Hoodsman: Revolt of the Earls

by Smith, Skye

  "We are both being betrayed by those French cockerels yonder," replied Raynar in Welsh.

  "Tonight I will be in command of the watch to the north of the ford," the man said with a grin. "Come across and speak with us. We may even let you live since the river will have washed off your Saxon stench."

  "You would be a better horse thief if you mounted their backs instead of their backsides," replied Raynar and once he heard the man's chuckle he turned and made his way slowly back to his own men.

  * * * * *

  The Severn water was cold and by the time he was dragged up the muddy bank on the other side he couldn't stop shivering. The original man who had spoken to him just before sunset was carrying a blanket and he threw it around Raynar's shoulders. It smelled of horse, but it cut the wind, and he soon felt a glow growing in his arms and shoulders. He followed the man beyond the first bushes and towards an open fire, a low fire, a cooking fire.

  He looked around the company and saw no ordinary bowmen. These were all Welshmen of power and wealth, which meant each led perhaps twenty men from their valley and owned perhaps a hundred sheep each. "I am Raynar of the Peaks," he introduced himself. "Friend to King Bleddyn ap Cynfyn and to Powys."

  One of the men stood quickly and stepped across the fire and grasped Raynar's elbow in a warriors grip. "Well met Raynar." The man turned to the others and said "I know this man from Bleddyn's palace, and he speaks truly. I will vouch his oath."

  The original man then said, "That explains why your bowmen did not reply to our arrows. I have sad news for you Raynar of the Peaks. Your friend Bleddyn is now riding in the clouds with Bran the Blessed, for he was ambushed and killed by Rhys ab Owain. He now claims the crown. We also were friends to Bleddyn, which is why we must now take Earl Roger's silver and help him to cross this holy river."

  Raynar threw back his blanket, drew his sword from it's dripping sheath, and raised it to the sky and yelled an oath to the stars in honor of Bleddyn, then spit into the fire. A man on the other side of the fire stood and held out a leg of lamb to him. "Here, it is all the more delicious for being stolen."

  "Friends of Bleddyn, I lead three wolfpacks from the Danelaw. We protect three thousand fyrdmen farmers who have rallied to the banner of the holy Bishop Wulfstan, and now stand watch all along the holy river. They wish to protect their sheep and their women from the fiend knights who ride with Earl Roger. Today, at the parley, we were betrayed by De Lacy who leads Worcester's cavalry. He is a Norman knight and therefore the spawn of snakes."

  "To know De Lacy is to hate him. Tell us more, Raynar. We are listening." said the man who had vouched him, "but first tell me how it is that you fight for King William. The Raynar I fought alongside would never ride under a Norman pennant."

  "Well noticed and well asked," said Raynar lowering his voice so that the men who had begun to chatter amongst themselves would have to shut up to hear his words. "I rode many times with my Welsh friends and learned two things that have changed my life. The first is the Welsh bow." There were soft murmurs of agreement. "The second is to encourage your enemies to fight amongst themselves." There was laughter and a few cheers.

  "I ride with the fyrd, under Wulfstan's banner, and he is the last English bishop in William's kingdom. I have two aims. To make sure these good fyrdmen live long enough to reap a good harvest this year, and to make this revolt of the Earls turn into a Norman civil war, so that they will kill each other and leave the rest of us in peace." Cheers erupted from the men around the fire, but Raynar shushed them and motioned them to keep their voices down.

  "This is of no interest to us, Saxon," said the original man, "The more battles that Ralph wins, the more silver we earn."

  "You can't spend silver when you are dead," said Raynar and then told them of the scheming he had overheard in the river. The Welsh faces turned ugly. They had been betrayed and belittled too often by these Norman knights, and they all cursed Earl Roger and De Lacy and the fire hissed with their spit.

  "Tell us what you would have us do, friend of Bleddyn." said the original man.

  "I have a plan where you will kill my knights and I will kill yours, and the Earl will not cross the Severn. With Hereford's knights lying in their own blood, you can pick the shire clean on your way back to Wales. Why settle for silver coins when you can have gold crosses. First however, you must oath on Bleddyn's tomb that you will try not to hurt any English, nor loot from any English, nor rape any English. What you do to Normans, is up to you."

  The men looked around the fire, which had been fed with logs and kicked to life. Their eager faces glowed red in the firelight and they looked like the pictures Christians paint of their devil god. They all so oathed, and spat into the fire. This time the spittle sizzled and hopped, and then Raynar chanted some words taught to him by a Welsh healing women, a seer, and the men quieted. His chant had sealed their oaths with a death curse, and the men close to him drew away from him, and the rest just stared at him in silence.

  "Are you a seer, then Raynar, that you know the magic words?" asked one.

  "No, he isn't," said the man who had vouched for him. "but there was gossip at the palace that the Golden Harp, Bleddyn's own seer, would seek his bed. I warned you that he was true, and now he has invoked the spirits to keep you as true as he. I warned you. I warned you."

  "So be it," replied the original man, "I meant my oath, so the seer's curse is nothing to me. Tell us your plan, friend of Golden Harp."

  * * * * *

  At daybreak, De Lacy told Raynar that his scouts had seen a garrison of men riding south on the other side of the river. "They are trying to outflank us. Take your men south and block them from crossing." Meanwhile De Lacy's knights broke their night's fast with leisurely meal of yesterday's horse and a hearty ale. They took their time, so that the wolfpacks would be miles away racing to protect the southern fords, before they donned their armour and mounted their battle horses.

  All archers and infantry were ordered away from the ford on both sides of the river, and then the two sets of knights lined up facing each other across the ford, armed with lances and swords. The agreed on terms were that no battleaxes or maces were allowed, and that a lance could be used only in the first charge, and then must be discarded in favour of the sword.

  De Lacy began his charge first and was more than halfway across the river before Roger's men spurred their mounts. But then the right wing of Roger's line had some horses collide as they entered the river and that turned the line, and caused confusion so the charge never really got moving, and resulted in half of Roger's men turning back to shore to regroup on dry land.

  Without the full line to meet the lance charge, the men that were left would be lost, so soon all of Roger's knights were retreating away from the river with the De Lacy's men in pursuit. Roger's infantry, who had lined up to watch the knights perform, suddenly found themselves diving away from fleeing hoofs, and then diving away from the lances of De Lacy's cavalry.

  Just as the first of the infantry were being spitted, and their howls of terror and pain were mixing with the howls of joy and yells of bloodlust from De Lacy's knights, a hundred Welsh bowmen stepped out of the bushes that separated their camp from the main camp. Within minutes, six hundred heavy arrows hit everything around the dying infantry that stood higher than a saddle. Horse went down with arrows spitting their necks and heads. Knights went down with their horses, or with arrows bristling from their armour.

  Now it was the infantry's turn, and in hot vengeance they fell on the fallen horsemen with their short spears and daggers. De Lacy, still in the river, had the trumpets sound a retreat. He stood in his saddle and yelled "treachery, treachery, back across the river," and what was left of his cavalry needed no coaxing to retreat.

  The largest group of them was midstream when Roger's flanking cavalry from the northern ford arrived to block their retreat. "Treachery, treachery," De Lacy yelled, but now he was too panicked to be play acting. The plan had been designed so th
at few of his cavalry would be injured. Instead he had now lost almost half his cavalry, and the rest were trapped in the river.

  He saw no option but to surrender immediately and hope that Roger did not choose to use a sword to silence his knowledge of their plan. He began to give the order to surrender the trumpeter beside him, when suddenly Rogers flanking cavalry on the Worcestershire bank began to fall from their saddles.

  The earls men were being felled by arrows even more fiercely than his own men had been felled. Arrow after arrow after arrow was killing horses and riders. There was no escape for those who spurred their horses either back along the road where they found yet more bowmen, or towards the ford where De Lacy's cavalry was waiting for them with swords and anger. This time it was Roger on the Herefordshire bank that was yelling "treachery" and he ordered the knights beside him to charge De Lacy. "Kill them, Kill them, treachery, treachery," he was yelling.

  The last of the flanking cavalry on the Worcestershire bank of the Severn were now being pounced upon by the Bishop's fyrdmen, who found it easier to rob the wealthy riders if they first pushed a dagger through the helmet visors to make sure the men were dead.

  The sword melee in the middle of the ford was worse than a market butcher shop, as limbs of riders were severed, and horses throats were slashed. Only when it looked like De Lacy would surely loose, did Raynar order his bowmen to target what was left of Roger's cavalry.

  Eventually Roger had no choice but to sound the retreat. As he rode with what was left of his cavalry to the western bank, he was stunned by the carnage of horses and riders that he saw all around him. There were bodies and body parts and blood everywhere both up and down stream, and on both banks.

  De Lacy's own losses were so large that he had not enough cavalry left to give chase. The ford had been held but at a great cost in the finest Norman blood from both sides of the Severn. De Lacy saw Raynar and rode at him with his sword out as if he were going to take his head, but Raynar deftly side stepped behind a riderless horse and pretended to be calming it. De Lacy over shot his mark and had to slow and then turn to come back.

  "That went well, sire. The Earl may camp on the other bank and lick his wounds for a few days, but I doubt he will try to cross the Severn again. Especially since the number of fyrdmen is growing by the day."

  "What are you doing here?" yelled De Lacy with an angry tone, "You were supposed to be securing the fords south of here."

  "Ah, yes, well, we ran into some scouts who swore they had seen no riders on the other side of the river, so we decided we must have misunderstood your directions and we should have gone north and not south. We doubled back, and then found you trapped and yelling treachery. I thought for sure that you would all be slaughtered if we did not open the trap, and the only way to do that was to kill the earls cavalry."

  Raynar looked along the road approaches to the ford. "There certainly is a lot of horse stew along that road. Oh well, there are more than enough fyrdmen now to eat it all. Do you want me to have the fyrdmen drag the men's bodies across the Severn, so that the earl can collect them?"

  "My god," said De Lacy, "there is going to be hell to pay for this morning's work. Every family in Normandy will complain to the king of the loss of blood."

  "Most of the blood is from the horses, sire. There cannot be many more than three hundred cavalry dead, and perhaps another hundred injured. There was hardly any blood let from the infantry or the fyrdmen. A small price to pay to keep Roger on his side of the Severn."

  "You fool," yelled De Lacy. "Who cares about fucking peasants. Do you know the value of the just the knights killed here today, never mind the rest of the cavalry?"

  "Bah, peasant or noble, neither are of any account once in the grave." said Raynar and quit the discussion before he lost his temper and put an arrow through this man's lying, treacherous mouth in front of witnesses.

  * * * * *

  The bishop was sent for, and he arrived with monks and priests who cared for the needs of the injured as well as the dead. There were very few injured on either side. The infantry and archers on both sides had turned it into very much a killing battle, very far from the jousting style rules of engagement that had been agreed upon. Roger beseeched Bishop Wulfstan to declare a bishop's peace, so that both sides could care for the living and the dead without fear of more fighting.

  Earl Roger openly and loudly praised his Welsh bowmen for saving his infantry, but he was seething when he spoke the words. That night, the Welshmen deserted their separate camp and headed north walking their horses along the river bank trail. At the next ford there was a call in Welsh to them, and Raynar walked out of the bushes. He had come to bid them fare well. The leaders all clasped him by the arm, and they all promised him a bed and a woman to warm it, if he ever visited any of their valleys.

  The Welshmen did not tarry long, as they wanted to be halfway to Hereford before Roger was told they were gone. "I think this is the end of Roger's march," said one of them. "If he could not win a battle against an old monk who hates war, then he has little chance against Odo's army."

  "That depends," said Raynar, "on how many bowmen ride with Odo." The men all laughed at the words, but then sobered at the truth of the words. Less than thirty of the cavalry had died by sword or lance. "Bloody waste of good horseflesh," he said and then called out after them. "May you steal better horses on your way home."

  The laughter rang and echoed in the darkness. "We already have," came the reply from down the trail, "not that our Earl will have noticed yet."

  * * * * *

  The bishop nodded to the sheriff and Urse put a large purse on the table in front of Raynar. "Walter de Lacy tells us that your wolfpacks are no longer needed. He is claiming the wealth gleaned from the dead, yet my own men that were at the ford tell a different story than he is telling. This purse is for your men. The sheriff's constable, who rode with De Lacy, says that your men were so busy fighting that they missed out on the gleaning."

  "They will thank you, your grace."

  "And I will pray for their souls and for a trouble-free passage back to Cambridge," said Wulfstan, "as I will pray for all the men who now leave these shires to join the old Earl Siward and his fleet that is bound for the Byzantine."

  Raynar looked at him with a question written on his eyebrows.

  "You did not know. Yes, almost 250 ships have been gathering not just English warriors, but their families, and they soon will set sail for the east. They plan to sail south and then through the Pillars of Hercules and then the full length of the Roman sea. Ahh, you did not know this, but then you are from the North Sea coast and not the Celtic Sea, and the ships leave from the western ports.

  I grieve for them, and for our kingdom. Those men had hoped to be ceded back their lands for helping defeat the Earl of Hereford, but instead Regent Odo is already naming other Normans who will gain that land. The message from Odo is clear. There is no future for Daneglish lords here in England.

  Raynar did not speak. The news was completely disheartening. "Then we are dismissed, and can leave?"

  "There is much that Urse has heard from his men about treachery yesterday on the ford, that warns me that we should keep you close by," Wulfstan replied. "However, De Lacy is a powerful baron in these shires and it is his will that you go."

  "Once a battle begins most plans must be changed quickly. The outcome does not show the treachery that was seeded between Roger and Walter while watching the sunset on the day before." Raynar rose to make his leave. "I have been told by the sheriffs in my shires that this rebellion is not between the barons and the king, but between the barons and Odo. If this is true then you would be wise to send De Lacy home and use Urse as knight commander."

  "We have already decided to send De Lacy and his men to escort Earl Roger to Winchester. The sheriff and the fyrd will continue their vigilance along the river until we hear how well De Lacey does with that task. I will pray that they both reach Winchester before months end."


  The bishop touched Raynar's shoulder gently, and made a Christian sign. Raynar turned and made for the door. "Bowman," the sheriff called after him in his gruff voice, "I have granted amnesty to outlaws in this shire. Since there is no knowing how many, or which, fought as fyrdmen, I have granted it to all. I will pass the word that all men can return to their villages, and need not fear my constables so long as they henceforth keep the peace."

  "Then you are worthy to be the Shire Reeve, Urse," he replied over his shoulder, and was gone. In his mind he completed his thought. "And you need all those outlaws to be peaceful now, if so many English are joining the ships bound for an new life in the Byzantine."

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Hoodsman - Revolt of the Earls by Skye Smith

  Chapter 7 - Wolfpacks ride in Cambridgeshire in August 1075

  Cambridge was an armed camp. The three wolfpacks returning from Worcestershire were recognized and allowed through the three successive guard posts along the highway to gain the town. There were no beds to be had, though they all needed rest. There were many warriors in the town, however, they were the only ones who had the rough look of the battle weary. In spite of wanting nothing more than to sleep for a week, young Raynar forced himself to ride to the bailey and report, mostly in hopes of hearing the latest news.

  The great hall had a throng of men blocking the entrance and he and the three wolvesheads walking with him were sworn at when they tried to push through. The wolveshead were too exhausted and in no mood to be jostling with a crowd of petty petitioners. One of them held his Welsh bow high above his head and he whistled a signal that every wolf in the throng would recognize.

  Large men dressed for the forest began moving quickly towards the raised bow, pushing other men out of their way as they did so. When a dozen of them had reached the raised bow, the wolveshead said calmly. "Raynar is needed at the head table." The men nodded and used their bows to form a fence around the wolvesheads and then pushed the crowd back to form an aisle that gave clear access as far as the doorway, and then they reformed inside the door and created an aisle for them to walk unhindered to the head table.