Hoodsman: The Second Invasion

by Smith, Skye

  His first stop of more than an overnight was in Rijnsburg where he was the guest of Beatrice's son, Count Dirk of Holland and Frisia. In strict secrecy he showed him Odo's letter, and it's translation, so that he could be aware of the glad tidings that may come true in August. Dirk had promised his fleet and his army to Canute, should Denmark ever invade the Danelaw.

  It was Dirk who first told him of the gradual but consistent withdrawal of Norman lords and garrisons from the Danelaw. His Frisian traders were bringing him news of small fort after small fort being emptied of Norman guardsmen. This had begun in the winter of 1080-81, shortly after Canute had been crowned, and after Odo had harrowed Dun Holme.

  Dirk explained that last harrowing of the North had been triggered by the burning of a church at Gateshead, north of Dun Holme. Bishop Walcher and his henchmen had been in the church at the time. Raynar let him enjoy telling the story and never even hinted that he had watched the church burn.

  "The Frisians have been slowly and carefully moving into the coastal ports," Dirk told him, "setting up trading posts and rebuilding simple houses. They have even taken young landless families over the sea with them to plant the vacant fields and run sheep during the trading seasons. They never venture far inland, mind you, and they keep their ships ready to sail on short notice.

  Inland is still more or less the wasteland that the Conqueror created by harrowing the Danelaw back in '69. Since the ships of Denmark, Frisia, and Flanders control all of the North Sea now, then so long as the settlers keep to the coast they are safe enough from Normans. The wasteland that the Conqueror created in '69 to protect Normans from the Danish fleet, now protects our colonies along the English coastal from the Normans."

  "Is this the same all along the Danelaw coast?" Raynar asked, hiding his amazement, and his joy at this news. "Is this resettlement of the Danelaw coast random, or everywhere?"

  "If my Frisians are rebuilding the burned out villages along the coast, then surely the Danes are too, and the Norse. So I agree with you Ray. There is no hurry for us to invade the Danelaw with an army, because it is already being won back by our settlers. There is nothing for us to lose by waiting to see what Odo and the Conqueror will do this summer. As you have pointed out, if we are seen to be assembling an invasion, that may cause Odo to stay in England, which none of us want."

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  The Hoodsman - The Second Invasion by Skye Smith

  Chapter 5 - Odo's messenger in Denmark and Rome in May 1082

  The route by road to Denmark was forced inland by the wide and damp fenlands of Frisia, Holstein, and Denmark. The further north Raynar traveled, the worse were the effects of the cold weather. The River Eider, the border between Saxony's Holstein, and Denmark's Schlies region, was completely frozen at the point where Raynar crossed it.

  Other than the river there was nothing to tell him that he had crossed from one kingdom into the next. The villages, the buildings, the clothes, the faces of the people, were the same on both sides of the river. It was a border to separate the kings' taxes, not the folk. The folk all had family on both sides of the river. Market days were held in villages on either side where the river was easiest to cross.

  Raynar had twice before been in Denmark, but both times by ship, and both times along the Wadden Sea coast. This time, because he was mounted, he kept riding north until he came to the coast of the Baltic Sea, the Ostsea. His Danish friends had told him many stories of this long shallow sea that led to the land of eternal ice and provided a life for so many varied peoples.

  Into this sea flowed rivers from the east, and if you followed those rivers across the lands of the Rus, and across the kingdom of Kiev, you would find other rivers that flowed into the Black Sea, which could be crossed to reach Constantinople. While the Norse of the North Sea scratched a hard life from forests and fjords and from raiding the villages of Hibernia and Ireland, the Norse of the Baltic Sea lived on flat farmland and were wealthy from the eastern trade with the Byzantine.

  There were towns and villages all around this sea, and therefore there were many coastal ships for cargo and passage. The guard who the elders of the last town had sent with him, agreed to take him down onto the shores of the sea. On the beach there were many ships pulled out of the water for the winter. They showed him the differences between the North Sea ships, the Baltic ships, and the river ships used for passage to Constantinople. It was all about keel size, weight, and draft for there were places along the river route that required rolling the ships overland.

  These same guards took him as far as Hedeby, which at one time had been the largest city north of York. Now it was just a village. The city had moved across the Schlei fjord to Schleiswig after Hereby had been destroyed by marauding Slavs. It was an obvious place for a major market town, because the Schlei fjord allowed an easy shipping route that connected the North Sea to the Baltic Sea without having to sail all around the Danish peninsula.

  Seeing this short cut from sea to sea, made him think of the other short cut he had crossed... the Elbe fjord. No wonder the kings kept the border at the River Eider. In that way both kings had a short cut from sea to sea. The border was not about the folk, so much as about each having a short cut from sea to sea.

  He left his horse in Schleiswig, and took a ship through the islands that blocked the entrance to the Baltic Sea, and to the southern end of the Scania peninsula. It was no wonder that such a small place as Denmark could become such a powerful kingdom. They controlled most of the trade routes between the Baltic and the North seas.

  Canute's palace at Dalby in Scania was nothing like the palaces of the nobles of southern Europe. It was a massive building made of logs, with a village of other log buildings built all around it. Even the walls surrounding the village were of logs.

  It was the very young Queen Adela, Gertrude's daughter, who welcomed Raynar. Canute was busy in a heated debate with his lords in the great hall. She didn't look like she was with child yet, which was a good thing considering her youth. He spent a wonderful few days in her company, but not so with Canute.

  Canute and he immediately butted heads. Not about politics, not about encouraging settlements in the Danelaw, not about delaying any invasion until Odo had left. No, they were in complete agreement about those critical things. They butted heads about the most stupid of things, church tithes. Being a lesser son of a king, Canute had been trained to become a bishop, and therefore he knew more about running a church than about running a kingdom. Only the short lives of his brothers, and his proven ability with ships in battle, had convinced the elders to place him on the throne.

  They argued long and hard about the church tithe, a type of tax expected by the church from its flock. A heavy tax, usually one part in ten. Canute was trying to create a new law that forced everyone to pay the tithe, not just the flock of the church. It was a very unpopular idea, especially with the country folk who still worshipped the old gods, or had no churches within easy walking distance.

  "But how do they expect a church to be built near them if they do not pay the tithe," Canute moaned to Raynar's listening ear. "I want a church in every village as soon as possible, and that means everyone must share in the cost."

  "Why not exclude those who aren't Christians from the tithe," Raynar suggested.

  Canute looked at him like he had two heads and replied, "I am trying to encourage Christianity, not discourage it."

  "Traveling from Rome through the communes of Southern France," Raynar told him, "I met many Christians who believed that religion was about faith, not grand buildings and the priests who grow fat running them. They refuse both priests and church buildings, because they pervert the true faith."

  It was exactly the wrong thing to say to Canute. He spent the next half hour preaching against the heretics that did not believe in the priesthood and church organization. He was a Romanized Christian and therefore had complete faith in the most holy of men, the Pope. It was only after he calmed
down that Raynar showed him the letter from Odo to the Pope. While reading it, Canute shriveled in front of Raynar's eyes.

  "Did you find Rome a holy place?" asked Canute meekly. He had never been.

  "No Canute. The Rome I saw was a rich place where wealth was wasted on luxuries, and where everything was expensive because of the corruption in every office of the church and the government."

  "Raynar, you are a brother in arms, and a friend, but I cannot allow you to reveal the contents of these letters to my lords. What you have told me must remain our secret. I think it better that you leave my palace, and leave Denmark. Please."

  "I am glad you said please, friend, else I would think it a threat."

  "You are no longer welcome," Canute hissed.

  "Beware of your anger at me, friend, lest you loose your soul," Raynar replied as he pulled out two other letters from his scroll pipe. His two passports. "If your mother-in-law's passport does not achieve a welcome from you, then perhaps the Pope's passport will."

  Canute grabbed up and read both passports and then exclaimed, "You are not even a Christian. How do you come by a Pope's passport?"

  "The same way I came by that letter from Odo to the Pope. I just delivered an equally important one from the Pope to Odo, and now that I have traveled all of this way to show the latest to you, I must go and deliver it to the Pope. I have the passport because I am his messenger."

  "No, this is unbelievable," Canute said crossing himself and kissing the gold cross he wore around his throat.

  "Believe it friend. I want Odo to leave England. If helping him to become Pope achieves that, then so be it."

  "You cannot, not Odo, not a Norman, not on the pontiff’s throne."

  Raynar spent the rest of the evening describing how Guiscard's Normans were now the Pope's staunchest ally against the combined power of the Western and Eastern empires, and about the battles, and the fleets, and about the size of the armies involved, and about Venice. Unlike Robert the Frisian, Canute did not want exciting stories about battles, he wanted to know about their effect on the Roman church.

  After talking for hours, Raynar agreed to leave Denmark the next day. Canute blamed him for the dilemma he found himself in. That by defeating the Conqueror's Normans, Canute may weaken Guiscard's Normans enough to cause the defeat of Pope Gregory. That by helping the church to expand, the outcome would likely be to strengthen the Normans. His last words to Raynar were, "Not Odo, please not Odo."

  Raynar’s last word to him were, "Perhaps if you built schools and hospitals before you built churches, your folk would not complain so loudly about the tithe." Canute did not answer, he just turned his back on his old friend.

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  "To Rome," Raynar replied to the question. "To deliver this letter from Odo to the Pope." Then he told the Count of Flanders about what Canute was doing with tithes in Denmark, and of the falling out between old friends.

  "Madness," Robert said, "Absolute madness. I wonder now how much power our Pope Gregory has over Canute. I wonder now, if the real reason that Canute marched armies towards the Germanies last year was to pull Emperor Henry north away from Rome, and if that was at the Pope's request."

  "Well now you can understand why I must go to Rome and deliver this letter. Not only will that help Odo to leave England, but Canute will shy away from any church led by Odo. Making Odo the Pope may save Canute from a huge rebellion of his own people. Speaking of which, as soon as Adela is with child you should fetch her back to Brugge. Tell Canute that she should be with her mother for the birthing."

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  During his short but richly comfortable stay in the Palace in Paris, Raynar was pleased to learn that the Conqueror was still walking with a limp, and had not ridden a horse since the day someone had put an arrow up his butt on the road to Alencon. He reluctantly left his fine clothes and horse behind at the palace and again became an impoverished pilgrim, although he did wear his silk shirt next to his skin.

  This time instead of trudging the miles, he bought a farm nag and rode the highway down the Rhone Valley to Arles. He thus rode quickly into spring which came earlier in the south. At Arles he paid passage on the next ship, so as to reach Rome with no further delay. After all, Odo had handed him that letter almost a month ago.

  The Pope, who was now living in the Castel Sant Angelo due to his fear of the Emperor, gave him an audience as soon as he was told what letter he carried. He was not allowed to put it directly into the Pope's hand, however, as Odo had instructed him to do. He was ordered to first hand it to a cleric for some kind of test with some kind of water.

  The cleric who had led him to the audience whispered, "They now fear poison ink. They give each letter a blotter test." Before the blotter test was given to Odo's letter, the cleric holding it held it up to show the pope that it's seal was already broken. When Pope Gregory looked up, Raynar saw the Pope's face clearly for the first time. He was old and sick, very sick. Had he already been poisoned?

  "Sire," Raynar spoke out to explain, but was hushed by his keeper. He kept talking. "Sire, I am late arriving because I was set upon by footpads. They kept me prisoner and opened that letter to see if it was worth a ransom. Eventually I put the fear of God in them for interfering with the messages of God, but they had already opened it and had passed it through their ranks in hopes that someone could read it. Even I could not read it to them, which is why Odo chose me to carry it."

  He actually received a blessing from the Pope for delivering the letter. The other copies that Odo had sent by mounted messengers, had still not arrived. He was offered a bed in the castle, and though he really didn't want to accept it, he had no choice since he was pretending to be a Norman who had never been to Rome before.

  Damn, he had been looking forward to staying at his friend Anna's house again. On his first visit to Rome, business had been very slow in Rome, and Anna, a wealthy Norman's mistress, had been forced to rent rooms to pilgrims to keep the household running. Business was still slow. The Normans had still not returned from Illyria, though there was a rumour that Guiscard himself was again in southern Italy, but without his army. Raynar had been hoping that through Anna he would again be able to access to the rich life of Odo's palace for purposes of spying. Odo's new palace in Rome was lavishly entertaining any who were friendly to his bid for the Papal throne.

  He had three days of rest at the Castel, which he mostly spent walking the walls with the guards. At least the walls had a view of the River Tiber and of the ancient runs of Rome. On the fourth morning a group of clerics came to see him and gave him a scroll pipe. Inside it was the Popes latest communiqué to Bishop Odo, as well as a new papal passport, this one in the name of Raynar of Winchester.

  This third passport caused him no end of bother, and almost cost him his life on the journey to Winchester. When he left Rome, he had plans of backtracking the way he had come via Paris and Brugge. This meant beginning with a ship to Arles, then by nag up the Rhone, over the hills to Paris, and from there on his fine mount, and in fine clothes back to Brugge. Unfortunately he never reached Paris.

  At the castle of the fortress city of Avignon along the Rhone, he showed his new Pope's passport to gain a meal and a bed for the night, and was placed with the other guests, who were Norman knights on their way back from Apulia to Normandy. Bertrand, the Marquis of Provence was in residence, and he insisted that these Norman knights swear to the safety of the Pope's man as far as Caen, and they so swore it. Raynar was thus trapped into returning via Caen rather than via Paris.

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  The Hoodsman - The Second Invasion by Skye Smith

  Chapter 6 - The Pope's messenger in Normandy in June 1082

  At Caen, the knights Raynar had traveled with were invited to the Conqueror's fortress, and they took Raynar with them to present him to the court of King Duke William. Although these knights had been ordered to escort Raynar and keep him safe, it was actually Raynar's passport that had
made the knight's trip across France so uneventful.

  This court was the last place on earth he wanted to be, for he feared being recognized as Raynar Wolfshead. His greatest fear, however, was that the Conqueror would break the seal on the Pope's letter to Odo and discover what Odo was up to. The audience went well for Raynar, because the conqueror, who was sitting on pillows on his throne, was more interested in the news of Guiscard and listened intently to the stories that the knights were telling.

  Everything went well until Queen Duchess Mathilde, Robert the Frisian's sister, made her entrance at court. Raynar quickly bowed his head, hoping she did not notice him or recognize him. He was too late. In his shabby pilgrim's clothes he was unique in the audience. "Why, I think we have met before," Mathilde told him as she was walking by.

  The words turned Raynar's blood to ice. The last time he had been this close to Mathilde was during the battle of Gerberoi between the Conqueror and his eldest son Robert. In that battle, he had pinned the Conqueror's hand to his chest with an arrow, but when he had grabbed a pike to finish the job, it was Mathilde who had yelled a warning at his approach. His pike had been parried and he had retreated, but not before Mathilde had taken a good look at him.

  It seemed like an hour while he waited for her to speak again. She was waiting for him to introduce himself and to tell her where they had met. Everyone looked around towards him at the silence, because even though a busy queen may not recall a meeting with an ordinary man, the man would surely not forget where he had met the queen.

  Mathilde’s quick mind saved him from mentioning Gerberoi. "You are the monk knight who safely brought Edgar Aetheling to us when he wanted to surrender. That was years ago. So tell me that my memory is not suffering as much from age as the rest of me."