Hoodsman: Saving Princesses

by Smith, Skye

  Raynar had been offered a bed in the room used by the men of the family. Once in the room with the door shut, Wylie admitted that being teased by those women was always the high point of his day. The rest of the day was just hard, slogging work.

  "Do you ever ..."

  "On occasion. It is sometimes hard to deny them, especially when business is slow. When it is slow at the inn they lose both types of earnings."

  There was a scratch at the door and it swung open on its pivot. By the light of the guttering candle they saw the light color of linen and light colored hair. "Wylie, does your friend need warming?" asked a sweet voice.

  Wylie bid her come in. "Quickly, before one of my sisters sees you. He does need warming. He is as moody as a ram with no sheep. I will go and do the rounds, but that won't take me long so get started now." He squeezed by her in the doorway and squeezed other things as he passed.

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  The Hoodsman - Saving Princesses by Skye Smith Copyright 2010-13

  Chapter 4 - To Dun Holm with a Princess in August 1068

  When the northern Earls lost confidence in their readiness to face King William's heavy cavalry, the York rebellion sputtered and died. The Earls ordered their shieldmen into the streets of the city, while others packed up and loaded the camp. The Reeve explained to York's ealders that William's army was on the move to York, and that the city must appease him for the attack on his garrison.

  The Reeve also explained that the English Earls were set on taking the treasures of York to safety away from William's army until that army returned to the south. There was an appeal for the wealthy of the city to come forward with valuables and that each would be given a signed bill to prove ownership for when the valuables were returned.

  The men of York would have laughed aloud had they not been surrounded by shieldmen. As a show of good faith, Bishop Aethelwine ordered the treasure of each church to be brought forth and Cospatrick signed the bills gladly. Slowly the town burghers came forward to hand over token wealth to get a signed bill. There was no doubt that the merchants would change the numbers and wave them at any Normans who pressed them to hand over their true treasure.

  Before the sun was low, the Earls with their huscarls and retainers and other men from the northeast, were Dun Holm bound. Young Raynar mounted his farm mare Abby and rode with them. Or more correctly, he rode with the Princess Margaret. She had insisted and he could refuse her nothing, save what she wanted most from him.

  Her mother Agatha kept darting them steely looks, but she did not refuse his company. She had watched Raynar in action in the fens. She had listened while he argued strategy with nobles and bishops. This young man was as formidable as Hereward around a planning table, and in a fight. At the thought, she wished that Hereward were with them now. After all, if the bishops in London had allowed her son Edgar, and Earl Edwin to use Hereward's plan back in '66, today Edgar would still be king, and William would be back in Normandy, or better yet, in a shallow grave.

  Raynar hated the ways of armies. The dust, the dung, the smell, the theft of the toil of farmers, the liberties with farm women. He was traveling with the nobles in front of the worst of it, but that also meant he was first to see the effects of the foraging parties on the villages they passed.

  One day as he and Margaret and Cristina were riding through yet another rough and emptied village, he heard Margaret cry out, and then watched as she kicked her horse to a trot and made for the edge of the village. The foragers had dragged two women from their hide in the bushes and were now holding them struggling and separated. The women were obviously a mother and her young daughter. Margaret was yelling at the men to let the villagers go, but as she got close they simply smacked her horse and it bolted through the village.

  Raynar had seen this game before. They were threatening to rape the girl unless the mother serviced them. Raynar walked his horse towards the men as he strung his Byzantine bow and nocked one of his blunt-tipped training arrows. "Let them go and be about your business," he said softly to the man who had smacked Margaret's horse.

  The man looked at him with scorn. "No harm done friend. The mother has agreed. You can be the first to take her, if you put the bow down."

  Margaret was back now, and Cristina was with her. "You steal their food and the thanks you give is to rape them as well! You are devils!"

  "We wouldn't never, your ladyship," said the man, "we just wanted the mum to be friendly. She knew we wouldna harmed the girl. A little friendliness was all we wanted. She has already agreed. It's all settled so, umm, see, we are letting the girl go." He waved to his friend, who did indeed let the girl go.

  Cristina moved closer to Raynar and faced him. She saw the blunt practice arrow and winked slyly. "Raynar, no, you can't kill a man for trying to turn a wife into a whore unless you are the husband."

  "Thankye mam, your ladyship. See friend, even the women understand how it is," said the man.

  Cristina began again, "You can't kill him, but it would be fair justice to turn him into a eunuch."

  "A whatsit?" asked the man.

  "A steer," said Raynar and he lowered his aim to the man's crotch.

  The man let go of the mother because he needed both hands to cover his crotch.

  The mother began to laugh. She curtsied to Cristina, and then she turned and kneed the man in the balls with all the power of her farmer's body. The man bent over as the agony welled up and then he slumped slowly to the ground.

  Raynar swung his aim to cover the other man and told him not to move a muscle. The mother stalked purposefully over to him and kicked him in the balls. He dropped like a stone and began puking into the dirt.

  Raynar saluted the mother and she curtsied back. "I suggest that you stay well hidden until they are gone," he said. It was a waste of words. Mother and daughter were already sprinting to the bushes.

  That night was spent at a crude but large longhouse just off the highway. After the meal, in front of fifty nobles and huscarls and women, Margaret stood up and called for quiet.

  "It has come to my attention," she began, "that the men that forage for this army are abusing the women of the farms and villages."

  There was a snicker and a laugh and then a roar of laughter. When it had quieted she pulled Raynar to his feet beside her. "This is Raynar of the Peaks, perhaps the best bowman in England. The man who slaughtered the Ogre of Stamford Bridge. I have ordered him to shoot the balls off any man who abuses the women. He need not wait my permission each time. He can carry out my order on the moment, no matter it be pikeman, huscarl, or lord."

  The women in the longhouse cheered, and Margaret sat and pulled Raynar down beside her.

  "Thank you, love," he groaned, "I now doubt that I will see another sunrise."

  Edgar now stood. "My sister in her naive way, makes a good point." The men laughed. "An English army must be seen to be different from a Norman one. If we expect the loyalty of these folk we must treat them better than what they can expect from the Normans. From now until Dun Holm this army will abide by the law when dealing with the villagers. That means no beatings, no abuse, and a fair price paid for their food. This means that an agent of the quartermaster will be assigned to each foraging party."

  There was a shocked silence from the crowd. Armies traveled on their stomachs. So long as they were moving across fresh land, they could eat. They did not camp in one place too long else the villages close by would be picked clean, and the army would go hungry and the villagers would starve.

  Villages were sparse along Roman streets, because the streets were favoured for moving armies. Since the times of the ancients, the friendly army took your food but left you enough to survive. The enemy army took it all and possibly left you alive. Neither army would pay for what they took.

  Cospatrick pounded the table with a leg bone of some beast. "Since we are in Northumbria, and since I am its Earl, may I thank you on behalf of my folk.” There was cheering. Almost all of
these men were Northumbrian. The village ealder was brought forward and Edgar handed him a small purse for the food and lodging for the night. The ealder went away with the purse, and returned with some village women to help with the serving and cleanup.

  Edgar came to sit between Margaret and Cristina, and they both hugged him, though his mother gave him a dark look. "Oh Mother," he whispered, "we are but two days from Dun Holm, where we must pay market prices anyway. Two extra days of paying is nothing compared to the good gossip about us that will travel throughout this land."

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  "There is word from York," Margaret told Raynar the next morning when they were riding together. "William arrived earlier than expected. He thought to catch us there, but due to your advice we are here instead." She waved her hand at the pastoral scene before them. "He has hung the reeve and a few other officers and appointed his own men. The Bishop is under guard, and a Norman bishop is to be named. He has not allowed his army into the town and instead has them building a motte near the fork in the Ouse. "

  "That is all with a softer glove than I expected," Raynar replied.

  "Well, he has taken the richest men hostage and will ransom their lives," she continued.

  "That is still a soft glove. Let us hope the hot heads that rebelled do not rise again and anger him."

  "Perhaps we have wronged William in thinking him so evil," she wondered aloud.

  Raynar clenched his teeth and looked away for a moment. "I have found that Normans as a people are evil. Perhaps not to each other, but to everyone else. It is as if they view themselves as better than all others." He then told her Alan's thoughts about it being due to owning slaves.

  "So by owning and commanding slaves, the slave owner becomes a slave driver, and a slave driver acts as if a slave is not a person," she reasoned.

  "You really are quick of wit. Hasn't your mother ever told you that men are frightened by witty women?"

  "It is not wit. At the convent we were taught to live by the golden rule. We all had our turn at being the floor scrubbers just to teach us how it feels." She looked at him and beat him to his thought. "And don't say 'he who has the gold makes the rules.' That is old and lame."

  "I am not a Christian, but I have worked for monks," defended Raynar. "I do know the golden rule and the nine commandments."

  "Eight. There are only eight commandments. The extra is only because some holy books have split one of them in two."

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  The Hoodsman - Saving Princesses by Skye Smith Copyright 2010-13

  Chapter 5 - With a Princess at Westminster in November 1100

  Henry and Raynar rode quickly along the embankment of the Thames to Westminster. They had not tarried long enough for Raynar to arrange for a horse, so one of Henry's guards doubled behind another's saddle. Captain Henry and Raynar both pulled their cloak hoods forward to cover their faces as they passed through the palace gates and pulled up at the central guards barracks.

  They hustled along a passageway, passed a staircase that led down into the earth and smelled like a midden , and to a small metalled door. Henry had the key. He unlocked it, said his thanks to his guards, and went through. Only Raynar followed him. He locked the door and climbed a staircase which opened into a tower room with no windows, only archery slits. There he unlocked and threw open a heavily bound chest, and began pulling off his guardsman’s mail.

  With Raynar's help he was dressed again as King Henry within minutes. The trunk seemed to be a hiding place for his disguises. He slammed it shut and locked it. A few moments later, their cloaks were sweeping through long hallways of the palace and Henry was ignoring everyone that bowed. There were no niceties exchanged to the guards as they strode into the throne room and closed the giant double doors behind them. They took a passage behind the tapestry behind the throne, which led to the counting room, then skipped up some stairs and into he King's quarters.

  Henry was twenty years younger than Raynar, and Raynar was hurrying and panting to keep up. Henry finally stopped in front of an arched doorway, took a deep breath to calm himself, and then knocked. A female voice from the other side asked who it was. All the King said was 'Henry' and a password. The door was unbarred and opened silently on its pivot. They walked through, and the handmaiden closed and barred it behind them.

  A woman of twenty years stood up from her writing table, and the bright candles on the table made her skin and her silks glow with a soft light.

  "Edith," Henry said as he walked towards her, "I come to present Raynar of the Peaks to your service."

  Edith looked at the man standing beside Henry and walked forward with her hand outstretched. The man did not move. Even when she stood in front of him, with her hand still out, he did not move. "Captain Raynar" she said softly.

  Raynar refocused his eyes and said equally softly, "My apologies princess, but I just had a vision of your mother Margaret, and my heart was trying desperately to hold on to the vision."

  "I have been told that I favour her."

  "You are now the same age as she was when we first met. It is more than you just look like her. You are her."

  "Captain Raynar?" Henry interrupted quizzically.

  "Oh yes," replied Edith without taking her eyes from the older man. "At the time he rescued us and brought us to Cristina, he was the captain of a ship, a squadron of ships. His exploits were sung in every alehouse from Scotland to Flanders. You didn't know?"

  Henry did not know what to say. He just looked from one to the other.

  "That was a long time ago, princess," Raynar whispered. "These days I leave the command of ships to younger men."

  Henry looked from one to the other and felt completely left out of what these two people were feeling. "I beg your pardon Edith, but I just pushed past two barons in the chambers to bring him to you, and I really should go and make my peace with them." He pulled her hand towards his lips, but she would have none of it. She kissed him full on the lips.

  "Henry," she said once she had released his lips, "when I visited Winchester on my sixteenth birthday, I begged you to take me, and you refused me. I have just spent three days in front of bishops denying my oath to Christ and to the Convent in order to be with you. Do you really think that I would be satisfied with a kiss on the hand from you?"

  "Yes, she is Margaret," chuckled Raynar.

  Henry held her ever so gently up to him and kissed her deeply, and then released her and turned to go. He grabbed Raynar's sleeve as he went and Raynar locked step with him towards the door. "She has spent most of her life in a convent, and she wears that innocence like a silken undershirt," he whispered.

  "I know exactly how you feel in your heart. I felt it once for her mother," Raynar whispered back.

  Henry stopped and swung himself face on to Raynar and their eyes met. "With your life?"

  "With my life."

  "Thank you."

  The maid was holding the door open for Henry. He looked at her hard and said, "Any orders from Master Raynar are my orders. You will treat them as such. Understood?" She curtsied and confirmed. There was a flicker of sauciness on the maid's face that whispered to Raynar that Henry had bedded this maid at sometime in the past.

  Henry was gone, the door bolted and Raynar went to sit at the writing desk with Edith. She told her maid to go to her bed and to cover her ears, then she slipped her hands into Raynar’s and looked at him. She looked at him with a deeply searching look. "Quietly," she whispered, "There are ears behind every curtain." She squeezed his hand. "Are you well?"

  "Yes," he replied in a whisper. "And you, and Mary?"

  "I am very well. Of Mary, I don't know much. I hope she arrives in time for the wedding."

  "Is there word of your Uncle Edgar?" Raynar fuzzed his eyes and pictured Margaret's younger brother Edgar, and her older sister Cristina. Edgar was the only one who still lived, he hoped. Margaret had died in the palace at Dunfermline in '93, and her sister at her abbey in Romsey
in '98.

  "I have had no word of either. I have not seen Edgar since Cristina died."

  He looked up and made a small prayer to Cristina. "Cristina would have made a wonderful mother, like Margaret. She was wasted in a convent."

  "As was I, as was my sister," she said a little too loudly, "but only from a convent could we have any say in the choosing of our husbands. Poor Cristina was never wed, and never bore children, though she raised Mary and I as her own. My mother fled the convent and ended up married to that brute Malcolm." She smiled warmly at him. "Mary fled from the convent last year, and I do hope she has stayed out of the hands of brutes."

  "I miss your mother so much," sighed Raynar. "The good always die too soon."

  "She would have left Scotland for you," she whispered, "had she known where you were. You must know that. She would have flown to you and damned the consequences. Her work for Scotland was done. There were honest heirs a plenty.”

  "The Wyred sisters wove the fates like a net that separated us. Even in '93 when Malcolm and your eldest brother were killed in Northumbria in an ambush by Robert de Mowbrays, the Norman Earl," Raynar said quietly, "there was no chance for us to be together for Margaret died days later. They say it was of a broken heart, but that was a lie to keep the peace. Did Cristina ever tell you the truth of it?"

  She smiled at him with Margaret's smile. "I was far away in the convent at Romsey at the time, so I got all this news late. There was such confusion in Scotland at the time. It went rapidly through three kings before I heard the true story my mother's death. First my uncle Donalbane took the crown, and then my half brother Duncan, but then he was murdered, and then Donalbane again. My uncle Edgar was forced to sort it all out with the help of the English army, and it was he who crowned my brother Edgar, King of the Scots.

  Cristina finally heard the truth from my mother's women. My mother was joyous at the news that Malcolm had been killed, but crushed by the news that her beloved Edward was killed with him. Never the less, she did not die of a broken heart. She was poisoned just days after Malcolm died in order that Malcolm's brother Donalbane could steal the throne before Duncan could claim it. My other brothers had to flee to England where our half-brother Duncan could protect them."