Hoodsman: Blackstone Edge

by Smith, Skye

  "No, but I think I tore his earlobe off."

  John whistled. "Come on then. Let's be gone before that one's mates arrive."

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Hoodsman - Blackstone Edge by Skye Smith

  Chapter 11 - Running in front of the Army down to Chester in February 1070

  The trail from the cave led down to a valley floor, which then descended and widened into valleys with the first fields. The trail became a bridle path which became a cartway and eventually met with the Roman street. They approached the street carefully but could see no Normans so they took it. It was the fastest way to Chester. There were few folk about and few folk in the villages they passed near. To any and all they gave the same warning. A Norman army was right behind them.

  They stopped at an alehouse in Manchester to be warmed by hot ale and soup. Manchester was a burgh and had simple fortifications but there was no one manning them. Raynar had expected the Cheshiremen to use Manchester as their rallying point, but they must have other plans. They gave their message to all who would listen and then pressed on towards Chester.

  It was about thirty miles to Chester, but the Cheshiremen kept the street well repaired and it had a soft surface on top of the Roman cobble that was easier on cart wheels and hoofs. They made it in about six hours, but by then neither of them could feel their legs, but they could feel their saddle sores all too much.

  At Chester, they told the watch at the gate that the Norman army was on its way, and asked for a guide to take them to the house of the Reeve. One of the watch was all too happy to take them, and knocked on the large door of a house that oozed with self importance.

  Hereward was not well known in Chester, so Raynar introduced himself as one of Thane Eadric’s wildmen with an urgent message for Cheshire and for Powys.

  "Yes, Yes," said the reeve impatiently, "we have already been told. William and the Norman army are on their way from York using the street through Manchester."

  "I have more information than that," said Raynar. "The king was sorely taxed by the crossing of the Peaks. He has less than six hundred men with him and they are in a bad way. His infantry is caught in the high country with the carts. Call out the fyrd and you will have William captive by nightfall."

  The reeve looked at him in bewilderment. "The English lords have already told me to surrender the city to him. Otherwise he will take the city, and in his anger will destroy Cheshire as he did Yorkshire."

  "You must send them a message with this latest news. William is weak, very weak. He cannot take this city. He cannot protect himself, never mind give battle," pleaded Raynar.

  "But if you are wrong he will destroy Cheshire. The risks are too great," argued the reeve.

  "With his current army, the only way he can destroy Cheshire is if you open the gate for him. Once inside these strong walls and safe, he will harrow Cheshire in daytime forays," argued Raynar. "Please send urgent messages to the lords. They must raise their men. William has no choice but to surrender to any greater force. His men are half frozen and exhausted. His archers are a half day behind him, if they have not yet already turned back to York. The Peaks had a brutal storm last night and William's army was caught out in it with no shelter."

  The reeve did not reply. He gave a stubborn look as if to say that the conversation was finished.

  "At least tell us where to find your lords," continued Raynar. "We can take this message to them ourselves. Meanwhile all we ask is that you close the gates to William. Even for just for a few hours. You will see for yourself how weak he is. He has only heavy cavalry and has no way to breach your walls. "

  "The lords have fled to Powys with their families and their wealth, taking with them many of the guard to safeguard their belongings," explained the reeve.

  Raynar was heart sick. "Then they have doomed Cheshire. They have doomed Cheshiremen. Cheshiremen will be slaves before spring. Is there any lord about that has enough men to hold these walls until help can arrive?"

  "They have all fled. And don't look to me to make trouble for William. It will be my head if I do. I have been ordered to welcome him and that is what I will do."

  John pulled himself up to his full height. He had been stooped to fit under the ceiling. Now his head touched it. "Are you telling me that after we risked our lives to ..."

  "Shush John!" interrupted Raynar, "remember the creed."

  The Reeve gave them a curious look and Raynar decided to make his farewell before they were bound and given as a gift to William.

  Once outside they made their way quickly back to the gate. "Let's get back to the forest before the Normans start picking this shire to pieces," he told John. "William isn't winning this country, so much as our weak spined lords are losing it." They headed east on the street but took the turning to Winsford so as not to meet the Norman army coming from Manchester."

  "I expected you try another shot at William by hiding in Chester."

  "I couldn't, could I. Not once that reeve had sussed us as troublemakers. Besides, what if he is right and Cheshire escapes a harrowing by surrendering Chester. Another shot from me may cause the very harrowing they are trying to escape."

  "Only if you missed," muttered John, "only if you missed, again."

  "Bugger, you are right." Raynar looked at their exhausted horses. "Come on then, let's trade these on some fresh nags. There is a stable near to the gate."

  "Good plan," replied John. "If you think your nag is exhausted, think how mine is, carrying my weight all day long. We won't make it back to the Peaks tonight, but at least with fresh horses we will be far away from here when the Normans arrive."

  "Yes, we will be south of here. By tomorrow noon we could be in Oswestry and by afternoon at Prince Bleddyn's palace at Mathrafal."

  "I remember Mathrafal," replied John, while giving a hard stare at his friend. "But why Mathrafal. We don't need more bows. Our camp near Tideswell has plenty."

  "Because the only force that has a chance of finishing William now, is Bleddyn's Welshmen. Come. Let's get to the stable and get going."

  It wasn't that easy. Chester had been emptied of everything of value. This included any good horses, because everyone knew that the Normans were horse thieves. Even the nags had been taken to carry the rest of it away. They ended up riding the same exhausted horses and were caught by darkness and complete exhaustion at Fulford, barely five miles south of Chester.

  Five miles was distance enough, however, to keep them out of Norman hands. There wasn't much at Fulford, but all they needed was a dry roof and some straw to lie on, which was offered to them freely by a farmer who could see that they were too exhausted to cause trouble.

  The next day it was easier to keep the same horses than to find someone to trade them with, and besides, the nights rest had done them all good. They didn't make it to Oswestry until well after noon. From careful questions in an alehouse, with fabulous ale, they found out that Eadric no longer had a camp out at the Dyke, and no one had seen him lately. Or not that anyone would admit.

  Eadric was also an outlaw, like Rodor and Alan, who ran a ragged band of outlaws armed with Welsh bows. Eadric, however, had won the favour of Prince Bleddyn of Powys, so any time there were Norman armies about, he could slip across the border to the safety of Wales where he was not an outlaw.

  Safety was a relative concept, however, as John and Raynar found out as they crossed the border themselves. They immediately picked up a tail from some wicked looking forest men with Welsh bows. It would be dark in an hour or so, and neither of them felt good about making a camp, or even stopping, when they were being tailed.

  Eventually, Raynar got frustrated by the hide and seek game that the men were playing with them, so he bellowed out to them in Welsh that he was a good friend of Prince Bleddyn and was in need of a guide to Mathrafal. His heart almost stopped when a short man with dark hair popped out of the bush beside his horse and said, in Welsh, "Well, why didn't you say so, you dumb shit," or somet
hing like that.

  With the help of the guide, they reach the palace just after dark, and were expected, and there was food and a fire waiting for them. Also waiting was Princess Haer.

  "I thought it was you, John, by the description my scouts made," she said as she personally ladled out their soup. "Did my husband send for you, or are you looking for your fairie friend?"

  John's fairie friend was Gwyn, the Welsh healer's daughter from Raynar's hamlet in the Peaks. She had grown up with both of these men, and had come with them on their last trip into the Welsh border counties to consult with some Welsh wise women about the visions she had been having.

  "We came with vital news for your husband, your grace," said John, self conscious that he was so big and clumsy and this woman was so light on her feet and precise with her movements. "But if you have news of Gwyn, that would be good too."

  "Well, Gwyn is on the holy island of Anglesey, and I've heard almost nothing but that about her in months. My husband is with his men on the border. They are escorting a group of Cheshire nobles to the safety of Redfort, the place we call Rhuthun. How urgent is this vital news?"

  Raynar exercised his Welsh because Haer was struggling with her English, and told her a very much shortened story of William's army at Blackstone Edge, and that if there was ever a time to capture or destroy William the Bastard, it was now.

  After listening to only the first half of Raynar’s short version of the story, she interupted him to send for the household captains to listen with her. While they gathered, she ladled out more soup. Now to an audience of ten, Raynar began again. For the telling in front of these strangers, Raynar and John were simply scouts who had watched Williams army struggle to mend a broken street before the weather caught them.

  At the end of it, Haer issued orders. First were to some of her women, to lead John and Raynar to where they could bathe, and then to a bed chamber. Next were to a squat captain, to send messengers with this news to Rhuthun immediately. Next to a younger captain, to prepare an escort for the morning to take Raynar and John to Rhuthun.

  They were just following the women out of the hall, when they heard her last order. It was to send word out to gather the clans, with weapons, horses and marching kits, in case her husband decided to cross into England.

  * * * * *

  "Don't know why they call it Redfort, Ray," mentioned John as they entered a hamlet. "I don't see any fort at all. Not even an earthwork fort. Maybe there is one on the top of that sandstone ridge."

  "You mean that red ridge up ahead," snickered Raynar. John was one of the smartest men he knew, but he loved stating the obvious. "For a small hamlet there are certainly a lot of horses about. I think we have arrived."

  Haer's messenger hailed them as soon as they entered the hamlet. He had been waiting for them. He hurried them into a longhouse, and pushed them through an assortment of well dressed men, and up to the hearth. Prince Bleddyn was also waiting for them.

  "You are the men with the news of King William?" Bleddyn asked what he already knew, and in English, not Welsh.

  Raynar looked around the hall at the faces that were waiting for his answer. These were mostly Englishmen. The wealthy burghers of Chester. He answered in English. "William will be at Chester by now. Despite our pleas, the Reeve was determined to open the gates to him. William had less than six hundred men with him, and they were in a bad way. They had spent a night without shelter in an ice storm in the Peaks. They were no threat to the city walls.

  All the Reeve had to do was to close the gate and William would have spent another rough night out in the weather. Their carts and their gear will still be in the Peaks. The infantry may not even have made it to Manchester yet.

  "The Reeve did as we ordered, then," said one of the fat burghers. "Our hope was that if he was treated well in our city, that he would go on his way and leave us in peace."

  "Hah, he crossed the Peaks to take you by surprise and crush you," Raynar replied. "Why would you ever think that he would leave you in peace. Once he has a garrison behind Chester's great wall, it will never leave. Chester is his now, unless you can destroy him before he can regroup or call reinforcements up from the south."

  "Forgive me for saying so," said the burgher, "but you look and smell like a peasant archer and you rode in on a farm nag. Why should anyone take your words seriously? Or are you an English warlord in disguise?" He laughed and the other English burghers laughed with him.

  Bleddyn did not laugh. He stepped between the giant and the archer and took each by the arm and led them away from the burghers. "Ignore them. They are fools. English lords, need I say more." He pushed them towards a table of rough looking men sitting on the bench beside to entrance to the hall. The men did not rise or bow to their prince.

  "These are men I sent out last night when I first got word from Haer," Bleddyn told them. "They have just returned from Chester. William's army is weaker than you said, and he himself is wounded or sick." He nodded a thanks to John, who had just, by himself, moved another long and heavy bench close to the scouts so that all could sit.

  "Is William inside or outside of Chester's walls?" Raynar asked the man closest to the door, in Welsh.

  The man said nothing until Bleddyn gave him the nod. "They were outside all night, and most were sleeping, but some of the army were active. They were building climbing poles."

  "Then by now he may have captured the walls," added Bleddyn. "The reeve that these burghers left in charge did not have enough fighting men to defend the entire length of the wall. Eventually the Normans would capture to top of an undefended part, and then it would be just a matter of time before they spread along to the top to the closest gate. Damnation."

  Bleddyn then asked Raynar to tell his story, and again he and John were portrayed as simple scouts who had watched while Williams army was delayed by a street that had to be mended for the army to pass. Delayed until the army had been caught by an ice storm.

  By the time the telling was done, there was a crowd of men around them listening, including the Burghers. "I made a mistake up on the Peaks," admitted Raynar. John was wagging his head at him, fearful that he was about to tell of their attempts to kill the King, but there was no fear of Raynar breaking an article of the creed, 'don't tell', to this room of strangers.

  "I thought I was doing the right thing," Raynar continued, "by sending a scout ahead of the army to warn all along the street that the Norman army was on the march, and especially to warn Chester. If I had not done that, then these cowardly burghers would still be at Chester, holding the wall with all of their men-at-arms, and William would have been in very bad trouble camped outside the wall, hungry and cold."

  The burghers shouted him down, but the only response from Bleddyn was a low growl. The burghers, with their joint anger, began to push towards Raynar. The crush of angry men caught John and Bleddyn with Raynar. John stood, turned, spread his arms wide, and pushed the crowd back away from his friend and the prince. A pushing match began between John and the five burghers within the spread of his arms.

  John, of course, won, which gave Bleddyn the space to stand on the bench so he could look over all of the heads, and towards his own men who were watching with interest while leaning against the walls at the far side of the hall. He signaled to them, and they ran forward and physically dragged the burghers to the floor and held them down.

  Bleddyn looked down at the burghers. "Listen to me," he yelled to get everyone’s attention. "I like Chester well, and I have a comfortable home there. You lot have put my friends and my home in Chester at risk. Two days ago I agreed to help you flee from the Normans, and now here you are safe and my guests. You will remain my guests until I find out what ransom William expects for him to leave Chester in peace."

  The prince did a hand signal to his men, and the English were dragged away from him. Then he turned to the men he had been sitting with. "I wish to meet with William. Since he is surrounded by an army, then so must I. Haer has already put
out the call to the clans. Go, ride, bring them all here. I want mounted men with bows and spears. At least three hundred. Tomorrow I ride for Chester."

  Men leaped to do his bidding and a half dozen were out the door to find their horses within a minute. He looked down at Raynar, who was still sitting, and at John who was trying to catch the attention of an ale maid, a maid but half his size. "I would be honored if you would ride with me to Chester. May I supply you with fresh clothes and fine horses? My gift of thanks. Oh, and I would like to hear the real story of Blackstone Edge. For my ears only."

  * * * * *

  For three days they camped outside of Chester's walls with the good company of hundreds of Welsh archers. Each day, Bleddyn met with William and they discussed the terms of the ransom or surrender of Chester. With their safety ensured by the presence of so many Welsh archers, Cheshiremen were returning to the city in great numbers, to camp out and await the outcome of the bargaining. William was now hopelessly outnumbered for anything but holding the great walls.

  John and Raynar were there and practicing their Welsh, and making contacts for buying bows and selling points. There was really no other reason for them to be there, other than to sit for meals with the prince so the prince could run his ideas through some English minds. On the fourth morning, Bleddyn was in a very good mood at breakfast, for this was the day that William was to agree to terms. And then the courier arrived from his wife Haer.

  They were all having breakfast together when the courier arrived, breathless and exhausted. "The princess sends a warning that an army is approaching you from the south. It contains every Norman in the Marches and is led by the pennants of William FitzOsbern, Roger Montgomery, Hugh DeLacy, and Gerbod the Flemming."

  "Damnation," hissed Bleddyn, "I have been played for a fool. William was delaying me here while his rescuers could reach him. How many men have they?"