Hoodsman: Revolt of the Earls Page 4

  It was no surprise, then, that all ways to the castle were blocked with small wooden forts filled with Henry's men. The castle was completely cut off from the countryside. There were even small forts above it and below it on the river banks. Just the sight of Raynar's expensive borrowed horse and his tax collector costume had the guards hurrying to unblock the way as he rode towards Henry's main camp.

  Along the way he passed close by the siege engines and slowed to have a good look. Of interest to him were the three mangonels with their bowl shaped buckets for tossing stones at walls. They looked long abandoned, and there were no crews close by to ask about them.

  He found Henry in multi roomed tent on a small rise above the camp. At first his guards tried to keep him from the king, but he simply waved his treasury badge and pushed through them. The inside of the tent was dark and smelled of shit. Henry was reclined on a raised pallet and had a damp cloth on his forehead and a moan on his lips. Two women, too young and comely to be simply nurses, were hovering close by, as was a physician.

  "Another bleeding?" asked Henry weakly. "I'll have no blood left soon."

  "What are his symptoms?" asked Raynar. Henry looked over at him and gave him a nod of recognition and a weak smile.

  "Who are you to ask?" replied the physician.

  "The queen's man." replied Raynar and shut his mouth on the rest of the words he wanted to say to this quack.

  "It has the symptoms of the water sickness, but it is the wrong season and no one else in the camp has it." explained the physician.

  "Food poisoning then?" queried Raynar.

  "I think not. His taster is well, and so are these, ugh, women"

  "Henry," said Raynar "when you burp, what do you taste."

  "Egg. Egg farts." replied Henry.

  "How many times has he bled you?"

  "At least six."

  "Physician," Raynar swung around and picked the man up by his collar, "if you value your life you will not enter this tent again." He pushed the man out the flap of the tent and then walked over to the two women.

  "You," he said to the first, "stay here with him. You," he pointed to the second, "go to the kitchen. I want the cook to prepare a thin and salty soup with good fresh liver chopped into it. Boil it, cover it, and then bring it here to cool. Also bring some fermented sheep’s milk. If the cook doesn't have any, have him send to the next village for some. Meanwhile I am off to the river bank to collect medicines. I will be back shortly."

  It took him two hours and a long walk to find the plants he was searching for because the land had been trampled by an army of feet. It took him another hour in the kitchen behind the king's marquee to prepare the medicine. By the time he returned to the king's tent, the liver soup and the fermented milk were waiting for him.

  "Henry, you are weak from the bleeding and from dehydration. I want you to sip on this liver soup. Just small sips, but many times a day. After each sip, I want you to take a sip of the milk. I have some medicine for you as well, but I won't give you any until we see if you can keep the soup down. "

  "Ugh," Henry complained and spat out the first mouthful, but then licked his lips and smiled and sipped some more soup. "After you get over the smell of it, you can feel it doing you good."

  "While we are getting you well, do you mind if I play with some of your siege engines?"

  "Be my guest," replied Henry. "but I'll tell you right out, that the problem with them is that there is no high ground to place them on. In order to sling stones heavy enough to damage those walls, you have to place them so close to the walls that you are well within arrow range."

  "I notice the soil and grasses are very dry. When was the last heavy rain?"

  "At least a month ago," replied Henry.

  "If I bring your siege captain here, will you place him under my orders?"

  "Hah," sputtered Henry through his sip of milk, "I knew I should have sent for you a month ago."

  "What I have in mind would not have worked a month ago."

  * * * * *

  The siege engine crew were not well pleased with Raynar. Instead of slinging stones at the wall, Raynar had them slinging lighter payloads over the walls. As the loads were lighter, the engines could stay well out of range of the castle's arrows.

  He and the siege captain had studied a rough plan of the castle and they had each of two mangonels aiming towards the two wells marked on the plans. The third mangonel was changing its aim each time to spread its loads widely over all the roofs within the walls.

  There was an endless line of men carrying skin bags of the contents of the camp's midden and latrines to the first two mangonels. Each shot was spreading evil smelling offal and dung within the castle, with the objective of contaminating the wells. It had been a dry June so by now their wells would be low and water scarce.

  "Quit your complaining," he yelled with a laugh to the men. "Haven't you always wanted to throw shit at knights." The men all laughed and then gagged at the smell they breathed in, which made them laugh even harder at each others faces.

  There were English bowmen spread along the curves of the river to ensure no one from the castle could reach the river water. There were other bowmen squatting near the siege engines preparing some fire arrows. The third mangonel was slinging skins of lamp oil at locations within the castle that were likely to have burnables like thatch roofs or wooden walls, including the main gate.

  At Raynar's order the fire arrows began. The siege engine crews all complained that all of this had been tried before when they had first laid siege. It didn't work then, and it wouldn't work now. Raynar just smiled at them. The men had been watching summer arrive day by day, but because they were seeing the daily changes they were not seeing the month's change.

  After the first day of bombardment, the siege captain told Henry exactly what the siege engine crews were saying. After the second day the captain asked Henry to order the engines stopped. Henry refused. He was already feeling stronger from the liver soup and Raynar had started him on the evilly bitter medicine. He was feeling strong enough that he even braved a walk to the siege engines. This with the help of an arm across the shoulders of each comely nurse. He watched the men work the engines until Raynar spotted him.

  Raynar grabbed him and had two hefty lads create a chair with their crossed hand and carry him quickly back to his tent. Once he was again on his bed and the men gone, Raynar scolded him. "Bloody hell, Henry. You are already sick. Standing around those poisonous loads could have finished you. You do realize that I have ordered that your own slop buckets be slung at the castle?"

  He may as well have been talking to the wall, because suddenly there were cheers from the men and Henry wriggled free of Raynar's grip and went back outside. The castle gate was on fire and the castle guards were running along the walls with buckets of water to douse it. His English bowmen now had human targets.

  By the third day, there was a flag of truce waving from the gate's tower, and Henry was feeling well enough to attend the ensuing parley. He was still weak however, and this may have accounted for him accepting terms that Raynar would never have accepted. The castellan seemed to be stalling for more time in hopes of a good rain.

  Despite warnings not to accept, Henry agreed that the castle could send a courier to Robert Belleme asking for his permission for them to surrender the castle.

  "Don't be so angry with me, Raynar. I am not a complete fool," said Henry when they were back at his tent. "I know they cannot hold the castle much longer whether Belleme gives his permission or not. My guess is that they will beg to surrender before the couriers reach Belleme."

  "So why did you accept?"

  "Because their courier will need an escort to gain safe passage as far as Shropshire. You will be that escort," replied Henry.

  "Me," Raynar felt his guts churn. "Why me."

  "Well first off, you are already dressed as a royal tax collector and who better than a collector to gain safe passage without a troop of guards?" sta
ted Henry.

  "Or to collect arrows in the back," Raynar mumbled softly.

  "By the time you return from Shropshire you will know the whereabouts of Belleme, and the status of his castle constructions," continued Henry despite the complaints.

  "Any of your men are welcome to these clothes," Raynar offered, "and they could do better service with them than an old man like me."

  "And before you return, you will have talked to your old friends the Welsh princes and you will have heard their response to the offer you will take to them," continued Henry.

  "Ah, so now we get to it."

  "And before you return, I would have you inspect my siege at Bridgnorth. It has been almost three months and still there is no end in sight. Robert Meulan is in charge there. Do you know him?"

  Meulan's face drifted into Raynar’s mind. Meulan was Henry's right hand man, and he had seen him many times but had never sought his company. He feared revealing secrets that Meulan may unwind. Meulan had been one of the hunters standing next to Henry when they had found the body of King Rufus laid out in the New Forest with Raynar's arrow in his chest.

  All Henry and Meulan had known was that it was a hoodsman's arrow, with blackened flights to tell everyone that it was from vengeance. On that day, Raynar had watched them from deep cover and deep shade. It had been stupid to hide and watch them find the body. The only reason he had not been caught at the site of the assassination was that Henry and his men had left immediately to seize the king's treasury in Winchester.

  "I know him to see him," Raynar replied, "but I doubt I have spoken ten words to him in the past two years."

  "Well, see if you can help him to break the new castle that Belleme has built in Bridgnorth," Henry lowered his voice. "There is more important work for you to do on this journey. I want you to spread the word to the English bowmen and axemen of Shropshire and Staffordshire and Cheshire that there are pardon's to be won in my service. Pardons from their king that their own lords have refused to honor and give to them.

  From the events of the past few months I have realized that many of my Earls have not made good on the promises I made to this kingdom in my Coronation Charter. Certainly none of the Earls in the West counties have passed on my good works to the folk. Well that is about to change in the west. Every man that rallies to my fight against Belleme and Mortain will be handed my pardon by my hand even if I have to stay up nights to write them myself."

  "These are heavy tasks that you have set for me."

  "I know it," agreed Henry, "take as much time as you need, but send word regularly to Winchester. Edith will ensure that your messages reach me. You will have an ally in Cheshire. The Earl of Chester died last year and I have not yet replaced him. My sheriff therefore controls that shire. I will send a letter of introduction with you, along with some orders for him. They will tell him to help you raise me an army of Englishmen united by their hatred of Belleme."

  "Henry," sniffed Raynar, "you are a devious sod."

  Henry laughed aloud. "So my brothers always told me. So they were right, then, because a porter from the peaks of Derbyshire now tells me it is so."

  Raynar gave him a hard stare. "If we raise an army based on the hatred of Belleme, then you will not be able to stop them from killing him. It will not be like at Alton where you could stay the bows of the men you recruited into your royal archers. These wester folk will not have eaten your salt. Their own vengeance will lead them and if you try to stay them, then they will be just as likely turn against you and all other Norman lords."

  Henry pressed his hands together as if he were in prayer while he thought.

  "Henry, is it your will that the lords of Shropshire be slaughtered. You must decide now, because there will be no going back. The chance for vengeance against Belleme the Impaler will gather a hoard from shires near and far. Once gathered they will not stop killing until it is finished."

  "How big of a hoard?" asked Henry.

  "There is no way of telling. A few hundred or as many as ten thousand. Until you order it, you will not know. The outlaws will help you, for they have nothing to lose and pardons to gain, but there will be many others marching with them."

  "Ten thousand. I do not need that many," stated Henry. "Are you exaggerating?"

  "It depends on how you spread the word. Your timing is good. It is well before harvest. If they believe your words, then they may leave their women in the villages and dig up their fathers' weapons from their hides. The fathers will still remember the way of the old English fyrd. For a chance at being the one to slaughter the Impaler, some of them would walk a hundred miles. But I warn you again, once they are raised up, you risk that the streets of the kingdom will run red with Norman blood."

  "Would they follow me to Normandy?" asked Henry.

  "Across the Manche. Not this year. By the time you are finished with Belleme it will be too close to harvest. Beware of how you are thinking. The mob will not follow your lead. You must lead the mob to where THEY want to go. Once they finish with Belleme they may decide to continue on to Cornwall. You will have the choice of leading them there, or letting someone else lead them."

  "Your words make me afraid, friend," said Henry quietly. "What I start now against Belleme could turn into a peasant's rebellion that could shake all of Christendom. How will I control such a mob."

  Raynar laughed. "How does your wife control the mobs. She walks amongst them. She talks to them one to one, without all the bowing and scraping. If she were not new with child, she could ride beside you and control them for you. Instead you must do as she would do. Drink with them, laugh with them, eat with them, walk with them, listen to them, let them finish your sentences, and for Woden's sake, speak to them in English."

  Henry thought about his lovely and gentle wife. She was born a princess in the wild land of Scotland, but raised in a convent near Winchester. It was true what Raynar said. She could walk unattended in the markets of the kingdom and be safer than if she were under guard in the palace. Any man leering at her beauty would have his eyes scratched out by the women folk. "Is Edith so powerful?" he asked.

  "Henry you jest. She is hugely powerful, and when she bears you a son she will become the most powerful woman in all of Christendom. With your son in her arms she could step forward and rule in place of both you and your brother Duke Robert. If her sister Mary bears Eustace of Boulogne a son then together the two sisters could extend their power across France. What is more, Scotland, Denmark and Flanders would help them to do it."

  "And if the sisters have only daughters. What then?" asked Henry.

  "Do not even speak the words, for that is something to truly fear. With no sons between them, then the Norman Empire would be torn to pieces, for your eldest daughter, Matilda, will marry into a family of great power, as will Mary's eldest, and then each husband would claim all."

  "Thank you, Raynar," said Henry, "as usual your advice is different from anyone else’s, and much less twisted by politics. Yes, I think I do want to ask the help of the outlaws and the folk against Belleme. If I time it well, then afterwards they will want to go home to their harvest rather than press on to Cornwall."

  "You do realize," cautioned Raynar, "that no one has levied the fyrd in this kingdom since the revolt of the earls back in '75. No one has been able to. That was the last time there was an English Earl and an English Bishop who could raise them, for the fyrd is a very English thing. There is nothing like it in Normandy."

  "An English thing, like my wife, my queen?"

  "You sly bugger," Raynar told his king. "You've already thought this out. You're going to have the Queen of the English raise the fyrd in her name."

  "Ray, I have lived in England for most of my adult life. English was a cradle language to me. My hunting companion when I was a lad in Normandy was Prince Edgar, Edith's uncle. I have studied the differences between the England of Knut and the England that my father's barons have created. I may not be a trained general but I know the English and th
eir tongue better than any of my barons.

  Unfortunately, my professional army is not strong enough to beat Belleme, not if he has the support of other Earls. The only way that I can end this without a huge loss of life is to make him very afraid. Having my army look bigger than it is will be a good start. The fyrd is the English amateur militia, not a professional military. Their purpose will be to take on the defensive and support duties, which means that my entire professional force can be in the front line. But you know all this. You have marched in the fyrd before now. Led them even."

  "It is more of a mob than a militia," Raynar warned him softly. "And therefore it has a mind of it's own, and the results may not be what you expect. I rode with the fyrd the last time it was levied back in '75 by Earl Waltheof and Bishop Wulfstan. The fyrd didn't give a shit about which of the nobility won or lost. They came out to make good and damn sure that the villagers did not lose, yet again."

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Hoodsman - Revolt of the Earls by Skye Smith

  Chapter 5 - Wolfpacks in Worcester, Worcestershire in June 1075

  "Bloody nobles," young Raynar cursed again under his breath, "when will I learn to stay well clear of them."

  One of the other wolvesheads was riding beside him and he grumbled, "You'll have to speak up."

  "I am a successful trader in Brugge with two handfuls of ships," Raynar complained, "What am I doing rubbing my arse raw in an English saddle in the Vale of Evesham?"

  "The way I heard it, it was your idea."

  "Sometimes," Raynar moaned, "I think the nobles trick me into saying things that they want me to say, so that I will take part. This time it was Waltheof, the Sheriff of Cambridgeshire, and the Sheriff of Northamptonshire. They kept listing off the same rivers, over and over. They were trying to choose one that would serve as a defensive line to hold Roger of Hereford's army in the west, so as to keep it from joining with Ralph's army in Norfolk. None of the ones they listed would do. They were too shallow with too many fords."