William and his sons led the two shining black Frisians right into the hall. "I have a new best friend," yelled William, and Willy repeated his words in a second yell. "My God, what a horse." He looked directly at Anso. "You must teach me the Frisian commands so that I can guide him with words alone."
Henry, the boy, was riding on William's shoulders and William swung him to the ground. Henry tried to run to his mother, but Willy reached out with a foot and tripped him. He fell hard on the stone floor, and one of his sisters ran to him and brushed off his knees and hid his tears with her skirts.
William walked towards the two guests and poured himself a goblet of wine from their jug and downed it quickly. "Thank you, Edgar. Later we must talk of more serious affairs, but for now," he waved to the guard standing to one side and holding Anso's weapons, "for now let us be warriors well met. This bow, for instance. I have rarely seen a match to the workmanship." He tested the draw. "Tell me about it."
"I have been told that it is from the great horse plains that stretch from the Black Sea to the Chinas," Anso replied. "I won it in battle, and have often tried to copy it, but the mix of the glue that fixes the horn to the wood evades me. It is the bow of the mounted archers who control those vast plains. It is said that they make the best of Frisian riders look clumsy."
"Your courtly manners are weak, knight, but I will waive them while we speak as warriors." William grabbed an arrow from the quiver and checked the point. "This is a fish arrow, but made of iron, not bone." He nocked it, drew, aimed, and loosed in a slow, practiced motion. The arrow bounced off a decorative shield hung on the nearest wall. "Not armour piercing, then."
Anso stood and walked to retrieve the arrow. "That point is fashioned long and tapered with two small barbs on one side as is a fishing point of bone, but it is made of bog iron so that it does not rust when used aboard ships. Being of iron it is heavier and does not shatter. The nails in your ships are made of the same bog iron and in the same forges."
He pulled a small ribbon of metal from a side pocket in the quiver. "This strip of lead makes it armour-piercing." He held the arrow up and away from his body so that everyone could see what he was doing while he twisted the small strip of lead around the shaft just behind the point.
William handed Anso the bow. Edgar sucked in his breath and closed his eyes and prayed that William would not die in the next moment. Anso nocked, drew, spun around, loosed, continued the spin, and handed the bow back to William all in one swift, flowing movement.
Only the clang of the shield told William that the arrow was already loosed though his own hand was again touching the bow. The arrow not only pierced the shield and its wooden frame, but the blunting of the point against the stone wall pushed the shield off its hanger and it fell to the floor with a great crash that had guards running forward from all corners of the hall.
William stared at the fallen shield for a few moments lost in thought. "That explains much," he said in a low voice that only those closest to him could hear. He walked to the guard and swapped the bow for the sword. He drew it and then laughed at its thinness and lack of striking weight. "Ah, so it is just a court sword for decoration. Never mind."
"It is no court sword," spoke Anso. "Is there a sword master present who can help you to test it?"
William motioned to the guard captain to come to him. "Draw your blade in practice, but try not to break this womanly sword."
"He will not break it," Anso said as he walked towards William. "It is of Syrian steel, perhaps from Damascus. It is made from endlessly hammering different steels together so that they become one. The center steel is very hard, like razor steel. It keeps an edge but would shatter in a fight. The outer steels are like those used in normal swords. They will not shatter."
Anso reached for William's hand. "Hold it like this. Tight, yet loose. Fight with your wrist, not with your arm. It is sharp like a razor so you do not need heavy blows, and it is light so you fight with quick movements, not slashes. Because you need no heavy blows you do not need to follow through with the weight of your body. This means you can feint and withdraw and strike and withdraw without your next move being obvious."
The master had come closer to learn of the blade, but Anso pushed him back. "Try it. Slowly at first." The crashes of steel from the test match began, so Anso stepped away from the blades and returned to his seat to finish his wine.
"Thank you," breathed Edgar.
"You dismay me, Edgar, to think I would kill a man in front of his wife and children. That is the very Norman cold-bloodedness that I have been avenging for eight years."
"Thank you," said Mathilde as she sat down beside them. Anso was confused and panicked for a moment thinking that she had heard Raynar's words, until she continued. "My husband has been ill and weak for a month. He needed this distraction." She moaned as William tested the keenness of the blade on a costly drapery. "He is aging quickly, from too many wounds. He must stop leading his army from the front."
William did well against the master, but he tired quickly and finally backed towards their table and sat with a thump on the bench, panting and wheezing. He laid the sword on the table and said, "Come, monk knight, show us how it is done."
"I could show you no better than you yourself have done. I am not a swordsman, I am a bowman. I use the sword only to defend, not to attack. To defend until I can run to make space for the bow." Anso pointed to the master collapsed onto one knee and completely winded. "You have already learned my method. Keep him swinging that giant heavy sword until he tires himself to the ground."
The maid standing behind Mathilde reached forward and poured wine, and William struggled to his feet while grabbing two of the goblets and took one to his captain. "Find us some of those blades. Replace our courtly swords with them." The captain nodded his head in agreement, and then rose and walked with his lord back to the table to inspect the light blade for damage.
"Good enough for the court, Sire," said the captain, "but a cavalryman needs a long and heavy sword for slashing."
"Long, yes," replied William, "but does it need to be wide and heavy? Imagine this sword but two feet longer. We must find other ways to keep our advantage, now that other cavalries are copying our use of stirrups, and now that even monks use armour-piercing arrows."
"I have heard that the great empire of the Chinas," interrupted Anso, "is ruled by small men who ride ponies, and use bows and swords like these, and protect their bodies with silk shirts."
"This is nonsense," replied the captain. "A pilgrim's tale, not to be believed."
"I took these weapons from the corpse of such a man," Anso whispered, "who had traveled from Byzantium with Harald of Norway."
William had now caught his breath. "I knew Harald, and loved him well. He brought all sorts of wondrous weapons and battle knowledge with him when he quit being a Byzantine general to take his throne in Norway. The last time I saw him was right here in the room, back when it had just been completed. See that map of the world painted on the wall? It was copied from one of his Byzantine scrolls. We sat here one week in winter and planned how we would work as brothers and make the world our empire."
Anso stood and took up a bright candle lantern and walked to the wall to inspect the map. William joined him. "You read maps then?"
"I love maps," replied Anso, "they are what drae me to monasteries."
"You see there a plan that would have worked, save that Harald was spitted by an arrow during his battle for Yorkshire. Our first great battle was to defeat the Danes and make Harald the Emperor of the northern seas. With that wealth of gold and men we would then take all the French counties from Normandy to Provence, so that the pope would make me Emperor of Rome. Then with the countless ships of our combined fleets, we would take all the coasts of the Roman sea, and the treasures of the cities of the east."
"It would have worked," stated Anso, "save for one arrow."
"Bah, if not that arrow then something else. Harald had already failed three times to destroy the Danish fleet. His weakness was that he always wanted to capture ships, not sink them. The greatest general in the world, yet that one weakness was always his undoing."
"I have noticed a similar weakness in the English nobles," added Anso. "They always want to capture fine horses, not kill them. It makes them easy prey for cavalry."
"My brother Odo would disagree. He has lost many horses recently," William said thoughtfully, staring at this very young man in a monk's cowl. "Last time he took an army towards Scotland, he met a hungry enemy, and to the hungry, horse flesh tastes sweet."
"So, will you continue with this plan without Harald?"
"Different. Without an ally to cover my back in the North Sea, I have to make sure that the kingdoms of the North Sea are weak. Denmark without the Danelaw of England is now just a minor kingdom, albeit they still have a large fleet. This new alliance of Denmark, Saxony, Frisia, and Flanders is worrying, but it revolves around my wife's brother Robert, and eventually he will again be friendly to us. Perhaps if I allow Brugge to control all of the trade going north."
"So you can look to the south and the east?" interrupted Anso.
"My cousins are racing ahead of me there, and are looking to France and to Rome for their guidance. Yes, my next stage is to convince the Normans already in the east to kneel to me. That means keeping Philippe and Paris weak. I curse the rebels that have kept me so busy in England. My absences from Normandy have cost me dearly in Flanders and France."
"So, you have lost interest in England, then?"
"England, bah," William jeered, "a kingdom of farmers and peasants. Let them grovel in the English mud. I went there to split it with Harald. He in the North, me in the South." He swept his long arm across the Roman Sea on the wall's map. "That is what interests me. Always has." He turned and looked towards Edgar like a man who had just made his mind up.
"Edgar, come," William raised his voice to be heard. Edgar stood and walked to the map. "Edgar, I welcome you to my home, but I cannot allow you to return to the British Isles because rebellions form around you. I cannot allow you to return to Flanders, because you would be too useful to my brother-in-law Robert. I cannot allow you to return to Paris because Philippe will again send you to vex me from the fortress at Montreuil Sur Mer.
Instead, would you agree to visit the courts along this coast on my behalf?" He pointed to the western coast of the Roman sea that faced Rome. "I want to control one of the pilgrim routes, and the only one left to me is a route by ship. I need someone to visit the ports on this coast and report what they find."
William turned towards Anso, "There, your task is complete. Edgar is safely delivered, so you may leave us, and leave Normandy."
Mathilde interrupted. "I have already invited him for the night. He has many stories that will entertain us."
"No doubt I could talk warrior talk with him for a month," replied William, "but his presence makes me uncomfortable. My gut tells me either to send him on his way, or send him to my dungeon for questioning. In deference to Edgar, I offer him free passage away."
"Then I will be away," bowed Anso, "but here is a present that may bring you closer to your goal of a pilgrimage route." He opened his map pipe and pulled from it two scrolls rolled together. "The larger is in Latin, and the smaller in French. They are a summary of the Writs from Cluny. If you wish to enter the pilgrim business, then a good first step would be to help protect pilgrims and other non-combatants in all of your lands."
"You are insolent, monk knight. Do you think I am not aware of the preachings of Cluny, when a dozen bishops bow to my will?" William's face was turning red.
"And have any of them bothered to translate it for you?" asked Anso quietly. "Or do they simply tell you the parts that fit to their own devices."
There was a shocked silence around the hall at Anso's impertinence. It was broken by the sound of Mathilde snorting into her hand in a hopeless attempt to stifle a laugh. "I am sorry, my husband," she said when she could finally trust herself to speak, "but I fear he vexes you for the very same reason he interests you. He is blunt." She took a large breath. "There was a time when you surrounded yourself with such blunt men. Take the scroll from him so he can make the next tide. I will read it to you tonight."
William looked up. "Captain, please escort Anso to his ship to make sure there is no confusion with the port master." He noticed that Edgar seemed to be holding his breath until both men had left the hall with the captain carrying the weapons.
"Edgar, who is that man?" demanded William. "He looks at me like a perched Eagle would look at a hare." He was too late with his question for Mathilde already had Edgar and Henry in tow to show him to his room.
Later that afternoon, when Edgar joined William and Mathilde on the roof of the tower to watch the sun set over Bayeux, Mathilde said, "You can ask that last question about Anso, now that he is safely away. Edgar, who is that monk knight?"
Edgar held up his hand for them to be patient while he framed his answer. "He is a man who, despite his youth, has lived many lifetimes. He was born an English freeman peasant, which means he wishes William dead, as do all English freemen. His is the champion of my sister Queen Margaret, though she daren't call him back to Scotland until she is ready to be widowed. He is the darling of Frisian seers. They believe he has been sent by Freyja's Valkyries to smite down rapists."
Mathilde crossed herself at the saying of the goddess's name and then spat on the floor and touched wood. "Has he smitten many?"
"Many," replied Edgar, "but in these troubled times, it is a mission without end."
"There must be more," said William. "As a monk, he can read, but that does not explain his battle knowledge."
"He has learned much from another monastery knight, Hereward of the Abbey of Peterburgh."
"Edwin's man. That Hereward? Ely Hereward?"
"The same."
"I hear that Hereward is in Flanders. He vexes me too," stated William. "It is an interesting idea, though. Knights attached to monasteries or even as monks. That would save me having to provide them honors of land to support them." His eyes widened at the thought. "And I could send them across counties and kingdoms without them being attacked for being my knights."
Mathilde laughed. "To enter a monastery, your knights would first have to give up women and rape. There is no chance of that." She silenced them to watch the sun touch the horizon.
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END OF Courtesans and Exiles
The adventures continue with Book 8, the Revolt of the Earls
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The Hoodsman - Courtesans and Exiles by Skye Smith Copyright
2010-13