by Smith, Skye
"An army that big? There is no stopping them. All we can do is warn the folk to harvest everything they can, and hide it well, and then clear out of the way. That and perhaps to slow them down to give the folk more time." He too was now sobbing. "This cruel irony is the work of the Wyred Sisters, for Canute cannot invade so long as Emperor Henry is ranging around near Saxony. Henry won't go back south until winter weather forces him to, but that same weather will stop Canute's fleet from sailing. This harrowing, this brutality, this devastation, will all be so the Normans can defend against an invasion that isn't coming."
"You were in the watch tower looking at ships moving on the rivers. What is happening?"
"We are clearing out. We need the ships to rescue folk along the coast from this black army, this pestilence of Normans. The crews won't do that until their own folk are safe. We are taking the Fens folk to Flanders."
Judith stood and backed away from him, staring at his eyes. "I'm staying."
"Don't be daft. You are coming. You of all people are coming. You have a fine house waiting for you in Brugge, and Gertrude will welcome you in her court."
"I'm staying. I am the King's niece. I can make a difference here. I can save these lands and villages from being harrowed. The army wouldn't dare. I am the King's niece."
"Judy, love, under Norman law you are still a widow. A wealthy landed English widow. You know what happens to English widows. They are held down in front of witnesses and raped into betrothal. The first knight that comes along will jump you. They've tried it before, remember."
She went red in the face, "Little Maud is betrothed to Simon St Liz. He will be with the army. He will protect us. We will be in no danger. Well, not much anyway. And meanwhile I can stay here and do much good. I can be one of your spies, like Cristina." She was grasping at straws and she knew it, but damn it, Huntingdon was her home. How dare her uncle's army threaten her in her own home.
"Love, I will not force you to come, but please, oh please think long and hard about what you are saying. Your children are the last of Waltheof's line, and he was the last English Earl. Even if you are spared, your son will not be." He stood and gathered the maps he had chosen and rolled them neatly together and placed them safely in his well used, but still waterproof scroll pipe. "I must go and pass on this news, and organize some rescue ships."
"To the docks?"
"To the docks, yes," he said while hugging her. "But then to Flanders and then to Limfjord in Denmark, where Canute’s fleet has gathered. Canute will have most of the crews with his army in Saxony, but you don't need a big crew if you are not raiding. There will be men enough to sail ships to the Danelaw to rescue the new Danish settlers. With the settlers aboard, they'll be well crewed for the sail back." He kissed her softly on the forehead, and then kissed her wet cheeks. "Please come with me. Leave this place until the black army has passed it by."
She pushed him away and stomped her foot stubbornly. "No. I will stay."
"Well, when you are ready to leave, ask any of the captains. I'll be back as soon as I can."
* * * * *
It had been easy to arrange, because it was so obviously the right thing to do, and with little risk to men or ships. The war fleets had been idle while the land borders of Saxony were being defended. The skeleton crews that remained with the ships were bored and feeling useless. They jumped at the chance to rescue their folk from the English coast and from the effing Norman army. They all had cousins there, and if not cousins, then trading partners.
The Danish ships put to sea to rescue everyone from the Humber, and north. The Frisian and Hollander ships put to sea to rescue everyone from the Lincolnshire coast, and the Flemish ships put to sea to rescue the folk of East Anglia. Mostly they took the light cargo ships rather than the longships, because they needed less crew and could land almost anywhere.
Meanwhile the Wash fleet ferried the folk of the Wash villages and the Fens villages to Flanders. All these small ships, hundreds of them, set off to rescue an entire coastline of villagers from the black army that had already ravaged and burned the coast of Kent. It was an event that would be sung about in the winter halls for lifetimes, because so many men were so proud of what they were doing. Not one of the little ships had orders to do what they did from a king or a count. They just put to sea and did it.
It was strange, this war for the coast of England, for there were no battles between armies. The Norman armies had no ships. The local folk had ships but no army. All the Normans need do to be safe from the ships was to camp together in great numbers. All a ship need to do to be safe from the army was to moor out of arrow range in ten feet of water. Folk rescued from a village would often sit safely offshore in the ships and watch as the army burned their village.
* * * * *
With their own folk now safe, the crews of the Wash fleet now began to spy on the three black armies that were harrowing the coast. They could not fight them, they could not stop them. All they could do was warn the folk in their path, and take them aboard if the army was close, and try to slow the armies down. The slowing, however, could not be done by ship.
Each day dangerous men in groups of two and three, loners, bowmen, killers, were dropped on the shore by the ships in good cover and in front of the army. Each day another ship which was trailing the army would pick up the men that had been dropped off a few days before. They were forest men, trackers, skirmishers. They ran free and chose their own targets, but those targets were mostly the leaders, or the horses that leaders rode. Only the scouts and the leaders had horses. Even knights were on foot due to the lack of Norman horses.
In ale houses across the kingdom, men were telling the tales of the Hood. Tales where Norman leaders were refusing to ride on horses, and refusing to wear fine cloaks and their plumes of office. Tales where the black armies marched and for every mile they scorched they lost one or two men to arrows. Arrows shot from phantoms who were never seen and never caught.
York, Lincoln, and Durham were under marshal law. From Durham one black army was inching south down the coast of Yorkshire. From Lincoln another was clearing the Humber but then would march down the coast of Lincolnshire. They were eating everything and then burning the roofs and the fields in a five mile swath from the coast and river mouths.
There was not much to eat. The farmers they had come to plunder had already fled with all of their metal, and with whatever they had time to harvest. What they had not had time to harvest, they often torched with their own hand, out of spite, so that Normans could not eat of the food that they had worked so hard to grow.
The southern black army, which was moving north from London, was burning both sides of the Thames Estuary, and then they would move north along the coast of East Anglia. From the sea you could mark their progress by the wide plume of filthy smoke. Although almost all the folk of the northern coasts had taken to the ships, the Anglians had mostly fled inland to stay with family and friends. Of the folk that did leave by ship, most were of Frisian and Danish blood, and feared that they would be punished because of it.
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The Hoodsman - The Second Invasion by Skye Smith
Chapter 20 - The last men rescued from Yorkshire in December 1085
"I'm just going by height," the calm voice came from the forest, "but since you are the short ass, does that mean you are in charge?"
Raynar swung around with his bow to aim the point towards the voice. He forced himself to be calm, forced his heart to stop racing. They were about to ambush a Norman scouting party, and it was unnerving to be ambushed during an ambush. "I am in charge, what of it?" He watched as a tall thin man in hunters garb stepped out of the bushes in a totally different direction from where the voice had come from.
"I am Eric. This is my turf. I do the ambushing around here. You are not to ambush these scouts. Call your men off."
"What? Why should I. It's a perfect set up. The scouts are dead men, they just don't know it
yet."
"We need those scouts," Eric told him. "They are leading the army north, following your ships. Let them pass."
"It is because they are spying on our ships that we are killing them. We are the last rescue fleet along this coast before the winter storms close the sea, and they are making our task more difficult. Most of the folk we are rescuing are men like yourself. Men who stayed behind to make sure the local folk got away. Men who have been ambushing the Norman leaders. Help us, or bugger off."
"We don't have time to argue. Call off your men and let the scouts pass. Trust me. I will explain later."
Raynar stared at this forest man. He was standing absolutely still. Not even blinking. Not a twitch. No wonder he could disappear in the trees. He cupped his hand around his mouth and gave a hoodsman's signal. A fox calling for her mate, repeated three times. Drop everything and come here.
There were now sounds of hoofs. These scouts were some of the few in the black army who were allowed horses, albeit, farm nags. The hoofs came and went and then there was silence. "What gives, Ray," a voice came from the trees. "We had them."
"Come to me and meet Eric." Ray said. Ten men appeared out of nowhere all around them and crowded in. Everyone of them was a Fens Frisian and a nose taller than Raynar, despite his six feet. "Eric has something important to tell us."
They all squatted in the way of forest men, ready to leap at any sound, while listening intently. Eric told his story of woe about his village, and told of how as a youth he had been taught French by a friar, and of how he had been spying on the army by listening the warriors talk over their watch fires. He had been dogging this army north since the Humber.
"Don't you get it," Eric told them. "This is the harrowing army out of Lincoln, not Durham. This is not their coast. They marked you as you crossed the mouth of the Humber, and they think that your ships are the scouts for the full Danish fleet. They think that you are choosing the landing beach. The scouts are following you, and the army keeping back. They are waiting for you to stop and choose a beach for the landing. My guess is that the army will then camp nearby and wait for the invasion, and send a courier north to bring the harrowing army out of Durham to reinforce them."
"And you know this for sure?" Raynar asked.
"Positive, sort of. What does it matter. What matters is that so long as the scouts keep you in sight, the black army is following them. If the army is following you, then it isn't off raping and pillaging further inland along the Humber or the Wash. This coast was harrowed a month ago. There is nothing left. No animals, no grain, no women, no roofs, nothing to sustain the Danish army, as was the Norman plan. But now, the only army here is Norman. They must be getting hungry by now. If the weather turns on them they will be in deep shit."
"Hey Ray," one of the hoodsmen, a man with a flap of skin where his nose should have been, called out with a nasal twang. "I like this guy. What can we do to help?"
Nothing about Eric moved except his smile. "The worst place to be in bad weather anywhere along this coast is the bay and the beach up at Fylingdales. That is about twenty miles north of Flamburgh Head. Not a single village has survived the Norman scourge on that coast, not even Scarburgh. At Fylingdales, the moor and hills come close to the coast. It is a good beach for a landing, but a bad place to be caught by a winter storm. Even before the harrowings there was not much to eat there, and only a few fisher huts for shelter. Go there. Make a show of choosing it. And then moor offshore until the snow flies."
"Why?" asked another hoodsman. "That would mean freezing our nuts off and then risking winter storms to sail home."
"Because four or five thousand Normans may starve and freeze to death in the dark if they are caught by a moorland blizzard. Even if they survive, it will keep them far away from the rest of the folk of the Dales. Far away and out of trouble."
Raynar nodded as he thought. Back in '70 he had almost finished the Conqueror's army by trapping it overnight in a Peak's ice storm. It had been worth the try then, and it was worth a try now. "This bay, will you know it from the sea? Could you pilot us there?"
"Aye, but you will have to go slow enough for those scouts to keep up."
"Done. You've got yourself a fleet, Eric. We'll continue north taking any folk off the shore as they wave us down, and then make a big show for the scouts at your beach. But... but if we freeze to death waiting for snow, you will freeze with us."
* * * * *
"I can't feel my fingers," the lad complained. "I think they're frozen."
"Put them in your mouth to warm them up," Raynar told him.
"Or up yer arse," added the mate.
The three men looked out over the gunnels to watch the storm cloud that was now jet black over the hills behind Fylingdale moor. It was almost night anyway, which came early this close to December, but darker still under that storm. There were already hundreds of small fires at the foot of the closest hill where the Normans had camped to wait for Canute's fleet. They must be really cold to light those fires. Showing lights would warn the Danish fleet of their camp.
The lad was one of the wild men they had picked off the shores while they played out this charade. He had eyes like the others, and Raynar didn't like looking into them. They were berserkers, every one of them. Men who had stayed behind when their villages were rescued, only because they wanted to kill Normans. Kill Normans in retribution for the loss of loved ones and for the savagery that had accompanied that loss.
The mad ones kept the crew amused with their stories of how viciously they murdered Normans. Well, sort of amused. It was hard to believe any of the stories, because the feats they told of were more or less impossible. The crew listened, but like they were legends not scouting reports. The stories were weird, like those that teen boys told each other in the dark to scare each other. Spooky, bloodthirsty, horrific.
A flake of pure white snow drifted down across Raynar's vision. He watched it land on his sleeve and then not melt. "Right, that's it. We are out of here. Man the oars. Set the sail. Let's run before that storm, and if our luck holds perhaps we will be in the Wash by tomorrow."
A cheer went up from the freezing men huddled around the hot braziers. The other ships were signaled, the anchors hauled up, and they were away. Behind them the fires of the army were now barely visible through the blizzard that had just folded down from the hills and over the bay. Snugged up against the hill like that, the Normans wouldn't have even known the storm was coming.
They had just cleared the point when the wind hit and men jumped to reef the sail. It was a Nor'wester, bringing lots of snow, but no bitter cold. Hopefully it would blow them far to the south before it swung around to the Nor'east, and turned the ships shrouds to ice. Hopefully the blizzard would hold the army in place until the killing cold of the Nor'easter hit them. Just two days ago the crew had threatened to throw Eric overboard. Now he was the most popular man on the ship.
Eric was laughing and Raynar saluted him, but then looked away nervously. The three crazies they had picked up last were staring at him. Again. No one else would sit near them for they stank of death or something worse. They just stared with empty eyes. It made him shudder. Or was that from the cold.
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The Hoodsman - The Second Invasion by Skye Smith
Chapter 21 - The last earl's wife is murdered in Huntingdon, April 1086
The Anske was busy ferrying Raynar around, keeping things organized, gathering news, passing on news, and hauling cargos of arrows. The arrow works was in Huntingdon, or at least, the largest works was in Huntingdon, where it had been set up by John Smith, so the Anske was the most frequent ship at the docks there. This trip up the river, however, Raynar was determined to evacuate Judith and the last of her women, once and for all, especially Maud and Lucy.
Twice over the winter they had evacuated Judith with the folk of Huntingdon and had waited on the ships until they were sure that the marauding armies had turned away. The armies h
ad not spent the winter on the coast waiting for Canute to invade. The conqueror had given leave for them to retreat from the brutal winter. Many of the Italian Normans were worrying the folk of Bristol while they waited impatiently for Irish or Breton ships to take them across the Manche on the first leg of the long journey back to Sicily.
The problem that the Conqueror, and his lords, and the folk were now having with the army, was how to feed them all. The bountiful harvests of the anarchy peace were no more. The fall harvest had been weak because the farmers were in hiding. A quarter of the productive fields had been harrowed to save them from the Danes who never came. After only six months of renewed Norman misrule, the kingdom was starving, yet again.
An army had to keep moving to feed itself. The Conquerors solution had been to break up the army into small squads for the winter and billet them in every manor house. That was very bad news for the serfs who had, under Norman law, freed themselves during the anarchy. With the army billeted with them, every manor lord whipped, beat, and killed the local peasants until they succumbed to the brutality and declared themselves his serfs.
The enlarged garrisons had nothing to do so they were put to work rebuilding castles, forts and fortresses, and building new ones. With the coming of spring and calm seas, the armies reformed and moved back to the North Sea coast to stand watch. Again the problem was how to feed them, for the coast had been so thoroughly harrowed that even in the warmth of spring there was nothing to eat.
In the Fens, the Cambridge garrison had grown, and the sheriff was having trouble feeding them because there were no longer any folk in the fishing villages. His solution was to send the extra men to all of the abbey villages to be billeted and fed. It was only a matter of time before he would demand to billet men at Huntingdon. That was why Judith could no longer stay.
The Fen land was flat, and the River Ouse sinuous, so the crew of the Anske knew there was trouble in Huntingdon even as they passed the abbey at Ely. There was a signal, a plume of smoke from tower that marked Huntingdon above the high bush that ran along the banks of the river. When they came around the last bend in the river they could hear the sounds of battle and the screams of women. All but a handful of oarsmen picked up their bows and knocked arrows in preparation for coming around the last bend and towards the docks.