by Smith, Skye
As an archer he was not forced to do the back breaking toil of lifting stones. He was issued a French bow and some light arrows, a uniform and new boots. If only they had issued the boots in Hampshire, the journey would have gone faster, for many of the men had been wearing rags on their feet by the time they reached York.
So long as he stood his watch without complaint there was food. Good food compared to what was being fed to those poor folk lifting stones. It was a very French deja vu because he had spent almost a year pretending to be a wall guard for this same Robert at Gerberoi on the Normandy-France border, waiting for a chance to kill William.
Every night he asked himself what had he accomplished during so much time of being bored while watching out from some Norman's wall. He himself had accomplished almost nothing, while his friends had accomplished much. Of the archers around him, not a one could he identify as a hoodsman.
The Normans were not rounding up oarsmen and carters, and most hoodsmen were now oarsmen or carters. The Normans were rounding up peasant archers. Farmers and foresters who had a practiced skill with a bow. Daily practice was what created the tell tale calluses on the string fingers.
While he was guarding Gerberoi, William's ever expanding empire had stopped expanding, and had begun to shrink. William's health was bad, due to the arrow wound at Gerberoi, which was his only true contribution. Due to the ongoing costs in man and coin of failed campaigns and his lack of health, William's own lords were rebelling against him. His own sons were rebelling. Everyone's wealth was being sucked away by failed campaigns. William was even having to make treaties with petty kings such as Malcolm of Scotland, who was less powerful than any count in France.
Ever since Ely had fallen, the brotherhood's preferred tactic had been to encourage Normans to fight Normans. Slowly, too slowly, that tactic was now showing results. If they kept fighting each other, the Norman empire would fall apart, perhaps not this year and perhaps not next, but eventually. Sooner if King Canute's Danish fleet would set sail.
Each day he looked out over the River Tyne and hoped for a visit from his good friend Canute. If a Danish fleet ever rowed up this river, they would have no trouble from these walls, because enough of these archers would turn their arrows on the gatekeepers, and welcome Canute.
The worst thing about his days on these walls was the boredom. At least in Gerberoi every man was a dangerous man and had good stories to tell. The men he ate with here had never been far from their villages and had few good stories. He could not even tell some of his own without alerting the Normans that he was a man to be watched. There was nothing to read, and even if there had been, it would be madness to show such a skill. The only news he heard from the outside was the self serving glorification of the king's adventures in Wales.
William had marched through Bristol to the south coast of Wales and had freed many English men. By this he assumed that William had been coerced by Bishop Wulfstan to close the Irish run slave markets in the West Country, and the Irish had scarpered leaving their slave pens full. This would have given William the excuse to build some castles along both coasts of the Mouth of the Severn.
William had joined the victors of a great battle in Wales where princes allied to him had won the day. By this he assumed that the Welsh had again been fighting amongst themselves, and that the winner had bowed to William in order to be recognized by him as another king, even though Wales was ruled by princes, not kings.
William had continued on a pilgrimage to Saint David’s on the far point of Wales to ensure a good future for his people. This worried Raynar greatly because the news was sparse. Had he been forced on the pilgrimage by the Pope, or had he gone to seek out Welsh healers, such as Golden Harp, to heal him.
Golden Harp was a royal seer, a wise woman with the gift of sight into the fates. She was also his childhood friend Gwyn, and she could have healed William with her eyes closed and both hands tied behind her back. Damnation. William's festering wound that had cost him a year of walking the walls of Gerberoi, may now have been healed by Gwyn. He reminded himself not to curse the fates.
This last news shook him enough to start him planning an escape. If William were healthy again then he must again hunt the king. The next day, during a shift change, he snuck through the gates during a confusion of stone carriers. He pushed himself out of sight flat against the wall, and removed the jerkin that marked him with Robert's colors. Then as calmly as he could, he walked away from the fort slowly and therefore invisibly, north. As soon as he was beyond the sight of the walls of the fort, he turned east onto a bridal path, and then began to run for the hills.
* * * * *
Gregor Nesbit himself delivered him to Margaret, hoping for a reward in gold. He was not disappointed. Margaret bid goodbye to Gregor and in the same breath ordered her guards to take Raynar to the barber. Raynar expected this. The barber was the man most skilled at getting rid of lice and fleas.
When next she saw him, she dismissed everyone around her and sat very close so that she could dab a healing oil on the raw marks left by the slave collar. Sitting so close they could speak in whispers. Every hair on his body had been shaved, and he had been bathed in very strong mineral salts. His clothing had been burned, so he was dressed in a clean robe that was too tight at the shoulders.
While Margaron, his pearl, fussed, Raynar bounced his daughter Edith on his knee and did nothing but smile like the village fool as he hummed a Welsh tune to her. It was her mother's Welsh tune. Her mother's sexual rhythm.
"So Cristina has sent you back to me,” she whispered but more like the hiss of a queen than the soft tones of a close friend and sometimes lover.
"No, King William sent me north for telling him that his son Rufus had murdered his son and heir Richard.” He had always found that the most useful lie was the truth.
"Well that explains the letters from Cristina then. Many had come to her looking for you. Your horse was in her stable. Even the Countess Judith deigned to visit her and ask about you. Did you bed her?"
"Which one?” he asked.
"Well since I know you live with Judith whenever you are in Huntingdon, Cristina of course."
Again, the best lie was the truth. "Yes. We spent a romantic week together before I dropped her off at the nunnery gate."
"Good, now she will stop blaming me for keeping you apart."
"That is harsh of you, love,” he replied softly, "for both of us had to push through the guilt of our betraying you."
"Nonsense, I am a married woman. How can you betray me."
"But,” he said but his sentence was finished by Edith chuntering and pretending she could talk too.
"Exactly, you tell him Edith,” Margaron said in a baby voice, "You want a baby sister, don't you."
"What,” the sudden loudness of the word echoed, so he took a breath and forced himself back to a whisper, "have you lost your mind. Malcolm will never agree."
"Malcolm is in Denmark. I am regent here,” she hushed her voice. "I say she needs a sister."
"Malcolm is in Denmark. Your women will count back the months. Wait, he is in Denmark. But he entered a treaty with Robert and Matilda against Denmark."
"Well then, let us just say that he has gone to explain the treaty to Canute. The fates delivered you to me a week too late for you to join him."
"We must wait until he returns,” He suddenly longed for her and he reached out towards her.
She slapped his hand away. "They cannot hear our whispers, but they can see. Behave. What about Saint Serb's Inch?"
"We were more at ease at Loch Fitty."
"I want to eat of the blue mushroom again,” she said softly. "My dreams and visions are not longer as colourful as they were, even when I pray long and quietly."
"Are you sure, the last time almost ended badly."
"Now that I know what to expect, you can have a turn too,” she bargained.
"So be it, but immediately so that the month counters will still be fooled. If no
t immediately then we must wait until Malcolm returns,” he took her hand. "Please don't call your new daughter Matilda."
"No need to worry. In the Roman church now, the proper name for a daughter is Mary."
"Ah, yes, that makes sense,” he said, "after the wife of your Jesus."
"Umm, no,” she said slowly, "after the mother of Jesus. Rome has decided that Jesus had no wife Mary, and no daughter, Sarah."
"But we have both read the original Greek manuscripts. Remember, they were in Aethelwine's library in Dun Holm. You told me then that your family had proof that you were descended from Sarah."
"We do, but they are all in Greek,” she replied. "The church in Rome is burning all Greek texts except for those in their own library. The only truth we are to believe, is truth written in Latin."
"Remind me never to trust a history written in Latin."
"That was what Aethelwine used to tell us ten years ago. Has it been ten years. That poor man."
"Well, Mary is a good name. I like it. The short form of Marium or Marion."
"Do you think you left Cristina with child, for that would be very, ugh, complicated for her?"
"No, we were careful,” he assured her.
"Did she enjoy herself?"
"Of course. She became quite soft and loving, less strict. Not the Cristina that most people know.” he bounced Edith and talked in a baby voice, "except for you, little one."
"I would like it very much if you would do to me whatever my sister enjoyed the best."
He laughed. "That is exactly what she asked as well. Oops, I have a wet baby."
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Hoodsman - Queens and Widows by Skye Smith
Chapter 29 - Traveling to London with Lucy in December 1103
It was the Bishop's sergeant who called a rest stop and chose the place to rest, some four hours south of Lincoln. It was not a place that Raynar would have chosen for it was surrounded by a wood, but the two carters had used it before and did not complain. Still Raynar's extra sense, his healing sense which was also his hunting sense, was on alert. There was something that was not right about the place.
The sergeant had come with a dozen of the bishop's men to escort the loaded cart to London. Lucy had not liked the look of the men. They had the look of mercenaries. She had pleaded with Raynar to call village men to them to serve as an escort. Along this stretch of the highway either of them could call out the locals to help, but the decision had been made in Lincoln. Now she wished that she had insisted that they call a dozen of the local lads to them, rather than use the armoured men-at-arms that the sergeant had provided.
At the time, Raynar had gone with the flow. As a sea captain he had learned to accept what the fates had offered and make the best of it. After the choice of this watering hole, he was having second thoughts. On an impulse he reached over to grab his Seljuk bow and string it just in case. As he did so, he noticed that Lucy was stringing her not-so-long bow. Two minds of a suspicious nature.
All of them were now dismounted and stretching their legs and munching on bread and cheese from the Bishop's kitchen, while the horses slurped water and grazed. Raynar walked over to talk to the two carters. They were John's men. They were hoodsmen. They knew this road. He wanted their advice.
There was a yell and he looked around in time to see two lads wearing forest colors leap onto the two horses closest to the highway, and then ride hell bent away down the highway. As Raynar watched he yet again had to admit that his extra sense had been right, yet again. So that was what his sense was telling him. They had been watched.
It was beyond belief, but every one of their armed escort were following the sergeant as he mounted up and gave chase to the two horse thieves. Now it was not his sixth sense that was bristling, but his intellect and his memory. How many times had he used this exact same tactic to spring an ambush. He yelled at their escort to come back, but his shouts were ignored.
The carters were now alarmed enough to be pulling their own bows out from the cart's seat box. Lucy was yelling in anger because both her horse and Raynar's were being ridden down the highway by two of their armed escorts. Raynar stilled himself and listened to his senses, and then he looped his strung bow over his shoulders and held his arms up and yelled into the woods. "Don't shoot. Don't harm anyone. We surrender."
He yelled it twice and then yelled to Lucy and the carters to put their bows down, and then yelled out the words of surrender to the woods yet again. This time forest men walked forward out of the woods. Some had bows, most had axes. One was in armour.
The man in the armour was giving orders. "Disarm them. Tie them. Throw them in the cart and then let's get the cart away from this highway. Hurry."
It was all efficiently done, Raynar had to admit. He could not have done better himself. Of course it helped that the sergeant and the men of his escort were fools. He did not resist being tied or loaded into the cart, and he told Lucy and the carters to allow themselves to be tied up.
He would not risk Lucy's life just for money, not even a treasure. His sigh could not be stifled however. This would mean that when they were finally let go, he would have to raise the Hood and track these men down. It may take weeks. He was too old to go traipsing through winter's fields.
Already in his head he was planning the tracking. The cart would be found almost immediately. The forest men he would call in as trackers would easily follow the track of this loaded cart. Where ever it led them, there would be other tracks. Eventually one of these footpads would be captured, and he would lead them to another, and then another. These thoughts had gone far enough. For now it was more important to keep his mind focused on keeping Lucy from any harm.
The cart stopped. Why were they stopping so soon. They were out of sight of the highway but certainly not far enough away to keep them from being found by the sergeant’s men when they returned from chasing the horse thief decoys. He looked over at the two bound carters and gave them a questioning look. They both shrugged.
Three other men in armour came out of the shadows and walked up to the cart. One was in very costly armour. At his order, two men leaped onto the cart and found one of the heavy kegs amongst the light ones. The heavy ones carried silver coins, the light ones, dried beans. There were clicking and hammering sounds as they opened the lid, and then a shout of glee and a tinkle of coins.
"Right then,” costly-armour said. "Secure the lid again and let's get moving. I want this cart at my manor before nightfall."
"We will need to do more than that,” said an older man, a big older man with a white beard. "That escort would need to be blind not to follow the tracks of this cart. There are a dozen of them, well armed and mounted."
"Well armed and mounted,” added costly-armour, "and on their way slowly to the sheriff in Lincoln to tell how a cart of beans that they were escorting was stolen by footpads. Their sergeant will lead the sheriffs men back to the wrong watering hole, and the cart will have vanished from it without a trace."
Raynar's senses went on high alert, not just because it was obvious that their own escort was in on this heist, and possibly also the Bishop, but more because costly-armour had said this within earshot. This could mean only one thing. Costly-armour meant to kill them. Time for a new plan.
"That silver is the property of the king, and I am a king's tax collector. You have made a deadly mistake by ambushing us, but I will be the first to admit that mistakes happen. Turn this cart about and send us peacefully on our way south again, and I will treat this as nothing more than a mistake. Just do us no harm and take none of the king's silver. If your lads get away with the two horses they stole, then they are welcome to them. That will go on my expense pipe as a cost of doing business."
"Gag them, starting with him,” ordered costly-armour, but his order came too late. The truth and the thoughts were now out there with his men. The men he had brought from his estate to pull off the ambush were looking at one another and whisperin
g.
White-beard came close to Raynar and tied a rolled up kerchief tight in his mouth as he had been ordered, but then he pulled open Raynar's heavy cloak and looked at the clothes he wore and searched around for the badge of office. He found it, and sighed heavily. Raynar nodded to him and then nodded to the two carters.
White-beard looked at the quality of the cart, and the metal hubs, as he moved around to the carters. Another man was following him. His son by the look of him. White-beard pretended to be searching for something to use as a gag, but said in a low voice, "You John's men?"
The carters nodded and one of them whispered, "And the one dressed as a tax collector is Raynar Wolfshead."
White-beard turned around to face his lord and hissed, "You arrogant fool. You have killed us all. There are some men that you do not rob on Lincolnshire highways."
"No one will know once they are dead,” replied costly-armour. "That was always my plan. My own lord cannot afford for them to survive this day."
"You wouldn't kill me would you Jokum,” said a somewhat shaky woman's voice. "That is you isn't it Jokum? Your white beard threw me off. When I used to tug at it, it was red. And that must be Dag behind you, all grown up now. I had such a crush on him when I was fourteen."
"I ordered you to gag them,” cursed costly-armour.
White-beard ignored him and instead pulled back Lucy's hood and had a good look at her face. "Why Lucy Thoroldsdotter. Is that really you? I haven't seen you since .... I heard you have married again. Married well again."
The son, Dag, came closer and looked at her too, and smiled at her, or perhaps at his memories of her for now she was older and fuller and had born children.
"You see,” costly-armour called out, "the trouble already starts. They should be dead by now.” He waved to the other armoured men to come close. "There is a charcoal pit just over there. That is why I stopped us here. Kill them all and throw them in the pit and cover them. The heat of the charcoal making will remove their bodies from this earth and send them to their gods."
