by Smith, Skye
The villages were similar to Pescara in that they were tiny villages built within the ruins of much larger ancient towns. The buildings were of stone and brick only because there was so much dressed stone and bricks in the ruins, free for the picking up.
Strangely the trees were not the size of English trees, but sparse and stunted. One of the monks told him that at one time these mountains had been heavily forested with huge trees, as in the Alps, but that the city of Rome had stripped the slopes of their forests, and they still had not grown back as large trees.
The monk told him this as they were coming out of a long gorge and into a wide valley. There was a stone castle defending the place where the gorge widened.
"This is the castle and village of Popoli," the monk told him. "The group will stop here for the night. There is a monastery here that will welcome us. The river that runs to Pescara on the coast, begins in this valley. At the far end of this valley the Via goes through another gorge. From then on, the water travels towards Rome."
The cool damp weather and the feeling of England gave Raynar energy, and he found a path that climbed up the ridge that had walled the gorge they had just come through. From high on that ridge he could see all around, and he stayed there hoping for a sunset, but of course, it was November and the sun was covered by clouds.
The next day the Via to Rome led them across a wide flat valley, and through another gorge, protected by yet another castle, and another village, and another monastery.
The last day they crossed a wide rolling plain and before sunset they were entering the gates of Rome. Just as the villages were nestled in the ruins of much larger ancient towns, Rome was a small city nestled in the ruins of what must have been a massive city in ancient times. There was certainly no shortage of dressed stones and brick with which to build the new stone buildings.
The monastery that the monks were going to was within the walls, and Raynar was looking forward to wandering about this famous city. Though it had fewer people than London, and much fewer than Venice, it was a rich place. Perhaps it was because there were dressed stones for the picking, but all of the houses were made of stone, and they were spacious. Even on the short walk from the city gate to the Monastery, he had seen dozens of buildings that an Englishman would have called palaces.
The pilgrims quarters of the Monastery were full to bursting, so Raynar was glad to be in the garb of a monk. He was given a bed, a surprisingly comfortable bed, in a cell with the other three monks.
Once the door was closed, the one monk who had been doing all of the talking told him abruptly, "Tomorrow morning you must leave this monastery. It is one thing to allow you to pretend to be a monk during our voyage, but we must join this chapter while we study. We cannot lie for you here, and your very presence here is a lie."
So it was that instead of spending his first evening in Rome resting or sightseeing, Raynar spent the first evening walking about to see what the options were for places to stay. He only needed a place for the short time it would take him to join a group of pilgrims returning to France, so his hope was to find both at one pilgrim house.
There were many pilgrim houses in Rome, but at the very first one he asked at, he was told where to find the area of the city where all the French pilgrim houses were. Walking across the city he saw many things that caused him to ponder. Just as Venice was a city with many construction sites, the biggest of which was Saint Mark's Basilica, so was Rome a city with many construction sites. The strange thing was, all activity at the sites seemed to have stopped.
The sites had no gangs of workers camped out, and no communal kitchens. There were no stacks of supplies waiting to be used. It was as if every one had quit work at the same time. Just downed tools and walked away. Perhaps they did not build in the rainy season. Perhaps something to do with the mortar not setting in the damp. It didn't make sense because even those buildings that already had roofs, did not have gangs of finishers camped out.
The other strange thing was the population. Of course there were many monks and priests and nuns. That was to be expected in a city that made its wealth from selling religion. As for those folk not of the church, there were many old men about, and many young women, but almost no young men. As for the women, they were either in church robes, or dressed as tarts. Even those in costly fabrics were dressed in the fashion of tarts.
By the time he found the area with the French pilgrim houses, it was dark and the doors of the pilgrim houses were shut. Once the doormen understood that he did not need a section of floor for the night, they had no time for his questions, and they weren't about to let him in the door to speak to other pilgrims. After being turned away from the second such house he decided to go back to the monastery and begin his quest again in the morning.
A sultry voice reached out from a dark doorway. He used his poor Venetian to reply that he did not speak Italian. The sultry voice switched to French, sort of, and repeated, "Looking for a bed for the night, love.” The second time was not so sultry.
He looked around as a woman in her twenties stepped out of the shadows and flashed him a toothy smile, and a lot of cleavage. He sized up her intentions immediately and replied in French in a friendly voice, "It is too bad I am a monk, for you would tempt my abbot."
"I've had abbots before, love, and bishops. Do you want a warm night in a good bed?"
"Bishops can well afford you. I cannot," he lied a little to spare her a harsher rejection.
"You will find that the women of Rome have come down in price a lot since the Normans all left. It's been a hungry nine months for most of us, without Norman coin. And it's not just us that are hurting. The masons and carpenters have little work, and even the priests must tighten their belts."
At the blank look on the face of this country bumpkin, she explained further. "The women and the priests are two halves of the same business. The women charge the Normans to sin, and then the priests charge them to forgive those sins.” She laughed. It started as a brash laugh but then became sweet.
"In truth I have my monastery bed for this night, but what I need is to find a group of pilgrims that are returning to France."
"You were just at the pilgrim house. What did they say."
"They said that if I didn't want a bed, that I should clear off and come back tomorrow." Raynar replied. "You are much more polite."
"Well they are right about coming back tomorrow. All the people in the know will be feasting down at the French bishop's palace right now, and that will go on late into the night. "
"And where is this bishop's palace."
"End of the street love. See where all the lights are. Nowadays, with the Pope in trouble, and the Normans off invading somewhere, that palace is about the only feasting you will find in Rome. They say that the French bishop wants to be the next pope, so he is throwing his coin around to gain favour in Rome."
After looking down the street at the lights, Raynar turned his head back to face the woman. She had reached out and grabbed his hand and was pulling it up towards her breasts. He did not resist. He was surprised when she dropped his hand, and suddenly became disinterested in him.
"I can tell by the calluses on your fingers," she told him, "that you are a country monk and not a city one. More's the pity. Country monks never have any coin. Well good night country monk. Go home to your cell bed.” With that she pushed on the door behind her to open it, and light spilled out from inside.
He looked her up and down. This was not street trollop. She was clean, and her clothes weren't ragged. "Wait," he called to her. "Is this your house? I must apologize. I thought your offer of a warm bed was an offer to..."
"It could be," she said as she turned and smiled at him. "If you ask your abbot for more coins than he is likely to give you. Better yet, send your abbot to me. Of course, if a warm bed is all you want, then one coin is all you will need."
"I have coin. I am a monk on pilgrimage, true, but my abbot gave me some coins for emergencies. If I stay he
re then in the morning it will be easier for me to find out about pilgrims. I will go and fetch my things. An hour at most and I will be back."
"Show me your purse," she said cautiously.
He reached inside his monks robe and pulled out his decoy purse, his purse filled with small coins, and jingled it.
"Well then country monk...."
"Raynar, just come from Venice."
"Anna," she replied. "Keeper of this house while my master is away with Duke Guiscard, but his Lady when he is in Rome."
"I will return in perhaps an hour," he said, bowing formally to the woman as he began to turn away and walk.
* * * * *
Back at the monastery, Raynar interrupted the three monks he had traveled with. They were in the process of shaving each other. Not their faces, but their heads. Venetian monks had stayed with the ways of the Greek monks who wore their beards long and flowing like their hair. Roman monks tended to be beardless, with short hair and a shaved tonsure on the top of their head.
"We have no choice but to shave," the one holding the razor knife said. "We are joining this chapter for at least two years to study in their library. We must look like the rest."
Raynar shrugged and grabbed his things and told them he may have found some pilgrims to travel with. They each gave him a hug and bid him well, but he knew they would be glad to see the back of him, and be rid of their abbot's charge to help him.
He trod quickly but carefully back to the French quarter. The streets were much darker now and his senses were prickling at every movement in the shadows. He was glad to have his crook-bow with him. Something long and strong to keep other men beyond arms length if necessary. He wondered if he should have brought more than four arrows, but then dismissed the thought. More than four would be too noticeable even when they were rolled inside his bed roll.
He knocked on the dark door, and when asked, called through the peep hole that it was Raynar. The door opened and he was welcomed inside by a grizzled old man with one foot missing. He followed Stumpy into a small courtyard, and was amazed at how similar it was in layout to the buildings that his friend Wylie was turning into an Inn within the Temple lands of London.
From the street it had looked like a wall with a few windows, and unlike Venice, no balconies. From inside it was a courtyard surrounded by two story buildings all facing into the courtyard. The upper story had a roofed balcony, and the lower story had that balcony as a roof over a raised deck.
"Come on," Stumpy called to him. "Your room is in the back near the kitchen with the rest of us. These big front rooms are for important people."
He was led through a covered portico to a smaller courtyard in the back that smelled of kitchen smoke, animals, and latrine. The woman, Anna, was beckoning to him from up some stairs, and he climbed them and followed her into an airy room, too airy for November. "Do you have a room that the wind won't howl through?"
"Of course, but it is not so nice."
"Warm is nice."
She shrugged and led him back down stairs and towards the portico and opened the door for him. The room was not as big, and smelled of must and damp. Anna was already walking back up the stairs by the time he made his decision to take the upper room. She waited outside the door of it while he put his things down and tested the feather bed.
"So will that be all," she asked, allowing her shawl to droop down over her shoulders so that he could again look down her cleavage.
"Where can I wash?" he asked, and she pointed him to a shed next to the kitchen and threw him a look as if to say, 'where else would a bathhouse be?' He didn't need to be directed to the latrine. He would just follow his nose. This time when he looked again at her, she had loosened her blouse and now her nipples were almost popping out of it.
"Anything else?" she said, licking her lips suggestively.
He was tempted, very tempted, but he knew nothing about her, and especially, nothing about how healthy she was. "Please don't tempt me so. I am trying to be a good monk."
She stepped forward and used her pelvis to push him against the door, and then ran her hands underneath his monks robe, and then stopped. "What kind of monk wears a silk shirt under his homespun robe?" and with that she ground her pelvis into his. "One more coin and I will warm your bed all night. Two and I will warm you without clothes. And after that, perhaps a coin a come. Surely you can afford that, monk-silk-shirt."
He would never be so rude as to stop a well meaning woman from teasing a man. He kept smiling encouragingly but saying no. Even when she put his hands on her breasts and grabbed him down below, he smiled, and said no. Eventually she realized that he really meant no, and pulled away.
"A pity. I may even have enjoyed it. You are gentle, not like the Normans that visit this house. With them you must squeal loud enough for the others to hear, as if they are too big for you. If you don't squeal then they hurt you to make you squeal.” She left him and closed the door behind her a bit harder than was necessary.
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Hoodsman - Popes and Emperors by Skye Smith
Chapter 23 - The bishop's palace in Rome in November 1081
No it wasn't in his dreams. The door had opened and a waft of cool air made it real. He reached out and grasped his knife from the small table beside the bed and rolled once, fully, and sat up quickly with the knife held the full extent of his right arm.
"Wake up silly," came a woman's bright voice in French, and he opened his eyes to see Anna standing at the foot of the bed with a breakfast tray. "You slept so long that you missed breakfast with the others," she said in a morning chipper tone, "so I thought I would bring it up to you.” She walked the tray to the table on the other side of the bed from his knife and set it down.
He groaned, and put the knife down, and snuggled back into the warm bed. The air in the room was not cold, perhaps, but it was certainly crisp. Anna's hands pushed at him and shook him.
"Come on, my silky monk. You wanted to go to the bishop's palace today, remember. Pilgrim group to France, remember. She whipped the covers back so that the chill air would wake him. He was nude and rock hard. "Oooh, you were expecting me then?"
He moaned, and told her to go away, and lay there on his back with his arm over his eyes. He felt her sit on the bed, and then felt her skirts against his bare legs, and then felt absolutely wonderful as she straddled him and lowered herself down. Now he really moaned, but it was not in complaint.
"Waste not, want not, my good mother always used to say," she said as she rode him ever so slowly. "Oh that feels good. Does that feel as good to you.” He didn't answer except to change the tone of his moans. "How is that for a silky feeling, my silky monk?" He couldn't answer because she was smothering any of his words with beauteous, bountiful, breasts.
Later, much later, once he had breakfasted and dressed, she walked with him to the bishop's palace. "I'm sure I can find it on my own, Anna, considering it is just up the road."
"What, and rob me of the chance of crossing the bishop's doorsill." she replied, "Not likely. As I told you last night, he is being generous right now because he wants to become the next Pope."
"So will I meet him."
"No, he is not here. He hasn't visited Rome for years, not since he commissioned his palace. But his chamberlains are working hard at making him Rome's favourite bishop. Look there, see down the side road. So long as beggars are orderly and line up away from the main gate, they are fed."
He looked down the side road and saw a hundred women and their children waiting patiently in the shade of the Palace wall. "And he is a French bishop?"
"You're the monk. You tell me." she had her arm looped in his and she hugged him to her.
He tried to push her arm off his, but she would just put it back again. "It is not seemly for a woman to be touching a monk in public," he told her.
"You're no monk," she replied. "Monks don't know how to pleasure women like that. I knew it as soon as I felt your silk
shirt. One of the most basic penances of a monk is to be itchy and uncomfortable from coarse home spun against the skin."
"Alright, I admit it. I am a merchant from Venice trying to reach France, but to tell anyone that may cost me my life because of what the Venetian fleet did to Guiscard's fleet. Please, oh please, pretend that I am a monk and respect me as a monk."
"See, was honesty so difficult," she said as she let go of his arm. They were getting close to the palace gate now, so she pulled her shawl up and over her head like a hood, and let it drape down over her shoulders to hide the otherwise bare skin. With it clutched in place by a single hand beneath her chin, she looked at him and winked. "Better?"
"Much better, thank you." he chuckled, "Now who is this bishop from France."
"The Bishop of Bayeux I think. I heard that he rules a county on behalf of William of Normandy."
Raynar’s blood ran cold at the mention of the name of the Conqueror, but he hid his anger behind a weak smile. "So Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. The half brother of William of Normandy."
"That's it. Odo. Supposedly there is a holy prediction that our next Pope will be an Odo."
"Odo, a Norman as the Pope?" He had to take deep breaths to control his anger and his panic. "Would they really hand the crown to such a devil?"
"Well he has Duke Guiscard's blessing, and Guiscard's Normans guard Rome on behalf of the current Pope. My master told me that Guiscard wants Pope Gregory to resign so that there can be peace with Emperor Henry of the Germanies. Bishop Odo would be acceptable to both Guiscard and to Henry."
"May it never come to pass," replied Raynar. "Gregory as Pope has been a joy after that last one, Alexander. The one who forgave William the Conqueror for butchering the English. At least Gregory was a monk at Cluny, and so supports their edicts to protect normal folk and travelers from being preyed upon by knights. I cannot believe that Gregory approves of Odo. That devil would undo a lifetime of his good works."
