Chapter 2: Ravaged Village

IT HAD been a hard winter, the first time I visited Oaklea, almost twenty years ago now. In the early spring of that year the king had campaigned in France against the Burgundians or possibly some other perceived ducal or royal rival and had rounded up as many able men for the purpose as deemed required. I had quartered the winter safely from the military draft in the wilderness of the mountains and hills of North Wales, making longbows with my father. I had brought part of our stock to the rural manor of Oaklea, having heard of the famous annual tournament held there at the inn, which was the richest prize of all in this English shire at the time.

I found nought but devastation in the village upon my arrival. With all the men vanished from the large village, the constable and lord along with them, a thieving band of mercenaries had gone through the place a month before and taken everything of value.

My coin was eagerly snatched from my proffered hand at the famous inn, the alewife there almost my mother’s age but still youthful in spirit and very comely in appearance. I was weary from my long journey on foot and I wasn’t alone of like company. Others also came, lured by the expected promise of archery prizes, trading and profit, and stood there empty-handed and disappointed.

The alewife’s husband had also been taken off to war, forced along with the others into the military draft and had not returned, having buried his precious wealth in the ground before he left; where it was, no-one in his family knew. The ale in the inn was, however, noteworthy in quality and plentifully produced in anticipation of the spring throng, so the archers and associated traders determined to stay at the inn. A worthwhile prize of sorts was raised from the agreed entry fees of the participants, aided by the mutual interests of the wager mongers who had also thronged to the manor in expectation of filling their purses.

I won the first prize that year surprisingly easily, just a leather bag of a meagre few silver pennies, three or four shy of a shilling, I recall. I was but a boy then, and it was the very first tournament I had entered and won with my bow. I had been apprenticed in the bow-making craft to a master, my own beloved father, inheriting from his loins a natural good eye for a target. I traded nearly half of the bows I had brought with me at the completion of the contest. Most of the other competitors left immediately after for other fairs, but I tarried a couple more days, after the alewife sought an additional boon of me.

The marauders that attacked the village prior to our arrival that spring not only took all they could carry off, they also took by force the virginities of all the village maids as well as compromised as many of the wives who were considered comely enough for their brutal attentions.

I remember blushing furiously at what my youthful ears were unaccustomed to absorb and was grateful that the alewife explained the circumstances in the softest of tones while we were alone in the low flickering light of the night fire, which minimised from her view my gross embarrassment. I was a big lad for my age then, tall and powerful enough to draw my father’s longest longbow, thus I believe, the alewife thought I was much older and more experienced in the innermost workings of the adult world than I truly was.

What she was most concerned by was that her daughter was early with child without a husband, which was both an unhappy circumstance for any young woman and her child, particularly for a family of some standing in the community. There was no other suitable male of marriageable age left in the village. The local lord had cleared out all the able men of nearby vills at the same time, the policy of a fool - as are most nobles of my limited acquaintance.

The alewife ushered her only daughter into the room. She was a sweet, slim, flaxen-haired girl, with the biggest and bluest eyes I had ever seen. She was a petite and shy child, Alwen by name, and she shyly curtsied before me. I had not seen her before this juncture, her mother the dame and the maids in the inn had managed to keep her well hid from view. She was a beautiful girl, so startling in her angelic appearance that she literally took my breath away. The mother’s request was that I marry Alwen directly, so that she would have her child born within the social recognition and blessings of holy wedlock.

I would not have to tarry longer than a day or two at the most in the village, the alewife assured me. The priest would marry us in the church upon the morrow and I would be free to go on my way the following morn and not have to take the slightest legal or financial responsibility either in the upkeep of my bride or the raising of the fatherless child. The inn would care for them and, at a future undetermined date, the alewife would have the marriage annulled on grounds of the absent husband’s abandonment. There would be no hue and cry, a simple acceptance of a marriage of convenience tidily terminated to the benefit of all participants. Thus I would have no long-term commitment to mother or baby; the child would benefit from not being born a bastard out of wedlock and Alwen would have her present impeccable respectability duly maintained.

I declared that I would sleep upon the outrageous proposal a further night before deciding my course of action. The alewife offered to let me sleep on it that night in company with her daughter, as she was already just showing with child. I declined, though I was not much more than an overgrown callow youth myself. I could not sleep with a girl so young I announced adamantly, who was, despite her condition, clearly an innocent.

That was a laugh, I told myself, I was less than a handful of years older than Alwen and wholly an innocent myself!

As an alternative inducement, therefore, the comely alewife offered herself to me in her daughter’s stead, erroneously believing me to be of full maturity myself. She too, had been a forced provider of carnal pleasure to the villains who imposed themselves on the village women. She had resigned herself to the subjugation, hoping by taking them on turn by turn, they would spare her daughter and divers other innocent maids residing as servants at the inn. Alas, there were too many soldiers and one mercenary strayed to sample the pleasures of the daughter. Although she was otherwise quite well hid, she emerged from her secure hiding place through her own innocent curiosity.