The warning horn, again. Was it a dream? Other
calls of alarm. Raynar's eyes opened with a start. It was real and
he was awake. He rolled from his bed and reached for his Seljuk bow
and a quiver of arrows. His short Damascus sword was in the sheath
built into weave of the quiver. No time for boots. He was out the
door and shut it hard behind him. His old legs ached as he ran and
then jumped up the first three stairs and in four more leaps was on
the roof boardwalk that ran along the outside wall.
Wyl was there already, yelling something to someone in the street. Beneath him he heard the creak of the opening of the small door next to the street gate. In a glance down he saw the Inn's two watchers armed with pikes push out onto the street and an old man limp in through the door. After a quick breath, Raynar half kneeled and bent the bow to reverse the C of it's arch and pulled the bowstring into place to hold the now massive tension.
It was a type of bow rarely seen in England. The kind that Seljuk Turks were using to kill the Frankish knights in the Holy Land. When the C was not reversed it still looked like a bow, but had the draw weight of a child's bow. He chose a shaft with a heavy point and nocked it.
"Help him, help Master Risto," Wyl called down to the watchers, as he nocked an arrow into his own longbow. He loosed and unthinking, nocked another arrow with a smooth and practiced movement.
Raynar took aim down the street. Risto, his friend from Al-Andalus, was holding the narrow Temple Lane against four swordsmen so that the wounded old man could escape. Another swordsman was on the ground pulling at an arrow imbedded in his thigh. Four others were behind the first four trying to get around the sword fight. The watchers were not advancing. The watchers were gate keepers, not warriors. They were not anxious to get near the melee of flashing steel with their wooden staffs.
Raynar’s first arrow hit the lead swordsman with such force that he was pushed against the wall and then slowly slid down the wall to sit in the slime of the gutter. Wyl's second arrow hit the right shoulder of another swordsman. Risto took advantage of the shock of his opponents and charged at them with violent slashes of his Salamancan sword.
The two attackers remaining in his fight stepped backwards and stumbled over the man on the ground. Risto was a seasoned warrior and made good use of the opportunity to make a tactical retreat to behind the staffs of the watchers. Two more swordsmen sprouted arrows, both in the chest, and the rest of the gang ran back down Temple Lane towards the Thames.
The watchers moved forward cautiously and checked the five downed swordsmen for signs of life. Three were dead, one was almost dead but Risto finished him with a thrust of his narrow blade. The last was about to be clobbered on the head by a staff, but Risto stopped the watcher by pushing him aside. Risto held the watcher's staffs for them, so they could drag the wounded man towards the small door next to the gate. The wounded man was howling with the pain of being dragged by his wounded arm.
Raynar made it down the stairs in three leaps. His aging joints regretted the jolting immediately, but he ignored the sharp pain as he made a beeline through the flower garden to the gate and drew his thin Syrian sword. He was blocked from making the street by the watchers and their bloody load. He turned and looked down at the wounded old man sitting on a stone bench with his shoulder slumped against the wall. It was Gregos. He was bleeding badly and in shock.
He turned as Risto came in through the door and he ordered a watcher to throw the bolt. Risto was covered in blood and was holding one wound closed by the pressure from his hand. Wyl was hopping though the flower garden on his good leg. On the uneven soil hopping was faster than limping.
Wyl gave orders for all three wounded men to be taken to the bath house. Some of the other tenants of the Domus broke out of their curious stares and stepped forward to carry the men. Risto told them to check the swordsman for other weapons. They found two daggers which they dropped to the ground.
In the bath house, under Raynar's instruction, they stripped the men. Also on Raynar's instruction, a messenger was sent to the Greek physician that lived four streets away. The old man's wound was deep. Raynar allowed Risto and the wounded attacker to drink pure water, but would allow none for Gregos. He sat by his old friend and held linen to the deepest wound to staunch the flow of blood.
Wyl was using battlefield knowledge to cleanse Risto's wounds with wine and bind the slashes in his skin. Risto was complaining loudly of the sting of the wine, but everyone knew he was just using his voice to keep himself from falling into shock. The wounded attacker was told to lie still and warned not to move the arrow in his shoulder until the surgeon arrived. His face was ashen, and his good arm kept twitching.
Gregos opened his eyes and looked long on Raynar's face trying to focus his eyes and his thoughts. "Find paper. I must send a message to the king. For the king only."
Raynar gave instructions to one of the young orderlies and was brought paper, quill and ink.. He wrote what Gregos dictated slowly and carefully and exactly for Gregos was dictating in code.
When the messenger arrived back with the Greek physician, he was handed the coded message and told to deliver it to Westminster palace on behalf of Master Gregos Demetrious. The messenger was to ask for Clerk fitzHooren at the gate of the palace, and then tell the clerk that the message was in the King's personal code and must be placed in the King's hand.
At first the young man balked at such a task. He was of peasant stock and had never even approached the palace at Westminster, never mind ask to be shown to the King. Wyl calmed his fears and sent the two watchers with him to ensure his safety, and to ensure he did not balk at the task and end up at an alehouse instead.
Wyl and Raynar watched the Greek physician work his magic on the three wounded men. As a boy, Raynar had learned that he had a healers touch, so he had always taken an interest in the healing craft. What he had learned in his fifty two years had served him well, and too often.
This physician was a master of medical skills that were still mostly unknown in England. For instance, he was using a sewing thread to close the wound, that he claimed would not rot or fester in a wound. A thread made from the fibers of a prickly plant grown on the Greek island of Kos.
The three men all had wounds that were deep enough that if this had been a battlefield, they would have been cursed with a painful festering death. Instead, after his cleansing and stitching, the physician pronounced that all of them would live. The two fighters must stay quiet for a week and have their bandages changed daily. Gregos must be put to bed and must not be moved for at least a week, and would be weak for at least a month. The physician told them that he would visit the old man each morning for the first week.
Gregos had a long lease on a room at the Domus, and he and Risto were taken to their beds in that room. The attacker was locked in a spare room, which was bare but for a pallet to sleep on.
One of the young orderlies had been sent up to the roof to watch Temple Lane for the return of the attackers. When he was relieved by another, he came and reported that the Holborn street people had stripped the other attackers bare before the physician had arrived.
By the time the physician was being escorted back to his own house, the sun was low and the September heat was gone from the day. Wyl had calmed the other tenants of the Domus by telling them that the attack was an assassination attempt on a treasury official, and was not the work of footpads or raiders.
Wyl and Raynar then sat together and allowed their battle fury to calm. They enjoyed the cooling air of the courtyard as if it were a sweet delicacy. It was a very pleasant place to wait for the inevitable knock on the gate from the Holborn Watch. As the Innkeeper, Wyl would have to explain the bodies in Temple Lane, and pay a good bribe to have them disposed of.
"Perhaps you should not stay, Raynar," warned Wyl. "for the King's men will probably come and they will be asking many questions. Questions that may have no easy answers for you."
"I will stay," replied Raynar. "I am too old to run from trouble anymore. Besides, this time we can tell the truth. Gregos rents a room at the Domus, and he was attacked in Temple Lane, and the staff of the Domus protected him. We even captured one of the attackers for them to question."
He closed his eyes and frowned. "If I had not been taking my afternoon nap at the time, perhaps Risto would have fewer wounds, but then again, if I had been out doing errands, he may be more wounded than he is. And how did you beat me to the roof with that game leg of yours?"
"I was reviewing the accounts in my strong room," explained Wyl, "it has no windows but it does have a high vent through the outside wall to the street. It is also the room where we store weapons. I heard the ring of steel on steel and knew immediately that there was violent trouble in the street.
I grabbed a bow and a quiver and my hunting horn. It was me blowing the warning horn as I hopped towards the stairway to the roof. From the roof I saw Gregos stumbling up the lane towards the Domus and I saw Risto being backed up the lane holding off the attackers with that Salamancan blade of his. My God, that man can fight. His sword is so light and so fast that the attackers' broad swords seemed to be as clumsy as axes.
It was me who ordered the door opened for Master Gregos. You know the rest. I am happy to know that you still have the strength to string that Seljuk bow of yours. You may have noticed that my own longbow is now one of the light training bows. I no longer have the strength of arm or back for a full bow."
"Speaking of bows, I think you should invite a few of our brothers to visit the Domus for a fortnight or two. Say four. Four bowmen of the Brotherhood of the Arrow should be able to defend these walls, and they could share the occasional watch. Are there any still in London?"
"Hmm," thought Wyl, "Many of our older brothers live in London but they all have profitable businesses. They would come if I asked, but would not be pleased by the invitation. However, their sons would welcome the chance of some excitement, and being merchants sons they would know the sword as well as the bow. Wait for me here while I send out a messenger."
Wyl rose from his seat and stretched his leg. He limped over to one of the older orderlies and spoke quietly to him. He fished something from his purse and gave it to the man. The man was gone through the door in the gate within a minute. Wyl limped back to his chair. "Done," was all he said.
About an hour later the watchers returned with the messenger who they had escorted to the palace. The messenger was bubbling with excitement as he reported to Wyl. "I did what I was told. I asked for the clerk. He wanted the paper, but I wouldn't give it to him. I said it was for the King's hand only and that it was from Master Gregos."
The lad's face was pink from excitement. "The bloody clerk was going to turn me away, but then I told him that Master Gregos was badly injured and may be dying, and that this paper was from him with urgency." He looked over at the watchers, as if needing confirmation. "The palace, it is so rich. I though the Domus was rich, what with stone floors and tile roofs, but the palace. It ..." He was interrupted by Wyl asking him to get on with his report.
"Oh, yes, well the clerk took me in tow, and we left these two at the gatehouse, and the clerk and I went inside and I had to wait in this big room filled with lords and ladies in fine clothes. The clerk was a cleric or a monk, but his habit was not of homespun, it was of fine cloth. I alone in the room was in drab cloth. Thank the gods that it is still warm and so I wasn't wearing my winter woolens...." He broke off again at the look in Wyl's eye, and got back to the report.
"The clerk whispered to another court officer and that one came to me and demanded the paper, but I wouldn't give it to him. He waved some guards over to have them take it from me so I ran behind the clerk and kept saying that it was for the King's hands only, louder and louder. Everyone in the room was looking at me, and the clerk was no longer whispering, so the court officer waved the guards back and he disappeared through a doorway.
When he came back we were taken through another doorway and down a very narrow passageway that seemed like it was inside a wall, and then through another doorway into what looked like a guardroom. I was very afraid. I thought that I was going to be beaten for not giving the paper to the court officer.
There was a big table in the room and another court officer was sitting at it reading a pile of papers and occasionally writing something. I hadn't realized that the clerk beside me had bowed from the waist until he dragged me down and he whispered that I was a fool not to bow before the King. Well, how was I to know? He wasn't wearing a crown and he wasn't wearing a long cloak.
Finally he looked at me. The King, I mean. He looked at me and held out his hand. I put the paper in his hand." He looked again at the watchers. "My hand actually touched his, but I wasn't struck by lightning or anything. He read it, and then made some marks on another paper and read it again. He asked about the health of Master Gregos, and I told him he was bad hurt by swords, and then he asked where Master Gregos was, and I told him, and then he waved me and the clerk away. The clerk gave me a coin, and led me back to the gate of the palace, and here I am."
"Nothing else" asked Wyl.
"Nothing, but let me tell you about the palace and the people and the clothes," offered the messenger eagerly.
"Another time. Go and eat. I am sure that they are waiting for your story in the kitchen."
As the lad and the watchers made for the kitchen, Raynar went to check on the patients. All were asleep. The physician had left a sleeping potion made from the sticky bitter sap of poppy pods. It was working. Gregos felt feverish, so Raynar dampened some linen bandages with clean water and put the cool cloths across his forehead and neck.
By the time he returned to the courtyard garden, Wyl was sitting with four young men. The sons of the Brotherhood. Junior hoodsmen. Wyl made the introductions to Raynar and each of the young men had a second name that he recognized. He was wrong to think of them as the sons of hoodsmen. They were grandsons.
Raynar suddenly felt very old. Grandsons. They were so young. Seventeen or eighteen, and with no experience of battlegrounds and slaughter. He chuckled to himself. He himself had been just eighteen and inexperienced when he had killed King Harald of Norway on the hill above Stamford Bridge. That was thirty-four years ago.
He sighed. Few of those years had been good years for him, or for most Englishmen. Thirty-four years of heartache, and loss, and hunger. None of these lads were hungry however. They were sons of successful Londoners, and London wasn't England. London was a wealthy city-port unto itself.
Wyl took the four lads on a tour of the Domus. The Domus was originally built to be quarters for a brotherhood of monks. Across the lane were the extensive ruins of a Roman temple, which was to have been rebuilt as a Christian abbey. These quarters were built using the original Roman foundations of the ancient quarters for the temple's priests. The layout, therefore, was Roman and very Mediterranean.
From the street, this residence was hidden by high walls, which well protected the insides from all intruders, including cold wet winds, noxious smells, and the hum of the city. Inside the walls, however, the spacious rooms were built around interconnecting courtyards. Instead of hallways there were covered breezeways, and covered porches where you could sit outside but be protected from the English rain.
It was now an Inn called the Traveler's Domus where most rooms were rented by the month or by the year. That wasn't just because Wyl was a fastidious innkeeper, but more because when you left your room to go traveling, all of your possessions were locked up in your room, and waited safely for your return.
Many of the tenants had homes in other places but used their room at the Domus as their home when in London on business. The Mediterranean flavour attracted clients who knew the Mediterranean and appreciated the simple comforts of this style of architecture. It was an oasis of cleanliness and calm, on the edge of a filthy and chaotic London.
The monks had planned it and built it well, but then had been refused permission to build their abbey by King Knut who felt there were already too many Christian temples around London. The order of monks moved on to find another location for their abbey, and the rights to this land, and the land of the Roman temple, had been in dispute ever since.
Wyl held the lease on this building and the stable yard next door from Repton Abbey. The monks there had been concerned that if it was used as an inn, then it would eventually be used for sinful purposes. For that reason, the lease came with a covenant that no woman could ever enter the building compound.
Besides being an oasis of comfort in London, it was also a crossroads of information. Some of the men who stayed here had business ventures in the corners of the kingdom, and the corners of the Mediterranean. Many a new venture started with a handshake in these courtyards. Many a night was spent listening to the stories of travelers and warriors.
A few of the private rooms contained the treasures of that tenant's lifetime, such as Raynar's. They were safely locked up and secured while the tenants were away on their next venture. The rooms were secure because the walls and the gate were easily defendable, and could be held by very few against many. Even by four junior hoodsmen.
When Wyl came back from giving the junior hoodsmen a tour, he had one of them with him. A tall thin fellow with a face almost too pretty to be a man's. "Sikka, here, thinks he knows you," he told Raynar who was sitting in the garden with his legs elevated while he kneaded the old muscles.
"My grandfather told me of you," said the lad. "You are Raynar of the Peaks, yes?"
"Aye, I am that, and who was your grandfather?"
"He was Klaes of Westerbur. He was a sea captain from the Fens near the Wash, back when the Frisian's controlled that area of the kingdom. You know, before..."
* * * * *
* * * * *
The Hoodsman - Frisians of the Fens by Skye Smith Copyright
2010-13