by Smith, Skye
It was senseless to continue to hide his face from her, so he looked up. It took all of his willpower not to cry out at the look of this woman's face. She looked ancient, twice her years, and there was no blush or glow in her face, just a sallow grey. "Your Highness has a keen eye and a keen memory," he muttered. "You would have known me by the name my monastery gave to me, Anso. I am now in the service of the Pope, and he has allowed me to use my birth name, Raynar."
"Is the Pope so poor now, that his men must dress in rags?"
"The roads from here to Rome are treacherous, your Highness. He bade me travel incognito as a pilgrim. The passport he gave me was to be used only in emergencies."
"Yet you come with a guard of knights?"
"My passport was guarding them, your Highness. May I ask if Edgar is still at your court?" He had to know. A careless word from Edgar could be his undoing.
"Yes, but no," she said slowly. "I believe he is upriver visiting Earl Morcar." An attendant rushed forward and confirmed her words.
Raynar was speechless. Earl Morcar still lived. The warlord who had led the rearguard at Ely when it was stormed by the Conqueror, he still lived. Everyone knew that he had surrendered, and had been imprisoned here in Normandy, but men rarely lasted so long in prison. So Waltheof had not been the last English Earl after all. The Conqueror must have kept Morcar alive so that he could personally rule his great Mercian estates, in trust.
"Would you like to visit Edgar. It is but a short ride," she said, but then had a spasm of pain, and lost her balance. The smelly pilgrim stepped forward and held her until the spasm had gone. "Thank you for your arm, Brother Raynar, but I prefer the arm of my attendant, at least until after you have bathed."
Her breath was in his face and it was fetid and smelled like death. He tried not to shy away from it as he passed her to her attendant. Instead of continuing to her throne, she retreated from the audience and left the hall.
The Conqueror had now also remembered the monk knight Anso, the man who had dared to lecture him on the Edicts of Cluny. The Edicts that had made it safer for unarmed pilgrims to travel than his own knights. The thing he remembered the most about this man, however, was how the man had looked at him as if he were an eagle staring at a rabbit.
"What is your mission for the Pope?" William asked, no, commanded, now completely ignoring the knights from Guiscard.
"I carry a letter from his most holy eminence to one of the bishop's of England," Raynar replied, daring not to name Odo. William was looking at him with cunning in his eyes.
"I think you should visit Edgar while you are here," William announced. "Once you are clean and dressed for visiting, I will have someone take you to him."
* * * * *
Four months Raynar had been living under 'house arrest' with Morcar. Not that he minded Morcar's company. Morcar was only a few years older than him and they had shared some adventures over the years. The man now spent his days pacing, and his nights in bed with his latest young female comforter. The visit was very one sided. After a dozen years of house arrest, Morcar had no exciting stories to tell over their meals, while Raynar had stories aplenty.
For a dozen years Morcar had been allowed at court only during the main holidays. This warrior of warriors, this Daneglish general, had sat around and done nothing other than learn to read and exercise with weapons. He was not even allowed to build a family for as soon as his latest woman became heavy with child, she was replaced by another, and he never ever heard what became of the last woman or her child.
Morcar's view on the world was through Edgar Atheling’s eyes, who was allowed to travel anywhere in Normandy so long as he did not approach its borders. Edgar was a frequent visitor. More so now that Raynar was at this manor too. After four months, however, even Raynar was on his third telling of most of his stories.
It was in the summer of '82, when both he and Morcar were summoned to court. William the Conqueror was dying and he wanted to make his peace with all of those who he had wronged. When they arrived at his chamber there was a very long queue of nobles waiting their turn at the sick bed of the King Duke.
The queue of wronged men was in truth, quite short, as most wronged men had been wronged to death. Most of these nobles were swearing to William in support of his son Robert as the next Duke of Normandy, and his son William as the next King of the English. The queue moved quickly until it was Morcar and Raynar's turn.
It was a large bed chamber and most of the immediate family were sitting on benches along the walls watching the endless stream of nobles bending their knee to the dying man. The family included his wife Mathilde, and two of her sons, William and Henry. William and Henry looked much alike though Henry was much younger, as there were sisters that separated their ages.
Just as Raynar and Morcar were invited to kneel at the bedside, the eldest son, Robert, arrived with a woman. A very beautiful woman from Paris. The Paris courtesan who had the palace all a hum in gossip, Gesa. Raynar turned his head quickly to hide his face from both of them, but he was too late and saw a look of recognition in Gesa's eyes. She was one of his many 'nieces' from the Fens of England. Her intoxicating beauty was due to her Frisian blood and her Frisian knowledge of health and diet.
"You Morcar, and you Raynar," William was speaking, haltingly, weakly, "I must apologize that I cannot allow you, or indeed any of my English prisoners to be set free. My sons will have trouble enough controlling the English without you at large. I ask your forgiveness, and I must leave it in God's hands that my sons will do no evil by you." There was a snicker from the son William. Few heard it, but Gesa obviously did.
"If you were this ill, why didn't you send for me?" Gesa asked in a strong voice as she stepped forward in a swirl of brightly colored silk. Mathilde was in black as were her lady attendants. "I am healer to the Royals of France, and I was once healer to the Royals of Flanders."
Mathilde could not sit still for this outrageous woman breaking the solemn serenity of these moments. She pointed at the man in costly monks robes standing near to the bed, and told her, "Our physician is well known and well capable, and is an abbot and a scholar. You are not wanted here. And why would we trust the healer of France or Flanders? You could be a witch or a poisoner."
Mathilde could not stand without help, and had to be balanced by one of her ladies. Her face was still grey despite the flush of her anger with this palace courtesan who her foolish eldest son was smitten with. She was shocked when that same courtesan stepped close to her and smelled her breath and looked into one of her eyes and held a hand up to her throat.
"So is this the same physician who has killed you, madam?" hissed Gesa without any politeness though she had to bow low to face the diminutive Mathilde eye to eye. "And now you allow him to kill your husband?"
The abbot physician was outraged by her slander, and he leaped towards the courtesan. In the presence of so many Royals, no non-royal moved to save Gesa from the abbot's rage, not without orders. Robert would have intervened but to do so he would have had to knock his mother over. Raynar would have intervened but he was on the other side of the bed.
Just as the furious abbot's hands reached her, Gesa swirled to meet him and drove the large gemstone of the large ring of her left hand into his windpipe. The abbot bent over grasping his throat and choking and she threw a hip and knocked him away from the bed so he would not fall on the sick king. He fell on the son, William, instead. William caught the abbot and lowered him to the floor and looked up at the courtesan with an expression of pure lust.
"Madam," Gesa told the shocked Mathilde, "if you will lead me to some private place I will tell you how this physician has killed you, and perhaps how to extend your life."
"But it is my husband who is dying," Mathilde said, but as she said this she nodded to her ladies to lead the way out of the chamber.
"Your husband is wounded," Gesa replied gently, "and needs my knowledge to cure that wound. That is all. You have more serious problems."
> In the queens chamber, at the other end of the corridor, Gesa inspected the queen. Her gentleness and her knowing ways put the queen at ease despite some of the places she touched. The other ladies nodded in admiration that such a lovely young woman, who was not even a nun, would know so much.
When she was finished, Gesa sat next to the queen on the bed, and said, "You became with child when you were much too old. You used that physician instead of a midwife. The baby miscarried, and still you did not call a midwife."
Mathilde defended her decision not to have a midwife, "But the physician is an abbot, and he prayed, and pronounced the poor child saved so it would enter heaven immediately. Besides, he would not suffer to be in the same room as a midwife. He calls them all witches."
"And he did not clean you out properly afterwards. He probably did not even look. Some of the afterbirth is still inside of you, rotting, and poisoning you. A year ago, six months even, a good midwife may have saved your life. Now I doubt that even I can save you. However, you do not need to die in pain, and you need not die this month. I can give you perhaps another year, and without pain. I can show your ladies how to help you with this. It is not difficult, but how would a male physician, and worse, a monk who is not supposed to even touch a women, know anything of these women’s things?"
"He cannot," admitted Mathilde, sobbing. The courtesan was right. Of course she was right. She knew in her heart she was right. The rigidity of the abbot's beliefs had killed her, despite his best intentions. "But be warned Gesa, that I cannot allow you to touch me, for if it goes wrong my family will call it a plot of Flanders or France, and do evil to you. You must instruct my ladies, and they must treat me. When can we begin?"
"Tonight, as you prepare for bed. It will take me until then to clean your husband's wound and to find the herbs that I need in your kitchen."
"I must stand by your side as you work on my husband," said Mathilde, and she stood so that her ladies could dress her again, and prepare her for polite company.
On entering the king's chamber, Gesa sought out and found Raynar’s face in the group of men who were standing in the corner gossiping as they waited for the return of the women. The abbot was seated, and remained seated even as Mathilde entered. He could breathe now, but still could not speak. Gesa's punch to his throat had been vicious and well aimed.
The abbot did not interfere as Gesa took command of his patient. She had the Conqueror rolled over in the bed, and uncovered enough to see the wound. That cheek of his ass was raw and inflamed, but the rest of him was pale, as pale as a corpse. She touched and prodded the wound, and William clenched his teeth and whimpered with the pain of it.
Raynar looked on in stunned silence. Gesa was not using her usual gentle touch with the wound. No wonder since the wound was on the ass of the man who had caused her mother to be burned at the stake as a witch. That had been at the bridge over the River Ouse at Aldreth during the Ely rebellion. She had been a child at the time. What were her intentions? If she did nothing the Conqueror would die. Was that not revenge enough for her? Was she prodding him just to cause him pain?
"And you say this began with an arrow wound, then it is as I suspected," Gesa told the king. "You are dying from a loss of blood. The abbot has bled you so much that the poison in your blood has become concentrated, like how soup becomes saltier as you render it. Yes, I can cure you, and the cure will be within two weeks, but you must pay me."
"Name it," winced the king after taking the pillow from between his teeth.
"When I first came into this room you were telling my English lord Morcar why he and your English prisoners could not be freed. My price for giving you back your life, will be that all of those same prisoners will be freed in England as soon as you are cured. You will have many years to deal with any problems their freedom may cause, before you hand your throne to your sons."
"Morcar is your lord?"
"I was a child in Ely when Morcar's shield wall held you at bay to allow the folk to escape the island. He was captured saving the likes of me. Do I not owe him something for that?" As she said this she poked the wound.
Without the pillow clenched in his teeth, the Conqueror whimpered like a woman. "Yes damn you. All right. Cure me. The English will go free."
"Swear it to God in front of this abbot."
"I swear it," the Conqueror howled.
"There is more. You are called the Conqueror because your armies harrow village folk, as you did in Ely. You must swear to the church that you will never harrow again." She lifted her hand and made ready to slap his ass.
"All right. I swear it. I have already sworn this to Pope Gregory."
"Wait Will," Mathilde stepped forwards. "She must not touch you. The abbot will do her bidding, and thereby learn it for next time."
Gesa told Robert to send for her healer's basket from their room, and then began to strip out of her silks. Every man's eye was on her as she stripped, except the Conqueror's who was facing the pillow. "Mathilde, please clear the men from this room, all save the abbot. I refuse to risk blood stains on my silk gown, so I must strip down to my shift."
Every man left, although the son William had to be dragged backwards through the door. Gesa was purposefully teasing him with peeks. When the three sons next saw Gesa, it was an hour later and she was again dressed in her fine silk, and the king's life was saved.
"It was as I suspected. The wound had not been cleaned properly before it closed, and yet for some reason it still closed. Each time it was pressured by even sitting on it, it became angry again but not to the point of poisoning his blood. The abbot has opened it, cleaned it, and rinsed it in salts, and then one of Mathilde’s ladies sewed it closed again. Now he needs rest and a broth made from the liver of lambs to replace the all blood that the abbot has stolen from him."
She walked over to Morcar and touched his cheek, which was clean shaven in the Norman way. "You should be freed within two weeks. You and the rest of the English held here." She told this to Morcar but she stared at Raynar.
* * * * *
Two weeks later an escort came to bring Raynar from Morcar's manor and back to the court in Caen. Robert had already taken Gesa back to his castle in Le Mans where he was pretending to be the Count of Maine. Gertrude no longer looked grey. She even had some rose coloring in her cheeks, though a lady stayed close to her arm at all times. The Conqueror was constantly pacing, building his legs back up after so long in bed.
The escort had been for Raynar and only Raynar, not Morcar and not Edgar. He had been told to bring along all of his things.
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Hoodsman - The Second Invasion by Skye Smith
Chapter 7 - Arresting Odo on the Isle of Wight in September 1082
Raynar was quick marched along Caen dock and pushed, none too gently, across a gang plank and onto a large longship. The name carved on the ship was 'Mora'. It was well built and looked very fast. Every rowing position possible had been squeezed between the narrowing of the bow and the steering deck. A seaman told him that the ship had been named by the Conquerors wife, who gave it to him for the invasion of England, and that the name was a version of the word for love.
Raynar smirked. He didn't know much Latin but he knew enough to know that 'mora' meant 'delay'. A terrible name for a ship. "Where am I going?" he asked the men who had fetched him from Morcar's company.
"With the ship," one of them replied, while staring at him as if he were thick.
"I mean, where is the ship going?"
"Some island in England. You'll find out. Move along to the stern. The Duke wants to speak with you." It was interesting how the Normans all called William the Duke rather the King, as if the throne of England didn't really matter.
The Duke did not speak to him, he just waved at the guard and told him to hand Raynar's scroll pipe to one of his clerics. The cleric read everything that was in the pipe and then handed one of the scrolls to the Duke, as he whispered into his ea
r. Raynar could easily guess which scroll they were discussing. The Pope's letter to Odo.
William walked towards him until their faces were inches apart and spoke with such vehemence that he could feel the spittle land on his cheeks. "Why did you not tell me that you carried a letter from the Pope to Regent Odo."
"Sire," Raynar looked down at his feet and bowed humbly like a Norman serf would do. "When the knight's presented me to your court, I clearly stated that I carried a message from the Pope to one of the bishops of England, and that I had a passport from the Pope. You would not let me continue on to England with the message, despite that passport, and instead had me held under house arrest. I was very surprised that no one inspected my pipe at that time, since the passport was being ignored." After saying these words, he cringed expecting a blow across the back of his bent neck. It never came.
"I remember the incident," the cleric hurriedly told William, perhaps out of guilt for opening private correspondence from the Pope. "He speaks truly."
"And you were given this in person by the Pope?" William asked Raynar. "You can bear witness and attest to its authenticity?"
"I can."
"Then you are coming with us to confront Odo. Find yourself a hole, mouse, and stay out of my way."
Raynar hopped and squirmed his way through the oars and oarsmen and the embarking noblemen all the way to the bow, and as far from William's sight as he could be. It would be a rocky ride so far forward, but at least he would breathe fresh sea air, and have a good view of the horizons, and of the workings of this great warship.
They sailed and rowed in a fleet of eight longships straight north across the Manche from Caen on a course that would take them to Southampton. Ten hours out, a blood red harvest moon rose over the coast of Normandy. The Mora could have made it in less than the fifteen hours it took them to cross the Manche, but she kept pace with the slower ships so as to keep the fleet huddled together.