Hoodsman: Ely Wakes Read online

  Robert looked nothing like his father, William the Conqueror. William had been a big man who carried a lot of weight in his belly. Robert took after his mother Mathilde, and was short and diminutive, and therefore much fitter than his father had been at his age.

  Eustace had his father's look to him. His father was also a Eustace, and had been at the battle for Hastings’s Road back in '66, and at the battle of Cassel in Flanders in '71. Raynar had been at both battles too, but had seen the father only from a distance. The brothers of this younger Eustace had been the first crusader rulers of Jerusalem and one of them was still the King there, but he could not remember which of them for he could never tell the twins apart.

  "Why did you bring a war bow to a hunt?" asked Robert in French.

  "I am not here to hunt, sire," replied Raynar in French. "I am here on Henry's orders to ensure that you are not hunted." Few Normans spoke English despite the time enough to learn it in thirty years. This always irked him.

  "Ah, I understand," said Robert with a grimace. "I have heard the rumours that Rufus did not die by accident, but by the arrow of an outlaw. So Henry thinks there are still outlaws in this forest, then, despite having recruited so many into his army." It had been the English bowmen that Henry had so quickly recruited into his army that had decided the outcome of the Norman civil war at Alton.

  The king's new archers had trapped much of Robert's army in the forest, and had surrounded them by knight-killing Welsh bows, and so Robert had been forced to agree to Henry's terms and drop his own, stronger, claim to the English throne. The Norman Civil War ended quickly and peacefully without a cavalry charge, and without a slaughter of Norman against Norman. That outcome had always irked him. Raynar would much rather that there had been a battle to slaughter the enire Norman ruling class

  The Norman knights now hated the English bowmen and had learned to distinguished bowmen from ordinary archers by the bow that they all carried. The long Welsh selfbow made from seasoned staves of the 'If' tree. The Holy tree that the welsh called Ywen and the English called Yew and was to be found in so many churchyards. The giant trees that had been worshipped before the Romans, and before the Christians.

  "Henry did not send this man because of footpads," spoke Eustace. "Even in Boulogne we have heard of the difference between a footpad and an English hoodsman. The hoodsmen carry a war bow like Raynar's that can puncture the finest armour. My father lost the fortress of Cassel to Robert the Frisian because of those damn bows back in... ugh."

  "It was in '70," Raynar supplied the date. "Your father supported Rachilde and Arnulf against the Frisian."

  Robert put his hand out towards the long bow and Raynar put it into his hand, and then passed one heavy, bodkin arrow to him as well. When Robert made to nock the arrow, Raynar had him pause while he removed and passed him his protective leathers for string fingers and bow arm. He showed the Duke how draw the powerful bow using his back and shoulders, rather than his arms.

  Robert was no stranger to bows. He was as avid a hunter as were all Norman warriors. He practiced drawing the bow a few times and felt the muscles of his entire body straining. He felt the power in the bow and knew he had to loose soon before his arm and fingers weakened. A local peasant lad was working the hunting dogs a hundred paces away and he took aim at him. He loosed, but at the second he did so Eustace purposefully knocked his arm and the arrow hissed well wide of the young lad.

  "Shoot him and you will have the hoodsmen hunting us for sure," Eustace hissed. "I value my life more than that lads."

  "What, for killing a serf? This I don't believe," replied Robert. He was angry with the miss.

  "This is not the Holy Land, Robert," scolded Eustace. "You cannot just kill the folk for pleasure. Here in England, every forest lad like that has a cousin who is a hoodsman. Even kings are not safe from the vengeance of their bows. For Christ's sake man, you are standing where they assassinated your brother."

  Robert shoved the bow back at Raynar. "That is why we have Raynar. To protect us from the hoodsmen." He peeled off the leathers.

  "Even I cannot protect you from the Hood if you kill an innocent like that lad," said Raynar as he took back the bow. "They are expert huntsmen. You will not know of their presence until you feel the point tear through your heart. I was sent with you to wave this bow at the eyes that watch this forest. In my company you will have safe passage, but not if you commit murder, or even rape."

  Robert looked thoughtful for a moment. "The power released by that bow is frightening. What is the range?"

  "I expect to kill men in armour at fifty paces, in mail at a hundred paces, horses at a hundred and fifty, and men without armour at two hundred and fifty. The power by itself is not enough though. At such long ranges the aim is all. If you are off by an inch at fifty paces, you are off by a hand at a hundred, and by a foot at a hundred and fifty. Most men do not have the strength to loose the arrow and keep the aim. You did well. Very well."

  "So that is why you, yourself, did not move to spoil my aim," laughed Robert, eager to seize on the complement to save face. "You did not expect me to be able to hold it. Then your praise is high indeed." Back in a good mood he waived the party to their horses. "Come, let us see what the dogs have found for us."

  Eustace hung back with Raynar. "He is like my brother Baldwin who has just succeeded my brother Godfrey as the King of Jerusalem. The battles in the Holy Land do that to warriors. Life is not sacred to them anymore. They have killed so many, seen so much death, that they no longer feel anything when they take a life. It is like a sickness of the mind. Like a berserker, but with calm and cunning."

  "I have met many like him, and for the most they were Normans. I agree with your description, although my Christian friends swear that the devil has possessed them. You are wrong to think it is just because of the crusades. The same happened to them here in England. I think it is because they have become too comfortable with being the masters of slaves. They no longer see the slaves as people, but as beasts to be treated like sheep and cattle. Beasts without rights or courts to protect them."

  "The Norman version of serfdom is an abomination," said Eustace as he mounted his horse. "We Flems, in both Boulogne and Flanders, are undoing the Frankish serfdom. We are changing it to simple socage, and our counties are the wealthier for it." He hurried his horse for there was a new and insistant pitch to the howls of the dogs.

  Raynar stretched his legs once more, and then lifted himself into his saddle and followed Eustace. The dogs had found venison. Hopefully boar.

  As they rode close they could see that a verderer was holding a very large tusker at bay with a tasseled spear, while Robert was charging the beast with his lance down ready to skewer it. The other men had circled it and were holding back allowing the Duke to have the sport. One of them yelled a warning and Raynar, understanding the English of the warning, looked and caught s glimpse of a shadow moving fast through the under brush. The boar had a mate.

  The second boar snapped the rear fetlock of Robert's horse with one bite. The horse went insane but could not rear or kick with one broken leg and instead tipped and crumpled. The original boar was now ignoring the verderer's tasseled spear and was attacking the face of the downed horse.

  Robert was an expert horseman and had stayed with the saddle until the horse was almost on the ground and then had pushed himself away. He was now pulling himself along the ground to get his legs well clear of the twisting, squirming horse. The second boar was getting ready to charge him.

  Raynar threw down his useless war bow. It was too long to use from horseback, and was clumsy in close fights. He slid down his saddle on the off side so that he could land next to Eustace's horse, and he pulled Eustace's lance from that saddle's sheath.

  He tore his cloak over his head and waved it towards the second boar. The boar turned it's head at the movement and first charged forward towards Robert but then arched his back to turn his body, and finished the charge directly towards the cloak
. It was a big sucker, heavier than Raynar and with tusks like daggers.

  Raynar kept wagging the cloak with his left hand as he took a firmer grip on the lance with his right. When the boar was only steps away he yanked the cloak hard to the left away from his body, and the boar changed directions with it. He shoved the spear with full force at the now open side of the beast.

  The boar ripped the cloak from his hands and was shredding it, not yet feeling the pain of the hit through the red of it's anger. Raynar kept pushing with all his strength on the shaft of the lance so that the brute would not shake it loose. He stepped forward and put the entire weight of his body into the shaft so that it skewered the writhing beast to the ground.

  He must have missed the heart because the boar was now squealing in pain and anger and was trying to reach around to slash at Raynar's hands on the shaft. For minutes he was caught in a gruesome tug of war with the beast. It was trying to slash him, and he was using the imbedded lance to keep his distance away. Finally, and none too soon, the boar collapsed with the shock of the pain, so Raynar let go of the shaft and turned towards the other boar while reaching for his short sword. The other boar was dying with the verderer's tasseled spear through its neck.

  Eustace used his sword to silence the wounded horse, and then helped Robert to his feet. Robert was shaken and winded from the fall, but seemed unhurt. Raynar walked towards them, and Robert went to shake his hand, but Raynar walked right passed him and grasped the arm of the verderer.

  "To hold a boar at bay so that a hunter can have the sport is either the bravest or the stupidest thing I have ever seen. And then to dismount and skewer the beast in one smooth move was the most skillful." They held their grasp until Robert got to them and slapped both of them on their shoulders and gave them his thanks.

  "Did anyone get slashed?" Raynar called out to everyone. "If so come to me and I will clean the wounds here and now. Nothing festers faster than a wound that has touched pig." Robert was scratched and bruised but not by the pig.

  "Oy," It was the lad with the dogs. "one of the dogs is cut, but I don't know that it was by the tuskers."

  Raynar walked to his saddle to get his wine skin and then walked to the lad with his dogs. The lad held the injured dog quiet while Raynar used the wine to clean the tear. This dog would have ripped Raynar's arm off if the lad had not been soothing it. Instead she was like a meek puppy despite the sting of the wine.

  The lad smiled nervously at this old warrior. He was English, not Norman, and he carried a Hoodsman's bow, like the one his father had wrapped in oil cloth and buried behind their house. "Have you ever hunted more dangerous animals than these boars?" he asked. "Wolves, or perhaps those huge wolves they call bears?"

  "I have hunted the most dangerous animals of all," growled Raynar as he finished cleaning the dog's wound and then slowly reached behind the dogs ears to scratch him there. "Half human boars, half human wolves, half human bears. Men who have lost their humanity and have become wild animals."

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  The Hoodsman - Ely Wakes by Skye Smith

  Chapter 2 - Stealing a golden angel from Peterburgh in May 1070

  Prior Aethelwold gave Hereward and young Raynar a guarded welcome when they returned to Peterburgh Abbey from Spalding. Just last week these same men had come from Huntingdon and had handed him a fortune in religious treasures that had been taken, or sent away, from the abbey. Apparently the new Norman abbot had spirited them away.

  Unfortunately, when these same men had left the abbey, they took with them all of the chests of valuables that the Abbey had been holding in trust for English lords. Lords who had now fled into exile. So long as it was their bowmen who controlled the burgh walls, there was nothing that he could do about it. Actually he preferred the company of Rodor, the bowmen's commander, to that of his abbot, the one time Norman knight commander.

  The abbot was still serving his penance in a locked cell for sexual misconduct against minors. Each day the prior would visit his abbot in his cell, but the time there was spent being blamed for everything that was going wrong in the abbot's life, and listening to abbot's fiery talk of blame and consequences.

  Eventually the abbot had to be told that his surviving men-at-arms had been shipped away to be oar bondsmen on Danish trading ships. Again the prior was blamed. A few days later, he had to tell the abbot that Prince Edgar's man, Raynar, had redeemed Edgar's great treasure. Luckily the abbot had expected this event and stayed quite calm, that is until he was told that Raynar also took with him all of the deposits that were in trust from English lords.

  He had not stayed to listen to the eruption of profanity from the abbot. Now that Raynar had returned, he must once again visit the abbot in his cell. He found the abbot unusually subdued. "Raynar and Hereward are back," he told the abbot.

  "So soon," he replied. "I thought you told me that they were shipping all the treasures to Scotland where Edgar is, and where many of the exiled lords are."

  "Well obviously the men did not go with the treasure," mumbled the prior.

  "I don't believe it. Who could they trust such a vast treasure to. Would you trust any of the ships captains. They would turn south, rather than north, and buy themselves an island in the Mediterranean." The abbot mumbled the next words as if he were thinking out loud. "They will have hidden that treasure close by. Buried it probably, and in many different places."

  "Perhaps," agreed the prior.

  "When Edgar's man left the abbey with the treasure, who rode with him?"

  "Well, Hereward and Alan and his bowmen, and the giant smith, oh and the woman, Anske. She went too."

  "And do any of them have homes near to here?" asked the Abbot.

  "Hereward has family in Burna, but he does not live there. Anske is from a village close to Spalding, I think."

  "When they sent my men off on Danish ships, were any left behind?"

  "A few, those who were injured. Your sergeant is still a prisoner here because he still suffers from Anke's arrow wound."

  "Ahh, good, could you arrange for him to visit me today?"

  "I shall try, but I cannot promise success. Your sergeant is not well liked by the bowmen."

  "Please try," said the abbot, polite for a change.

  The prior felt quite relieved as he walked back to his own quarters. The abbot had actually been calm and polite. Perhaps time in the cell would turn him away from his warrior ways, and towards becoming a good monk, and a member in good standing of the Order. He was content.

  With the new abbot locked in his cell, the abbey was more like the holy place it had been before old abbot Brand had died. Rodor kept his men separate yet protective of the monks, so the monks felt secure and were once again wandering the countryside doing their farming tasks. Tasks such as bee keeping and vegetable gardening and sheep and geese herding; and also tasks like overseeing the tenant farmers and the lay millers and fullers.

  Despite Hereward being a foresworn knight of the abbey, it was Prince Edgar’s man, Raynar, that the prior had the most faith in. When Raynar told him that they would hold the lordly treasures in safekeeping in hopes of returning them to their rightful families, he actually believed him. The young man had worked as a lay person for one of the Order's other abbey's, and had been taught well by someone of the Order, though by whom and where the man refused to say.

  Through Rodor, the prior found out that only four of the abbot's men remained at the abbey and all because of their wounds. And yes, one of them was that obnoxious and shifty sergeant that the abbot had set so much store in. He was a nasty piece of work, and the prior would rather that he had been taken with the others to pull on oars, than left here to cause trouble.

  It took only a few words to Rodor to arrange for the sergeant to be assigned the light duties of waiting on the abbot's needs. He went with Rodor to tell the sergeant, and then led the sergeant towards the Abbey to show him to the cell. They had almost reached the steps down when the lov
ely Anske pranced through the gate astride a wondrous Frisian mare and dressed once more as a desirable woman. He saw a glint of evil cross the sergeant’s eyes and it made him shiver.

  The next morning the prior went to speak to the monk who collected slop buckets from all the cells. The man was a renowned gossip and he told him of the evil snickers and urgent whispering between the abbot and his sergeant. He could only guess that these discussions had something to do with the abbot's other men-at- arms, who had duties at other houses of this abbey's widespread holdings.

  Only last month the abbot had made arrangements for the treasures of those other houses to be moved to Peterburgh, which was why the abbot had recruited so many armed men. Despite being the prior, he was never told any of these plans until the abbot's men began arriving with the treasures. The sergeant had arranged all of that.

  The news of the abbot's reclusion must have traveled to all of those other houses by now, so the men-at-arms at those houses would be awaiting new orders. The prior doubted that the abbot would send instructions to his men through the Order's regular couriers. It came to him that the abbot must hope to use the injured prisoners as messengers. The next time the prior saw Raynar, he asked about the health of the prisoners. As far as the comely young man was concerned, it was all good news. The men were healing quickly, even the sergeant’s infected bottom.

  That afternoon, as with most afternoons, the prior walked slowly in contemplation along the top of the wall beside the abbey gate. This time he was contemplating the evil he had seen in the sergeant’s eyes. He reached a decision. That night at the evening meal he would ask Hereward to take the four remaining prisoners to Ely and there ask Abbot Thurston to assign them to some useful work.

  Having made the decision, he felt happier and lighter of heart. From this wall he could watch the farmers leave the burgh and the villagers close up their houses, and the swans swim along the river, and the sun drop behind the enormous trees that had marked this as a holy place long before there was ever a church built on this river bank.