Hoodsman: Popes and Emperors

by Smith, Skye

  Gregos had been listening quietly. Now he spoke. "If evil must be fought with evil, then you do not need to become evil yourself. Simply turn those who are already evil against one another. The Duke says that Belleme's brothers are to the point of turning against him. Mortain is attacking estates around Hauteville, the family home of the Guiscards, the Italian Normans."

  The other three men stared at him and Meulan added, "If you must raise an army of knights to fight Belleme, let it be from the knights that think and act most like Belleme. Leave the worthy knights in England to protect the hearths and families."

  "It is too early to talk of this," Raynar interrupted. "Let Belleme stomp on some more toes in Normandy and France. Allow him time enough to make enemies of all those counties around him. Do not come early to this battle, Henry. Come late, so you are still alive to finish it."

  "Exactly," Gregos agreed. "Give me time enough to turn the bankers and moneylenders against Belleme and Mortain."

  "Hah," Henry coughed out. "The bankers all hate you. They will not do this for you."

  "They will do it, if I make them a bargain."

  "What bargain?"

  "That I will not introduce tally sticks in Normandy so long as they do no business with Belleme or Mortain," Gregos stood and rubbed his sore side. "I beg your leave, for I must leave for Caen and ruin my eyes reading columns of numbers, yet again.” He half limped away from them while calling towards a man who was obviously one of the Duke's head clerks.

  The three watched the elder man disappear with the clerk. "There goes perhaps the most knowledgeable man I have ever met," Henry whispered, and turned to Raynar. "However did a peasant bowman like you ever meet him?"

  "I was introduced to him by a blind woman," Raynar replied. "back when Odo hoped to become Pope."

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  The Hoodsman - Popes and Emperors by Skye Smith

  Chapter 27 - Traveling through Languedoc in December 1081

  One of the Magdalena men led his pony along a damp path until they reached a cartway and then he pointed northwest, and said farewell. Raynar was on the move again. His eagerness to hurry home to England had enticed him into accepting the company of the priest, and that had almost cost him his life, and certainly had cost him a month of travel time. If he had walked out of Arles with the rest of the pilgrims, he would have been either in Huntingdon or Brugge long before now.

  He had been told to keep to this cartway until it crossed an old Roman Via, and then keep to the Via until it crossed the west fork of the River Rhone. That was easy enough to do. Once he was across the river, there was no Roman Via going his way, northwest. The Vias led north or southeast only. He looked at the crude map and the next name was of a town, not a village. One of the few towns listed. All he had to do was to keep asking people the way to Allais.

  The first few villages on the list had been in the river valley, and therefore were farming the wonderful and productive soil. They were typical farming villages built near the manor of the village landlord, and surrounding a church so that the landlord's wishes could be preached to the people by the priest, as if they were in the name of the Lord God.

  Manor lords seemed to prefer Romanized priests, and that was logical, since that was in their own self interest. Romanized priests supported the manorial way of life, because they had a place in it. There was a strong mutual interest between landlord and priest that had nothing to do with the well being of the village folk.

  Allais was where the river valley entered rolling hills, and then wound through ever higher and steeper hills and into the Cevennas mountains. This town was a commune, run by the folk, and by elders chosen by the folk, similar to how the Danelaw towns had been run before the Normans had brought their version of slavery. Here he bought some food, some excellent pork, with crisp crackling skin. Sarah's Yehudim did not keep or eat pork, so it was even more of a treat. After some food, he followed the River Gardon up a valley into the Cevennas range.

  The next few villages were not manor-lord villages. There were no manor houses, and no Romanized churches. Down in the valley the manors were fortified, while up in the hills the entire village was fortified, though not so much by building walls as by building the village in places where natural features like cliffs, and ravines protected them. The entrance to each village was done by crossing a bridge over a gorge. Like Allais, these villages were also communes, run by the elders on behalf of the folk.

  As the early night of winter caught up to him, he wondered if he should have stayed in the Rhone valley and followed the Roman Via north along it. In those villages, his papal passport would gain him a good bed and good food every night, albeit with Romanized priests. Not his favourite company. Not after the last one. He decided to leave that decision until the morning and make it based on how comfortable he was this night in a Cevennas village.

  The village he was approaching was built on a peninsula formed by a river, but what a peninsula. From the village there were sheer cliffs down to the river. The river bridge was the village gate, and the river was a torrent far below. The guard at the gate was at least thirteen, but his back was well covered by two ten year old girls who were well armed with knitting needles. He was directed to the hall, a building that in an English town would be a guild hall, but here served the same purpose as a Daneglish village longhouse.

  After the greeting of such formidable guards at the bridge, he saw no other people on the one street. He assumed that the entire village was in the hall. It was December and in Daneglish villages, the longhouses would be filled with the villagers keeping warm and dry, and keeping well fed, and keeping amused by story, song and dancing during these long dark nights. Well at least that is, in a Daneglish village where some Norman lord had not yet burned the longhouse or turned it into the stable of his stone manor house.

  These Languedoc folk were making good use of their village hall. It certainly was their equivalent of a longhouse, and it was filled with smoke and funk, but also the sound of singing, and hands drumming on tables, and laughter. When he walked in, the cacophony of sounds slowly stilled and then went quiet, until the only sound was the sweet voice of one petite woman, and then she too went silent.

  An elder walked towards him and told him, "You are not welcome here monk. Please leave."

  "I am not a monk, despite my habit. The disguise was necessary to enable me to travel this far in peace from Venice."

  "So says you," replied the elder. He turned to the petite woman, the one who had been the last to notice the stranger. "Giselle, please divine a stranger for us.” She nodded, so the elder faced him again. "Go to that woman and do what she tells you to do."

  Raynar kept his bedroll and his other gear with him and crossed the hall to the front, where an empty ring had formed in the crowd surrounding Giselle. His eyes were becoming used to the dimness of the hall, and he looked around at the folk. They were of all shapes and sizes and coloring, and there were twice as many women as men. When he got to the petite woman he stopped and stared. She was pushing a folded scarf up off her face. Her eyes were completely clouded. She was blind.

  Two other women took him by the arms, one on each side, and led him forward and placed him in front of the blind woman. Then they took his things from him and laid them on the floor. All around him there were faces staring at him out of the gloom, all shapes and colors. The two women stepped back and then took the blind woman by the arm and guided her to stand directly in front of him.

  "You must not touch me," said Giselle in a soft, friendly voice. Then she raised both hands and ever so slowly reached out until they hovered around his neck beneath the chin that Sarah had so carefully shaven only yesterday. It was as if she were preparing to strangle him, but without touching.

  He felt her healing touch almost immediately. He had known more than a few healers and seers in his lifetime. He was drawn to them as they were drawn to him. He had left Sarah the healer not a day ago, and already here he
was with another one. He himself also had the healing sense, though it often became stale or hidden from lack of use. Today his own extra sense was strong, after being a month with the gentle healer, Sarah.

  Giselle's healing sense was intense. Not even with Golden Harp, the Welsh Royal seer, had he felt the extra sense this strongly.

  "Are you a ..." She stopped mid question and began again. "Are you a Christian?"

  "No," he answered truthfully, hoping that this answer would not have him thrown into the gorge.

  "He spoke the truth," she said to the elder. "If he is not even a Christian, then he cannot be a monk or a priest of Rome."

  It was enough for the elder. "Good, then we welcome this stranger to our hall, where he may share in our abundance. Bring him cheese and wine and potage, and when he has pushed the wrinkles out of his stomach, he can share his news of the world outside our valley."

  "Wait," said another elder. "What if he is evil? We do not want an evil man amongst our women and children."

  Raynar was forming an innocent sounding reply in his mind, when Giselle asked him, "Would you hurt women or children."

  "Of course not. I protect women and children from harm." he replied.

  "He is not evil. He fights evil. He is a warrior with a soul weighted down by too many deaths. He worships the moon, and a blonde angel, but he worships under the sky, not in a church."

  He reached up, slowly, smoothly, ever so careful not to touch her, and cupped his own hands under her chin as she had done to him. He stared into her face, not blinking, not ever closing his eyes. And then she sobbed and lost her balance and he grabbed her by her upper arms so she would not fall. The two women sprang forward one on each side of her and led her to a bench where she could sit. Everyone on the bench cleared it immediately and joined the ring of standing folk.

  The elder stepped over to Giselle and waited until she was breathing easier, and then said to the two women with her, "Bring him cheese and wine and potage, like I said before."

  "No food, not yet," said Giselle, as she pulled a band of white cloth down from her forehead to hide her unseeing eyes. "He has a fever. Before he eats or drinks anything I must find out what is causing the fever."

  One woman took Giselle's arm, and one woman Raynar's and they were lead through a side door into a small, but private room. He was told to remove his monk's robes, and he did so. The two women nudged each other and stepped closer to him to feel the silk of the shirt he wore next to his skin. There was a blood stain on it, so they pushed it up under his arms.

  It was not Giselle, therefore, but one of her helper women that found the cause of the fever. "Fool, you have traveled too far today and have reopened the wound on your side. It needs attention."

  "Does that mean that I can eat?" he asked the women who had resumed the soft stroking of his silken shirt. "I am so hungry."

  "Yes," said a woman, taking her hand from the silk, "I must fetch my healing basket to see to you, so I will have food sent in. Now sit still and keep your fingers away from your wound. They are filthy."

  The food came. The best cheese he had ever tasted, with good hearty bread, served with a very boring bean stew with green things floating in it. "I didn't get any meat in my stew. Is your village short of food?" he asked, not as a complaint, but as an observation.

  "We are sworn to our God not to kill, so we do not kill for meat," replied Giselle, "at least, we do not kill anything that bleeds red."

  "So then your diet is dairy and plants, and perhaps fish from the river?"

  "Sometimes meat, if a young healthy animal dies in an accident. Like if one falls from a mountain trail."

  "A strange rule."

  "Really?" she replied, "and how many women have you met in your lifetime who were born blind?"

  "Uhh," he said between slurps. The stew was salty and he craved the salt. "I can't ..."

  "None," Giselle replied for him, "the midwives would not allow a blind newborn her first breath. In your village I would have been killed at birth. I like our oath against killing."

  "And do you enjoy your life? A life where you must be helped in everything you do?" He did not say it to be cruel. It was simple curiosity. The other woman in the room snickered but said nothing.

  "Because I have no sight means I see in other ways. You have the touch, the healing touch. I felt it when I divined truth of your words. I have never felt it in an adult male before, just in baby boys. Did you feel my touch? Have you ever felt one so strong?"

  "Not even close, love. It took my breath away. This cheese is the best I have ever tasted."

  "All of my other senses are strong because I was blind from birth. In normal folk, the sense of sight is so strong that it stops the other senses from becoming strong. Sight is so seductive that folk ignore their other senses."

  "You are a seer?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "So how do you see in your visions. Do you dream as if you had eyes?"

  "Of course not. How can I dream of something that I have no experience of. I dream with my other senses. My visions are without the distraction of pictures, so they are very powerful and very clear."

  "You know the future, then?" he asked as he dipped the coarse bread into the stew juices.

  "No one knows the future. When I use my healing touch I can hear the thoughts of folk, so I know what they are likely to do in the future, before they themselves realize it. That is akin to knowing the future."

  "Will you tell me my future?" he asked, and stopped eating.

  "Unna is here with her healing basket. We will speak of this again once she has finished with your wound."

  Raynar looked up at the door. It was still closed. All he could hear was some loud and rowdy song being sung in the hall on the other side of the door. It was a few eye blinks more before it opened and Unna stepped through with a basket. He looked towards Giselle. She was smiling at him.

  Unna knew her business. She cleansed, and cut away stitches that were no longer holding, and re-stitched the part of the wound that was oozing blood. Then she removed the rest of the old stitches and replaced them with just a few new ones of her own. "This thread is made from the fiber of a dryland plant. A prickly plant that grows where there is no water. They will not rot or go foul before you remove them."

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  The Hoodsman - Popes and Emperors by Skye Smith

  Chapter 28 - The blind seer of Le Puy in December 1081

  Unna was finished stiching up his wound, so Giselle came close and used her healing touch on his wound. He could feel the goodness from her non-touch. He could feel the sting and the hurt go away. While Giselle was doing this, Unna went to join the ribaldry in the great hall. Once the door was closed again and they were alone, Giselle raised her hands away from his wound moved them up and close to his throat.

  "I wanted to..."

  She hushed him. "I want you to close your eyes and try to think about nothing at all. You will feel yourself falling asleep and you will feel the warmth of my healer's sense. When I say a something, just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind, but stay warm and sleepy. I want to talk with your hidden mind, so try not to think, try not to wake yourself, don't pay attention. Do you understand? Good, then allow yourself to enjoy my warmth."

  The noises from the next room, the happy noises of the village folk seemed to grow quieter, and the room seemed to grow darker, and his throat was warm and then his face and his chest. The last thing he remembered was her asking him where he was travelling to.

  He couldn't remember what he answered, or what they spoke of. All he remembered was drifting in a warm feeling, like floating in soft warm summer breezes. He had no feeling for the passage of time, until the noise from the next room became loud again and he opened his eyes. Had he been asleep? Was it for a minute, or an hour? He did not know, but Giselle was still beside him.

  "Your mind is as wounded as your skin, but by too much guilt. Allow yourself to feel
the guilt, all of it. Feel it so deeply that you must sob.” She said no more until his sighs became sobs, and then tears, and his head fell forward into her breast and he cried.” As soon as he touched her, the sensations of her healing touch disappeared. She stroked his head, and tried not to breathe in his man smell of sweat, and the horse smell that clung to him.

  Once he had calmed his sobbing and had pulled his face away from her breast, she asked, "Before I tell you what I read from your mind, you must tell me about the general William who you hate to the death."

  "He is William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, and the King of the slave masters of the English."

  "Is he an evil man, a cruel man ... insanely so?" she asked.

  "He is a general who more than anything in life, loves winning of battles, and making the vanquished bow to him. To achieve this, no cost is too great. He thinks nothing of the suffering of others, but only of winning. So he is a cruel man with evil effect. Is he insane? I don't know. He will retreat to save the lives of his warriors. He honors loyalty and punishes disloyalty with vigor."

  "And the general Odo?" she asked.

  "He is Bishop Odo of Bayeux, the Earl of Kent, William's half brother, and the Regent of the slave masters of the English. He is absolutely insane. A demon walking the earth as a man. He takes joy in the suffering of others, especially the crushing of innocence. His idea of good sex is the ravaging of young virgins, very young, of both sexes. He rarely honors loyalty, but the punishment for disloyalty is always extreme."

  He noticed that at the mention of demons, Giselle had made a sign over her heart. Not a cross, but a circle. "You did not cross yourself. I was told that these villages are Gnostic Christians. Are you not Christian."

  "Oh we are the most true of all Christians," she replied. "Here, see the symbol sewn onto my smock over my heart. A cross within a circle. The circle represents the God of the old bible, the Creator of all things good and evil. When he appears to men, he appears as a demon. The cross represents the god of the new bible, the gospels. The God of everything good. When he appears to men, he appears as Christ."