The next week went much the same for Maya as the
week before, but seemed less frantic because the daily patterns was
set and she was accustomed to it. Yoga, interviews, lunch,
interviews, home, teach auras, then crystal dreaming and
bed.
Each evening just before sunset, everyone at the manor would gather for a sit down meal and use the time together to compare notes about the various projects ongoing at the estate. At least the older women would discuss projects. The younger women would use the gathering to catch up on the gossip about the various couples that had been matched at the party.
After dinner, Maud, Maya, Fiona, Beatrice, and sometimes Angelica, would meet in the manor's office to compare the latest memoir translations with the latest dream notes. Maud had a renewed interest in translating all three of the ancient memoirs, and was doing so even when Fiona was at class or cramming. Her archaeologist passions were intrigued by Anske's memories of a rich treasure at Saint Peters Abbey in Peterborough. The Abbey was only thirty miles north of Cambridge.
"I think I've figured out where the treasure came from," Maud told them one evening. "After William the Conqueror was crowned he soon learned that the English treasury was bare. It is likely that Saint Margaret's brother, Edgar Aetheling, was to blame. King Harold had put Edgar in charge of defending his camp at Hastings. There would have been a sizeable treasure traveling with the English army, and therefore in that camp.
After Harold and his brothers were murdered on the battlefield, Edgar had to defend the camp, and he was so successful that the Normans pulled back. Edgar organized a fast and full retreat to London. Of course, the history books say that he should have stood his ground because reinforcements were so close to reaching him, but in any case he ended up in London where the bishops chose him to be the next king. There is no record of what became of the treasure. Perhaps we now know. Edgar fled north with it and left it at the abbey for safekeeping."
Fiona sighed. "Too bad the historians will never believe us. How would we explain our proof. We dreamed it up? A peasant woman who died a thousand years ago told us? Yeh right."
Sir Harry stopped at the door and looked in at them and asked them in French what they were doing in his father's office. Ever since Maya had cured him of being a psycho he had been lost in a very French deja vu, reliving his past. They were all trying to get him to speak English again, but with little progress.
He wandered into the room as far as the desk and then looked down at the two ancient rings that were lying on a bit of felt. One of gold and the other of iron. Beatrice was the closest to the desk and reached over to shoo him away from the rings.
"Oh leave him be," Maya told her. "After all, the gold one is his. Let him touch them. Maybe they will trigger his memory."
"So the iron ring was passed through generations and generations to reach Maya. How did Harry come by his gold one?" asked Fiona.
"Same way," Maud replied. "Passed on for generations. His family has always claimed that they were descendants of Hereward. His, our, land holdings around Bourne supposedly overlap the ancient holdings of Hereward's brother. It would seem that Anske's memory of the rings has proven the claim." She laughed lightly with far away eyes. "They called him Harry at school because the name his father stuck him with was Hereward, after his grandfather."
Beatrice looked up from her dream notes from the memories of Roas. "He would have to be descended from Hereward's brother. When Ely fell to the Normans, Hereward took Roas and fled to Flanders. They were welcomed there because of some Frisian connection to Flanders. So far it seems like they lived long and prospered near Bruges."
"There would have been a Frisian connection," replied Maud. "About this time the powerful Count of Flanders died and there was a war of succession. His brother Robert won the throne, with the help of the Frisians. The forces of the King of France and of the Duke of Normandy were both defeated. They both had designs on Flanders."
"I always said that Hereward helped Robert the Frisian take Flanders," said Sir Harry, looking up from his gold ring as if he was just waking up from a nap. "The faculty mocked the idea."
"Maud," Maya hissed and pointed to Sir Harry. When Maud raised her hand and waved away any thoughts of her old bugger of a husband, Maya hissed again. "He spoke in English."
"Harry, is that you?" Maud's question may have sounded silly, but Harry hadn't spoken a word of English for weeks.
"And who else would it be, my love? Have you been playing it loose and fast with the bishop again?" he chortled at his own joke.
"Oh merciful Freyja," Maud whispered. "That is what he used to say to me when we were first engaged." She thought for a moment and then asked, "Harry, how was class today?"
"Fell asleep in Tolkien's tutorial again. The bloody old fool goes on and on about nothing."
Maud's eyes were damp, "I was so happy then, in those days. Oh, whatever happened to those wonderful times?"
"He happened, remember?" hissed Maya. "He was a psycho, remember? When he courted you he was first acting the role of the romantic and then the role of the dutiful husband. Once he had perfected those roles, he went on to other roles and replaced you with something or somebody more ego-stroking."
"You are right of course. That is exactly what happened. Being the idol of some silly girl was not enough for him. He wanted to be idolized by all the men where he worked, and the women. He wanted to be important, so he played the role of being important until it became true."
"Well he's not important any more. He's sort of cute in an old fart kind of way," Maya smiled at the man and he smiled back. An innocent smile.
"Oh no, you don't. You didn't have to live through those years of deviltry and evil. You can't possibly expect me to forgive him, just because ..."
"Just because he is a different man on the inside now, even though he looks the same." Maya turned her smile towards Maud, then she waved to get Harry's attention. "Harry, did you ever find proof that Hereward lived in Flanders?"
"Impossible to find." Harry grumbled. "I gave up. Dozens of armies have marched across Flanders since then. Any record was stomped into the mud centuries ago."
"Do you read Olde English, Harry?" asked Maya.
"Of course," the knight said proudly.
"Maud, why don't you give one of the forbidden books to Harry to translate. He may find a clue in them."
Maud nodded slowly. "Only Margaret's memoirs would be from Hereward's era. Her daughters weren't born until the '80's. 1080's that is. I'll copy some chapters for him and see how he does with a computer. There was no such thing as computers way back when he went to college." She looked thoughtfully at her husband. "Harry, did Hereward ever remove any treasure from Saint Peter's Abbey."
Harry chose that moment to sit down and close his eyes. Besides having been stuck in French, the other side effect of his mental cure was a bit of narcolepsy. Without warning he would fall instantly to sleep.
Maya on the other hand was suddenly wide awake. "Oh no you don't. We are not going to turn this into a treasure hunt. Don't you dare. This started as a hunt for the owner of my ring, so that I could find out who I am descended from, and where my village was.
Okay, it was this peasant bowman, Raynar Porter. Okay, he is the connection between Little John and Hereward the Wake, like, they were all friends and hung together. Okay. But as for turning this into a treasure hunt, no way. That goes way out of bounds."
"That's a bit selfish, don't you think?" Fiona was quick to point out. "What about the rest of us. We can chase down any new clues that come out of the crystals, but only you can read the crystals."
Maya felt Maud's eyes staring at her, and suddenly realized why, "No way. I can't do Anske any more. Not even for treasure. It's too disturbing. You still don't get it. When I dream all these ancient memories from a crystal, they get stored in my memory. They become my memories. Anske must have had a horrible death to make Raynar so crazy for vengeance. Get real. I don't want the memories of her death in my head, like, forever. Besides, the Roas memories are much more fun."
"But it was Anske who was with Hereward and Raynar at the abbey when they used the rings to claim the treasure," Maud argued. "That was before Roas lived with Raynar."
"No way," Maya repeated. "I don't want to have nightmares for the rest of my life. I'll gladly do more readings from Roas. She traveled with Raynar across England, and lived in Ely, and traveled with Hereward to Bruges." She gave Maud a hard stare, and then soften her look. "I've been to Bruges, you know. I actually recognized some of the places in the memories. But I've never been to the Peak district and that is where Raynar was originally from."
Maud decided this was not the time to push at Maya. She was overtired and too emotionally fragile. "Well Roas was at Ely. I suppose we owe it to the craft to find out what really happened in the Ely rebellion. What decided the Normans to begin burning our seers as witches."
"Why does everyone call it the Ely rebellion?" asked Maya. "I was there, I mean, ugh, Roas was there. The rebellion started because Raynar and a few of his men began slaughtering Normans to avenge Anske. There were a lot of other homeless men who also wanted vengeance. Men who had moved south to escape the Anglo-Danish genocide. They rallied to Raynar, and the one wolfpack became two, four, a dozen. But their base was Huntingdon not Ely. It was the Huntingdon Rebellion. Ely was the base for the Danish fleet."
"Perhaps because after the Norman army arrived in force in Cambridge, the escape route for the rebels was through Ely," Maud explained. "Point taken, however. We need to research the Huntingdon connections. Hmm. The town is half way to the Abbey where the treasure was.
There was a sound to the side of them. It was Harry sitting up. "Hereward removed the portable treasure from Saint Peter's Abbey to hide it from both the Danes and the Normans. It was a good thing he did because part of the price the Normans paid to make the Danes leave England was to give them permission to plunder the local abbeys."
Maud's eyes gleamed. Now for sure she had to convince Maya to go back into Anske's memories and find out where Hereward would have hidden a treasure.
"As I recall," said Fiona, "it was the Pope that told William to crush the Ely, err, Huntingdon Rebellion. He was scared that a peasant's revolt would sweep across England and then across the Channel. Hard to believe that one peasant, this Raynar guy, could scare the Pope in Rome."
"That's because you've never ridden with a wolfpack," Maya snorted back.
"Ooh, listen to you," Fiona teased. "and I suppose you have." She put her hand over her mouth as soon as the words had left it. Of course Maya had ridden with them, through the memories of Anske and Roas.
"So how did these wolfpacks work?" asked Maud, sitting forward and hoping to hear something more about the treasure.
Maya closed her eyes so she could better visualize the ancient memories that were now mixed in with her own memories. "The wolfpacks were small bands of less than thirty men. When they got bigger than that, they would split into two. The wolfshead was the pack leader but there was also a second. The leader was chosen by vote. Those that did not vote for the one who became the leader, would be allowed to choose the second.
They all had horses but they didn't fight mounted because their bows were too big. They rode to the fight, dismounted, and then fought. They also carried pikes for defending against charging horses. They were, sort of like a long spear but with the addition of a hook near the end for pulling riders down. Some of the hooks looked more like hammers or hatchet heads."
"Yes," Maud concurred, "the use made of horses was one of the big differences between the English army and the Norman army. The English rode to the battle, and then kept the horses safe while they fought on foot, usually in a shield-wall. The Normans walked to the battle, leading their horses packed with armor and weapons. The Normans had a new invention called the stirrup, which allowed them to fight from horseback. The Normans would pay mercenaries to be their infantry ground fodder."
Maya was peeved at the interruption. It broke up the flow of the memories. "Anyway, the horses were actually the Norman's weakness. The wolfpacks used the same trick on them over and over again. They would send a couple of lads ahead to steal some of their horses, and when the Normans gave chase, the bowmen would ambush them."
"But that would have only worked the first few times," argued Fiona. "Once word got around, they would be expecting the ambush."
"Uh, uh." Maya shook her head. "The wolfpacks were moving fast, faster than the news that they were coming. As soon as the Normans were killed, always killed, no prisoners, then the wolfpack would move on. There were gangs of axmen marching behind them to tend the wounded, and clean up the mess, and run the estates, and protect the twice-widowed women."
"Twice-widowed, what is that?" asked Fiona.
Maya had to pause to find the modern words for the memories. "Um, the Normans married the widows of the rich English that had fallen in battle. Actually when they ran out of widows they would conveniently create some fresh ones. It was all about real estate. Under English law, the widow was in charge of the estate until her son could take over. A Norman would marry her by raping her in front of witnesses, which was quite legal, then bonk her daily until she was pregnant. Once there was a half Norman son, the English sons would meet with unfortunate accidents."
"Ah yes," said Maud, "the infamous bed and dead policy. It worked well in the South, because it was a surprise. Not so well in the North because word had already gotten around."
Maya's eyes lit up. "See, there is something you can thank Roas for. She forced Hereward and the Earl of the Danes to bring in new harsh laws against rape here in the Fens. The Normans, meanwhile, thought that rape was their right."
"But of course they did, dear. The Normans were slavers, " agreed Maud. "They enslaved the English, or at least, enserfed them. Slavers always seem to claim the right to use the women."
"Especially virgins," added Angelica.
"Yeah," mumbled Maya, "well it sure opened my eyes to the myth of the chivalrous knight. What a crock. I doubt any English women escaped being raped by them."
"You see," smiled Maud. She had always enjoyed that moment when a young person's light bulb was turned on. "Sir Nigel comes by it honestly. He is from a long line of slavers, and he is proud of it. In his world order there are the masters and the slaves, and he is one of the masters."
"Yeh, a headmaster," Angelica quipped.
"You still haven't answered why they were called twice-widowed," Fiona asked Maya.
"Oh, right," Maya came back from some deep thought, "That was because they not only lost their English husband to the Normans, but they lost their Norman husband to the wolfpacks. Say do any of you want to come with me to the Peaks district this weekend."
Fiona looked at Beatrice and they both shook their heads. "Final exams." Angelica reached forward and touched Maya on the leg. "Sorry, love. Got to work Saturday. Is it important?"
"Since my ancestors seem to have come from the Peaks, well I just thought. Well, I have seen the countryside through the eyes of Roas, so like, going there may help me to get more from her memories."
"But that didn't work so well in Lincoln." Maud was hesitant to volunteer to go with her.
"But in Lincoln all the pre Norman land marks I remembered had been built over by newer buildings. It's a city," Maya explained. "In the Peaks, the landmarks will be large and natural, like hills and rivers. Please. Oh Maud, you must come. It wasn't just where my Raynar grew up, but where he grew up with Little John. I've seen his forge, his family home, like in my dreams."
Maud hesitated. "It's a long way."
"Like a hundred and thirty miles tops. You Brits are so short sighted. That is nothing. Please come."
"I can't dear," Maud stated while shooting the other girls a steely stare. "Not after what happened when I was away last weekend."
"But I can't go alone. What if I trance out and drive off a cliff or something."
"You won't be alone," said Angelica. "Wendy won't let you go alone."
"Don't be so sure. I think my importance to that organization is dropping. Almost all the interviews are done now. My contract with that psycho Sir Nigel is winding down. You have to come, Maud. Wendy knows nothing about the geography or history of the Peaks Forest."
"She knows as much as me then," replied Maud. "You may laugh at a hundred and thirty miles, but that makes it like the far side of the moon from Cambridge."
"Brits," Maya muttered under her breath. Where she came from in California, a hundred and thirty miles was what you drove to get to the next big town. "I'll need a copy of all my dream notes."
"We have one of the new auristas typing them up. I'll go and ask her to print you a copy." Maud stood up stiffly to stretch, picked up some dirty cups, for she never left a room empty handed, and then left the office in the direction of the kitchen.
Maya caught up to her and put an arm through hers. "You're absolutely sure you don't want to come?"
"Of course I want to come," said Maud heatedly. " I just don't trust the witchlets enough to leave them on their own again. Not now that they have had some real success with the craft. Look at the lengths they went to last weekend to get us both out of the way so they could matchmake with those young men.
Really. And then going even further by curing young psychos before they become dangerously powerful. I wonder where they got that idea from, hmmm?" Maud gave Maya a hard stare, "By the way, are you still feeding the MRS list to Beatrice?"
"I thought of stopping, but that since that would please Sir Nigel, I decided I'd rather help the girls look for husbands, and ignore what else they may use the list for."
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MAYA'S AURA - The Crystal Witch by Skye Smith