Hoodsman: Ely Wakes

by Smith, Skye

  Outside the gate Raynar turned first to the west, where the priest was blindfolded and bound to the pillory. A half dozen young women wearing not nearly enough clothing, were gathered around him. One of them was lashing the priest with the whip in a fury, while cursing him. Another was in front of him scratching at his face with her nails. The man had pissed himself and was whimpering and crying. He saluted the women, and they waved back and blew him kisses.

  He turned completely around to see what was happening outside the bailey. The bowmen’s horses had been brought into the village and were hitched to a long rail outside the inn. The two guards had joined the bowmen that had put the priest in the stocks. They were leaning against the bailey wall in the shade and watching the half naked women torture the priest.

  He whistled to them and pointed to the Norman bodies still lying where they fell, over towards the inn. Crows, both the bird kind and the human kind, were gathering to pick at the bodies. They stopped scratching their crotches and trotted over to the bodies to stand guard until the bowmen could lift the purses and collect the spent arrows and the Norman weapons.

  There were two very pious and respectable looking women standing aside from all others with their arms crossed determinedly while they watched the priest being whipped and punched and scratched.

  "Not a well loved man, then, this priest?" he called to them. "Not one person came to protect him."

  "We will not let them do mortal damage to him, but this is punishment he deserves, especially from those he had violated," replied the older of the two.

  "You may want to organize more fitting clothes for those poor girls. No good can come from the men watching so much tasty flesh uncovered."

  They looked at each other, and then the younger scurried towards the town. He had long ago accepted that there were few folk who had any truly original thoughts, but why did folk have such trouble acting on the obvious.

  He chose the highway towards Sandieg and rode towards the ambush woods. The carter who had leant him his cart was heading the other way towards Bedford with a half dozen axemen walking beside him. The cart was heavily laden, but covered. The jingling of metal told him that it was filled with armour.

  At the ambush site, twenty axemen were digging and dragging bodies into one large hole dug where low marshy land was still soft enough to turn. The man with the white scarf waved to him and he waved back but did not stop. The call to Huntingdon sounded urgent. Sick mother indeed. His mother had died when he was a child.

  * * * * *

  Huntingdon was bustling and booming. The market at the river docks must now have been one of the busiest in the North. Ships were coming and going, being loaded and unloaded. A new bridge was close to completion upstream from the old one. It was built like a Frisian bridge, designed with one span that could be drawn up and out of the way of river traffic.

  Raynar could see immediately the simple genius of the design. The bridge had two solid decks leading to the center span. The center span was wider than the other decks and was built on two long logs teetering across a third. The span deck was on one side of the teeter while the other side of the teeter was free to drop down to the river.

  He could see the men experimenting with attaching short logs to the water end of the teeter to balance or be slightly heavier than the weight of the bridge deck. The deck's natural position was therefore up with the river open to ships, so no road traffic could pass. Any heavy weight on the deck would stop the bridge deck from opening. Only men on the north side of the river could lower the bridge deck, by pulling on ropes attached to the counter weight logs.

  He watched while two men pulled the counter weights up, and thereby lower the bridge deck into place. Amazing. Two men controlled whether carts or ships were passing the bridge. There were loud cheers from the men who had worked at building the bridge. Now the only heavy work left to do was to disassemble the center span of the old bridge so that it no longer blocked the river.

  He felt someone come up behind him, and twirled around with his hand on his dagger. "John, is this bridge your doing." He grasped the giant's arm and held on to it while they talked.

  "The design was from a bridge near Lynn, but this one is bigger and heavier so it took some figuring. I don't like how it wobbles when it is up, but most of the time it will be down, and when down it is sturdy enough." As John spoke, you could see that ideas were passing before his eyes as he formed the words.

  "You sent a message for me to come. I am here."

  "It was Rodor that sent the message, but I am the cause. We have used up all the bows and bow staves. We can't train more men or keep pushing south unless we have more bows."

  "Wales?" asked Raynar.

  "Yes, it's too far by ship and too dangerous overland." John saw the question on Raynar's face. "Rodor is willing to try to get them from Wales to here, but he needs someone to bargain with the Welsh."

  "Ahh."

  * * * * *

  Rapenald, Thorold, Hereward, Rodor, John and Raynar spent much of the rest of the day sipping French wine and planning their next campaign. They were looking at Rapenald's much enlarged and more detailed version of Raynar’s map of the Fens.

  "With Bedford now in our hands," Hereward pointed out, "and the wolfpacks clearing the manors to the west of it of any Normans, it means that all the main highways that lead to Huntingdon are now ours. By the way, the Jarl has yet to capture Cambridge bailey. How long now, almost five weeks. How long did it take you to capture Bedford, Raynar?"

  "Two days of scouting, and one day to take it. We didn't win it so much as the bailiff lost it. Or rather his pride and arrogance lost it."

  "What was the butcher bill?" asked Hereward.

  "For the wolfpack nothing. For the Normans about fifty dead."

  "And how many prisoners?" asked Hereward.

  Raynar was silent. The other men looked to him for some kind of answer. "Wolfpacks don't take prisoners unless there are axemen close by to take care of them. Otherwise it could cost us speed, and surprise, and our own men."

  "And all those fortified manors you have cleared and turned back into longhouses. Any prisoners?" asked Hereward.

  "None."

  "Some must have surrendered," said Hereward.

  "They were given to the villagers for trial at their new moot court."

  "So there were prisoners?" asked Hereward

  "I'm sure they would have preferred a quick clean death from an arrow, than what the villagers would have done to them. Especially the women." Raynar and Hereward stared at each other. Both thought the other wrong.

  Thorold broke the deadlock. "The bishop in Lincoln has told me that William is in trouble with Rome. Rome does not care if kings and dukes and lords scheme and kill each other, so long as there are lords left to support the church. Rome feels that the harrowing has created a peasant revolt that is overturning the ruling classes and upsetting the order of things. This is against God's wishes, or at least, against the Pope's wishes. So long as there are lords, the church keeps its power. They fear rule by the peasants more than they fear the devil himself."

  "Does that mean that William must feed and nurture and be kind to freemen so that they stop rebelling?" asked John with a sarcasm unusual for him.

  "It means that William must focus on stopping the rebellion that we have started, and all the while the wolfpacks are spreading," replied Thorold. "The bishop also hinted that William does not have enough warriors to protect the southern coast from Sweyn's raiders as well as to march in relief of Cambridge."

  Raynar groaned, "He is going to pay Danegeld to the Jarl again. The effing Jarl is going to abandon us once again." He sat forward quickly. "Hereward, how many ships has Jarl Osbard sold you so far?"

  "Four, and they need refitting."

  "And what did Klaes tell us? That we need at least a dozen ships just to defend all the approaches to Ely," stated Raynar. "Even if we pull down and abandon Huntingdon, we can hold the fens if we have ships enough.
Offer him gold for ships. If he makes to cross the North Sea before winter, then he will have little use for the small ships, the very ones that are of the most use to us in these rivers."

  "And where am I supposed to get so much gold?" Hereward closed his eyes and sighed. He knew the answer before he finished asking the question. Peterburgh Abbey.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Hoodsman - Ely Wakes by Skye Smith

  Chapter 11 - The Sherwood Hood on a bow run to Wales in July 1070

  Rodor had asked for and had been given a hundred and fifty horses for his trip to Wales. In the north of England that year, of all years, that many horses made you a very rich and powerful lord. Moving so many bows by cart would never succeed because carts were easy targets during a pursuit.

  The load would therefore be carried by pack horses overland and through rough territory. They would split the load into three and take three different routes with a third of the men escorting each load. A wolfpack with each load would mean a hundred mounted men. There was no arguing with the request for so many horses. After you had worked the counts, it made sense.

  He, Raynar, Alan, with the twenty hoodsmen of Sherwood and the Peaks traveled to Sherwood leading this great herd by staying as much as possible to areas of Lincolnshire that had already been cleared of Normans. The first Normans they saw was a patrol north of Nottingham, and at the sight of so many bowmen, the patrol turned tail towards their bailey.

  Once they were safely in Sherwood, Rodor put out a call across the forest for all hoodsmen to meet at the hanging oak in two days time. While he waited for the meeting, Rodor had his men gather all horses bearing the sheriff's mark, and they took them the Priory at Ravenshead from where they could be claimed by the sheriff's men. The sheriff had loaned them the horses in good faith and for the good cause of escorting refugees. It was a matter of honor to Rodor to do his best to return them.

  The meeting at the hanging oak was huge, almost three hundred men. Rodor put it to the men that he needed at least a hundred of them to come with him south to help clear Bedfordshire of Normans. He needed young bowmen who could ride. There was no shortage of men in Sherwood who were a hand with a bow, but the riding experience of most was limited to plough horses.

  Eventually a hundred men were chosen and the others bade their farewells and went back to their villages. The hundred were told what kit they would need and to meet back here in the morning. Of the men of the Peaks only Alan remained. The others had been away from their families for too long and Alan agreed that they should return home. Of the men of Sherwood that had been with them at Peterburgh, about half returned to their families.

  The next morning there were many delays and many excuses, but Rodor had not expected to leave that morning. He just wanted everyone to assemble and move into one of his camps so that they all spent the last night in Sherwood together.

  When they did leave Sherwood, they were spotted almost immediately by a Norman patrol. The patrol kept their distance and followed them to the next cross so they could report which highway they were following. A year ago on hearing such news, the Norman garrison in Nottingham would have set off in hot pursuit. Today, instead, they sent riders to warn the manors that a large warparty was on the highway bearing south. No one tried to stop them.

  Once night fell and it was too dark for scouts to watch them, they turned west. They camped that night in Charnwood forest, but before light they broke camp and rode further west. Rodor was hoping that loose lips in the forest would tell the Normans that they were headed for Bedfordshire. The scouts that had tracked them would confirm the direction. Hopefully the scouts had now lost them, and would be pressing south to find their tracks.

  They kept to a small cartway that led them to Ryknild Street where it ran along the River Trent. They crossed the old street in small groups with great care. If there was anywhere they expected trouble, it was here. Once across the street they regrouped and kept moving until they found some thick woods that ran along the valley of the River Dove. Here they slept through the heat of the day to make up for their early start that morning.

  That night they camped deep into Shropshire in a small forest at the foot of an ancient hill fort. In the morning Raynar rode alone to the only farm nearby to ask directions to Oswestry. Once the farmer realized that Raynar spoke the true tongue, Welsh, he insisted that he join his family in eating some fresh eggs.

  The good news was that they were less than twenty miles from Oswestry and that Earl William of Hereford and his henchman Walter de Lacy were back in Hereford and no longer harrowing Shropshire. The bad news was that Earl Gerbod of Chester and Sheriff Warin of Shrewsbury were nearby harrying any Welsh who were still farming in the area.

  The fare was poor but it was everything that the farmer could offer. Though the farmer and his family had kept their lives during Gerbod's harrying, they had lost their animals. The farmer and his son had pulled the plough themselves and thus had been able to plant only half their field. The man had a quick smile and a glint in his eye, which confused Raynar who thought he must be fibbing about how much he had lost to the harrying. It took his wife to explain that her husband counted his blessings not his losses, and that was why he still smiled at the sunrise each morning.

  Alan was not pleased by the news that Earl Gerbod had closed the border. He knew of Gerbod, whom the folk of Chester called the Flemish Fart, and of how he abused peasants. He was supposedly the first man to have betrothed-by-rape Queen Mathilde even before William or Normandy had done the same thing to her. He was a Landlord from Flanders, and he was a short fat fart who was full of himself.

  Raynar was actually enjoying himself. It was a relief that all he had signed on for was to translate and guide, and that Rodor was the lead and Alan the second. It was a relief that it was not his decision to make to go on or go back. Rodor decided to go on. If the border was sealed then they would turn about. He sent scouts ahead to ensure that they would not be ambushed.

  About five miles short of Oswestry some of the scouts came racing back to report. In the next valley was the River Perry, but there was trouble there. From the heights above the valley they could see a large camp of refugees, mostly women and children, beside the river. They were undoubtedly folk displaced by Gerbod's harrying, and seemed to be on their way to the Welsh border. Then the scouts told them that between the refugees and the border there was a large patrol of Normans.

  "Do you think the folk know that the Normans are there?" asked Rodor.

  "I doubt it. There are few men in the camp, and certainly no warriors. The patrol seems to be setting up an ambush, because they are hiding behind a low ridge."

  "How many Normans?" Rodor asked.

  "Perhaps sixty."

  "Any sign of other patrols?"

  "Well, yes and no. We can just see another group of an equal number further away but we cannot see them clearly yet. We think they are carrying the camp gear for the sixty warriors."

  They continued riding until they could ride no more without being seen along the skyline of the ridge they were following. After a good look down into the camp and then looking further out to the patrol Raynar moaned, "Bugger. Heavy cavalry. They are going to charge the camp. See, they were hiding while they waited for their battle horses and lances to catch up to them. They can't get closer to the refugees without being seen."

  "Neither can we," said Alan.

  Two more scouts pulled up in front of Rodor. "A half mile to the north there is a wooded vale that leads down to the river. We can get to the river unseen," one reported. "If we can cross the river without being noticed there is a similar wooded vale on the other side that leads out of the valley."

  Rodor kept his head down and crawled to where there was a view. He could see the vale on the other side, and the place on the river where they would need cross. He could also see the second group of Normans more clearly now. They were indeed a support group, and not more warriors. Raynar and Alan’s head
s were now also peering down into the valley.

  "The only thing between those children and those knights is that river," Allan pointed out. "That will slow the knights for at least a minute. That camp is lost. They will become slaves or corpses depending on how much sport the knight's want with their lances."

  "I think not," said Rodor, "because I am going to send Raynar down to attack the Normans before they can start their charge."

  Alan laughed at the jest but then he noticed that Raynar was nodding.

  "I'll need thirty men in homespun with short bows and mounted on the pack horses," said Raynar. Alan left them immediately to arrange it with the men.

  * * * * *

  Raynar and his thirty stayed in the lead down the vale and to the river. Instead of crossing the river, Raynar's men stayed on the east side of it and followed the bank at a calm pace towards the refugee camp. Meanwhile Rodor led the rest of the hoodsmen across the river and into the wooded vale on the other side.

  Raynar told his men to hold back while he approached the camp alone. It was well he did. The folk in the camp were Welsh. Welsh women learn all about weapons when very young. Even though the camp was mostly women and children, they were not helpless, and they would not have taken kindly to thirty men coming close.

  Raynar dismounted and walked towards the ealder women. He spoke to them calmly in Welsh, "There is a large Norman patrol on the other side of the river. They are preparing to charge you." The women began to panic at the news, but the ealders told them to keep their places until they were told differently.

  "My men and I have decided that we don't like these Normans so we are going to kill them for you. You must stay camped here as if you do not know that they are coming. We will charge them, and then they will charge us. When you see them charging us, then send your children and your weak to the woods over there," he pointed to the wooded vale behind his men.