by Smith, Skye
The burgh wall was under attack by Norman infantry, but the gates were shut and secure. Most of the town had already left for Flanders or to hide with their families further inland, but the men that ran the arrow works were on the wall, and they were teaching these Normans a hard lesson about the power of the arrows they were making. There was no attack against the fort, because the Normans couldn't safely approach the pale wall of the fort so long as there were arrows flying from the burgh wall.
There were bodies in front of the wall and in front of the gate which spoke to an earlier failed rush for the gates, but now the infantry were hiding behind their shields and waiting for the burgh to run out of arrows. Little did they know that it would take weeks for this burgh, of all burghs, to run out of arrows. Meanwhile the Anske moved silently up behind them and trapped them between the river and the wall. Twenty of the best bowmen in England began shooting arrows into the backs of the Norman infantry.
There was nowhere for the infantry to hide, and no chance to run. The call came from the walls and the Anske to drop flat to the ground and leave go of any weapons, else be killed. They all dropped, whether in surrender or whether from being skewered, they all dropped to the ground. While men from the Anske kept them covered, men from the burgh poured through the gate to bind the prisoners. Raynar hopped ashore and walked towards the gate. He was not quite there when Lucy and Maud ran through the gate and launched themselves into his arms.
"They killed mummy, they killed mummy," Maud cried.
"It's true, Uncle Ray," Lucy said, trying to be calm like a grownup while surrounded by blood and slaughter that made her want to puke. "They surprised us with the gates open, and so auntie gained the men time enough to secure the gates by marching up to the knight commander and scolding him for threatening her on her own land. They, they, they hit her with a sword on the top of her head and then stepped over her."
The news made Raynar weak in the legs. He let go of the two girls and heard his voice, as if it wasn't his voice, telling them to go home and gather the other children, and to pack everything of value. He didn't even recognize the woman who came and led them away, though he had known her for a decade. He kind of floated along the killing field in front of the gate while searching for women’s clothes. There was only one women, dressed in her work day homespun, but unrecognizable as his sweet Judy with her face smashed to a pulp.
Beside her body was the body of a Norman knight, with six, no seven arrows stuck in him. There were no other bodies in homespun. He walked over to the wall, where the burgh men had lined up the prisoners, and walked slowly along the line of bound prisoners until he found one who looked like a leader. The man had blood stains on his clothes. In his most courtly French he asked, "Under Norman law, what is the penalty for killing a Norman Royal?"
The man blinked at him, wondering what this was all about. "Death by mutilation. Drawn or impaled. And their family, and anyone who helped."
"That woman there on the ground was the niece of your king. Tenth in line for the throne. Countess of a tenth of this kingdom. Who ordered this attack on her town?" There were gasps from the prisoners, and they hushed to hear more.
"The High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire." The man said, with his face now flushed in embarrassment because piss was dripping down his leg.
"Not Simon St. Liz?"
"Earl Simon is in Northampton with his own garrison. He may have known, but our orders came from the Sheriff."
"And who struck the blow?" Raynar asked, turning his head to look again at the figure in homespun and the knight who had collected so many arrows.
"That knight there," the man said, and smiled slightly in relief.
"Liar! You liar!" it was Lucy, who had snuck up on Raynar's blind side. "You struck the blow. The other knight was in charge, but you struck the blow. I saw you do it while I ran for the gate." Lucy threw her self at the bound man with her Valkyrie knife in her hand and stabbed and slashed and ripped at the man's face, and with each slash she howled, "You liar! You liar! You liar!"
Raynar grabbed at her and pulled her into him and hid her face in his shoulder so she would not have to see what her razor sharp filleting knife had just done to this bound man. The man was long passed screams of agony now, and was sliding down the wall to the ground. As he walked young Lucy away from the battlefield, the bowyer of the arrow works asked him what they should do with the rest of the Normans.
"Lame them and send them back to their Sheriff with a message that they have just killed the King's niece."
"Ugh, Ray," the bowyer said keeping up so he could speak softly. "what if they know about the arrow works? We can't let them go. Not yet. Not until we have moved the works out of here."
"Then they are your problem, but don't do anything until I have the women and children on my ship and out of sight. I will send you more ships to load the works onto."
One of the healing crones who had been seeing to the wounds of the Normans, now took Lucy out of his arms and led her away. Lucy's clothes were spattered in blood and blood dripped from the knife in her hand as they walked towards the gate. Raynar looked down at the blood spatters on his own clothes and suddenly the smell of blood filled his brain.
He could feel the Berserker energy rising inside of him, crying out for vengeance. No. He must contain that destructive force. The same battle energy had made all of his senses clearer, as if he were hunting. He could smell everything on this field, he could feel the slight change in the touch of the air as men moved about. He could hear the loud moans of wounded men but he could also hear the quiet buzz of a fly. His mind, he must focus his mind. He must find the children. He must get them out of here.
Around him the men of the Fens were staring at him, expectantly. The men from the walls, the men from the ships. They were whispering to each other. He heard the words Anske, and Berserker, and wolfpack, and Ely, and Rebellion in their whispers. It was obvious what they were whispering about. The last time that the Normans had killed his wife, the lovely Anske, he had gone berserk. He had organized his first wolfpack and had lashed out killing any Norman he could lay his hands on. Anske's death had been the trigger of the Ely rebellion. Now another of his wives was dead. Judy.
"NO!" He yelled out to the men watching him. "No, you must not rebel. Remember that we lost the Ely rebellion. We rebelled and they gathered an army and they crushed us. All we achieved was the killing of a lot of petty landlords and petty knights. I will not lead you in this. Not this time."
The men came closer to him, yelling at him because they were so angry with the Normans who had killed their countess. He yelled back at them, "If you want to be wolves, then be wolves, but don't be rats," he told them. "During the Ely rebellion we were rats pretending to be wolves. Do you know the difference? Eh? Do you? A rat shits in his own nest. With Ely we shat in our own home shire. We killed petty Normans whose main failing was that they lived close to us. I for one will not be that foolish again. I want to be a wolf, not a rat.
If I am going to shit, I am going to shit in the Norman's nest, in the Norman's home. If I am going to kill a Norman it will be an important Norman, not some lord of farmers. Skirmisher rules but on the scale of a kingdom. The only way that England will ever be free is when the head is cut off, completely. Kill kings, kill princes, kill dukes and counts and earls, for they are the head. And do it away from your own home, and keep your home a secret so that they will not send an army to destroy your home, your village, your shire."
"So you are saying that we should do nothing?" the bowyer called out. "The good countess is only one of the women who have been killed this year for no good reason. The Norman army has caused the death of tens of thousands of men, women and children everywhere."
"What I am saying is that if you want to throw your life away, then go somewhere else to do it, and throw it away on a killing that will make a difference: a royal, or a duke, or a noble, or their direct heirs." He looked around at the men. "Understood?" There was no reason to
wait for an answer. The children, Judith's children, needed him.
* * * * *
The English village elder walked softly with bowed head towards the warriors standing around the table. The page who was leading him, pushed him towards a tall man who was bent over some drawings. The tall man mumbled for him to speak without turning away from his drawings.
"Sir Simon, sir, your majesty," the elder spoke in halting French. "I bring you grave news from Huntingdon."
"Then speak it," Simon said without turning. "I am listening."
"Grave private news sire," the elder said with head bowed. "I would not dare speak it in front of others." He followed Simon's beckoning through to a private room at the back of the manor. Once the door was closed he spoke again. "Judith of Lens, the Royal Countess of Northampton, Huntingdon, and Northumbria, has been murdered in Huntingdon."
"What," Simon said, lifting the old man's chin so he could read the eyes. "Judith murdered. By whom. There was a garrison sent to protect her. Did they catch the killer. Does he still live?"
"The killers have all been executed, sire." the old man said softly. He had volunteered to be Raynar's messenger. It may cost him his life, but he owed that much and more to Judith.
"Killers? And why are you bringing me this message instead of a garrison courier?"
"As I said, sire, the killers have all been executed. There is no garrison. They killed her, and the townsfolk executed them for doing so."
"How many dead?"
"Just the countess, sire."
"I mean of the garrison?"
"Why all of them sire," the elder said softly. "All one hundred and six. But we spared them the mutilation due them under Norman law." He was grabbed by the throat by Simon and pushed against the wall. "Wait sire, before you crush my throat, there is more to the message." Simon released him and allowed him to catch his breath.
"Captain Raynar sends his greetings on this saddest of days, and assures you that the young Countesses Maud and Lucy are safe with him and unharmed. He suggests that since the old countess was so well loved by her people, that it is now too dangerous for Norman soldiers to be billeted in the Fens. He strongly suggests that you arrest the Sheriff in Cambridge and order the men who were to garrison Cambridge, Huntingdon, Peterburgh, and Ely to instead build you a great fortress here in Northampton to keep them busy and far away from the Fens."
Simon sat on a stool and hid his face from the elder while he controlled his rage. Captain Raynar had been Judith’s business partner. She ran the land, and he ran the trading ships. He now held Maud, who was not only the new countess, but was under betrothal contract to him. Was he holding her for ransom? The lands and honors she just inherited were worth a throne. They would be his once he bedded the lass. He had already patiently waited for a decade for her to come of age.
His land. These armies were burning his land, his villages. He was losing his peasant stock because they were fleeing or being killed. He calmed his anger at the upstart captain, and thought instead about his words. What had he suggested. In his rage he had taken it as a threat. Was it a threat, or was it sound business advice from Judith's business partner.
The king had ordered him to build a fortress on these lands, and he had assumed Huntingdon because it already had a burgh wall and a motte and bailey fort. Why not Northampton instead? The crossroad and highways here were just as important. It was safer from attack from the sea. It was on the same river as the wealthy Abbey at Peterburgh. Why not Northampton? That would keep the army away from the rest of his lands and villages. That would allow this captain's ships to continue their profitable trade. More importantly, he could still use the King's silver and the King's army to build the fortress.
"Old one," Simon said sweetly to the elder. "Please tell Captain Raynar that I agree with all of his suggestions but I have two to add. The first is that the Countess Maud must be surrendered to me in good health and virtue after her sixteenth birthday but before her seventeenth. The second is that as soon as the armies leave her land, that he resumes trading with me in place of Judith. Now repeat that to me so I know you have understand."
* * * * *
Simon had demanded that he meet Captain Raynar face to face to confirm their agreement. They had postponed the meeting twice. The first time Simon postponed it because he had been forced to accompany taxmen who were making a survey of all the hundreds of the kingdom. As Maud's betrothed, Simon was the lord trustee of at least fifty hundreds, spread out from Cambridge to the Scottish border, and as far east as the Peaks of Derbyshire.
The second time it was Raynar who was not available. His old friend Canute, the holy King of Denmark, had been assassinated in a church in Odense, thus completely halting the gathering of ships for the invasion of the Danelaw. He had rushed to Brugge in case Robert the Frisian had need of him to rescue Canute’s wife Adela, Robert's daughter, and her young son and twin baby girls. By the time Raynar reached Brugge, however, this had all been taken care of.
Finally they were meeting, but even today Simon was eager to be away. "Our greedy king," Simon told Raynar, "is upset that the tax yields from so much land are so low, and so he has commission a survey of the fields of the entire kingdom, and every cow. How does he expect higher tax yields when he keeps burning the crops and destroying the villagers and their animals. I have just returned from the North, and there is not a field planted."
"Well go and tell him that," Raynar said half jesting.
"That is exactly why I must leave. The king has ordered every lord and knight to meet him at Sarum on the first day of August. He fears that the lack of tax revenue is because the lords all serve more than one master who are each dipping into the king's share. He wants us all to swear fealty to him directly."
Raynar shook his head and sighed. He had never understood how the Norman feudal oaths worked, or didn't work. He wondered if it was called feudal because the system led to so many blood feuds. "What difference will that make?"
"It means that even if a baron refuses the orders of the king, his knights must still obey the king. I think he fears a mutiny by his barons. They are angry with him because he promised them much loot for re-invading England, and of course, England had been so well looted already that there was nothing left. Now he wants them to bring him the taxes that the tax survey says they owe. Aye, it has been a hungry year for the barons, and all for naught since in the end the Conqueror simply paid some assassins to kill Canute. That cost him far less than another Danegeld."
"Canute was assassinated because he had ordered a church tithe to be collected from folk who were not Christian and had no desire to be Christian."
Simon remained silent.
"What?" asked Raynar.
"Do you really think that the assassins did not have Norman gold in their purses?" Simon picked up his riding gloves. "Anyway, at least we agree on the importance of keeping the Fens ports open and busy. Take good care of the young Countesses."
"Lucy decided to fulfill her betrothal in Lincoln. Sheriff Ivo is most pleased. Maud is with Countess Gertrude of Flanders learning some courtly manners."
"Good then. There is no one I would trust more. Good bye, and fair winds." Simon said as he left the little church they had been meeting in.
Raynar sat for a long time looking at the inside of this church, the alter, the statues, the paintings. Canute had been killed in a church. Did the Conqueror have anything to do with it? Would anyone ever know the true story other than the assassins? Were they even still alive? He sighed. What did it matter. Canute was dead, and with him died any hope of pushing the Normans out of England by force of arms.
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Hoodsman - The Second Invasion by Skye Smith
Chapter 22 - Siege of Bayeux in April 1105
With Avranches castle now back in the hands of the locals, and with most of the folk from the surrounding villages now spending their nights in the castle for their own protection, Raynar was eager to
return to Henry. There were certainly enough locals to man the walls and the gate, and if Mortain laid siege to them, they would be relieved within a day by Henry.
Once the two ships that had been assigned to carry Duke Alan safely to Bretagne had returned, the wolfpacks bid the locals farewell, and put to sea to head back to Carentan to join the rest of the fleet. The fish pies that the local women had given them were all good. The news in Carentan was all good.
Norman lords and peasants were rallying to Henry. Facing this crush of locals, and with skilled English bowmen landing at every port on the Cotentin peninsula, Mortain's raiders were in full retreat. The taking of Avranches had been key. Mortain's main strongholds were all around the fortified town of Mortain, a town that was halfway between Henry's personal stronghold in Domfort, and the newly friendly stronghold at Avranches.
Armed with hogsheads of silver coins, a host of newly allied Norman lords, and his English archers, Henry moved from castle to castle from Avranches to Domfort in an arch to the north of Mortain. In this way he separated Mortain from the main coastal plain that ran from the Cotentin, through the main towns of Bayeux and Caen, to Rouen on the River Seine. Meanwhile he sent his fleet, including Raynar to make landings at every village along the main coast of Normandy to take his message of peace to the people, and a sampling of good silver coins to the lords and burghers.
With such a push, and with Henry's Englishmen at large who shot arrows that did not pay heed to class distinctions, Henry's peace was spreading across the farmlands and villages of the coast. Farmers were encouraged to plant, animals were once again grazing unguarded. Peace. Peace that Normandy had not known since before the death of William Rufus and the return of Robert from the holy lands.
