by Smith, Skye
"We will go one step at a time," said Henry. "First we must charm Barfleur. Captain Thomas can give the village men a tour of the new Mora. It will give me the chance to speak with the elders. Once the first ships of our fleet arrive they can cover our backs while continue down the coast of the Cotentin to the Passé D'Isigny. Serlo, the bishop of Seez has invited me to spend Easter with him at the port of Carentan."
"And after Carentan?" Raynar asked.
"I have come to secure the people of Normandy from the ravages of Belleme's raiding parties. I will start with this peninsula, but if that goes quickly and well, I will spread my peace and the rule of law beyond the Cotentin."
"And your brother, Duke Robert. Do you expect him to just sit by and allow you to invade his shores?"
"At last years meeting at Domfort the barons made it quite clear to Robert that if he did not lead them against Belleme, that they would follow any leader who would. Well that was a half a year ago, and Robert has done nothing other than raise taxes to hire mercenaries. As I said, I will start by bringing peace to the Cotentin, but all of Normandy needs peace, and all of Normandy will be watching what we do here. It is criminal that so many are in such dire straights in such a wealthy place."
* * * * *
The anger of Bishop Serlo was out of control. He had arranged to meet Henry at the large church in the village of Carentan, but when he entered that church to say a service to bless Henry's endeavors in the Cotentin, he could not. There was not room. The inside of the church looked like a cross between a stable and a warehouse and a Danish longhouse. For their own protection from Mortain's raiders, the folk had been living in the church surrounded by their most valued animals and most cherished possessions.
The bishop railed at the folk angrily, and shoved the elders away from the alter, and with a sweep of his arm cleared the alter of all the meager possessions that had been saved from the raiders by these hungry, filthy, long suffering folk. When a woman with a babe in arms tried to save her things from his reckless arm, he hit out at her. It was then that he felt the excruciating pain of his arm being twisted almost out of its socket and was forced to stare into the face of one of Henry's Englishmen.
"Henry told me that you a Gregorian, priest," hissed Raynar. "I think not. Not when you hurt women and babies and blame innocent folk for being set upon by the henchmen of the ruling class. Not when you desecrate a place of sanctuary just because you didn't get to say your magic words over a rich king. Behave yourself else I will pin you to the cross behind the alter with my Valkyrie knife."
Henry called out from behind his personal guards who had immediately surrounded him at the first sign of violence. "Raynar, you are in a church. It would be unseemly to spill a bishop's blood on the alter. Put him down, or at least take him outside before you use your knife." His guards had to hide their face so no one would see their smirks.
As soon as the Englishman released his grip, Serlo twisted away from him and then stared at the King and his general Meulan, and the rest of the English Normans. "You dare to mock me in my own church. You come to Normandy looking like filthy Englishmen with your long hair and beards and expect to be welcomed."
Henry looked around at his men. For sure the fashion for the men in England had reverted to the Danish and Saxon look in hair, beard, and clothing. Even his Norman courtiers fashioned themselves thus in order to gain favour with his English queen. He softened his voice slightly and asked the locals using his best Cotentin accent, "Do any of you have shears with you. It seems that the good bishop wishes to cut my hair."
An elder stepped towards the bishop and slowly and hesitantly offered to him the best shears in the village. Henry walked over and sat on the steps up to the alter and waved to the bishop to take up the duties of a barber. While the bishop cut off his long hair and trimmed his beard, Henry spoke calmly and at length to the elders about what was happening in the Cotentin.
Henry was not such a fool as to not realize that what had brought all of these folk to the sanctuary of this church was the rumours that Henry's fleet was approaching. While he was pruned by the bishop he patiently listened to the reports of the elders about Mortain's raiders, and noted which villages were being used as their bases, and which villages had been completely slaughtered by them. Henry repeatedly told them that there was no need to fear his army or his fleet.
"Did you see how one of my men jumped in to protect one of your women from being manhandled. I have given such orders to all of my men. We are here to help you, not to prey on you. We are here to rescue you from raiders, not to raid you. I bring the rule of law, and no one will be above that law, not even a bishop who missed his calling as a barber."
The bishop finished shearing the king, and to keep him busy and therefore silent, Meulan sat down on the steps and asked for the same hair cut. The bishop looked at Raynar and gave him a questioning look.
Raynar growled under his breath as he moved away from the shears. "Normans wear their hair short because they spend much time in their battle helmets. I prefer peace to short hair."
During Meulan's haircut, the bishop did not keep his silence. He was no longer cutting the hair of a king so he no longer feared accidentally drawing blood. "If you come to rescue us, then rescue us from your brother the Duke. His government has failed and therefore our churches are all being used as sanctuaries from strife, if not from raids. My own church in Toumay was burned this winter by Belleme's raiders, and forty five of the poor souls who sought sanctuary there were burned with it.
Meanwhile Robert has spent the winter drinking and whoring. He has appointed his brother-in-law, William of Conversano, and his friends Hugh de Nonant, and Gontier d'Aunay in charge of running the government, and they have dissipated the wealth of his fair duchy in vanity and upon trifles.
Their values are upside down. They cannot even get the simple things right, like providing bread. Robert himself begs off attending Mass for want of trousers, stockings, and shoes. I hear that while he lies snoring in drunkenness, the buffoons and harlots who infest his quarters each night, rob him.
Henry, if you can do better than Robert, and that would not be difficult, then I welcome you here in Normandy and so will the folk. You have the same birth right as your brother, and you have proven to England that you can rescue a place from robber barons and the demons of nobility. The folk of Normandy need you, Henry, and so does the church. We need you to enforce morals again."
Henry looked at the elders and asked, "Do you agree with the bishop?" The all cheered him. Anything was better than being ruled by warlords and robber barons. Any order was better than random violence. Any rule of law was better than rule by fear.
"In the Lord's name," Henry announced, " I will rise to this labor for the sake of peace, and with your aid I will seek peace for the church." Robert of Meulan and other barons present applauded the momentous, albeit obvious, decision. The bishop said some magic Latin words to make Henry a defender of morals, a defender of the church and a Gregorian reformer. As Henry was about the only other person besides the bishop who spoke Latin, he himself translated the words into Norman French and then into English.
* * * * *
Henry stayed in Carentan, a safe place nestled in the Norman version of the Fens, to wait for word from the court of King Philip in Paris and from the Norman and French barons. The barons who shared his desire to drag Belleme down. While he waited, he sent ships of his fleet in small groups to all the villages and ports of the Normandy coast to spread the word that he, Henry of the English, had been made their champion by the church.
Raynar took three of his Wash cogs, with a combined crew of about a hundred oarsmen-bowmen, around the Cherbourg peninsula to take the message to the port of Avranches and the holy mount of Saint Michel. He had a small cask of silver coins on board to be used to win sea captains and lords of fortified manors over to Henry's cause. Newly minted English silver coins with the head of Henry on one side and the word "PAX", peace, on the other.
Other groups of ships sailed with Raynar's group, but one by one each group peeled off at places like the port of Cherbourg, and Portbail where some folk still spoke Cornish, and Fulquerville where some folk still spoke Norse. Avranches was visited by only Raynar's three ships.
Henry's caution was the reason he had sent Raynar to Avranches. Though the town was a churchly place with a college where even a few Archbishops of Canterbury had been trained, it had a violent history. Hugh the Wolf had been the prior viscount, a man who Raynar had fought against many a time in Wales, for as the Earl of Chester, Hugh had tried to capture Anglesey back in the 90's. This was the same Hugh who had blinded his prisoners, or at least left them without feet or hands.
Raynar was very thankful that Hugh was dead. His son Richard was the new viscount, but Henry suspected that the true power in Avranches was the Mortain family. Henry had asked Raynar to test the water, but not to take any chances. Avranches was too close to the Mortainaise.
Though the other ships of the fleet were mostly manned by the King's Archers, Raynar’s ships were manned by men from the Wash. And not just any men. They were all experienced men of the Brotherhood of the Arrow. At one time or another each had been an outlaw. At one time or another, each had killed a Norman warrior. Each crew was in truth a wolfpack of skirmishers.
After spending a less than comfortable night sleeping on the ship just offshore, they approached Avranches through the fog of daybreak, under oar with the sails down. The closest tower to the river mouth that formed the harbour was of the cathedral and school. Further away were the twin towers of the stone castle. There was not a soul in sight at the fish market. They had obviously been seen, the alarm sounded, and everyone had gone to hide.
They had taken one of the fishermen off a five man fishing dinghy at the mouth of the bay, and now they set him ashore to take a message to whoever was in charge at the cathedral. In truth there were three messages. One from Serlo, the bishop of Seez telling the church officers that King Henry was now the church's champion. One from Henry telling them that they could trust his man Captain Raynar and his ships, as they had been sent to find out how they could help bring peace to the town. The last was from Raynar asking them if it was safe to land and buy meals from the women of the village, for his men were hungry enough to pay in good English coin.
As Raynar expected, the message that had immediate effect was that he wanted to buy, as in pay good coin, for meals from the women of the village. He had specifically instructed the fisherman to show off the handful of Henry's silver to anyone he met along the way, and tell them that the ships were filled with hungry men with coin to spend.
They did not need to wait long before every old fishwife in Avranches was hawking food to them from the shore, but they did not go ashore until a legation from the cathedral arrived. The spokesman was the priest in charge of the cathedral school, a bishop in training. Raynar jumped ashore to speak with him, and had to push his way through the throng of smelly women who pushed forward towards him with baskets of bread, and pies, and fish, and fruit.
"I am Captain Raynar, in the service of the Queen of the English," he called up to the clerics in his best courtier French, as he pushed through the last of the fishwives. They were now mobbing those of his crew who had jumped ashore to serve as his guard. The captain of the ship pulled the wives away from the guard by flashing a heavy purse and asking the price of fish pies, but from the other end of the ship.
"Captain," the priest called back. "You are welcome to linger for breakfast but then you must leave. The castellan has promised to stay within his walls for two hours, no more, before he will come to arrest you in the name of his lord, the Count of Mortain."
"We do not wish to worry the castellan, so it will be as you have asked. While my men are fed, perhaps we can have a chat. In private." And thus it was that Raynar and the priest spent an hour alone together in the closest building to the fish market, a carpenter's shed.
What Raynar learned from him was that the child Viscount Richard of Avranches was a prisoner in his own castle. The viscount and his folk would support any effort to get rid of Mortain's men from the castle and town. Mortain's men were using Avranches as their main base for raiding the villages of the Cotentin. The castle walls were thinly manned today because Mortain's men were off raiding. They had trapped a force of Bretons at the southern end of Saint Michelle's Bay, and most of the garrison had gone there to slaughter the Bretons.
When the priest left Raynar, he walked with his monks towards the castle to deliver a message. The message that the castellan would be paid one keg of silver coins to surrender the castle. Raynar stopped long enough for a good breakfast in the market and then, surrounded by his guard of hoodsmen, walked towards the castle. The castellan rushed out to meet him. That is how the bargaining for the castle began.
The bargaining was interrupted while another wolfpack brought a keg of coins to the gate for the Castellan to see. To Raynar, the company of the wolfpack was a relief. He had felt quite nervous bargaining with just a few guards close by, and so near to a castle gate.
"No. It is not enough," said the castellan as he picked up the small keg of coins and tested its weight and shook it to hear the slush of coins. "My life would be forfeit if ever I fell into Mortains clutches."
"Well that was all I was authorized to pay," Raynar replied and then turned slightly to take the measure of the castellan's second in command. He had the look of a hungry weasel, but then, that was a common look amongst Norman mercenaries. "My instructions were to give the keg to whomever surrenders the castle." He saw the second's eyes squint at that news, as a wave of cunning crossed behind them.
An hour later, one side of the castle gates opened a crack, and the priests were ushered in to accept the surrender of the castle. By this time two wolfpacks were close enough to the gate to offer the support of their bows, so Raynar followed the priest through the gates. The castellan was slumped beside the gate, bleeding profusely and breathing hardly at all. The castellan’s second walked towards Raynar to claim the keg of silver. The priests went to say some magic words over the dying castellan.
Raynar gripped the seconds arm in a warrior greeting and then told him, "Now that the castellan is out of the way, are you free of oaths and able to make one to Henry so that you can become his castellan of this castle?"
"I am a mercenary paid by the castellan, as are my men. There was no oath between us, just a promise of payment for services provided."
"Ah, so these are your men on the walls?" Raynar asked looking up at the men on the walls above the gate. "Good, then assemble them for me here in the courtyard. I wish to inspect them and their weapons to estimate what their pay will cost Henry."
The men were called down from the walls and they assembled in the courtyard that the main gate opened into. They were a motley crew of the walking wounded, the old, and a few inexperienced louts hoping to become warriors. They were just who he had hoped had been left on the walls when he had first heard that the garrison was off slaughtering Bretons. He turned towards the four tall bowmen taking turns at carrying the keg of silver, and took it from them, and softly reminded them not to allow the gate to be closed.
With the keg on his shoulder, he motioned to the new castellan to follow him into the gate house to make a count of the silver. On the way they collected the priest from the corpse he was praying over and took him with them to witness the count. Raynar's four men turned their back on the men now assembled in the courtyard and watched the gates.
As they watched the gatekeepers quietly and slowly began to close the one partially open gate. The four who had carried the keg were tall Frisian men from the Fens, and they had worked ships oars for most of their lives. They had strong backs, bulky shoulders, and arms heavy in muscle. As one they charged their bodies at the gatekeepers who were reaching up to drop the bar into place on the gate. They literally threw the gatekeepers aside and wrenched the gate fully open.
As
they opened the gate they howled like wolves to the wolfpacks waiting outside the gate. As soon as they had the gate swung back they hit the dirt and began yelling to the castle's men in the courtyard. The fishwives in the market had taught them the words in the local lingo. "Drop to the ground else be shot." Meanwhile arrows were whistling overhead and slamming into the largest of the men assembled in the courtyard.
A half dozen hoodsmen had stepped through the gate and loosed their arrows, and then ran to the gatehouse side, to be replaced by a half dozen more, who loosed and ran to the other side, and then more hoodsmen stepped into the gateway. The arrows they were loosing were not volley arrows, but individually aimed. These were seasoned skirmishers and they chose targets for effect. Any arbalester with a bolt in place was dropped first, then any man who was looking for a fight, then any man who was running away.
Of the defenders, most were now injured and a few dead. Some were throwing themselves onto the ground and pushing their weapons away from them in an act of surrender, and to stop themselves from attracting arrows. Some were making a run for the steps to the wall. None of them made it to the staircase.
The priest had barely counted the first two hundred coins when all hell broke loose in the castle courtyard. The new castellan immediately realized that he had been tricked and he leaped towards the door to yell orders to his men. The priest tripped him, and before he could gain his feet or draw a weapon he had a wickedly sharp filleting knife held at his throat.
"Be calm," Raynar ordered him. "In any case, you would be too late, and walking through that doorway would earn you an arrow point in the heart." The sounds of battle were calming outside, replaced by the woeful sounds of men in pain. One of the wolfheads poked his head into the room and told them that the castle guards were being disarmed, and that it was safe to come out.