Hoodsman: Courtesans and Exiles

by Smith, Skye

  "So, over there we build up the embankment with logs so that it will be easier to keep the channel deep enough for cogs. Over there on that higher spit, we will build a wharf so that the cartway to the barns will stay dry. A new roof on the old barn, and a new barn behind it for storage and beds for the crew. Yes, it will all work for us."

  "And any passengers can get off here or in London. Yes," agreed Eustace. "Well worth the effort. How do you think we should begin?"

  "We've got one crew here now. Leave half of it with me and ask Raynar to skipper you and the ship back to London, and then send me more men."

  "But I was hoping to get to Witham on this trip."

  "Forgive me, sire, but it is much more important to get this place working. Especially if there is trouble coming between Normandy and England. With this place working we can cross the strait well north of Dover and not risk either side's patrol ships." Henryk looked over at Raynar. "That good by you, Ray?"

  "Whenever you want. I'll go and tell Mary."

  Mary was off somewhere with her two new courtesans, so Raynar sat a while with Theodora to chat and wait.

  "Tell me," she said to him. "How is it that you are so well-versed, and keep the company of counts and princesses?

  "You mean, for a lowly peasant? William the Conqueror made me all that I am, because of my hatred for him. Now ask me the question you really wanted to ask."

  "What will happen to the Mortains and the Bellemes?" she asked. "Will King Henry kill them all and rid the world of so much evil?"

  "Not unless they die in battle. But that is not likely for them. They would rather run away or surrender and pay a ransom than risk injury or death. Henry will take their English estates away from them, as Rufus did to Odo. To do that he must either keep them prisoner and rule the estates in trust, or exile them as traitors and have the crown claim their estates.

  You see, if he kills them, then he will have the same problems with their heirs. When William conquered the Daneglish lords of England, he killed many in battle, and then had his own knights wed the new widows by rape, and once there was a child by the union, his own knights claimed title to the land on his behalf. Henry can't do that with these Normans because they keep their wives and heirs locked up in fortresses in Normandy."

  "So did many English widows suffer betrothal by rape?" she asked.

  "Of the estates that changed hands from Daneglish to Norman lords, perhaps half were by the rape of widows, and most of the rest by exile. Of course that was over a period of six years. The surrounding kingdoms and counties became full of English exiles, especially Scotland, Denmark, and Flanders."

  "Well, curse it all," she seethed. "Exile will take wealth away from them, but the Mortain's and the Belleme's also have huge estates in Normandy and France to flee to."

  "I would be most happy at even just exile for them, but you are right. I would pity poor Normandy. I had always hoped that more of the Norman demons such as the Bellemes would be seduced by the Crusade and by the riches to be stolen from the Holy Lands. Normandy and England could only benefit from their pilgrimage."

  "I don't understand your point," she said. "The Crusade is to keep the Holy Land Christian."

  "I suppose some still think that. Myself, I believe that the Crusade was created to as a way to ship all of the noble problem children to the east to become someone else’s problem. What a success it has been. Think of all the demon nobles and knights that have traveled east, never to be seen again. It is most unfortunate that the Belleme clan did not join the Crusades."

  "You hate those clans as much as I do," she said, reaching forward and squeezing his hand strongly. "Admit it."

  "I hate the Bellemes and the Mortains, yes. I used to think that if I could kill William the Conqueror, that England would be saved, but after I... er.. after he died, the evil continued. The evil seed of the Mortains. If I were a Christian I would say that they were possessed by demons. And now they threaten two women who are most dear to me. Mary and Edith."

  "Ahhh, now I understand the oath you want my daughters to swear. You want them not just as Mary's companion, her ladies, her spies, but also as her body guard, and especially to guard her from King Henry's enemies." She stared long into his eyes. "It is a good plan. I like it. So tell me, how did you learn so much about courtesans? You are but a peasant so they would have ignored you."

  "Have you ever heard of Gesa of Paris?"

  "Why, of course. The infamous sex witch of King Philip's court. You knew her?"

  "I knew her before she was a courtesan. Back when the English exiles finally gave up hope of ever winning back their estates from the Normans. Myself and some good friends once, um, liberated the personal treasures of many of the exiles from the great Abbey at Peterburgh and then hid the treasure where no Norman Sheriff or Danish raider could find it.

  Gesa was one of the friends who helped me to dig up all the treasure and take it to Flanders so that the English exiles could collect theirs on their way to Constantinople. Gesa did not stay in Flanders. She went on to Paris."

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Hoodsman - Courtesans and Exiles by Skye Smith

  Chapter 9 - The mushroom magic in the Fens in July 1072

  The manor was the center of rule for the two port towns of Spalding and Lynn, and perhaps a tenth of a shire. During the daytime hours when the manor was busy with folk coming and going, Raynar was forced to keep out of sight in his room. He had been a welcomed guest at this house many times and the household all knew him and knew not to speak of him.

  They all knew that though he had many friends in the Fens, the Normans, or rather the local abbot, had put a hefty price on his head. His presence must be kept from the new Norman priests appointed by the hated Abbot of Peterburgh to replace the old English priests who he had forced to become monks.

  Countess Beatrice, feeling stronger today than she had for a month or more, held full court in her great hall to get as much business cleared quickly, in case she was not so well on the morrow. Gesa spent her time flitting between Bea's busy table, and Raynar's quiet solitude.

  "I can train you," offered Gesa, and then at Raynar's doubting look, "I may only be sixteen, but twelve of those years I fetched and trained under my mother Inka. I can train you." Again she saw the doubting look and resented it. "I will start now. What do you understand of the touch?"

  He began to reply but she interrupted him. "You are a man, you understand nothing of it. Listen and learn. The healing awareness is not touch but non-touch. It is another sense like touch but it reaches beyond what you can touch. Women sometimes call it intuition. Men sometimes call it a hunting sense or a sixth sense. It is an awareness that animals keep but folk lose. An awareness that all are born with and which peaks just before we are pulled from our mothers tits. The moment we start learning to speak in tongues, we start losing this other sense, this awareness."

  "This I can understand," he said, "for with tongues comes learning and what we are born knowing is overruled by what we learn."

  "Ahh, good. I will think of an example that shows how different you are from other men." She closed her eyes. "Ahh, yes, you are a hunter. When you are tracking game with other men does it ever happen that while they are bent searching for sign and spore to gain the track, you already know it without looking?"

  "Why, yes, that has happened. I have a gut feeling for such things."

  "It is not your gut, fool," she smiled warmly at him and he felt it between his legs. "That is the awareness. You were born with another sense as sharp as any wild animal. For some reason, you of all men, still have it despite having learned to speak languages. Inside of you, your wild mind, your tongueless mind has found the track and has told it to your learned mind. You think this happened without having to look, but you are wrong to think so. Your wild mind has used your wild sense and has found the track for you."

  "So fast that I don't know it has happened?" he asked. "So fast I think it is magic tha
t I know without seeking?"

  "Why not? Your wild mind is not confused with tongue learning. It is still directly connected to your wild sense. But," she snickered, "but I bet you do not believe your gut feeling. I bet you walk to the very track that your wild mind has found for you, and then wait while your learned mind finds some sign to confirm it."

  "Of course. That is logical."

  "Pah, that is how folk lose the sense. They do not believe it and close their mind to it, and it withers and weakens until it is lost to them."

  "The mushrooms," he said, eyes widening, "the blue mushrooms. I have eaten them on your island. They give you back the eyes of a child, so they must reawaken the wild sense. I prepared some in the island way for my Welsh healer, and afterwards she had visions, and became a seer, and moved back to Wales. Is that is why seers eat them?"

  "They are a most precious gift from Freyja. Inka would always say that there are two types of folk in this world. Those who have eaten of the blue mushrooms and those who have not, and that they will never understand each other. Norman priests are the enemy of all mushroom eaters, yet there are some monks, the truly holy ones, who know of them and eat them."

  "I have not eaten them for years," he told her.

  "The punt by the river gate, it is yours?" She saw him nod. "Then tomorrow at first light we will go together into the fens and I will be your keeper while you eat them again. Your training will go easier if I don't have to fight your learned mind to reach your wild one." On a thought, she cocked her head. "You did mushrooms on our island. Then you would have had a keeper. Who was it?"

  "Inka"

  "Of course. That is probably why you have kept the wild sense even though you became a berserker during the Ely rebellion."

  * * * * *

  They were late in getting away in the punt because Raynar was worried that he would be seen by spies and thus waited until Bea had sent men out to make sure there was no one watching the manor. Gesa laughed at his fears. "At this time of morning the priests have yet to leave the boys that warm their beds. Even if they have risen, by now they will be preaching at the women's washing pond hoping to see a naked breast or two."

  She took the pole from him and used it effortlessly to speed them through the reed-choked side channels of the river. There was a light mist with a bright sun above it which had turned the day close and warm and humid. When he was totally turned around she announce their arrival. They had entered a shallow pool with a small island at its center.

  As they closed on the island he had to look twice. There were Roman style columns poking white and black up out of the tiny island. Once she beached the punt, he leaped ashore and rushed to explore the columns. "What place is this?" he asked her.

  "An ancient place as you must know already by the stone columns of the ancients. Inka told me that it was a bathing place, but I never believed it true because the ealders told me that the ancients built bathing places where there was warm water because they were always cold."

  She lifted a sack out of the punt and placed it on the top of broken column. "I have cleaned these mushrooms already, so they are ready to eat. Come. They are fresh and delicious."

  She had a slender bow with her and a quiver of long fishing arrows. "What is the bow for?" he asked.

  "You are a wanted man with a price on your head. If I am your keeper while you are on mushrooms then I must be prepared to protect you. Believe me that I would spit a greasy priest if we meet one. Come and eat them, for it will take most on an hour before you are theirs."

  He ate mushrooms while she ate honey cakes. His stomach was empty as she had instructed, and he began to feel the effects very quickly. In truth he began to feel horrible and ill. Ale would not settle his stomach, and she stopped him from drinking too much of it. After about a half hour of feeling dreadful he suddenly vomited, and then she gave him more ale. It was then that his senses began to play tricks on him.

  She let him wander on the tiny but oh so interesting island and she did not speak. If there was danger she simply led him away. If he became focused on something ugly, she simply showed him something beautiful. His senses were alive and he was one with the wild. The creatures of the fens had no fear of him, and they came near and were as curious of him as he was of them. There were many butterflies and they would land on him and stay perched while he wandered around and looked at everything in wonder.

  He had the feeling that he was too full of wonder, that the world around him was too wonderful and that he could not take it all in. He had no reality of time or worry. He became his senses, and she would show him things to see, and to hear, and to smell, and to touch. Once the sparkling, dripping colors ceased to astound him and his reasoning powers began to return, she began his training.

  She lay naked on the warm stone of the fallen column and had him hover his hands just above her skin and move them slowly around. Without touching her he could sense her veins and her organs and the movement of fluids in her body. She had him smell her, her breath, her skin, her openings, under arms, her hair, between her legs, her feet and her hands. There were many many scents and he could sense all of them. She had him taste the scents. Some were sweet, some were sour, some were bitter.

  Of course she became aroused and began a lustful moaning even before he got as far as actually touching her. He was told to touch as lightly as if there was no touch. And so he began touching and pressing every part of her body. She started to writhe and spasm and without saying anything slid off the white stone and dived into the cool pool. He threw off his clothes and joined her in the cool clear water.

  "No!" she yelled but it was too late and he was swimming under water and bobbing up beside her. "I didn't mean for you to douse in water. Oh, well, that is the end of today’s training. Two things interrupt the mushroom magic. Dousing in water, and rose hips."

  He did not care in the least. He felt one with the water. He dived and swam and floated and absolutely enjoyed the feeling of the weightlessness and the push of the water. Meanwhile Gesa climbed ashore and again lay on the fallen pillar to dry in the misty sun. She was dozing and listening to the playful splashes of Raynar in the water, when she became aware of a different splashing noise. She drifted into consciousness and sat up with a jerk.

  There was a frenzy of small splashes about ten paces from Raynar. Her heart rate surged and she screamed, "Raynar, get out! Get out! Oh please get out of the water!" He was so enjoying diving to the bottom that he could not hear her. The frenzy was moving closer to him. She dived in and three strong strokes took her to the place she had last seen him. She looked down through the crystal water and saw him swimming below.

  She took one, two, three deep breaths and folded her body and raised her legs out of the water and dropped down through the crystal liquid. She reached out and grabbed his hair and yanked up on him. The surprise and the pain forced the air from his lungs and he had no choice but to make for the surface. She did not let go. With all her strength she tugged at his hair and dragged him after her towards the bank. She was almost out of air, and twisted her body so that her mouth and nose would break the surface first. She gasped for breath. He did not make the surface.

  Her feet touched the bottom and she pulled him along after her with his hair until she was worried that it would rip out in her hand. And thus she dragged his limp body to shore and then up the bank. He was not breathing. His lungs had filled with water. There was a fallen column beside them and using every bit of her strength she dragged and rolled him over it so that he was face down over the column and with the column pressing his belly. Then she straightened his neck and pushed on his back.

  Water dripped and then flowed from his mouth. She pushed his back again and the lungs emptied and he vomited which cause him to suck back and to fill his own lungs with air. He moaned, suddenly in the here and now and no longer playing under the spell of the mushrooms. "What the fuck!" he yelled at her.

  She pointed to the pool. The frenzy of splashing was now
exactly where he had been diving. Hundreds of long snakelike bodies were causing the splashing. Thin mouths filled with razor teeth were occasionally snapping at the air, or at something hovering in the air. It was an eel ball.

  "They would have slashed you with their teeth, and once your blood was in the water they would have ripped your flesh off your bones," she panted. He still had the energy of the mushrooms while she was totally exhausted.

  "They should not be here," she pondered. "This is spring water and they do not like spring water. There must be a strange tide."

  "It is full moon," he replied, "the flushing tides." Part of his training under the old Flemish ship's pilot was moon training to teach him the cycle of the tides. "The sun is low, the moon is about to rise. Can you find your way back to the main channel in the dark?"

  "I can," she confirmed, now realizing the moon magic that was about to happen. "Come with me to the highest of the columns."

  He followed her through the Roman pillars, some standing, some fallen until they came to an abnormally high mound behind them. Usually fenland is flat because any heights press down into the mud until they reach a common level. This mound was more like the manmade mounds that the Frisian built their huts upon.

  Climbing the mound he stubbed his toe on something and cursed. He kicked at the strange stone with his uninjured foot and dislodged it. It was a baked clay roof tile like he had seen form the roofs of the old Roman houses in Chester. "This mound," he spoke up to her, "is the crumbled roof of an ancient stone building."

  "Who cares," she told him, "come here before the moon rises." When he reached her, she had him kneel in the soft grass and then sit back on his heels. They were both still naked. She looked at the angle of the sun and had him shift slightly to face south. She stood straddling his legs and pushed her breasts into his face and caressed his cheeks and eyes ever so gently. After a few moments she looked down at his lap and then smiled.

  She pulled away from him, which took some strength because the softness of her breasts against his face was bringing back his mushroom mind and he was holding her against him so as to enjoy it. She went to her own knees and used her mouth and tongue to moisten him, then she climbed on top of him and lowered herself onto him, face to face.