Hoodsman: Revolt of the Earls

by Smith, Skye

  The sheriff of Cambridgeshire was holding court, but a more unruly court Raynar had never seen. He saw panic on some of the faces, and urgency in the motions of the petitioners, but no rulings could be made in such disorder. Raynar jumped up onto the table and stood tall so he could be seen from everywhere in the hall. Two guardsmen push forwards with their pikes to pull him down from the table, but they were blocked by four men with bows, each of whom stood a head taller than them. They were firmly told to behave and let the man speak.

  "Friends," Raynar called out, "I have just ridden here from Worcester. Bishop Wulfstan has prevailed. Earl Roger has been stopped from crossing the River Severn, and is right now being escorted either back to Herefordshire, or to Winchester. There is no longer any threat to you from the west."

  There were cheers and the noise level from the ensuing gossip made it impossible for anyone to gain order. Eventually Raynar stomped his boots on the table in a rhythmic pounding and the crowd began to settle down. "With your permission," he yelled full voice, "I must take those at the head table into another room so that I can tell them all." He motioned to those sitting around the sheriff to make for the side door. Again the bowmen leaped into action and created an aisle so they could move through the crowd.

  In the small room behind the great hall, Raynar's report took less than five minutes to make. The response to his questions about what was happening here in Cambridge took much longer. The Wash was filled with ships. Ships from Brittany bringing the Breton warriors who were rallying to Ralph's banner. Danish ships bringing Boulonnais mercenaries from Boulogne. Trading ships out of London that had come to the Wash ports to try to sell their cargos rather than run Odo's blockade of the Thames. Trading ships from Lynn and Spalding that were trying to pick up or deliver cargoes for or from Flanders..

  Lynn had been chosen as the landing port to put the Norwich bound warriors ashore. Thorold was there now, keeping the locals, the local ships, and his warehouses safe from those warriors. Not by fighting with them, but by keeping the peace so that the ships could unload quickly and so that the warriors could be on their way to Norwich as soon as possible.

  The crowds at the court were mostly men seeking recompense for animals taken by the warriors, and not defended by the sheriff, as was his duty. Especially horses. Others were seeking instructions as to where to hide their boats, their carts, their herds, and their women, in case Thorold failed in his mission and the warriors began foraging in Cambridgeshire. Others were fyrd leaders waiting for orders.

  Raynar focused on the phrase 'Danish ships'. Had he been wrong not to support this rebellion. With the help of the Danes and of Waltheof, perhaps the rebellion could have succeeded. He felt sick to his stomach at the thought, but then calmed himself. Succeeded for whom. Princes and barons. And at what cost. Again the folk, the women, the children, the villages would have paid the price. There would be no success for them, only more hunger and heartache.

  Before he did anything else, Raynar told himself that he needed food and sleep to stop his mind from swimming. He said as much to the sheriff, who acknowledged his need by remarking on his paleness of face. There was another way out of the hall through the food staging area that led to the kitchen shed behind the building and well away from the huge thatch roof of the hall. He bade his wolvesheads to take care of the men while he went to find some peace to think.

  * * * * *

  There was no peace to be found in this overfull town. He was wandering aimlessly and confused passed a big thatch roof behind the church, when a woman called out to him in Frisian. He turned and recognized the comely maid who had called to him from his times in Huntingdon. She grabbed him by his hand and pulled him towards the large house and called out for the doorman to open for her. Inside it was mercifully peaceful.

  She led him through the house to a small room at the back, next to the door that led outside to the kitchen. Inside, boys were setting up a short bathing barrel, while girls were bringing buckets of water. It took no coaxing to have him strip out of his outer wear. He had worn them without break for three weeks and through two battles.

  Though fording the Severn in them had washed away the blood and offal, they had dried stiff, and now smelled faintly of carrion, and strongly of horse. A boy carried them away, hopefully to be cleaned, and left him standing in just his silk under shirt, which was now ugly with stains.

  "Girls, women, be gone now so that he can bare himself," a commanding voice said from the doorway. "I will throw you his silk shirt for washing."

  Raynar turned to face the familiar voice. "Judy, but why are you here. You should be in Paris by now, or at least Brugge."

  "My husband would not hear of it. He made sounds like he needed me to command in his absence, but he was being false. What could I do that Thorold could not do better." She motioned for him to take off the shirt, and he did. He twisted to take it over his head, and she saw again the old scar that ran the length of his back. A lance wound that had glanced and torn rather than spitted.

  She smiled to herself. The first time she had seen this man he had been standing in what little privacy the wall of a well could give, while her maids giggled and poured water over him. That was three children ago, so almost four years. She took the foul silk from him and threw it out the door and then slammed it shut. Her women knew better than to approach a door that she had slammed. They would have privacy.

  She had him undo her laces, and then she took her own costly outer clothes off and hung them on a peg. Underneath she was wearing a silk shift not dissimilar to his shirt, and nothing else save a few jewels. She motioned him to step into the barrel, and then she picked up the first bucket, the warmed one, and stepped up on a stool and poured it over his hair and face and beard and shoulders.

  She broke and crushed some soap and mixed it with the last of the warm water in the bucket, and then dripped it over him. "There, rub the soap in while I get more water." She stepped down and retrieved another bucket of warm, and poured it carefully down his front and back and arms, and then down his legs. While he lathered his hair and beard, she lathered the hair between his legs, with an immediate and encouraging response.

  "Judy, The last time we were together, our bodies wanted more than just closeness and were denied. Denial again would be prudent even though Waltheof is not here." Because of the soap, he could not open his eyes to see, but she stopped caressing him and heard her moving away. Then she came back and water cascaded over his head and washed the soap away and with it the foulness of the road, and he could see again.

  She was naked now, and her skin shone with splashed water. Her breasts, plump with milk, were mere inches from his face. Other than that, she still looked like a teen, and she may still be one, as Waltheof had made her early. She leaned forward and overbalanced slightly with the weight of the bucket, and steadied herself by pressing her breasts into his face. They were warm and soft and clean. They were the magical gift from the goddess to the most innocent.

  She left him twice more to fetch more buckets, each one cooler than the last, until he had cleansed himself of battle and road and horse, and then with the final rinse, she again pressed her breasts into his face. The bucket splashed them as it fell from her hands to the ground. She wrapped both arms around his neck, lifted her weight from the stool, wrapped her legs around his waist, and then slid down his slippery skin until she felt his point hard up to meet her. She shifted slightly and then lowered herself onto him.

  They could not keep the pose long. Just long enough for a long deep kiss. But she was slipping all the time down his wet skin, and it became uncomfortable, so she reached out and hooked the stool with one foot, and with a heave that washed his face in breast, she climbed off him. "There, the deed is done. Denial is now foolish, and you are clean enough for my bed."

  "I need food and sleep, and soon, else I will fall where I stand and drown in this swill I have made of the bath water." He used his toe to kick out the plug and the water began to drain
from the shallow half barrel along a channel and outside through a hole in the wall.

  She was silent as she toweled him dry, and made no move to cover herself. She sat him on the stool and rubbed perfumed oils into this hair and skin, and then with comb and shears trimmed him so that he no longer looked like a grizzled wolf. Each time he dozed off, she would rub against him, or nibble his ear, or kiss his eyes. "You must pretend to have some wound, so that there will be no eyebrows raised when I give you my husbands bed, and visit you frequently to change your dressing."

  She reached up to a shelf and pulled down some clean strips of linen and bound his left calf, then poured some of the perfumed oil slowly onto the bandage to stain it in one place. "There," she said and then wrapped a larger linen around his waist to cover him decently. "Now let's get you fed and to bed."

  He spent the next twenty hours in bed, most of the time asleep, except when he was woken five different times by the lonely countess, who ravished him and was ravished in return. By then his clothes were clean and dry and he begged to leave her company for a day to make sure of Thorold's well being. She knew better than to deny him leave, when he would take it anyway.

  * * * * *

  His men were not as well rested as he, having spent the night spending their earnings on the best food, good ale, and bad women, and afterwards sleeping with their horses to make sure they were not stolen. He made up one wolfpack of those who could still stand to hold a bow, and these he marched to the docks and seconded two river boats to take them downstream on the River Cam to Ely and from there down the River Ouse to Lynn.

  The men made good use of the time to bath by hanging off the boats, and to wash their clothes, though the sheep’s skins would take days to dry. They even used an old pair of sheep’s shears to tidy each other's hair.

  From Ely onward, the channels were filled with river boats carrying everything and anything that would sell at a market, for that is what Lynn had become, one giant market. It was testament to Thorold's skills of order and organizing that what could have turned easily into a town under siege had turned into a town more crowded than Cambridge, with a market more fitting of London than a sleepy port village on the Wash.

  Thorold’s bowmen, and the local fyrd were everywhere serving as constables to ensure the peace was kept. Men from all over the North Sea were on the move, seamen and warriors, and their agents were bargaining hard at each stall. Animals were being bought by the pen full and crops by the boatload.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Hoodsman - Revolt of the Earls by Skye Smith

  Chapter 8 - Lynn becomes a big town in August 1075

  In the port of Lynn, when young Raynar asked for Thorold, he was pointed towards the watch tower. He hurried there and climbed to the top on a busy stairway, and found Thorold spying out and giving orders either to the stream of messengers who were clogging the stairs, or bellowing down to the town criers on the ground who would then bellow them out across the town.

  Despite his busyness, he stopped in mid bellow to give Raynar a hug. "I've been watching you for an hour, wondering when you would seek me out," the ageing Daneglish lord told him in a hoarse voice. Raynar turned slowly in place and looked at the tower's view. From here he could see across the low lands to the mouth of the Ouse, and beyond, to the Wash and the ships sails. He could watch up and down the river. He could see the highway that stretched east towards Hempton, and could see the men marching along it, driving animals before them.

  During the rebellion at Ely, Hereward had many such watch towers built in the fens. Most of them survived and were kept up by the locals, who much appreciated the ability to look far out over the low land and to see the horizon above the thick groves of bush and trees. "It must be so in every flat land," thought Raynar, "they must build high platforms to see out over the trees, whereas in the Peaks we can simply climb the closest hill."

  Lynn, called Bishop's Lynn by churchmen, was the place where the Wash, the fens, and the drier lands of Norfolk, all met. It had been a jewel of the Ely rebellion when the Danes were part of it, but part of the rebellion's downfall once the Danes left. It was the easiest port in the fens for land based armies to attack, and unfortunately it was at the mouth of the river that was the main transport route through the south fens to Ely, Huntingdon, and Cambridge.

  Now, this week, it was the safest port safest for Earl Ralph's supporters to unload men and weapons in England. It was far from the reach of Odo's army and his ships which by now would be making their way from London to Norwich, but more important, in the dry season, Lynn had a good highway to Hempton and from there to Norwich.

  "Tell them no," Thorold called out to a messenger. The words broke Raynar from his musings over the view and put him back in focus. Thorold was silent for a moment while he phrased his next words to the messenger. "My instructions were clear enough. They can use the port, and the market, but then they must leave using the Hempton highway and no other. There are to be no camps near to Lynn, and they cannot use the rivers or the southern highway."

  "I have told them that, sir," the messenger complained. "They say they only want to leave some ships upstream from Lynn so that they are safe from any Norman patrols."

  "Take part of a wolfpack with you and let them see the length of the bows. They must move on. They cannot stay here. That was the agreement." Thorold turned to Raynar, "Bloody Bretons. Always think they should be treated special like." He refocused on his friend. "Canute was asking after you."

  "Canute is here? Where?"

  Raynar pulled him over to the view of the town. "See the small house with the red door. That is where he sleeps. His guards sleep in the barn behind."

  "I thought you just said that they cannot stay."

  "Well, Breton captains aren't special, but a prince of Denmark certainly is. He came with fifty ship loads of Boulonnais mercenaries."

  "But that is a thousand men," replied Raynar. "Where did Ralph get the coin?"

  "Canute, he traded him for his land in Denmark, and it is only five hundred mercenaries because the Danish ships are crewed for raiding, not trading."

  "So fifty Danish ships, how many Breton ships, how many Flemish, how many of Odo's?"

  "The Danes came as a fleet straight over from Boulogne." said Thorold. "The Flemish come and go and carry supplies only, so they are of no account. The Bretons come in squadrons. Perhaps five ships per squadron. There are thirty of their ships now anchored off the head, and they hate being there. That is why they want to move them up stream away from the winds and out of reach of any marauding Norman ships. I have no idea how many Norman ships are in the Wash. Not many. Most of Norman ships are fully busy carrying men and supplies from London to the southern coast of Norfolk, or are guarding those that do."

  "Is Lynn safe with all these mercenaries moving through and so many raiders sailing offshore?"

  "You mean are the folk safe? Well, safer now that you and your wolfpacks have blocked Hereford's army from reaching here," Thorold said softly. "As safe as I can make them. I begged six wolfpacks and every punt from Cambridge, and those men are camped safely up stream. If there is any trouble, it won't last long. Not with that much power afloat and mobile. That is why the Breton captains want to move their ships upstream. Safest place in England for a ship right now. "

  "Do you sleep up here?" Raynar asked, seeing some bedding rolled into a corner of the tower.

  "I have done, but that bedding is for the double watch. How we have been keeping the peace is by spotting trouble from up here when it first starts and immediately sending some bruisers in to break it up before it spreads." Men were pulling at Thorold's sleeve. "Time to get back to work. Tell Canute that I will join him for the evening meal."

  Raynar made to leave, but then moved behind the current messengers and watched Thorold work. A clerk was following him around as he paced from view to view in the tower, probably to record the decisions being made for future reference. As he walked and do
dged down the stairs he heard a cry from above "fight just broke out at the Red Cockerel. Break it up." and then he saw ten huge men with wooden cudgels running across the market square.

  Out on the street, Raynar was jostled and pushed because he was walking too slowly for this busy town. Eventually he found the lane to the red door, and was about to knock when men came out of the shadows and forcibly stayed him. "What do you want?" said a voice in Danish tinged English.

  "To see the prince," replied Raynar in pure Danish, "he has been asking for me with the garrison commander."

  "Hand over your weapons."

  "There is no need. I would rather sever my own hand than hurt Canute"

  "Hand over your weapons, else leave."

  "There is no need," said a voice from the window. "Let him through, and remember his face for the next time. He is Thorold's right hand." The door opened and Canute stood there in comfortable clothes. "Well met Raynar. Come in, come in. I heard that things are not going well for Roger of Hereford. Come and tell us all." He closed the door behind them.

  "Before I forget," Raynar said, "Thorold says he will eat with you tonight."

  "With us, friend," Canute walked across the room to the other window and yelled instructions to his cook.

  "Do not get entwined in this rebellion," Raynar warned, "It will end badly for Earl Ralph, as it has already for Earl Roger."

  "I am not entwined. I was paid well for delivering mercenaries who have no oath to me. They are a poor lot. French Boulonnais who were on the wrong side at Cassel. I think that Count Eustace was happy to send them here to get them out of Boulogne," he offered ale or wine, and poured wine. In a lowered tone he said, "My true purpose here is to keep Odo's fleet in the south, so that Jarl Hakon is free to raid in the north. He has over a hundred ships, I have less than fifty."