Hoodsman: Hunting Kings

by Smith, Skye

  This was much easier on Raynar’s back, and it moved the boat faster and smoother. This also allowed him to quickly move between the two ends of the big boat, even when the big boat was filled with passengers and market baskets. Thankfully, the small boat was so much shorter than the big one, that it did not get in the way of landing on the bank, or get in the way of him using the boat's platforms.

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  THE HOODSMAN - Hunting Kings by Skye Smith

  Chapter 8 - The Ferry at Staines-Upon-Thames, in August 1100

  "Oye, you're goin' ta miss yur ferry, again!" called a fisherman from the water's edge to the old man who was snoozing under a tree.

  The words drifted through Raynar's tired old mind and through his dreams of other towns on this great river, and woke him slowly into the bright daylight. "What is happening?" Raynar asked the man who had called to him.

  "You'd best wake up if you want to catch that ferry. Everyone is heading to the coronation in Westminster so there'll be a rush when it loads." There were some choice curses. "Staines is overcrowded. The ferry is overcrowded. The last run it was so overloaded that it was listing and there were children onboard who were scared enough to scream."

  "The ferrymen are fools," Raynar stretched, "They are carrying horses on the same ferry as folk."

  "Usually it is not a problem. I have never seen crowds like this in Staines," replied the man. Now that the stranger was awake, he went back to the water's edge and threw his fishing line back into the water. The hook kept its bait as it hit the water, and then dropped out of sight beneath the wooden float.

  "Its about time they rebuilt the old bridge," said the fisherman pointing to the old stone pilings and the jetty caused by a fallen bridge span.

  "They don't know how," replied Raynar, "The Romans built that old bridge, but the masons in this kingdom only know how lay a flat stone to span two. Not good enough for a bridge of that size. It needs arches. They've forgotten how to build big arches." He pointed up the river, and the fisherman looked in that direction. "Times are changing though."

  Through the haze and looming up above the next village upstream, Windsor, was the unfinished castle that the Norman kings had been building on the ridge to control the river. "Once they have the castle finished they will build a bridge. They have imported builders and masons from the Byzantine to complete the arches on the castle. They will figure out how to re-build the spans."

  He looked over at the fishing float. It was out beyond a couple of huge upside down baskets on the bank. They were the lightweight coracle boats that were built by stretching oil cloth over a frame. "Are those your coracles? Could you take me across the river so that I don't have to risk the ferry."

  "The two of us in one o' dem would be as overloaded as the ferry," the fisherman told him. "I'd rather stay dry today if you don't mind."

  "I suppose you wouldn't rent me one to go across. I'd leave it tied up and you could go and pick it up once the ferry is not so crowded." The fisherman looked at him as if he was a fool. "No, I suppose not."

  "We could lash the two together and we could both go across, one in each," the fisherman offered. "If they wus lashed properly, like, then I could paddle both of them back here together. Do you know lashings?"

  A slow smile spread over Raynar's face. "I've spent half my life working on boats and ships."

  "Well 'op to it then," the fisherman said holding up the fingers of his right hand, "cause it would take me too long." The fingertips of three of his fingers were missing.

  "Hunting accident," said Raynar about the mutilated fingers, "getting caught I mean."

  "French knights," replied the fisherman. "I was one of the lucky ones that day."

  "Where?"

  "Aumale back in '90, but they call it Albemarle here in England. I'm Flo by the way," They grasped forearms in the way of old warriors.

  Raynar looked closely at the man. He had intelligent eyes. "I've got time for a good story if I don't have to run to catch that ferry." They sat down next to each other on the dry bank where Raynar had been sleeping, so they could watch the river as they talked.

  Flo cleared his throat and glanced over to make sure his fishing float wasn't bobbing. "As usual, the two armies were like a plague of crows stealing the winter stores from every village along the way. I don't know if there ever was a true winner to the battle, but the losers were the serfs and the women and children.

  Me and my best friend was there mostly to keep the lord's horses, but we grooms kept company with the other English, and most of 'em were archers. We had the time and the interest, so we learned archery from them. Nice bunch. Mostly from the Welsh border. We practiced with them, and joined their drills of practice cavalry charges. Within two months we were useful fighters armed with a pike, a bow, and a long dagger."

  "A Ywen bow?" asked Raynar.

  "A Yew longbow, yes." Flo continued "We each carried our food and cloaks and arrows in a large but flattish wicker basket on our back and held to our shoulders similar to that pack o' yurs. They were archer's baskets, specially shaped to keep the shoulders free. Long, but narrow front to back.

  The Normans laughed at them, but they kept us alive. We always had our gear with us when night fell, but more - they were our shields. We could pull them off and use them to shield us from arrows. When we had to run for it, they shielded our backs from sword slashes. The only weapon they couldn't protect us from was a lance.

  The commanders kept us well away from the knights' battles. Our job was mostly scouting but we did a few skirmisher attacks on French infantry. One day twenty of us were sent as a scouting party to find and hold a ford, so that our knights could use it to cross a flooded river. We found one and sent runners back to camp with the news.

  Before our knights could arrive, the other side's knights came up to the other side of the ford. A lot of the buggers. We had to hold the ford, else our own knights would be caught in an ambush. Instead of disappearing into the forest and using skirmishing tactics of hit and run, we formed a line across our side of the ford, like we had practiced in our drills.

  They had the advantage of numbers and heavy horses so they charged. The ford was deep enough to slow their charge and our arrows did for a half dozen in the middle of the river. The rest kept coming, and so we dropped our bows and planted our pikes.

  They must have been confused when we did not run. A knight's fondest sport is cutting down infantry who are already running away. Perhaps they could not see the pikes through the water splash of their horses, but for whatever reason they skewered their own horses directly onto our pikes. Perhaps the ones behind were shocked by their view of the front line of horses go down as one, because they pulled up and retreated across the ford.

  More than a few of them fell with arrows in their backs. If they had kept charging over their fallen, we would have been finished. Our pikes were buried in horseflesh, our bows were on the ground and we had nothing left to defend ourselves with but our daggers. Worse, we had no reserve. Instead they retreated. We couldn't believe our luck."

  "Retreated fully, or re-formed?" asked Raynar.

  "Re-formed," replied Flo, "We needed to find our bows and free our pikes before the next charge, but the fallen knights were struggling up from under their dying horses. If they gained their feet we would be slaughtered by their swords, so we jumped between the dying horses, pushing the knights back down and shoving our daggers through their face guards."

  "Ooo. I bet that pleased the men who had retreated." Raynar said with a whistle.

  "Too right" continued Flo "Seeing us killing the fallen knights with daggers enraged the ones on the other side of the ford. Usually in their battles, once a knight fell from his horse he would be captured and held for ransom. We had no one to spare to watch prisoners, so we just finished them.

  They charged again. Most of us had bows back in hand and half the pikes were usable. Again, instead of running to cover, we reformed behind the
carnage of struggling and dead horses and men, and loosed the rest of our arrows, and made ready to block their charge with pikes as they came out of the water.

  The second charge had much the same result except that this time they never even made it over the wall of dead horseflesh. Their horses shied from the smell, I guess. Anyway we didn't have to drop our bows to take up our pikes so we got off a few more shots.

  They retreated again, and by now at least forty of them were down. Not forty dead mind you, but falling from a charging horse tends to cripple a man. A few of them were face down in the river trying to gain their feet. Bloody weight of their armour was drowning them for us.

  We were now low on arrows and we had decided to run for cover, when we heard the sound of another cavalry charge. But this time it was behind us. Our own knights had arrived.

  True to our training, we turned our line into columns with wide spaces between so that our own knights could ride between us and charge at the enemy. Instead of going between us, the buggers trampled us, all of us, and some of us were slashed by swords. My friend went down to a slash and was stepped on by a battle horse.

  My basket pack saved my neck from being slashed. Now all around us were the broken bodies of archers. We started dragging each other to the side of the road, to the safety of the grass verge and the closest cover of the forest. My friends legs could not take his weight so he hung his arms over my shoulders and I dragged him to the edge of the ford."

  Flo's hands were in a tight fist and his arms were frozen in position and his face had grown red, and his eyes were locked on his missing fingers. "Our Normans knights parlayed a truce with the French ones. Our knights withdrew up the slope and gave the ford to the French, so they could retrieve their dead and wounded.

  Can you believe it, our own knights let all them Frenchies go. Meanwhile our own wounded skirmishers were left crippled and bleeding beside the ford. The French had reason and hate enough to kill us, but they were under truce, so instead they walked amongst us and held us down and cut our fingers off so that they would never have to face our arrows again."

  Flo looked through his tears and notice that this stranger also had watery eyes.

  "Those that could, ran." he said quietly. "I could have run, but I would not leave my friend. I should have. He did not last the night." He pounded the ground with both fists. "So I buried my friend and our fingers in Normandy at a ford with no name and no importance. I used the fingers as a reason to be sent home. There was a king's ransom in prisoners and armour given back to the French at that ford, and I came home friendless and without coin and without fingers. Bastard knights."

  He left Flo sitting on the bank with his grief and his memories, and went to lash the coracles together. After flipping them over he used their bow lines to join them front to back, or at least he thought it was a front and a back, for it was hard to tell with a coracle. When it was done he went back to get his gear from beside Flo.

  "Expensive bow for a child," Flo said pointing to the bow that Raynar had chosen from his collection for this day of traveling. "and are those fishing arrows." The arrows were short and light and had a long thin point like a spike, but with two tiny razor sharp barbs on one side. "Do you mind if I string it?"

  At Raynar's nod, Flo strung the child’s bow. "Wrong bowstring," he said as he pointed out the obvious flaw that the C of the bow was too small for the string, so neither the bow nor the string was under tension. He nocked one of the arrows in the string and drew the bow, but it had no draw weight to it and the arrow wasn't long enough. "Oh well, it means your boy won't be going around hurting anything, though if he is that young you should take them points off the arrows. They are razor sharp."

  "Umm, let me show you," Raynar said. "Notice the belly of the bow?"

  "Well I'll be. The bowyer put it on the wrong side of the C. And so much craft went into the bow. What a waste."

  "No, it's on the right side. To string it you have to sit down and use your knee to unbend the C and rebend it into a C pointing the other way. See, like this. And then place the bowstring properly and .... there." The bow now looked like a bow. The string was taught, very taught. He handed it back to Flo.

  Once more Flo nocked an arrow. "Woden wept, feel the draw weight on that." He looked over at Raynar sheepishly. "All right, so I taught myself how to hold a bow with my other hand. It took a year before I could hit anything. Don't you dare tell the local verderers else my poaching days are over." He looked again at the strange bow, now thoroughly impressed.

  "It's the type of bow that is killing our Crusaders in the Holy Land. The Seljuk skirmishers use them. They fight mounted on small fast horses, and I do mean fight mounted. They can use these bows at a full gallop. Their specialty is to feign being cowards and running away from our Christian knights, and then slow so any knight foolish enough to give chase can catch up. Then they turn right around in the saddle and shoot over the horses ass to kill the knight."

  Flo laughed at the thought. In his experience, knights were at their best when they were attacking men who were already running away. These Seljuks, whoever they were, had figured out the perfect way to teach them a lesson. "So how did you come by it?"

  "I have an eye for bows, especially strange ones. Well, strange to here anyway. I've even tried my hand at making bows. Go on, take a shot."

  "Too right I will." The fisherman looked around for a target. "How about that fence post over there. It has a hay stack right behind it so we won't have to run after the misses." He loosed and hit the post dead center.

  It became almost a contest, with Flo eagerly running to fetch the one practice arrow after each shot. Too soon for Flo, Raynar finally said, "Well come on. Lets drag the boats into the water and see if we can paddle them without going around in circles."

  The rafted coracles worked surprisingly well because Raynar had tightened his lashings with all of his strength. They decided it would be better for Flo if they paddled across aimed slightly upstream, so that on the return journey Flo wouldn't have to fight the current with only one paddle.

  When they were almost across the river, the sounds of screams turned their heads to look downstream. The overloaded ferry had made it almost to the North bank, but now was tipping to one side. The horses on it were pushing folk into the river as they tried to keep their footing. Luckily the ferry was close enough to the bank to be out of the flow and into the shallows, else the ferry would have flipped and a hundred souls may have drowned.

  "I think you made the right decision," Flo muttered, watching the scene closely. "Come on, let’s get to the bank and go over and see if we can help." He began paddling at double time.

  At the ferry dock there was not much they could do. The tipping had put the ferry off course and now men were in the shallow water trying to haul it out of a mud bank. "Hopeless," Flo pointed out, "unless they unload it first. There'll be a lot of best coronation togs gettin' muddied before this is over."

  The bad news for the ferry passengers was good news for Raynar. The passenger carts and strings of passenger ponies that had come to meet this ferry were standing idle while the carters watched their would-be passengers thrash about in the shallows. Raynar got a seat on the first cart that would leave for Westminster. While it waited for more passengers, he fell back to sleep and dreamed again of Wallingford.

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  THE HOODSMAN - Hunting Kings by Skye Smith

  Chapter 9 - Hunting a King, Wallingford in December 1066

  By the end of his first month in Wallingford, young Raynar had become a well known member of the community. He was Raynar Boatman now, rather than Raynar Porter, and folk recognized him and called out to him whenever he went to market. The winter weather had begun now, and the seemingly endless November rains had slowed with the colder winds.

  Each time he passed the Shirereeve's gatehouse, he was invited in for ale, in hopes that he would tell the latest news, or perhaps even a choice bit of juicy
gossip. Raynar eagerly fed on the news going north and south along the highway and east and west along the river. Whenever he heard something new and believable, he willingly passed it on to the Shirereeve's guards, who passed it on to Shirereeve Wigod.

  There was now continuous news about William, who was still marching about with his army in undeserving and unprotected Kent.

  Despite not being the king, while in Canterbury William had named his first Earl to replace Leofwine Godwinson, who had been butchered with his brothers at Senlac. Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury approved of the choice under direct pressure from the Norman churchmen, who supposedly spoke for the Pope.

  The new Earl of Kent was Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux from Normandy. So of course he would have pretended to speak for the Pope. Almost everyone that Raynar told this to responded with a curse and the complaint that churchmen always looked out for each other. A few of the wiser heads told him that Odo was chosen not because he was a Bishop, but because he was Duke William's half brother.

  William's army failed to take London Bridge. Everyone nodded at that. It was obvious and expected. There was no better guarded crossing on the Thames than London Bridge for it not only gave direct access to the center of London, but it also controlled the port. What had William expected. It had the largest population in the kingdom to be called upon to man the walls at the southern gate.

  Whatever William had expected, he was furious at not being allowed to cross the Thames, so his army sacked, slaughtered and plundered the south bank of the Thames near London as a punishment and as a warning to other towns. That was no surprise to anyone either, and everyone hoped that the south bank would have been emptied long before William arrived.

  William's army was heading this way along the river looking for a safe place to cross. Everyone had expected this as soon as London Bridge was held against him. The history of Wallingford had been the history of armies crossing the ford.