by Smith, Skye
"Hmm," Raynar was not so sure that Wyl should have explained that to Henry. If the proclamation was a trap, then the Normans would know to treat the first men well, so as to trap more men. "Do not put the bowmen under the Sheriff or the Sheriff's men. To each castle send a small squad of existing Royal Archers, with an archery commander. Let him do the recruiting and be responsible for the recruits. Oh, and besides giving each man a helmet, and a tunic, give them a good pair of boots too."
"I can do that,” Henry was scribbling madly. "As the number of recruits grow at each castle, they will be marched in groups here to London. Meanwhile their army training can begin at the castle. Do you think it possible that I may have a few hundred here within the month?"
"It is possible. Yes, a few hundred is quite possible," replied Raynar. "But if you are going to have the army train them, then have them trained as skirmishers, not as volley archers. Volleying the heavy arrows of a longbow would be a waste. And not just a waste of arrows, but a misuse of carefully aimed killing power. A waste of the ability to strike the enemy down from a safe distance. A waste of the opportunity to win a battle before it even begins."
Henry wrote down every word that Raynar had just said. "I'm sorry if I seem to be writing a lot. I was not trained as a warlord, but as a cleric. Still, I have sat with many warlords over the years, and every one of them overestimates the importance of heavy cavalry, and under estimates the importance of heavy bows."
"That is exactly why the Holy Wars have been such an expensive disaster," Raynar pointed out.
"Perhaps I should ask the bowmen recruits to choose men from their own ranks to help with the training. Some of them must have been skirmishers before."
"Oh yes," replied Wyl. "You can wager your life on that."
"I may well be doing that," replied Henry. "and sooner than you think. A few hundred in a month you say. Here in London, ready to fight for me."
"Keep your promises, and their bows are yours," Wyl said. "It is as simple as that."
* * * * *
Wyl and Raynar climbed to the roof to watch the new king ride back down Temple Lane. "It worries me that he likes coming here," muttered Wyl. "I mean, all our neighbours know that something big is going on here even if they think he is just a captain of the palace guard. Hard to miss when his troop block the lane for an hour at a time."
"I don't care a fig about the neighbours," Raynar replied. "I just hope that any assassins that may be watching Temple Lane assume that he is just a captain come to take scrolls back and forth from Gregos to the Palace."
"Come on, we have some writing of our own to do. I think this is all going to work. I can't believe he is going to replace that bastard Sheriff in Nottingham, just on our say so."
It was starting to drizzle so they went back into the Inn's count house to use the desk. Together they composed a message to send out to the brotherhood that was concise, and easy for men who could not read to remember.
"Read what we have so far," said Wyl as he poured them each some mint tea to warm them. He had noticed that as they go older they drank more and more tea and less and less ale.
"It starts with the list of the six castles," began Raynar, "then, Watch these castles for Royal Archers. Send a few men to volunteer to the Royal Archers. Oath to only the king. Then a few more. No outlaws in the first few. Then a few more. They have leave on Sundays to tell the rest. You will be pardoned and proclaimed a freeman, as will your wife and children. Within the month you will be marched to London."
"It's not enough," Wyl complained.
"It's already too long," Raynar replied.
In the end after much discussion, the message stood as it was. As fast as Raynar could create the copies, Wyl was giving them to his young male orderlies, all of whom were related to hoodsmen, and hurrying them off to visit their relatives.
One message to one hoodsman would become five messages to other hoodsmen, and from each of them to another five, so that the message would spread from twenty to a hundred, then to five hundred, and then thousands, and all of this within the time it would take one rider to reach a far corner of the kingdom. A week, or a fortnight at the most.
This was either the start of a new life for the brethren, or a lot of them would be hung. It was a flip of a coin which. When the last of the orderlies had been sent off, the two men stared at each other. Wyl began to laugh.
"What?"
"John in Winchester is going to be right pissed with us," Wyl sputtered. "Most of his carters are outlaws from the North under new names."
"Bah, wool season is over," replied Raynar. "He'll have six months to replace them. If Henry's Coronation Charter becomes law, then there will be so many serfs doing a runner to towns, that he won't miss the hoodsmen." He began to laugh. "He should have his message, when? In a day? Ooh, I wonder how much of Mar's furniture he will smash before she gets him calmed down.” John was a very big man.
* * * * *
The next day was a day of waiting. The injured men were waiting to heal. Wyl and Raynar were waiting for news from the palace. The lads on the roof were waiting for another attack.
Gregos had a cheerful visit with the physician. They chattered away to each other in Greek and discussed the medical writings discovered in the Greek library in Cordoba. After the physician had left, he called for Raynar to sit with him and tell him again of his meeting with Henry and of the latest attack by his enemies. Gregos was bored. His healing time would drag by due to the boredom.
The two men always spoke in Greek to each other when they needed privacy. It meant they could be more open in their discussions without wondering who else would overhear. "Raynar, please continue telling the stories of your youth. They were engaging and I learned much of England and Englishmen and Normans through them."
"It has been weeks since I told you any stories, old friend. What did I tell you last?” Raynar picked up Gregos's hand and just held it. He knew from his own sicknesses over the years that the touch of another’s hand connected two souls even through the fever and the drugs.
Gregos closed his eyes and thought. "You had been running archery competitions as a way of handing Welsh longbows to the best archers around Nottingham. The sheriff's men were looking for you, and had almost caught you. Yes, that was it. You were saved from the Normans by some bowmen in Sherwood forest, and since you left them with all of your bows."
"Ah, yes," Raynar smiled at the fond memory. "I stayed in Sherwood for about a fortnight to meet more of the men and to teach them the craft of carving and using the longbow. Where I had entered Sherwood was in the southern edge of the forest where there are many clearings, and many people working the forest. The further north we went, the thicker grew the forest and the fewer were the people working it.
The forest was different from the forest I knew in the Peaks. The Peaks forest includes steep hills and ridges and valleys. There are many types of trees because of the different heights of the land and different soil and different weather. There is a lot of game and a lot of venison and many high points with views to spot game and to spot men.
In Sherwood, however, the land is quite low. A few types of trees dominate. There is no high land to use for spotting, or for taking one's bearings, so it is easy to get turned around and lost. There is a lot of game but not so much venison. Too many people live around the forest and they keep down the population of venison."
"You preferred the Peaks forest," asked Risto. Risto was awake now and listening. Before when he had listened to these stories they had been in English, because Raynar was trying to teach them more of the language. Now, because Gregos was so week, Raynar was telling them in Greek. This was so much better for him.
"Very much so. I prefer the variations in the Peaks. Sherwood was a dark mass of big trees. For the purposes of resisting the Normans however, they shared a vital feature. You could attack highway traffic and then retreat quickly into the forest. The forest floor was tangled enough that a horse was slower than a man. Y
ou could travel across the forest and attack the highways on the other side of it, and then retreat again.
The area of the Peaks forest was much larger and touched more highways, but the highways that ran north and south on both sides of Sherwood were heavily used and critical to the Normans if they were to control the North.
I learned from the men of Sherwood that the Normans were using different tactics for controlling the North than they used in the South. In the South, where so many lords had died with King Harold at the Battle of Hastings Road, their main tactic was to replace the dead English lord with a Norman. Of course they would twist the law, and sometimes do murder, but for the most it was done by forcing the widows to marry Normans."
Risto spoke out, "Yes, I remember your explanation of this. They could contest the inheritance from the dead lord, and thus under the law, the crown would run the land for a year and a day while the courts decided the inheritance. A Norman trustee would be appointed to run the land for that year on behalf of the crown, and he would wed the widow by force, by public rape, and make babies by her. During the year, any other claimants would meet with accidents, especially any sons of the widow. At the end of the year the Norman trustee would have the strongest claim to the land under the law. This is correct, no?"
"Well explained, Risto. More simply put than Raynar ever explained it," commented Gregos.
"Yes, well, in the North we countered the Dead and Wed tactic by making the Norman lords disappear, or by hiding the English widows and their children. It was too little, too late to save the southern widows, but in the North the list of vanished Norman lords was a creeping disaster for the Normans. They had few enough lords willing to live in northern England without losing so many to shallow graves. Worse. It may take months before they realized that the Norman lord was missing and not in control of the land.
For most of 1067 King William was in Normandy or Flanders, so the odious Earl Odo, his half brother, was left in charge of England and also as the Chief Justicar of the court. He had lawyers searching English law for statutes that could be twisted to the Norman's purposes. The Normans started enforcing the ancient law of 'Murdrum', which was a heavy fine on a village for the secret killing of a Norman. The fine was huge, thirty one pounds; so a village usually forfeited and every man was forced into bond slavery.
Odo's lawyers were actually wasting their time. Putting a legal wrapper around an evil was not necessary when any Norman could do whatever he wanted with any Englishman, whether it was by law or not. Despite the Murdrum, in the North they were still losing too many men. The attacks were usually on the road far away from witnesses, but sometimes in an alehouse or a whorehouse. So the Normans changed tactics."
"Normans traveling in big groups?" Risto broke in.
"Not possible," Gregos corrected him. "There were not enough Normans in England to put large groups into every village in the North."
"You are both sort of right," Raynar continued. "They started building castles. Not the stone castles you see today, but wooden forts called baileys built next to or around mounds called mottes and surrounded by the ditch which was the source of the soil for the mound. Building such forts is fast and takes little skill, just a lot of labour.
First, you dig a round ditch and pile the diggings inside the circle to make an earthen wall. As soon as the ditch is complete you already have a fortified camp with an earthwork wall. Then you haul in heavy wooden poles and build a wooden wall called a pale on top of the earthen one. You now have a bailey fortress.
Then you start moving rubble, rock, fill, anything into the center or at one end of the bailey to build a mound. On top of the mound you build a wooden tower. Sometimes there is another wall around the tower. The Normans could hold these forts with very few men. From them, large groups could go out and raid the surround villages, and bring the villages under control one at a time. At the end of each day, they would return to the fort and sleep in safety."
"I have seen these forts along the border of France," said Gregos. "The motte is very steep, too steep for horses or for heavily armoured men to climb. In France, though, they build it on an existing hill rather than move all that earth."
"The same here, Gregos. Many were built on the sites of Roman forts. A good location with lots of rubble."
"I knew it," said Risto, "groups large enough that the village men would be stupid to put up a fight. The Normans could take what they wanted without opposition. A land lord can live safely in his fort. He does not have to live on the land to run it."
"Or to ruin it," said Raynar, "they took what they wanted and left the village hungry and without strong hands or strong animals."
"Without strong hands, then they killed them?" Gregos asked.
"They killed any man that resisted, which usually meant any man with armour. The Normans were building forts everywhere and they needed the healthy and the strong to dig and carry. It takes many backs to build a motte and a bailey in a hurry.
They learned quickly not to anger the town where the fort was built, or the villages close by. Instead, they would raid villages about a half day's march from the fort. They would return from the raid with any draft animals, and any healthy men for building the fort. They would also bring along any healthy women, you know, for the Norman whorehouse. Oh, and they took every horse they could find, whether healthy or not."
Risto whistled. "Tell me of the Norman whorehouses. They must have been big, and the women must have been almost free."
"Yes, big and almost free. Close to every Norman fort there was a whorehouse, so the Norman men did not have to risk the local alehouses. They spent most of their pay there, with the profits going back to their lord for the next month's pay. The women were given nothing but room and board and clothing and, of course, constant company."
"And they took all the horses so that they could increase their range," observed Gregos.
"Not just to increase their range," replied Raynar, "but to deny the horses to English rebels, you know, like me, and Hereward and our brotherhood. The Normans would not risk their costly battle horses against our bowmen, so they needed other mounts for every day riding.
And not just the knights were mounted. They wanted every one of their warriors mounted, so that they could move further than us and faster than us. Instead of having to hide just the rich widows, we were forced to hide the horses as well, and sometimes entire villages of people.
It was a plan that was already well proven in Normandy and in the long suffering counties around Normandy. And it worked in England too, eventually, once they had forts built across the land. With enough forts they never had to camp in the open. All we bowmen could do was to slow the spread of the Norman curse.
A curse on the Bishops that chose the lad Edgar as king after Harold was killed. If they had chosen Earl Edwin, we would have pushed William into the sea in the winter of '66.
Anyway, the next time I saw Sherwood Forest I was guiding the northern Earls to Chester to meet with the Princes of Wales."
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Hoodsman - Frisians of the Fens by Skye Smith Copyright 2010-13
Chapter 19 - The men of Sherwood Forest in April 1068
"We are all soaking wet. We should have made camp," Morcar said to Edwin. They were riding double file, and riding the handsome black Frisian stallions that they had bought from Klaes.
"Hereward says that we should ride until we hear a signal," replied his brother Edwin, "and then we will be led to a camp. Besides, we know we are being followed by a Norman patrol but we don't know by how many."
They had chosen not to take the direct route through Derbyshire to Chester because Regent Odo was hunting Edwin, and the streets and villages south of Nottingham were controlled by the Normans. Young Raynar was guiding them along a more northerly route that would take them through Sherwood Forest and then through the Peaks forest. It was longer but safer.
Their guard was twenty of Hereward’s Lincolnsh
ire skirmishers, all mounted so they could move fast, and yet a small enough number that they could live off the land. Hereward's plan was to collect more skirmishers from Sherwood and the Peaks as they went. Once they were in Mercia, Edwin would put a call out for his earldom's huscarls to meet them in Chester.
Morcar sped his splendid horse and caught up to Raynar on his farm mare. "Any signal yet?"
"Ten minutes ago. A signal to keep moving," said Raynar.
"I heard nothing."
"You did not hear the owl?" asked Raynar.
"I did hear an owl."
"Owls don't call in the rain," stated Raynar.
"But... Oh, I see, or rather I hear. That was the signal."
"One of them." Raynar left the cartway and started following a rushing stream. "This way, single file, keep to mid stream and to the gravel bed."
Morcar passed the instructions to the man behind him, and the message moved down the line of riders.
They followed the stream for perhaps a half mile, then Raynar stopped and held his arm up to stop the rest of them. "We are expected!" he yelled out to the forest, "we are Hereward’s men!"
Morcar looked around but could see nothing except trees and bushes. He almost had heart failure when a man stood up out of the bushes right next to his horse. The man waved his strung longbow, and then other men appeared from nowhere along both banks of the stream, all with bows.
"Where is Hereward?" Morcar yelled at the forest men, "we sent him ahead to find you."
"You mean you sent him ahead to be found by us," said the man at his side. "He and some of the lads are back at the last highway cross counting how many Normans are following you. They want to have a little talk with them."
The man grabbed the reins and began leading the stallion. Within five minutes they were at a narrow pathway between two ancient and giant tree trunks. On the other side of the trees was a fortified camp. There was no one in sight. The forest man put his fingers in his lips and whistled a blackbird's call. Men and a few women suddenly appeared and he called out, "It's them, uncover the fires."