by Smith, Skye
Raynar walked closer to the sisters, where there was a serving table with a flagon. He poured them some wine. He waited to speak until a sudden bout of infectious laughter from the women had abated so that they could drink the wine he had poured.
"Sire, I am sure you have already sent the orders to the criers. Something like: Today in the palace, there was an assassination attempt on the life of the English beauty you have chosen to be your queen. She is the sister of King Edgar of Scotland. Three young heroes rescued her, but unfortunately two died in the rescuing. The assassin crossbowman escaped and a reward is offered for his capture. The rescuer who survived will be knighted at the coronation."
Henry rose and crossed to the door, and told the guard outside to send for his chamberlain. When he returned and sat and toasted his horn to Raynar, he said, "You forgot to mention that I now have to pay all the guards who witnessed the attack to keep their mouths shut."
"Don't you pay those incompetents a farthing. I will have a quiet word with our two guards. I will tell them that the King does not want to hang them for accidentally killing the men who were trying to rescue the Queen, but if it becomes known that the rescuers were not killed by the assassin, then he will have no choice but to engage an executioner. After all, the noble families of the slain men will demand it,"
Raynar was so infected by the cheer and jests of the women that he tried a jest himself. "That gossip will go through the guards faster than bad fish."
They decided to dine quietly in the chambers. There would be feasting enough over the next few days. Over a dinner of quail and eels, Henry's favourite, Mary told Henry the story of how her mother and Raynar met. After hearing the story so many times, she was thrilled to be telling it in the presence of Raynar himself. He did not have the heart to correct her version, which was obviously from Edgar’s words.
"So who paid Edgar's men to be assassins?" asked Henry. "Did you ever find out?"
"We never had proof, but the man who most feared the joining of Edwin's family to yours was Odo of Bayeux," replied Raynar. "But then, many Normans would hate the idea of Edwin being the Earl of so much of the kingdom."
"Odo, that monster. When I was a young, we boys learned fast never to be left alone with him. His lust was for any young flesh. Male or Female. But then he was a bishop, and I fear that is an all too common trait of bishops, " said Henry. "He was Robert's monster. I am so glad he is dead now, otherwise he would be helping Robert against me.” He looked at Raynar who was savouring the eel and obviously trying not to continue the topic. "Did you ever meet Odo?"
"A few times only. The last was several years ago when I was traveling from Constantinople to Cordoba. If I trust my memory, it was in your cousin Roger of Sicily's capital of Palermo. It is one of those ancient towns that is grand and beautiful, but underneath is corrupt and dangerous."
"Wait, isn't Palermo the place where Odo died?" asked Henry.
"Was it?" said Raynar. He was trying to hide a smirk. "Was it really? I must say that when I was introduced to him, I had an immediate dislike for the man. There was something sinister about him and the way he was handling the merchandise at the slave pens."
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The Hoodsman - Saving Princesses by Skye Smith Copyright 2010-13
Chapter 11 - Hiding from winter in Bamburgh in February 1069
By morning the wind at Amble had dropped and the temperature rose above freezing, but then large wet snow flakes fell from a low dark cloud and blanketed the world in soggy white mush. They were trapped by the snow for two more days, but at least they were warm, gloriously warm in the longhouses. Even Agatha had lost her shakes and was gaining strength with every meal.
The third day they hitched and saddled up and were again on the highway to Bamburgh. Along that highway north, they came to one corner where you saw Bamburgh fortress for the first time. The men who knew the corner were waiting to see the effect of this first sighting on the others. They were not disappointed.
The southerners stopped and stared in disbelief at the earthen fortress and its towers. Although part of the town was on the highway, most of it was inside the ring of the enormous earthen wall, and the earthen wall was built on a hill and a cliff.
Cospatrick's huscarl dropped back to watch Margaret and Cristina get their first view. He told them, "Cospatrick is the Prince of Bernicia, and Bamburgh is the historical seat of the prince. He keeps a large garrison at the fortress always, and his family live there in comfort and safety.
The Prince will always hold Bamburgh. From the moment he took possession after Osulf of Bamburgh was shot by outlaws, he has manned it to be held at all cost. So long as he holds it, the kings of England and of Scotland must treat him with respect."
As they rode closer to the ancient fortress, they were even more impressed. To enter they had to ride through three fortified gates. There was so much space within the walls, and so many longhouses and barns, that even a party of travelers as large as theirs were housed and taken care of with ease.
Edgar’s family and their guard were given a house of their own and were made comfortable in it by the personal attention of Princess Ethelreda, Cospatrick's wife. After such a hard, cold, and dangerous journey, the women were eager to stay under a good roof beside a good fire. Ethelreda, however, was quick to tell them, "You will soon be bored. This is a dreary end of the world to be spending a winter in."
To which Cristina responded under her breath, "No wonder the warm welcome. Now she has some company for the winter.” And company they were. The earth works served to deflect the worst of the wind over the fortress and the houses were nestled in the ring and were the warmest hearths in Northumbria during the late storms of that winter.
Couriers crossed here on their way north and south, and the princess was privy to all the messages, so there was always news, albeit old by a week. The princess told all the warriors from Dun Holm that they were to stay in Bamburgh and not return to Dun Holm until they were ordered to.
* * * * *
Unlike the nobility, Raynar was quite happy to stay in Bamburgh and hide from the winter. Margaret had noticed a difference in him. A quieting. The young peasant who usually woke up each day and lived that day anew, was now brooding and moody. Surprisingly, it was her aloof mother Agatha, who told her that he was a man in need of comforting. Margaret and Cristina set about to do just that.
Of course, it was the slaughter he had caused at the Bishop's house that had disturbed his mind so. The trap was his plan, the timing of the trap was controlled by him, the slaughter was triggered by him, and the consequences were hell on earth for seven hundred poor souls. He could not shake the consequences. He had reveled in the battle and marveled at the superhuman surge of strength and reactions while fighting in battle. He had savoured the strength of brotherhood feelings from joining in the battle lust with the rest of the men.
Afterwards, however, while looking down on the charred ruins of building and men and animals he had felt a guilt so strong that he could not shake it off, as the rest of the men seemed to be able to do. What was worse was seeing the sadistic grins of the warriors around him as they saw the aftermath. They did not just enjoy the battle, they enjoyed seeing the vanquished. They even enjoyed the mercy killings and did them savagely, instead of carefully.
Agatha and her daughters resolved for one of them to be close by him at all times while he fought the demons in his head. They listened to his song of grief, and held his hand tenderly. They began to understand that though he had been in bloody battles before, Raynar had never made the plans or given the orders. What he was feeling for the first time was the responsibility of a leader for the consequences of his orders. For the first time he had given orders that controlled and then had an effect on many, rather than being limited to just the consequences to himself.
Agatha told her daughters that the peasant porter's brooding was the perfect proof that the noble class was a different breed from the peasan
t class. The noble class had been bred to ignore the suffering around them and the suffering they have caused, so that it would not cloud the decisions they were trained to make. One must be born to lead. "The poor lad's mind is in the deadly grip of massive remorse," she said. "A nobleman is bred to feel little or no remorse, no matter the consequences."
Margaret was so angered by her mother's words that her face was reddening in the search for bitter enough words to reply with. Cristina dragged her away on some imaginary errand. Cristina bore the brunt of Margaret's fury. "She thinks like a Norman. To her the peasants are like cattle, to be owned and herded, to be used for labor, to be slaughtered when there is a need. She thinks of herself and her noble breed as demi gods, the chosen, and of Raynar and his peasants as mere mortals to do her, the ruling class's, bidding."
Margaret's voice was rising and Cristina pulled her through a door to the outside in hopes that the chill air would cool her blood. Margaret shook off her sister's grip and spun her around and pressed her against the wall of the house and spoke inches from her face in a harsh, breaking whisper. "We nobles gathered Raynar to us and held him with promises, and used him for our own ends. Our family, all our family, and our allies, trust in him better even than we trust in each other. That is because we know he will be true, whereas our own family members would use us and abuse us for their own gain."
Now Cristina was angry. "You think I don't know this. I choose to live in convents because I reject the noble ways, the false ego, the posing, the skillful lies, and the back-stabbing. You, you hide in convents so that you can say 'no' to a betrothal that does not please you. But inside," she pushed on Margaret's breast above her heart, "inside you want a husband. You want a powerful husband so that you can share his power, and then eclipse his power through your sons."
Margaret had her mouth open to respond but was at a loss.
"Deny it!" hissed Cristina, "may the lord strike you dead if you deny it. You hunger for Raynar, are in heat for him. You sit beside him and your bodies meld to each other and your spirits become one. You lay awake at night playing with yourself while thinking of him, and yet you will not take him.
Why? Because you fear bearing his child, as if bearing a peasant's child would poison you. You fear it would ruin your choice of a husband, and you will never, never take him as a husband. "
Margaret's slap across her face sounded loud and it stung.
They struggled and pushed at each other and yanked each others hair until tears welled up in both sets of eyes and they simultaneously stopped pulling. Cristina, too tired and frustrated and angry to go on hissed, "I would have him in a minute, but he is smitten with you. He is so terribly smitten that he denies the natural lust of his manhood for you.” They were silent and their hot breath rose like steam in the still chill air.
"Mother is wrong about him," Margaret finally spoke. "His sickness of mind is not because he planned the hellish death of so many. He weighed the lives of the raiders against the lives of the peasants they would hound, and he made a clear choice to slaughter the army, and then he made it so.
No, his sickness of mind is because he knows he could have prevented the slaughter. One arrow could have prevented it. One arrow whistling from a hide along the highway and through Robert of Comyn's neck would have turned that army back to York. Usually when Raynar draws his bow, a leader becomes accountable to his god for his life's work."
Margaret kissed the cheek that was still red from her slap, and the sister's hugged each other, and then shivered in the freezing cold, and together walked back to the door, and warmth.
* * * * *
The Bishop's valuables were in the care of Edgar's household, and that meant his chests of books as well. Cristina held the keys to the book chests, so Raynar would often be seen in bright candlelight improving his Greek with the book of diagrams. Such bright light was costly, so the sisters often shared the space with him. As the weeks passed, he stayed warm and eventually became content and relaxed in this dour fortress of the north.
The rest of the north did not fare so well. The Norman garrison at York had fallen to the Bishop and his axemen, but William and his army had arrived within days. The Bishop saved many lives by convincing the Dun Holm axemen not to stay and fight, and they fled north and home to their hearths with much coin in their purses.
To Edgar and Cospatrick's disappointment, William did not chase them north. Instead he had stayed in York to rebuild the bailey and to crush a series of small local rebellions. Once the earliest planting and lambing seasons began and the men of Yorkshire became busy again with the reality of a farmer's life, then the rebellions quelled.
Edgar and Cospatrick and all of their men arrived at Bamburgh with the better weather. There was no word of Morcar, although the best guess was that he was at one of his estates close to York and negociating for his brother Edwin's freedom. Bishop Aethelwine had stayed in Dun Holm and busied himself preparing for the spring holy days. After the holy days were finished he was determined to pack the holy relics and the bodies of the saints. He wanted them moved to the safety of the island fortress of Lindisfarne, just north of Bamburgh.
After listening to the stories of his family, Edgar realized how close he had come to losing both his family and his treasure to the winter storms and to roving gangs of axemen. After a week of thought and discussions with Cospatrick, he declared that he would take his family north to the safety of Scotland as soon as the weather permitted.
Edgar sent word to his great Cog to prepare to come from Monkwearmouth near Dun Holm, to Amble near Bamburgh. It was the same large cog that he had used to travel from London to the Wash and then on to Monkwearmouth. The same one that the Frisians had rescued in the Wash.
A dilemma was troubling Raynar. He now was convinced that his riding with the Earls would not stop the ravaging of the folk of the kingdom. The Earls' solution was to fight army against army for the gain of the English lords over the Norman lords, and for the swapping of armour wealth from one set of warriors to the other. Every time the armies of either side marched, the folk bore the true cost. Worse, whenever an English army won, the folk bore a cost double or triple due to the brutal Norman vengeance against the folk that eventually followed any win by their English lords.
There was a much better solution than fighting William's armies. The very solution he had tried at Hastings Road, and at Wallingford on the Thames, and again at Warwick. Killing William would send the armies home, and save the folk from the foragers of both sets of lords. Kill William and the Normans will fight amongst themselves to choose his replacement. Divided, they could be picked off by small local rebellions, until they were so weak and fearful that they would flee back to Normandy.
At the battle of Hastings Road he had posed as a Norman archer so that he could approach William with a bow. In Wallingford he had stayed at a place where William must eventually come to, and then waited for him while posing as a boatman. In Warwick, he had posed as an onion farmer to sneak up close to William and try for the killing shot.
All these plans depended on his being close to William, and playing the role of an innocent that no guard would notice. All of these plans had a good chance of success, and had cost nothing in revenge. In truth, each of his attempts had come closer to killing William than any English army ever had. His arrow that downed William's horse at Hastings Road had been the only time that William had been injured in England.
So where was the dilemma? The dilemma was that both Margaret and Edgar were pressing him to sail with them to Scotland, whereas William was in York. Cristina made up his mind for him. "Everyone should see the mountains of Scotland one time before they die." She had recently become more open in her physical attraction to him, and it was a wonder to Raynar that Margaret had become less jealous of her sister's time with him.
"There are mountains in Scotland?" Raynar asked.
Cristina's answer was to open another of the Bishop's book chests and pull out a roll of scrolls. She th
umbed through them with a carelessness that irked Raynar's reverence for ancient writings, but she dismissed his protests saying that these scrolls were not old. She finally pulled one out, and draped it over the writing desk. It was a map of Scotland.
"Now, I am not good with maps, and use them only to find how to spell place names, but I think that these marks mean that there is a mountain there, and there, and .... well you see, Scotland seems to be all mountains further north."
Cristina slipped away from the writing desk and intercepted Margaret who was just slipping through the curtain wall to approach. "Shhh, come away. I have found something that made his eyes glint like a priest looking at gold. Maps."
Indeed the Greek book of war camps was left forgotten in its chest for a fortnight while Raynar spent long hours copying maps. When Edgar found him thus and saw the maps he was creating, he drafted his sisters to copy Raynar's maps so that he also would have the same maps.
It certainly kept all three of them together, busy and out of trouble. Even Agatha was pleased but she questioned the work of her daughters. "Why are they copying Raynar's maps instead of the originals?"
"Look here," answered Margaret straightening her body up from her hunch close to the paper, so that her mother could see. "These are three different maps of Bernicia, all different, all adorned with lovely miniatures and scrolling cursive. Now look at Raynar’s. He has combined them into one, so that his is more complete than any of the originals. His has no adornment, and the place names are clearly positioned and clearly written."
"There is more," added Cristina. "There is his choice of which maps and which parts of maps he has copied." She pushed a small paper towards her mother, then remembered that her mother could not read. "This is a list of his maps. Some of the maps show the points and rivers and harbours from Scotland to London, and from Denmark to Normandy. Some of the maps show the streets and main highways from Kent to Cornwall, and from Wessex to Northumbria. Some of the maps show the plans of large towns like York and Chester." She flipped the map she was copying. "And see, he has maps on both sides of the scroll, so that he can carry twice as many maps in a small scroll pipe."
