by Smith, Skye
"The order that all looters and rapists will be shot," Raynar called back. "The Queen's orders. The orders that now rule Bayeux."
Henry and La Fleche had caught up to Martel, and he turned to them and said loudly, too loudly. "The town is mine. Angevins took the gate. My men have the right to take anything they want."
"Then I invite you to personally walk into that town," Raynar called to him, "and mount any woman you want. Please be my guest. I want you to."
Henry shot Raynar an angry look and flashed him the wolfpack hand signal to keep quiet. La Fleche told Martel, "Don't be a fool Geoffrey. Did your father never tell you stories about English wolfpacks. When I rode with Fulk against the Conqueror back in '79 in the Vexin, we were supported by wolfpacks sent to help us by the Count of Flanders. Did he never tell you about them?"
"What of it?" Martel replied. "That was years ago."
"Aye, but the bows and the heavy arrows are the same. The men of the wolfpacks are peasants who have no respect for noble blood. They are heathens who do not believe that we have a God given right to rule. They think nothing of killing a noble for taking a woman against her will."
"But that is our right," Martel complained.
"Ray," Henry interrupted. "Tell us what is happening in the town."
The Englishman swung his bow over his shoulder, but left the bowstring in place for now. The young girl hung on to his tunic and followed him into the center of all these powerful men. "The fire is contained, but still burning. Your Normans and the townsfolk are singed and bruised and filthy and dog tired from fighting it. Your archers control the walls, the crosses, and the squares so they can protect buildings from looters. That allowed all the men folk to leave their homes and shops to help with the fire."
"Good," Henry replied, "and are their orders to kill looters and rapists?"
"I didn't say kill," Raynar said pointing to the man on the river bank being held down by his friends while they cut the arrow out of his butt. "I said shot. A warning shot first, wound if necessary, kill only if they threaten violence. The same rules we used when we took Shrewsbury from Belleme and Exeter from Mortain. Do you agree with the order?"
Henry blushed. It was the one question he did not want to answer. Not right now. His ability to defeat Belleme and Mortain and bring peace to Normandy depended on the help of the Manseaux and Angevin knights. It was obvious by their siege of Bayeux, the richest town in Normandy after Caen, that the French had rallied to the possibility of some rich looting, as well as, or rather than the possibility of crushing Belleme.
"Well?" Raynar pushed for an answer. He wanted the rules on looting to be set by Henry, and now in front of these counts. The French army was deep into Normandy and they could do a lot of looting, a lot of damage while they stomped around.
"It's not black and white," Henry replied. He wondered if Martel and La Fleche would be satisfied with the loot from any of Belleme's thirty castles. Any that they could defeat.
"You can make it black and white with one order," Raynar was going to say more but suddenly his senses bristled. There was something wrong. He could smell smoke, but he had been smelling smoke all day. Wind. He felt wind on his cheek, so he looked up into the giant chestnut tree above the command post. The wind was twisting the top boughs. "Fuck," he yelled out. "Wind. The fire. This is bad. Quick, order every man near the river to fill their buckets again."
The nobles looked at him as if he was a madman. Then they looked towards the walled town behind them. Where minutes ago there had been a cloud of smoke and steam rising from the burned quarter, now there were flames to be seen on a church roof. A church roof that moments ago had not even been smoking. They watched the old Englishman run along the river yelling his lungs out to the already tired men who were resting along the bank. He was yelling at them to fill their buckets.
"Jesus," Martel yelled out despite himself as suddenly the entire tower of the church exploded into flame. However gentle the wind seemed down here by the river under the shelter of trees, the wind over the roofs of Bayeux was blowing hard. With every gust, burning cinders were being blown across the part of the town that had just been saved by hours of hard, dirty work.
"This is a disaster," Henry moaned. "The fire will be blamed on me, and there's no stopping it now, so the complete destruction of Bayeux will be blamed on me." He felt a small hand slip into his own. It was the girl Ray had saved.
He looked down at her, and at how she had to keep one hand holding her torn smock so that it would not fall down. Despite her efforts, she was still showing a lot of skin. She had no breasts and no pubic hair. She was but a child and yet the Angevin knights had been ready to pork her. If Edith had been in Ray's shoes, she would have shot the knight herself.
In his head the decision was made. No looting, no rape. He was here to rescue the folk of Normandy, and it didn't matter a damn whether the rescue was from Belleme, or from his brother's incompetence, or from French knights. He turned to tell this to La Fleche, but both Martel and he were running towards the river gate of the town yelling at their men to haul water to the cathedral. Odo's expensive and beautiful cathedral, the cathedral where the treasure was kept.
* * * * *
Henry's man, William, with the help of some knights from the Cotentin, had yelled warnings throughout the town. William was still on the wall yelling, "Run for the river gate. Run for the safety of the river. The English archers will protect you from the Angevins."
Unfortunately, his wise words had caused the river gate to be blocked by throngs of panicking folk, and that meant that the passing of the buckets of water had been slowed, just when they were needed the most. One of the wolfpacks was trying to keep order at the gate, while also trying to protect those fleeing the town with their valuables from being pounced upon and robbed by the Angevins. More than a dozen Frenchmen were limping towards the river with arrows in their limbs.
Once Raynar had finally pushed his way through the gate, and into the hot damp smoke on the inside of the wall, he made for the cathedral. It was the only large building that was not aflame and he knew that many had taken refuge there. It was only a matter of time, perhaps moments, before the burning ashes carried by this demon wind would reach the cathedral.
William came running towards him from across the square, calling out, "The fools in the cathedral have barred the doors. They probably don't realize the danger they are in."
"They are your folk, William," Raynar replied. "Convince them. At least convince them that they are in more danger from the fire than the army." He saw some nuns running towards the cathedral carrying something that looked like a long rolled up carpet. "Follow them. They must know a way in."
The nuns had just reached a small side door in the cathedral when they were set upon by Angevins looking for loot. Moments later some English archers dropped down from the wall and ran towards the Angevins with their arrows drawn. The Angevins stood their ground until an arrow powered into the ground barely missing a leg, and then they fled to find easier prey.
"You risk your lives for a carpet," Raynar asked between puffs of breath after the run across the square with William through the choking smoke.
"Not a carpet," one nun sneered. "Odo's great tapestry, the Bayeux Tapestry. We must save it. He was Earl of Kent and the women of Kent worked on it for a dozen years."
"So the Canterbury Tapestry then," Raynar pointed out. He looked at a corner of the roll of cloth carefully. "This is not a tapestry at all. Even I can see that it is embroidered on linen. So the Canterbury Embroidery then." He brushed some glowing embers off the surface, then yelled at some men with buckets who were wetting down the wooden roof on the large kitchen shed that leaned against the side wall of the cathedral. "Oye, you lot, water this roll down, and quickly."
At first the nuns stood in the way worried that the water would cause the dye of the threads to run, but after more hot embers landed on it they demurred and allowed the roll of costly cloth to be deluged in buckets
of water.
"Now that your carpet is safe," said William, "take me into the cathedral so that I can tell the folk inside of the danger they are in." The nuns agreed to take just him, and they knocked out a code on the small door and it opened for them. William went in with them.
While Raynar and the archers waited outside, the smoke became so hot that they dampened their kerchiefs and tied them round their noses and mouths so they could still breathe. The once crowded square in front of the cathedral was now emptying as people realized that the doors were barred, and ran towards the river gate to escape the inferno within the town walls.
"They've left it too late," one of the archers said aloud, and nodded towards the flames that were now creeping up towards the wooden beams of the main roof from the kitchen roof. "With this wind the main roof will be a torch within a quarter hour."
Raynar had to agree with him. Odo had spent a fortune on this cathedral to modernize it away from the solid, heavy, Romanized style, but he had ignored the roof. His wealth had been spent on windows and statues and marble facades, not on a fireproof lead roof. At that moment William appeared in the small doorway. He was fighting the folk inside to keep them from closing it after him. Raynar pointed and yelled to the archers, "quickly, hold that door open."
Two tall, fair English oarsmen-archers with shoulders as wide as the door ran at it and hit it with all of the force in their powerful bodies. As soon as it opened wide, smoke billowed out of it. The inside of the cathedral was already on fire. The high pitched screams of terrified children were now wafting out of the door with the smoke.
William called to him, "Scraps of burning ceiling are falling on them. They are trapped inside. They can't even reach the main doors, and if they do fling them open the wind will get in and that will make the flames roar like in an oven."
'Think. Think. Get them out. How.' Raynar clenched his fists in frustration at feeling so helpless while so many were about to burn. "The carpet, the tapestry," Raynar yelled at the archers. "It is soaked through. If we unroll it and lift it above our head, we can create a corridor of safety through the burning debris that is falling from the roof."
"Worth a try," said the archer closest to the carpet roll and he pushed the nuns hovering around it out of his way and then kicked the sodden thing to unroll it across the square. The others jumped to help and found out that by unstringing their bows and using the bows like ribs they could hold the long wet cloth up above their heads with the edges lapping over the bows and trailing down. With it above their heads they walked in single file like a caterpillar towards William and the now open side door.
Raynar tried to help, but he was not strong enough. The sodden cloth was enormously heavy to hold above your head. The archers ordered him to go and lead the first man to ensure he did not get lost, or misstep, and to yell out in the local lingo so the folk inside would realize what they were doing.
It was a group of children huddled under a long table who were the first to realize what the tapestry meant to them. They yelled at their mothers, and they to their husbands, and they to their cousins that the tapestry was the way out. Raynar yelled to the children to crawl along the floor, for if they stood up the smoke would choke them.
It was slow work clearing perhaps a thousand folk on hands and knees from that burning temple. Too slow. Eventually Raynar and the two men at the leading edge of the tapestry could stand no more of the searing air and ducked down and began to crawl towards the door with the folk. A yard of their end of the cloth had already burned. The two archers kept yelling to the others by the door to start walking the makeshift roof out of the building so it would not block them at the door.
The cries of terror and pain that Raynar heard behind him from the folk that were left under the burning roof tore at his heart, but there was nothing else that could be done. Every breath was a scorching labour, and if they didn't get this steaming cloth roof out of the way, then those left behind would not even be able to make a mad dash for the door.
As the archer deepest into the cathedral, Raynar was the last of the archers outside. He had been holding his breath for minutes, and once the others were out of his way he lunged through the door to take a deep breath of sweet fresh air. He was immediately wracked by a coughing fit. The outside air was almost as hot and smoky as the air inside the burning cathedral.
The archers still had the tapestry lifted high, and women and children were huddled under it as they all trotted towards the river gate. Someone was yelling, screaming really, "RUN. The roof is going." Everyone knew what that meant. A collapsing roof would burst the windows and searing air and flames would shoot out of them like a vision of hell. Everyone ran. Ran to get clear of any of Odo's expensive colored windows.
There was no seeing where you were going. Between the smoke, the hot air, and the tears of pain in your eyes, there was no seeing. Raynar stumbled over a crying child, rolled, and came up on his feet again with the child in his arms. Run. That was the only thought now. Run.
And then the roof caved in with a thunderous whooompf, and tongues of flame shot out of blown out windows like a smiths forge on a giant scale. Raynar kept running, and didn't stop until he reached the river and, like all those around him, threw himself and the child he was carrying, into the murky, but cool, water.
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Hoodsman - The Second Invasion by Skye Smith
Chapter 27 - The surrender of Caen in May 1105
"How many do you think died?" Henry asked Raynar as they both sat leaning against a tree trunk and watched the red glow of the embers of what had once been one of Normandy's major cities. It was still pitch black, although the first light of dawn was only perhaps an hour away.
"I have no idea."
"How many do you think were still in the cathedral?"
"I have no idea. Count the survivors and give thanks that so many escaped the walls."
"They will blame me," sobbed Henry. "My people here in Normandy, the church, my brother, everyone will blame me."
"I hope those tears are for all the burn victims and not for your fall from grace."
"La Fleche and Martel, and all the Manseaux and Angevins are leaving me. They refuse to fight if there are no spoils to be gained from winning. They are going back to Maine and Anjou, and will probably plunder any village in their way, and I do not have the forces to stop them from doing that. I was a fool to think that they would help Normans. The Normans have preyed on them for decades."
"Good riddance to greedy men," Raynar hissed. "They have been rebelling against vicious Normans for decades, and have become what they resisted. Did you ever get FitzHammon back. Did they surrender the castle."
"You forget yourself, Ray. I am a Norman. These are my folk. Yes, FitzHamon was released. Yes, the castle gates are open, though my brother's man is still inside waiting to talk terms."
"So now what? If these are your folk, then what are you going to do for them? They are tired, and burned, and homeless, and hungry. The bloody town will not even cool enough for men to clear the main roads for a week. The armies of the siege have scoured all of the food. The castle tower still stands but that will house perhaps two hundred at most."
"I will lead the women and children and injured to Caen. I will protect them so that their menfolk and the strong can stay here and begin to rebuild some roofs. My brother is in Caen. I must tell him that this was none of my doing. I must tell the bishop, though the church's forgiveness may cost me dearly."
"I would imagine they will want your help, and a lot of your coin, to rebuild the cathedral and the churches."
"I can't waist my coin on churches until Belleme is defeated. The only alternative is that they will force me to agree to their version of investiture. They will force me to give up my right to appoint bishops. Damnation. That won't sit well with the other kings of Christendom. I will be the first to have bowed to the Gregorians." Henry didn't continue with the explanation because Raynar was sno
ring.
* * * * *
"Wake up," Enguerran de Lassy hissed as he whipped back the covers of his Duke's bed so he could watch the two naked wenches squirm and dance while finding their clothes. He was disappointed. They were just common kitchen women with sagging breasts from feeding whelps, and certainly not young, and as far from clean as they were from God.
Robert moaned and looked up from his pillow. The skin around his eyes was so dark that he looked like he had been in a fight, and the end of his nose was swollen and the color of blood. "Go away," he moaned and turned over to hide his head from the brightness of the day.
"Get up. Go, wash your face and wake up your brain." Enguerran told him. "Your brother Henry is approaching Caen with an army of thousands. The town elders already have the city gates open, and are daring my men to close them. After what happened in Bayeux they want us to resign with no fight. None. They were quite clear about that."
Robert rolled off the bed, stumbled, lay on the floor, then puked and passed out. Enguerran left him there. It was time to quit Caen. If he hurried he would have time to take the last of Roberts treasury with him. He ran through the huge castle passing the word to the garrison, at least his men of the garrison. "Pack up, saddle up, grab anything of value and let's head for Lassy."
Other garrison men began to take notice of Lassy's men and were asking, "What is going on?"
"Flee," he told them. "Henry's army will be here in a few hours, and you heard what he did in Bayeux. Robert is drunk again, so there are no orders. The townsfolk have already decided our fate by not allowing us to close the gates. Flee lest the mob string you up."
On his way to his horse, Enguerran looked in on Robert once more. The man was up now, and seemed to be sobering up. He was looking for something.
"Those bitches have stolen my purse," Robert lamented. "Were you here earlier? You told me something."
"Your brother Henry is approaching with an army of thousands," Enguerran repeated himself. "The town elders have already decided to hand him the town. They don't want a repeat of Bayeux."
