by Smith, Skye
Chapter 7 - Four vital women in Winchester in October 1103
The chamberlain held his head with his hand. Not because he was still dizzy from being knocked to the floor by the hip of Countess Lucy, but because what he was seeing now was such a travesty of court protocol. The Countess Mary had led the women back into the dining room, ahead of a queen. Worse, she held the arm of a commoner. Worse still, she helped the elderly commoner to sit while a king, a queen, and a duke were still standing. He chuntered under his breath about this younger generation.
Raynar winced as his wounded arm was nudged by Mary as she sat beside him, but he hid the wince from the women. He forced himself to smile at Maud who had changed places with Lucy so she could sit beside him.
"You need a bed more than this meal,” Maud scolded as she sat. "We don't know how much blood you have lost."
Raynar looked around the table. The other women were all nodding in agreement with Maud. Blood or no, he was bloody hungry. He decided to ignore the women's dire looks. After all, who were they to give him advice, especially these four women. No matter how rich and powerful they were now, at some time in the past he had changed wet nappies on each of them.
Maud looked at the chamberlain, sized him up as useless, and instead grabbed the wine maid as she passed. "Have the kitchen prepare a broth of chopped fresh young liver, lamb if they have it, and float some milk curds in it. Bring a bowl of it as soon as it is ready."
Robert toasted Maud with his latest glassful. She was a hand at most things, as had been her mother Judith. He supposed that this was one effect of living with Frisian peasants in the Fens. He could not fault the effect. Better to have women who knew how to do things, than women who were only ornaments and the target of lust. He thought again of his two courtesans and felt a stir between his legs. Hopefully this dinner would end soon so he could return to them.
Henry noticed the clothing that Raynar wore. They were his, which meant that there must have been much blood. He coughed to quiet the table and looked at Raynar severely. "You have been in Winchester less than a day and already you are in a fight."
"I did little fighting,” mumbled Raynar. "They were hired assassins, and I believe that I was only one of the targets on their list. Some friendly carters warned me that I was being shadowed and that the same men had been shadowing other courtiers for some days."
"What,” Henry exclaimed. "So there are assassins in my streets."
"As you well know,” Raynar replied, "otherwise your courtiers would not be so well guarded when they walk about."
"You survived. I suppose that means the assassins are dead. How many were there?” asked Henry.
"I set a trap for them so that I could question them. A dangerous trap for sure, for I was the bait, but I survived. There were two, a finger man and a killer. The finger man still lives. I left him with the captain of your guard."
"What is a finger man?” asked Mary.
Raynar thought for a moment and then said, "He is a man who knows the face and customs of the target. For instance, with me, the finger man walked passed me in the street going in the other direction. When he was sure it was me, he gave a signal to the actual assassin. He fingered me."
Henry gave the bent eye to the chamberlain, until the old man spoke up, "Sire, both bodies were brought to the palace by two giants, one old giant and one young, perhaps father and son. The giants are not unknown to some of the ladies present.” He bowed to the ladies at the table and then continued, "The corpse has a crushed skull. The other is with the physicians who are trying to fit his arms back into their sockets.” He stopped his graphic description as the queen was giving him a hard stare.
"Er,” interrupted Raynar, "the finger man gave us some information about who sent him. He is from the village of Essa on the River Tamara in Cornwall. I believe it is the port and market town for William Mortain's castle."
At the mention of William of Mortain, Robert came back from his thoughts of courtesans. "Is he still in England? My spies told me that he was to meet Belleme in Normandy last month. Then it is not too late. Henry, we must stop Mortain from joining up with Belleme. They tore this kingdom apart with their rebellion against you last year. Luckily you had the forces to defeat them. If they join together again in Normandy, they will tear the duchy apart in order to control me, or replace me."
Henry snickered. Belleme and Mortain had been the two richest Earls in England, and they had immense wealth in France as well. He was quite sure that they had risen against him last year with Robert's permission. Now Robert was worried for his own skin. "I could only defeat Belleme because Edith used her English connections to raise the English fyrd. Though they were mostly farmers and foresters, the huge numbers that answered the levy call were enough to convince Belleme that the only alternative to death, was banishment."
"Well raise the fyrd against Mortain,” replied Robert, "only this time imprison him here in England. I do not want him in Normandy. I have enough problems with just Belleme."
"If he has not already sailed to Normandy to meet with Belleme,” interrupted Raynar, without so much as a by your leave, "then it is because these storms have him trapped here, as you yourself are trapped. His ships will be ready to sail, they just await calmer weather. He will be gone before you can raise a fyrd. He will be gone even before you can move your cavalry to Cornwall."
Mary slammed her goblet down on the table with a great crash. "Why is the bastard still alive. After what he did to me he should have been killed immediately.” She was speaking of her abduction and rape two years before, just before her marriage to Eustace of Boulogne. She absent mindedly tugged her neck scarf higher. It covered the dagger scar on her neck that marred her perfect complexion.
"Calm yourself, Mary,” soothed her sister Edith, "You know that Henry could not attack Cornwall until Belleme had been defeated, otherwise he would have been surrounded and crushed. Even with Belleme gone, the terrain of Cornwall protects Mortain from an attack by armies. He will die, that I promise you. He will not be given the option of banishment as everyone else seems to be given.” She stared at Henry. Her own orders to the fyrd had been to kill Belleme. It was Henry who had banished and attainted him instead.
"Love,” Henry said to Edith in a low voice, "I could not kill Belleme without starting the fyrd on the path of slaughter that would have widowed every Norman lady in the West Country. You know that.” He looked over at Mary, the lusty younger sister. Sometimes he envied her husband. "Mary, too many good men have already lost their lives getting rid of Belleme."
Mary looked away. She felt a weight of guilt. No one had been more at risk from Belleme than her own blood father, Raynar. Even as she thought it, she noticed that the wound he took on the arm today was turning the white linen of his bandage red. His face was grey and she had never seen him look so old and so tired.
Henry noticed her guilty look and took the advantage, "If I can get rid of that devil Mortain without losing more good men, then isn't that what I should do? How many lives should I risk to avenge your honor? Ten, a Hundred, a Thousand. I am already under sanctions from Rome because of the damage my army did while they were defeating Belleme. Every time an army marches there is destruction, and not just to the enemy, but to every village they pass through and every farm that they raid for food."
"No,” interrupted Robert, not liking what the king was saying, "she is right. Kill him. Don't let him escape to Normandy. If he has ships at the ready, then they will carry more than just him. They will carry his best men and his wealth. He must assume that you will lay siege to his castle as soon as he is away on his ship, and the castellan will be quick to surrender. He must assume that you will strip his honors and his land from him as soon as his feet touch at Normandy. Return his own favour. Since he has sent assassins here, then send your own assassins to him."
"What,” replied Henry angrily, "you want me to become like him. Never. Assassins have always been the way of those Mortains. Odo used them, and now so does the re
st of that nest of vipers. It is not my way and it can never be my way. If I flaunt the law then I have no right to judge others that flaunt it. In this kingdom I am the ultimate judge."
He automatically stopped talking at the sound of a door opening. It was a maid with the liver broth. "Over there,” he pointed at Raynar. While the serving maid was in the room, he would speak no more of the Mortains. He smiled thankfully at Lucy because she had squeezed Robert's hand to stop him from speaking his next words.
Robert did not rise to Henry's bait. The clan from Mortain had always supported him in all his arguments with all of his brothers. They had protected him from his father's wrath in the late '70's, and against Rufus in the late eighties and again in the nineties. Odo had died while following him to the holy land. But he could understand his brother's point. None of the Mortains had any morals or ethics. He shuddered at the thought of the time as a boy when he had been used sexually by his uncle, the odious Bishop Odo.
Robert changed the subject completely so that he would not have to speak further to the problem of the Mortain clan. "The great houses of Normandy are greatly upset by that new English law which prohibits slavery. I would have thought you to have more sense than to allow the bishops to sign it, Henry."
"It was I,” Edith interrupted, "who forced Archbishop Anselm to take my legislation in front of the Council of London, and would that it went so far as to prohibit slavery. I could not get my full version passed the bishops. The best I could do was to prohibit markets of slaves and debt slaves.” She motioned to Henry to stay quiet.
"It should have come as no surprise that I would draft such a law. My mother Margaret and my aunt Cristina were Bishop Wulfstan's staunchest supporters. I did it to honor the memory of all three.” Her mother Margaret, as Queen of Scotland, did much to hamper the Norse slave traders that visited the highlands of Scotland, and her aunt Cristina, as the abbess of the richest nunnery in England, kept the subject of slavery before the Bishops for years.
"So a man can still sell himself into bondage?” confirmed Robert.
"Of course,” interrupted Raynar. He had helped to convince Anselm to take the law forward to the Council. "else there would be no loans nor coin for credit, and no way to enforce repayment of debts. The difference is that now the bond holder can no longer sell the bond to another. It means that an oath of debt and coin and labour must stay between the two original men, and has more chance of fruition. It means that a bond slave cannot be thrown into a slave pen at a slave market to be sold for other purposes, or to be separated from his family."
"Why was a new law required?” Robert asked. "Henry has rolled England back to the laws of Knut, and those laws limited slavery. Under those old laws, proof of forced sex is cause enough to cancel a bondage. Besides, our father regularly closed down slave markets. I remember him doing it. So why this new law?"
"You are so naive, Robert,” said his brother, "our father closed down slave markets and freed the slaves only because the slavers were not paying him his tithe. Do you really think he cared about those that were enslaved. He freed them to be used in his own quarries and for building his own castles."
"My greatest failing with this new law,” admitted Edith, "is that I was not allowed to include that a man could not sell his family, especially his daughters, into slavery. The bishops were infuriatingly thick about it. I mean, Henry's coronation charter already stated that a woman could not be forced into a marriage. As Robert said, Knut forbade sex slavery. It seemed an obvious extension to protect the daughters, but the bishops rejected that particular clause more strongly than any other."
"Wealthy men will always do what is needed to keep down the price of whores,” Robert jested and then laughed fully. No one joined in with him. The women all looked at him with contempt. Robert represented the bad old ways of William the Conqueror. Henry represented a return to the peace and civility of England before the conquest.
Ranulf looked around the table. The only person who was not fluent in English was Robert and so everyone was speaking French. He could see that Robert, again, was about to be roasted by the powerful women around this table. That would not be diplomatic. He broke into the conversation with, "This will be a hard winter because of the great storm. I foresee famine and pestilence and plagues unless we can organize some relief.” He hoped someone would speak to the subject so that it would not seem like yet another petition to the king.
Raynar obliged him. "I came from London along the Devil's highway. It is a rough way with few inns, but it follows the high lands and is Roman made, so the road was not flooded like the bottom land highways. It passes near the village of Finchampstead. The folk there were all praying in church because their well spring was spewing forth blood."
"Blood, are you sure?"
"That is why I stopped to see. I recognized it not as blood, but as the red colored growth that is common in iron bogs. I assume the flood from the great storm had corrupted the well from some iron bog close by."
Lucy and Maud nodded their understanding. They had grown up in the Fens where a good iron bog could earn well for a village. Robert looked blank so Maud explained, "There are bogs in the north that produce crystals of iron ore. Villages harvest them. The scum in those bogs looks red from the rust of the iron."
"Exactly,” continued Raynar, "and I explained that to the village priests, but they were Hell bent to see God's work in it, and would not take my explanation to the folk.” He nodded to Ranulf and continued, "I also fear that we have a hard winter ahead, and these end-of-the-world priests will make it even harder....
For instance, I warned the priests to assign one roof for housing all of the pigs of the village and to assign one man as swine heard. I even told them why. Pigs share many diseases with people, but in hungry times families sleep with their pigs to protect them from theft, and so pestilence follows hunger,” he spread his arms and hands out to the company at the table. "Did they thank me for my knowledge and then assign a swineherd. They did not. They ran me out of the town."
"Is that true?” asked Henry, "Is it the pigs that spread the plagues?"
"Many of the plagues,” Raynar looked over at Robert, "Robert, you know this. You lived in the holy land. In many kingdoms out there they have outlawed swine altogether. I once read in a Greek text that it was because pigs blood is too similar to human blood. That is why we share diseases with them."
"Harrumph,” Robert replied, "I was told it was because the seed of swine is too similar to the seed of humans, which explained the piggy look of many of the people in the holy land.” Robert was again coughing out laughter that was shared by no one else at the table.
Henry ignored his drunk brother and waved the chamberlain close. "I want an edict to all churches and to all holy orders. Pigs in every village are to be kept under one roof and with a trustworthy guard. They are not to be kept in the houses with the folk, and the folk are to be warned not to sleep in the same room as swine."
"That will not work, sire,” mumbled a very weary Raynar. "The folk will assume that this edict is to make it easier for the swine to be gathered for taxes. They will hide them."
"If they hide them, they will not be in their houses. It serves the same."
"Well if you are going to give such an edict, then do it fully,” said Lucy. She motioned the chamberlain to listen to her. "The villages should harvest all the fruit and corn that is spoiling in the field and turn it into cider and ale immediately. That will not only preserve some of the goodness, but will also lessen the pestilence of caterpillars and rats."
"And what of the murrain in the cattle?” asked Ranulf.
"My guess,” replied Lucy sweetly, "is that it is caused by the dampness of the ground at a time when the days are still warm and the sun still high. The Frisian dairymen of the Fens deal with this all the time. Why not ask them?"
"So I will send an order to Huntingdon to have some Frisian dairymen travel here to share their knowledge,” said Henry. Half the table
began to laugh. It turned into that breathless laughter that is infectious and hard to stop. "What did I say?” Henry was getting angry for he thought they were laughing at him.
Lucy held up her hand and counted her fingers up to three. On three, she and Maud and Raynar recited, "You can tell a Frisian, but you can't tell him much.” and they broke down in laughter again. Eventually Lucy could trust herself to speak and she said, "Order a Frisian to attend you and he may arrive in time for your funeral. They are proud and stubborn men."
Lucy turned to the chamberlain and told him, "Send a message to Huntingdon announcing a contest to see which dairyman in the kingdom knows the most about preventing murrain in cattle. There will be three prizes of gold. Invite the shire to send two men immediately to Winchester for the contest."
"Oh, Lucy,” Maud giggled, "you are so devious. You will have the six best Frisian cattlemen here within the week."
"Six,” asked the chamberlain, "I heard you say two."
"Yes,” replied Maud, "but there are three prizes, so each of the two will bring two cousins to try to win all three prizes."
"Frisians,” Robert called out, clearly quite drunk, "damn fine horsemen and bowmen, damn fine.” He seemed to lapse into thought, but it could have been dreams.
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The Hoodsman - Forest Law by Skye Smith
Chapter 8 - The arrival of Robert in Brugge in October 1076
Without any advance warning, Robert of Normandy, Queen Matilda's eldest child, arrived in Brugge with a small escort of loyal men. His decision to leave Paris and ride long and hard to Brugge had meant that he had left Gesa in Paris, although Gesa could out ride most men. She had grown up on Klaes's Frisian horses.
Raynar happened to be in the court when he arrived. He and Count Robert had just returned from the count's inspection of the wondrous Norse twinned hull and the both of them were still dressed for the sea. They looked like peasants in comparison to the finery of the courtly hangers-on.