by Smith, Skye
Since Spalding rarely housed more than four hundred folk including children, the size of the crowd between the common and the docks, was staggering. At least two thousand. While he was being spun around and around by the saucy young girls, he caught sight of hulls in the river. Many, many hulls.
They eventually stopped twirling him so they could giggle while watching him stagger about dizzily. When the world stopped moving in circles, he noticed that most of the male faces were those of Danish seamen. He also noticed that no one was armed except for him. That was a good thing.
He could keep his balance no longer, so he sat with a thump on the ground and one of the young women sat on him and told him he was her prisoner. He asked her why the festival, and she pointed to the Danish seamen. "They won't be here for May Day so we are holding the festival early. It was Beatrice's idea."
He pushed her off him with the excuse that he must find Anske, and he stood up and began looking for her. A group of brightly dressed wives were trying to create a green man from saplings and straw and baskets. He threw them his homespun shirt to use, full well knowing that it would be eventually be burned with the effigy.
It was while he was watching them fill his shirt with straw that Anske found him, and hugged him, and threw her multicolored Frisian shawl around his shoulders to cover his naked chest. With a mighty tug, she pulled him away from the fire and pushed him against a cart and devoured his lips.
After a few moments they noticed that the cart had started to rock from side to side. They stopped kissing and then realized that someone must be humping in the cart. They walked to the rear of the cart and joined other young couples at the back, who were peering into the cart to watch something.
In the splashes of orange light from the bonfire they could just make out the faces of Beatrice and Thorold lost in the ecstasy of their love making.... fully clothed of course. They were fulfilling their May Day responsibility as the lord and lady. They were enacting an ancient fertility ritual. Beatrice would never fake such an important ritual, like other ladies were wont to do.
The young couples stayed just long enough to watched them climax, and then they took each other's hands and wandered away into the store houses and stables where fresh straw beds had been created that morning for just such a necessity. Anske led him to an empty bed between two sets of humping bodies and they made smiles with each other.
The make shift straw beds were very busy that night. He had expected the Danish seamen to outnumber the local women by ten to one, but he had underestimated the number of refugee widows there were in the Fens. Some had walked for a day to come to the festival. This made the ratio of men to women more like two to one, so that night most of these lonely seamen felt the joy of joining with a woman.
It was less than an hour later that he and Anske were married. It was a communal ceremony typical of a May Day feast. The couples who had permission from their villages to mate gathered in a circle around the May Pole, and chanted their vows with each other as witnesses. Inka, the seer of Westerbur, led them in the chant, while Spalding’s old priest walked around the circle of couples with his incense burner and holy water just to make sure the bonds were sanctified by the true church in Constantinople.
The festival went all night, and only ended because the sun rose. By that time the bonfire was barely smouldering and a tired wreckage, as were many of the folk. Anske found Beatrice and Thorold sitting high on top of a thatch roof watching the colors of the morning, and she dragged the completely exhausted Raynar behind her up the climbing pole to join them.
After a stunning sunrise, the light of the day showed them the town spread out below. They spotted Inka rolling off a straw bed where she had been in Hereward's arms, and that raised some eyebrows. The townsfolk were drifting away to their homes to wash, to breakfast, and to sleep. Visitors were following behind them, invited to share in the food.
Inka and Hereward followed Anske and Raynar, who followed Beatrice and Thorold towards the manor. Once out of the narrows between the towns buildings, Beatrice dropped back and hooked an arm into Raynar’s and answered his question before he had even thought to ask it. "King Sweyn liked Ely. He liked it a lot. He has ordered his fleet to make for the mouth of the River Great Ouse. I decided that since the Danes were staying, that they should meet some of the widows that we have inherited from the harrowing."
Beatrice had always fancied herself a matchmaker and had supplied many a rich man with a beautiful Frisian wife. This time she had supplied five hundred wives. "I am hoping that many of the women follow them to Ely. It will make the men's stay there more pleasant and will give the Danes each a personal reason to protect the English folk."
"You know what this means don't you," said Hereward from behind her, "It means Ely will become the largest town in the fens."
Inka, who was a Frisian Seer, related some of the history of Ely to them as they ambled along. "In ancient times, when the Angles crossed the sea to escape the hoards pushed south by the endless winter, the Frisians provided the ships. The Frisians were the Fen people of the low counties across the sea, and it was natural for them to settle in the Fen areas here.
The Fens here were rich in fish and eels and iron bogs. The channels were deep enough for small ships. For their defense in those wildest of times, they built their villages on islands. Where there were no islands they dredged channels to create islands. The women’s culture controlled the islands while the men controlled the ships. The largest, richest island and the center of our Frisian culture was the place of the eels, Ely.
When the priests of the desert god came from the eastern empires to these shores, they did not approve of villages that were controlled by women. They said it was not natural or godlike for women to act with the power of men. They called us whores and witches and abominations against their desert prophets.
They got permission from some king to create an Abbey at Ely and to live amongst us to save our souls. They taught lessons of property and ownership and possession and greed, and called it the way of god. They made buildings of stone and worshipped golden crosses and spoke in secret languages. They brought evil to Ely, led by one of their lesser gods they called the Devil, who had never visited Ely before the Abbey was built.
Our culture is one of sharing. We share the good and the bad, the work and food and earnings and luxuries. It could not survive side by side with the all grasping selfishness of the Abbey and the sermons against our ways. The women left Ely and moved to smaller islands that could not support stone buildings. The men followed the women. Ely became a barren island of old men and stone temples, save when the eels were running and the fishermen came."
Hereward spoke softly. "I do not think that Ely is about to become a woman’s island again, Inka. I have lived in army towns before and they are very male and very wicked. I hope the widows understand this before they follow the seamen to Ely. They are more likely to become whores than wives."
Beatrice and Inka stopped and stared at each other, then together they laughed and said. "You have much to learn about women, Hereward."
* * * * *
After sleeping the morning away in each others arms, young Raynar and Anske joined the two older couples in the warmth of the afternoon sun. He had found his letters from Scotland and he was making use of the bright light to try to break the code. There was no sign of invisible ink, so the code must turn on a phrase that Christina knew he would recognize. He kept reading and rereading the romantic nonsense and the poor wording and was suddenly glad that Anske could not read.
He gave up for now, and instead told all those present the warning from Repton Abbey about valuables left in trust.
"So any English who have deposits with monasteries must claim them soon else they will be taken by William. Is that what this all means?" asked Beatrice. "We must go to Peterburgh immediately Thorold." In explanation she added, "When we were ordered to Lincoln last year, we left my jewels at the Abbey, and much of our treasury."
"I think," replied Raynar , "that they will take everything, and then have the churches and the lords petition them to get back what they can prove is theirs. Lady, I am happy to have warned you, but what of all the others. Many of the fleeing English would have left their valuables in safe keeping with their local monastery, or convent, or church. How do we warn those who have fled or are in hiding, or in exile?"
"I have some news that now makes sense," said Hereward. "Because I am Peterburgh Abbey's sworn knight, my uncle's old guard of monks pass messages to me in secret. The new Abbot has been sending his men to every monastery, convent, and church that is under Peterburgh Abbey and they return with carts under heavy guard. Since Repton is so far away, it will probably be the last, but the others are already done. I would wager that all of the deposits from fifty miles around are now in the Abbey vaults."
Thorold grabbed Hereward’s arm. "That could be the price of a kingdom. Perhaps more than William paid in Danegeld last year." He did not need to say that they could never allow William to claim it.
Beatrice had been thinking about the puzzle that Raynar posed. How do you warn the depositors. "There is no way to warn them in time. If the abbot has already done the collection, then all that is required is for him to make his deal with the King. He will become a bishop or even the archbishop."
"How many warriors does the abbot have?" asked Raynar.
"Over a hundred, perhaps a hundred and fifty," replied Hereward.
"But many must be out collecting, yes. How good is the burgh wall?"
"He is improving it. The weakest parts now have pales of standing poles and the ditch is flooded. What are you thinking Raynar?"
"You are all sworn to secrecy. No Inka, you cannot walk away. You are sworn," said Raynar in a commanding tone. "Why don't we take the deposits, all of them, and in a way that everyone thinks that Sweyn did it."
"You mean to rob the abbey?" asked Hereward. There was silence all around.
"We will have to be more clever than that," said Raynar, "otherwise Sweyn will simply take it from us. I don't mean to rob the abbey of what is the abbey's. I mean only to protect what belongs to the English from this Norman abbot."
Everyone laughed at the words he used to justify robbery except for Inka. She told them, "You laugh as though you think him jesting. Each one of you knows Raynar better than that. Rather than laugh you should decide. Do you help him or not. If not, he will find others that will help. May I ask how you will have the blame placed on Sweyn?"
"Sweyn will already be coveting the treasure of the abbey. If he raids the abbey, he will be expecting the alter, the guilt, and the crosses. He will not be expecting the deposits, so if he doesn't find them, he will not miss them," Raynar explained. "The first step is spying. We need to know the number of guards at the abbey and the state of the walls. We need to know where the deposits are kept and who has the keys."
"You will have all that tomorrow, because at first light I go to retrieve my jewels," said Beatrice. Then she walked away towards her quarters with Thorold on her heal calling after her.
Inka and Anske decided to follow Beatrice in case she had need of them.
Hereward took Inka's absence as an opportunity to go and relieve himself.
That left Raynar alone with his letter from Cristina.
Again and again he scanned Cristina's letter for clues. His eyes kept stopping at the line that was repeated at the beginning and the end of the clumsy wording. On a scrap of paper he tried to create a decoding key using the line above each of the duplicate lines. He then tried to decode the first of the clumsy lines. It didn't make any sense until he took just every third word. Then it said, "Trouble Peter church".
That was promising so he decoded the rest of the clumsy lines in the letter. The coded message was:
Trouble Peter church
Edgar has deposit
One thousand marks
Word Eliminate
Word Ecclesiastes
Hereward will help
Feed the folk
and then:
Malcolm lying swine
Margaret with child
We are watched
Edgar given William
Wants me mistress
Me to convent
He memorized every word and then walked to the kitchen and threw the paper scrap into the fire. Then he walked to the Hall looking for Hereward. He and Thorold were sitting at one end of the head table and whispering to each other. When he approached, they pointedly stopped.
He sat where he could see both of them and then said, "Why does Edgar have a thousand marks in Peterburgh Abbey?" He could tell immediately that Thorold knew nothing of this. The man was in shock at the vast sum.
"For a thousand marks you could buy half of Lincolnshire," Thorold said, "that is forty stone of silver."
By his silence it was obvious that Hereward knew of the treasure. He twisted his head around to ensure no one was close by and then whispered, "Edgar brought the English army's treasure with him on his great Cog when they were fleeing from London. Remember the Norman Karvi we captured. We used it to take most of the treasure to Peterburgh.
The abbot of the day, my uncle Brand, accepted the trust, and knighted me to bind me with an oath. The coin was to be used to fight William. At the time, the Earls expected to sweep their Northern army down from the Danelaw towards London. To keep moving the army moving south, they would need coin, a lot of coin.
Peterburgh is in the center of the kingdom, and can be reached by ships. It was a good plan at the time. It's too bad that the Northern armies never got this far. But it is a secret. You must never tell. Especially not now that the Danish fleet is here."
Hereward’s voice turned emotional, "It was a good plan, but the fates decided otherwise. And the treasure sits there, useless because no one can redeem it without the signet rings and the code words. There it will sit until the Abbey is plundered by either one king or the other."
Raynar looked at the emotion in his friend's face. "The letters, the ones from Scotland. The ones from Margaret and Cristina. Some of it was in code. They have sent me the code words to redeem the treasure. They want us to get it away from Peterburgh Abbey and use it to feed the folk. I suppose they must have heard of the Great Harrowing. But, but can we redeem it without these signet rings you spoke of."
"No worry's, lad," said Hereward after he got over the shock of royals entrusting a peasant with the code words. "We buried one of the signets near to this manor, and you have the other." When Raynar gave him a blank stare, Hereward pointed to the ring that Raynar had been given by Margaret.
It was an ugly ring. Just before Raynar had left Margaret in Scotland, she had given her gold signet ring to him. A peasant could not wear gold without losing a hand as a thief, so he had the signet sawn from the gold ring and soldered on to a seaman's wedding band. Just a plain band made from bog iron so that it wouldn't rust. Raynar stared at the bastardized thing. It was worth a thousand silver marks. Margaret and Cristina had given him a thousand silver marks.
"That new Norman abbot will not redeem the treasure for you," warned Hereward. "Even for Edgar in person he would not redeem it. He will have other plans for it."
"I think we must first see if he will redeem anything at all," replied Raynar, "Thorold, was Beatrice serious about going to Peterburgh to redeem her jewels?"
"Yes," whispered Thorold, "and the pig headed woman would not change her mind no matter how I pleaded for her own safety. Men look on jewels as nothing more than portable treasure, but to a woman they are for cherishing."
"If she succeeds," asked Hereward, "will you ask to redeem your own chest of coins?"
"I will," whispered Thorold, "but I will not mention it until she has her jewels in her hands."
"Then you will need an escort," whispered Hereward. "Allow us to select one for you." He shot Raynar a me
aningful look.
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Hoodsman - Blackstone Edge by Skye Smith
Chapter 17 - Making a withdrawal at the Abbey in Peterburgh in April 1070
At this time of year, with the waters high, riding from Spalding to Peterburgh meant many detours. The driest way was through Burna, but that was more than twenty five miles. By ship up the Welland they could row and punt within four miles of Peterburgh and even though that meant a four mile walk, they would be there within half a day. This was important because it meant they could be there and back in the same day without overnighting anywhere.
Hereward arranged with the Frisian captain Gerke to provide an escort on his shallow draft Frisian cog. For two years off and on, Raynar had been teaching Frisian men and women the craft of the Welsh Yew bows. This meant that there were thirty folk on the ship, and at least twenty of them carried deadly bows.
The ship made quick work of the passage along the River Welland but it was slower going once they turned into Car Dyke. Once Car Dyke became choked with weeds they found a muddy cartway but there was no village and, of course, there were no horses to rent, this year of all years. They had all been eaten.
Gerke kept five men back to guard the ship, and the rest walked with Countess Beatrice to the Abbey. She had asked that Anske come as well, which was understandable for a lady traveling. Anske was overjoyed to be included in one of Raynar and Hereward’s adventures, though she was unhappy to be dressed as a lady rather than a tomboy. Thorold, meanwhile, was nervous and grim.
The walls of the Peterburgh had indeed been improved, as had the gates. Peterburgh had always been fortified, but now it was becoming a fortress. Today the gates were swung open for the business of the day. As they walked through the town, Raynar was memorizing the layout so he could map it after they had left. Hereward was counting the men and the type of men. There seemed to be more warriors than monks.