The Hoodsman - Killing Kings Read online

  "Of course I know of the Neb Storm. I am born of the Peaks. The Neb Storm is what everyone measures every killing ice storm against."

  "I was but eleven at the time and Britta thirteen. We had just attended the wedding of my eldest brother. It hurt our family more than any other. My father, Hugh, lost half of his sheep, all of his lambs, two shepherds, a wife, and a son. All in one hour to one freak spring storm. And the losses didn't stop there. We lived like paupers while he tried to put his life back together.

  Eventually he gave up, withdrew into his grief, and threatened to become a monk and leave us. At that point my oldest brother, on his thirtieth birthday, petitioned the Moot to take his inheritance early so that he could save the estate. Considering Hugh's state of mind, the Moot agreed."

  "Ah, so that is what happened," Raynar went suddenly quiet thinking of his friend, old Hugh. What a tragedy to have to bear. "I have heard other gossip from those that did not know the truth."

  "My brother had a new wife and it was her family who provided the loans that saved the estate. Unfortunately she became the head of the household, replacing Britta. She resented both of us. We were seventeen and fifteen and not yet betrothed. Not unusual in a Danish family. We tend to keep our daughters close to home longer than Saxons. She was quick to find us husbands to get rid of us.

  Britta was wed to Osgar. Her dowry was the grazing rights to our lowland pastures until she bore him a son. Within the year she had a daughter, Marion, but then Osgar was injured in a brawl in Scafeld and there have been no more children since. That is why Hugh must still pasture our sheep in the high meadows of the Tor."

  Raynar nodded. So much about his shepherd mentor, old Hugh was now clear. "And you?"

  "I was married to an old friend of Hugh's, a widower who needed a mother for his two children. He took me without dowry, as a favour to Hugh. The marriage was barren. He was old. He died three months ago. I became a young and comely widow without a child of her own."

  "So that was good for you, then," he whispered.

  "Are you really that naive?" she hissed. "Without a child I had no role. I was no longer a wife, and could not fill the role of a loving mother. I could not become guardian to his children, nor trustee to the estate. His younger brother, another older man, took over the main manor, the children, and the estate. I inherited an old manor, abandoned and with no land. An empty place with no income. As I came into the marriage with no dowry, so did I leave it.

  I was viewed as nothing more than a drain on the estate's coin. I had a decision to make. Find another husband - difficult without a dowry. Stay on as governess to my step children, and therefore mistress to the new lord. Go back to my own family. Or, the way of most childless widows, depend on the generosity of men, and eventually end up as an alehouse slut."

  "Sorry, love, I didn't realize," he whispered softly. "So you went back to your family's manor, back to Hugh."

  She moaned, "Hugh had become his own shepherd. My brother is lord there now. His wife would not suffer me to cross her doorstep. I had only two realistic choices. Become a mistress to my husband's brother, or live with Britta until I found another husband.

  Britta was worried about me from the moment I entered Sweyn's household. She had long known what an evil shit Garrick was. Luckily for me, I was not his type. I was four years older than he, and very much not a virgin, and I no longer had the skin of a young teen.

  Unluckily, I didn't know that I was not his type until after Sweyn had asked for us to wed, and until after I had rejected him. Any rejection turned Garrick into an instant enemy. He never wanted anything so much as that which he could not have. Suddenly he wanted me, but not as a wife."

  "Is that when he raped the household maid?"

  "My maid. He raped 'my' maid. He went to my room to rape me, but I was not there, so he did her in my place. Oh," she sobbed, "he used her cruelly and beat her face so as to ruin her beauty. When she accused him, he blamed it all on me for not being there. I began to fear for my life but where else could I go. It was Britta who told me what to do. I seduced the lord, her father-in-law Sweyn. Britta arranged for our coupling to be 'accidentally' witness. Together we convinced him to offer to wed me."

  "So that is who you will wed next Sunday?" Raynar almost cried. "Lord Sweyn? But he is so old, over fifty. You cannot do this thing. Marry me instead."

  "You, a shepherd, a porter, a man who breaks his back everyday carrying lead ore. I love you dearly, darling, but you cannot afford me."

  "You said you have an old manor. I can work it. We can make it pay. Life will be good, you will see. I am not just a porter, I am a head porter because I can read and write, well, at least I am getting better at writing. I can do sums and ledgers. Please, marry me."

  She took a deep breath. He was so young, so eager to please, so simple. "The logic and desires of women confuse men. You probably know this already," she whispered. "But the logic and desires of women born to the manor are even more confusing. I desire you, desire to be with you. More, I love you. You will be the love of my life. But marry you? Never.

  It would not be logical. I have an empty house with no land. You have no land. To those of the manors, marriage is all about land. I am betrothed to Sweyn. My dowry was that empty house. The terms were that I must be pregnant before the wedding date is set."

  He stood and dragged her to her feet and looked down at her pretty face and voluptuous body. "You are pregnant?"

  "Of course. That is what happens when women have sex. Haven't you noticed me gaining weight? Well, perhaps not me. I am still slim. But you must have noticed Britta."

  "Britta is pregnant? But I though that Osgar ...." his eyes went wide. "It could be John's child."

  "Pah, she wouldn't have ridden John if she weren't already pregnant." She watched his eyes widen even further. He was such a child. "The fates have woven us together, love, whether we are married or not. On that day that we first met, here at this pool, Britta and I had just decided that we both needed sons, and moreover, that our sons must share a father. After all, they had to look alike, if we were to pass mine off as Sweyn's, and hers off as Osgar's.

  Mere minutes after we had made that pact, you discover us bathing. It took us seconds to realize that you must have been sent by the goddess to solve all of our problems. When I look back on it, I am convinced that the fates must have foretold to the goddess that it was you who would eventually kill Garrick, and so she arranged to have you meet us here on a day when we were both mentally ready, and physically fertile."

  Raynar grabbed his crystal and held it between his hands and looked to the heavens to pray to the moon goddess, the goddess of fertility. He did not know whether to curse the fates or to applaud them, but he prayed for the goddess to keep these woman safe from more of their mischief.

  "Yes, pray to the goddess for sons," she whispered as she led him towards the private place behind the boulders. "We will give her one more fertility offering to ensure it. A son to either of us will complete Britta's dowry and then poor old Hugh can come down from the peaks and enjoy his grandchildren."

  As they passed the first of the sandy, private places, they watched for a moment while Britta rode John into ecstasy. Raynar whispered. "Does John know?"

  Sonja's spun about and stared him in the eyes and in a hushed voice replied, "I told you because you are the father and have a right to know. No one else suspects and we must keep it that way. That is the main reason to stop these trysts, and now. We all enjoy them, but one of these days we will be caught out."

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  THE HOODSMAN - Killing Kings by Skye Smith

  Chapter 10 - Safe with Old Friends, Winchester in August 1100

  Raynar was woken out of his pleasant dreams of his trysts with Sonja and Britta by the early morning river midges. They drove him from his forest bed. They pestered him all the way back to the cart ford and they made it impossible to wait by the footbridge, so he started walking along the c
artway towards Romsey. His legs and hips and back ached from his long day yesterday. He was too old to still be hunting men in the forest.

  After the sweet spicy air of the forest, Romsey was an assault on the nostrils. Putrefying odors announced the town well before his first glimpse of it. Saxon towns always seemed to be surrounded by refuse and night soil. An old shepherd had once told him that sheep did not smell until they were penned too closely together. To Hugh the shepherd, who lived in the fresh air of the high mountain valleys, towns were just places where people were penned too closely together.

  Some local folk told him that the best food was at the inn on the Winchester side of the town. He pressed on past two other inns and a rough-looking ale house. The food at the Boar Inn was good, but then all food is good if you are hungry enough. There was no talk of kings at the inn.

  As travelers finished their food and ale, they would stand close to the cartway to wait for others walking the same way. Once a group was large enough, they would strike out together along the highway. He went and stood with the next group that was Winchester-bound. There was little talking amongst them, as if each member of the group was traveling by themselves. There seemed to be no husbands and wives, or brothers, or cousins , or even two from the same village.

  As an afterthought, Raynar doubled back to the inn door and said quietly to a group of men who were just arriving, "So is it true? Has the Hood killed the king?" He ignored the replies as he sped his pace to catch up to his own travel group.

  When his group stopped for a rest and an ale about an hour west of Winchester, a horseman rode up and drank an ale without dismounting. Raynar heard him ask the serving girl, "Is it true, has the Hood killed the king?" She ran into the kitchen without answering. By the time he reached Winchester, there was only one topic of conversation at the city's west gate. Bad news travels fast.

  Henry, on his fleet horse, would have arrived at Winchester almost a full day ahead of him. The bustle and din of the city was a shock after the serenity of the forest. His tired feet were complaining about the change from soft country road to cobblestone streets.

  Winchester was a thriving city and still considered the crown's center in spite of London's size and financial power. Compared to London, it was well organized and clean. It had been in a nonstop building boom since the Normans arrived thirty- four years ago. It was also, therefore, expensive.

  Luckily Raynar did not need to pay an inn's prices for a dirty dormitory bed, because an old friend here had done well for himself as a wool merchant and had a large household in Winchester. Of course, neither friend John nor his son were in the city right now because there was less than a month left before the Winchester Wool fair would begin. Both father and son would be with their carts visiting favoured sheep farms, collecting wool and homespun for the fair.

  John's wife Mar, however, was still in Winchester keeping an eye on the business and making good and sure that the fullers and weavers that John had contracted were working long hours. Raynar had kissed Mar goodbye six days ago, with the full expectation that it would be his last kiss on this earth. At the time, the tale he had told her was the truth, or a stretch of the truth. How had he put it? Ah yes, since his business in Winchester was delayed, he was off to the country to fulfill a promise made long ago.

  Along he trudged on aching feet as the Romsey cartway became High Street, until at Market Street a bouquet of summer flowers leaped from a barrow into his hands. The flower girl had a delightful smile, and he made such a bad bargain that she added more flowers to the bunch.

  Within a few paces he was also carrying a plum tart, despite the horridly craggy brown smile of the tart lady. The tart was tart and then sweet. Quite pleasing, but finished too quickly. She sold him a second for half price. It was late in her business day and what she didn't sell was her supper, which explained her teeth. The second tart was also gone by the time he pushed through the throngs on the Broadway and turned onto Eastgate.

  Mar's house was in view now. It had been a continuous construction project for years, converted and expanded and now being remade of stone with the business at street level and rambling quarters above. At night with the heavy gates closed, it was like a fortress, but now in the brightness of the afternoon sun, the gates were open and welcoming.

  Raynar turned in off the street and stopped at the gate. He had a wave of welcome from the building watcher who left his seat and put down his staff to open the small inner gate for him. He was now in the business level of the building. He continued walking to the landing at the bottom of a wide staircase, all the while looking up to the upper floor. The upstairs door was closed, so he swung his pack to the floor and rang the chime at the foot of the staircase.

  There was a flick of a shadow across the door's peep hole, and then the rattle of a door bolt sliding. A smiling woman in a dark red apron came through the doorway and paused on the landing to look down. Mar had a twenty-year-old son but she was still slim and fit, and therefore very different from most of this city's merchant class women. Most of them were fat as a sign of their respectability, for there was nothing like a broad ass to prove to everyone that they never went hungry.

  Mar was a shepherd's granddaughter and had often helped the old man in the high country with the sheep. She took pride in still being able to keep up with her men. Her good looks had captured a good husband, and she kept those looks to keep him faithful. She danced down the stairs to Raynar and threw her arms around his neck and pulled herself up on her toes and kissed his cheek.

  "Welcome back Ray," she whispered. Then she dropped back on her heels and brushed his dust from her apron and snatched the now crushed bouquet from his hands. "You have timed it perfectly." She was beaming at the flowers and at him and giggling like a girl. There is nothing better than a gift of posies to bring the girl out of a woman.

  She stepped back but then came forward and hugged him again, and then took his hand and led him upstairs. He reached down and dragged his pack along with them. Once they were up the stairs and inside, she closed and bolted the door, which was very unusual during daylight hours. Only then did she lead him across the great hall of the house towards the back set of rooms.

  She turned to face him and said, "Your two friends from Al-Andalus convinced me that they needed to bathe, uh, properly," her smile was wide and knowing as she tugged him along again, "and other things. So I have sent my serving girls on lengthy errands to keep them away from this house, and I have invited two respectable young widows to come and help your foreign friends to bathe. All four of them are right now in the back room with barrels and buckets and kettles. You timed your arrival well for they just started, and you are covered in dust and smelling of the road."

  She looked down at the cloak folded and hooked into his pack. "Where ever did you get that disgusting homespun cloak? It looks like the one I first met you in. No matter. Go, go and join your friends. The good widows have about another hour to get you clean again before I must send them home. And mind you keep the noise civil else the neighbors will have the priests knocking on the door." She gave him a very naughty wink, and a saucy look, a look that no one else in the city would have ever seen on this hard-nosed business woman.

  Ever since the Norman invasion, England always seemed to have an abundant supply of young widows. The Normans were professional warriors, and warriors begat young widows in one way or another. The lucky ones were taken care of by family. For the others, well, life was a constant scramble for rent money. Luckily, Winchester had a constant supply of respectable visitors. Respectable visitors did not frequent the seedier inns and brothels that catered to soldiers and working men, but they still had needs.

  Raynar paused by the door to the back room. Mar pushed him forward, giggling. He could hear giggles from the other side of the door as well. He turned to Mar and smirked. "So Mar, I am assuming that you will be washing me, as the widows already sound fully busy". Mar crossed to him and pulled herself up to his lips for a lingerin
g kiss. "Some other time, when there is just we two. Now go and get ... uh ...clean."

  Raynar handed her his purses and she nodded in confirmation that they would be put in a safe place. He then opened the door a crack, but knowing her curiosity he then opened it wide so she could enjoy the complete view. The scene in the room caught his attention immediately. In the room there were two naked, olive skinned, Mediterranean men, and two naked, blonde, and much younger Saxon women.

  The older man, Gregos, was being dried by one woman over beside the pallet by the wall. The younger man, Risto, was standing in a quarter of a barrel while the other woman poured water from a kettle over his head. Raynar turned towards Mar, who was leaning into the room staring at the body of the younger man, blew her a kiss and gently closed the door in her face.

  "Raynar, you are back." Gregos pulled himself away from his attentative widow, and crossed the room with both hands open, and with no thought to cover his nakedness or his sexual arousal. Though a member of a trading family from Cordoba in Al-Andalus, he was of Greek heritage and in the way of Greeks he was not embarrassed by his nudity, or even aware that others might be embarrassed.