The Domesday Book. (Still Not That One)

By Howard of Warwick

It's history, but not as we know it.

England, 1067-ish and the King’s grip is tight. His Earls of Northumbria will keep dying though. Every time he appoints one, someone sticks something in them, or sets light to them. Something is going on and he has a strong suspicion who's behind it. If he's right, it could mean real trouble.

In Viking Vinland, the man who would be king awaits rescue - and waits. If no one else is going to do it, he will just have to rescue himself. There's only a bit of sea to cross, he will sail home and take his throne by force. Although he might need a bit of help.

And then there are the Danes and the Scots who have their own ideas.

If Volume I is anything to go by, this situation is a recipe for disaster. And if you’ve got the recipe, you might as well make a disaster.

The textbooks would have you believe that everything in the past was carefully planned and organised. That the leaders of the time were clear in their aims and decisive in their actions. That the people knew what great events they were living through.
No one made mistakes, no one incompetent ever got to be in charge and above all, no one ever had a laugh.

All that changed with Howard of Warwick.

The 16th book to do things to history that it never asked for, returns to the aftermath of the most famous date ever. 1066. Well, the year after actually, no one ever talks about that - and with good reason, it was chaos.

Caution: contains facts.

What they said of The Domesday Book (No, Not That One)

‘Had me chuckling the whole way through,’ Discovering Diamonds.
5* ‘Brilliantly humorous,’
5* ‘A laugh riot,’

• Language: English
• Publisher: Howard of Warwick
• Release date: Oct 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781999895938

Howard of Warwick

Howard of Warwick is but a humble chronicler with the blind luck to stumble upon the Hermitage manuscripts; tales of Brother Hermitage, a truly medieval detective, whose exploits largely illustrate what can be achieved by mistake. Now an international best-seller with nearly a quarter of a million sales and a host of Number 1s, it only goes to show. Howard's work has been heard, seen and read, most of it accompanied by laughter and some of it by money. His peers have even seen fit to recognise his unworthy efforts with a prize for making up stories. The Chronicles of Brother Hermitage begin with The Heretics of De'Ath, closely followed by The Garderobe of Death and The Tapestry of Death. Howard then paused to consider the Battle of Hastings as it might have happened - but almost certainly didn't - and produced The Domesday Book (No, Not That One). More reinterpretations hit the world with The Magna Carta (Or Is It?) Brother Hermitage still randomly drifted through a second set of mysteries with Hermitage, Wat and Some Murder or Other: Hermitage, Wat and some Druids and Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns. Just when you think this can't possibly go on: The Case of the Clerical Cadaver turned up followed by The Case of the Curious Corpse and now The Case of The Cantankerous Carcass. Now there are thirty of the things in various cubby holes all over the world. All the titles are also available as major books, with paper and everything. Try your local bookstore or www.thefunnybookcompany.com

Book preview

The Domesday Book

vol. II

(Still Not That One)

or

The Return of The King

(Not That One Either)

By

Howard of Warwick

The Funny Book Company

Published by The Funny Book Company

Dalton House, 60 Windsor Ave, London SW19 2RR

www.funnybookcompany.com

Copyright © 2018 Howard Matthews

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, or distributed by any means whatsoever without the express permission of the copyright owner. The author’s moral rights have been asserted.

Cover design by Double Dagger.

ISBN 978-1-9998959-3-8

Also by Howard of Warwick.

The First Chronicles of Brother Hermitage

The Heretics of De'Ath

The Garderobe of Death

The Tapestry of Death

Continuing Chronicles of Brother Hermitage

Hermitage, Wat and Some Murder or Other

Hermitage, Wat and Some Druids

Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns

Yet More Chronicles of Brother Hermitage

The Case of the Clerical Cadaver

The Case of the Curious Corpse

The Case of the Cantankerous Carcass

Interminable Chronicles of Brother Hermitage

A Murder for Mistress Cwen

A Murder for Master Wat

Brother Hermitage Diversions

Brother Hermitage in Shorts (Free!)

Brother Hermitage’s Christmas Gift

Howard of Warwick’s Middle Ages crisis: Authenticity sans accuracy.

The Domesday Book (No, Not That One.)

The Magna Carta (Or Is It?)

Explore the whole sorry business and join the mailing list at

Howardofwarwick.com

Another funny book from The Funny Book Company

Greedy by Ainsworth Pennington

Caput I The Earl of Dead

Caput II The King of The Castle

Caput III Sir Bazile Sallies Forth

Caput IV The Shipping Forecast

Caput V For Sale: Northumbria; Several Careless Users

Caput VI All Aboard

Caput VII If You Want A Job Doing

Caput VIII If At First You Don’t Succeed, Give Up

Caput IX All at Sea

Caput X In the Court of The Danish King

Caput XI Edgar the Not So Eager

Caput XII Northumbria’s Latest problem

Caput XIII See the Sea

Caput XIV Follow The Leader

Caput XV Next Stop, Durham

Caput XVI Do it Yourself

Caput XVII Run for Some Hills

Caput XVIII We Three Kings

Caput XIX Welcome to York

Caput XX To The East, Trouble. To The West, More Trouble.

Caput XXI It’s All in The Preparation

Caput XXII Scouting for Kings

Caput XXIII Gathering Forces, Eventually

Caput XXIV From Shore to Ship

Caput XXV Ever After?

Epilogue.

The map(ish) of the book.

Caput I

The Earl of Dead

‘Dead?’ King William of England, Duke of Normandy, considered his trusted companion, Le Pedvin, with a troubled eye. ‘What do you mean, dead?’

‘The usual.’ Le Pedvin shrugged and strolled across the room to sit at the table next to his king. ‘You know, dead.’ He cast his own single eye around the room and scratched the patch that covered the space where his other one used to be. ‘Are you still going ahead with this?’ He indicated the room around them with a nod of his head.

‘Of course,’ William replied, putting the parchment he had been considering down at his side. He stood, drew his fearsome frame full height, ran his hands through the circle of hair that sat atop his head, and looked about him. He even stepped over to give one of the wooden walls of the castle’s keep an encouraging pat.

‘Nothing like a castle to frighten the locals. Give me five years and I’ll replace this with one made of stone.’ He considered the walls and floor around him and used his hands to indicate that his stone version would be a tower of some sort. ‘Just what the people of London need, a great big tower with Normans on top, dropping things on them. Ha ha.’ He smiled at the thought.

Le Pedvin gave no response but took a leg of chicken from a plate on the table and gnawed at it. As he sat back he looked like nothing more than one of the logs that made up the walls of the fortification. His build was certainly no thicker than a half decent tree limb, and a dead tree looked a lot healthier. Wherever the chicken he was eating was going, it wasn’t doing him any good.

‘Anyway,’ William said, getting back to the subject. ‘What do you mean he’s dead? And don’t say he’s not alive any more; I know what dead means. How can he be dead?’

‘Someone killed him.’ Le Pedvin looked at his chicken as if only now remembering that he didn’t like food. He helped himself to a flagon of wine instead. He liked wine.

‘Someone killed him?’ William sounded interested now. ‘I’ve got a monk who sorts things like this out, haven’t I?’

Le Pedvin didn’t look very interested.

‘The monk, you know. Brother Investigator or something.’

‘Oh, him,’ Le Pedvin was contemptuous. ‘Man’s an idiot; don’t know why you encourage him. Anyway, we know who did it.’

‘Who?’ The way William asked this question made it quite clear that whoever it was would be the next dead person.

‘Fellow called Osulf, apparently.’ Le Pedvin didn’t seem particularly concerned.

‘Osulf?’ The name seemed to stir a vague recollection in William. ‘Not the same Osulf who killed Eric Bloodaxe?’

‘Hardly,’ Le Pedvin coughed into his wine. ‘If that was him he’d be a hundred years old by now. Probably a relation though.’

‘Wasn’t there an Osulf trying to run the place before I sent Copsi up there?’

‘That’s him. Obviously didn’t take well to losing his job. And he’s one of Morcar’s Northumbrian men.’

‘The Morcar we’ve got locked up?’

‘Can’t be two Earls of Northumbria called Morcar, I’d have thought.’

William shook his head in frustration that even locking people up didn’t stop them causing him trouble. ‘When did this happen?’

‘The news is fresh in, so probably a week ago.’

‘Honestly.’ William tutted at the goings-on around him. ‘You can’t leave these people alone for a day and a night without them killing one another. Where are we now? April?’

Le Pedvin obviously didn’t follow dates very carefully. ‘Probably.’

‘Copsi only came here and swore allegiance last month. I make the man Earl of Northumbria, and how long does he last?’

‘About five weeks, they say.’

‘Five weeks?’ William was very disappointed. ‘It took me longer than that to sail from Normandy. How could he only last five weeks?’

‘Word is that this Osulf surprised him.’

‘I’d say he must have done. Not much of an Earl if you get yourself killed after a month.’

‘Trapped him in a church, burned it down and then cut his head off.’

‘God,’ William sighed. ‘Is nothing sacred?’ Compared to some of the things William had done, the behaviour of Osulf was quite restrained. But then William was a king now, so he could do what he liked.

He returned to his seat and glanced with familiar disappointment at the discarded chicken leg with one small bite taken out of it. He took it up himself, almost sucking the rest of the meat off in one rather revolting slurp.

‘What is it about Northumbria?’ he asked Le Pedvin and the room. ‘They’ve been trouble since the day we got here.’

‘Different country,’ Le Pedvin shrugged his version of shoulders. ‘Danes and Earls and so forth think they run the place.’

‘But Copsi swore allegiance to me. And he fought against Harold at Stamford Bridge. You’d think he’d know his way round the place and not get his head cut off at the first sign of trouble.’ William clearly thought that the whole head removal business was as much Copsi’s fault as Osulf’s.

He threw the now gleaming chicken bone down and turned slightly towards Le Pedvin. Looking at that man sideways-on was always a challenge.

The King knew perfectly well what the guts of other men looked like; he’d used his sword to make quite a lot of them fall out. He still doubted that there was room in Le Pedvin’s frame for the normal complement. Perhaps that explained why he ate so little, he really didn’t have the guts.

William arranged his face into its most serious expression. This was very little different from the one he wore all the time but those close to him would spot the difference. He even left a pause before asking his question. ‘And you’re sure that,’ he hesitated for a moment, ‘you-know-who actually left?’ If there was a name King William didn’t want to say out loud for fear of invoking a curse of some sort, it would have to be an important one.

Le Pedvin sighed, his sapling-like frame finding the power from somewhere to release a breath that he no longer needed. ‘Yes.’ The word had the tone of one that had been repeated many times over, apparently to little effect. ‘Martel, Ranulf and I saw him sail away with the Danes.’

‘Doesn’t mean he didn’t come back. He could have been dropped off somewhere up the coast. He could be rallying support. It would explain all this trouble.’

Le Pedvin turned to face his king and gave his very familiar report. ‘This is not Harold. We know he sailed away because I saw him. We know he arrived at the court of Magnus because Magnus told us himself. And we know that he sailed west, never to be seen again.’

And William gave his familiar response. ‘Magnus could be lying.’

‘Yes, he could be lying,’ Le Pedvin accepted. ‘But it’s not in his interest to lie to you, is it?’

William nodded that it was most certainly not in King Magnus’s interest to lie to him. Having got the hang of invading other kings countries quite successfully, his promise to visit this skill upon any who crossed him had become quite effective.

‘Of course,’ the king went on, a tone of serious disappointment in his voice that was deadly in most circumstances, ‘if you’d killed him, like I asked, we wouldn’t be worrying about this at all.’

Le Pedvin regarded his monarch with his own serious demeanour. ‘I’m not worrying about it.’ he said plainly. ‘The whole country thinks he’s dead. Everyone knows he was shot in the eye. Even his mother and his wife accept that he’s dead.’

‘They are a bit suspicious,’ William confided. ‘They’re still complaining about why I won’t give them the body. Even after all this time.’

‘You’ve told them there’s not enough left to fill a small sack. Let it go.’

William did not look keen on letting Harold go. Like he hadn’t been keen the first time it happened.

‘I’ve killed everyone else you asked me to,’ Le Pedvin pointed out. ‘And several more besides. Harold had a band of Vikings spiriting him away on a long ship. Not much even you could do on your own against a boat full of Norsemen. And before you suggest it,’ he went on quickly, ‘remember who I had with me. Ranulf de Sauveloy, the pickiest man in Normandy, who’d criticise the Lord Almighty for not being quite almighty enough, Giles Martel, who managed to avoid even the mud of Hastings and would run from the point of his own sword, and finally the hostage no one wants, the awful Saxon, Mabbut, moaning on forever about how wonderful everything Saxon was. A bunch so useless it was even worse than being on your own.’

‘Hm,’ William didn’t sound convinced about this.

‘And if this was Harold,’ Le Pedvin continued, ‘he would crow about it, wouldn’t he? He’d be calling all those who oppose you to join him in the north. He’d be claiming that he was still the king and that it wasn’t you at all.’

William just rumbled quietly, knowing that if you thought you were entitled to be a king, you had to say so, quite loud and quite often.

‘Instead we’ve got that useless sheep botherer Edgar Aethling claiming that he’s the king. Chosen by the Witan, so he must be.’

‘Claiming from as far away as he can get,’ William pointed out.

‘Quite. I’d be surprised if he’s behind any of this. Too much like actual fighting for him. And if Harold was still around he’d have finished Edgar off by now. No, this is just some greedy locals after what they can get. And they get more by chopping the heads off the ones who have anything at the moment.’

‘I shall have to go there and sort them out.’ William sounded reluctant at such a tedious chore. ‘Can’t have people going round killing one another unless I say so. Not much of a king otherwise.’

‘Why bother? You’ve got enough on your hands dealing with the southerners.’

‘And the westerners.’

‘And the Welsh.’

‘Don’t get me started on the Welsh.’ William was getting annoyed. ‘Eric from the marches has sworn allegiance but I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could carry him on the end of my sword.’

‘So,’ Le Pedvin nodded as if it was settled. ‘Leave the northerners alone for a while. With any luck they’ll all kill one another, and then you can just walk up there and take charge.’

William pondered this. ‘And anything left is mine because there won’t be anyone left to object. Mind you, if they don’t all kill one another, I shall go up there and do it for them.’

‘Right and proper, too,’ Le Pedvin agreed. ‘And anyway, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this Osulf found himself dead before long. Seems to be a tradition with Earls of Northumbria; get appointed and die.’

William considered all this as he poured his own wine and sipped on it. ‘I can’t have people setting themselves up as earls though. Not without my agreement. It sets a bad example to the rest of them. I’ll have earls springing up all over the place claiming this and that.’ He seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. ‘Best thing to do is kill him straight away, I think.’ He said this as if making up his mind whether to fix the thatch on the roof or mend the door first.

‘Please yourself.’ Le Pedvin didn’t seem to be bothered about who got killed in what order. ‘What about Eric though? What if he does go back to killing his neighbours, Norman neighbours? At least this Osulf hasn’t got any Normans to kill yet.’

William growled his frustration at wanting to kill everyone at once and not being able to do it. ‘So many people to kill and so little time.’ He came to yet another decision. ‘All right, we go and do Eric first, then Osulf. We can always send word that we’re coming; that should scare him nicely and discourage any support.’

‘That’s a thought.’ Le Pedvin stroked his chin with his long fingers, an action that would make any observer wonder why they couldn’t hear the bones rubbing together.

‘What is?’

‘Killing Osulf. We don’t have to do it ourselves.’ Le Pedvin raised his eyebrows with the suggestion.

‘I’d like to,’ William replied. ‘It’s the proper thing.’

‘Well, yes, but if you don’t have the time, you could always send someone to do it for you.’

‘Send someone?’ William sounded vaguely disgusted at such a deceitful idea.

‘Some ambitious young pain in the arse. There’s lots of them want to impress the new king. Just pick one and ask him to pop up to Northumbria and kill Osulf for you.’

William frowned. ‘And if they fail?’

‘They weren’t ambitious enough. Send another one.’

William frowned as if this was an underhand way to go about things. Far better to finish Osulf off himself, underhand or overarm. ‘He’d have to know it was me.’

‘Of course.’ Le Pedvin accepted this. ‘We could send this young blood up as your official emissary, come to kill the usurper Osulf.’

‘Not going to last long, being my official emissary in Northumbria, I’d have thought.’

‘More than five weeks would be fine.’

William took one final pause for thought. ‘Alright,’ he gave up his opposition. ‘But no one too valuable.’

‘Agreed. And if you finish off Eric with time to spare you can go and do it yourself after all.’

William would have given Le Pedvin a friendly thump on the back, but he didn’t like the ripple of the man’s bones when he did that. ‘This emissary could also make sure that Harold isn’t behind all this and report back.’

‘Report back? Is the emissary going to live that long?’

‘Hm, probably not.’

Now Le Pedvin was serious. ‘Harold is not behind anything. Take my word for it. If he was, we’d know. The worst he could be is sitting on some distant island starving to death. At best his ship sank, and he drowned on the way there.’

William did now risk a pat for Le Pedvin, but it was light and on the shoulder. ‘You always know how to bring me good cheer.’ He thumped the table instead. ‘Now, let’s really make April a month to remember. Let’s go and kill Eric.’

Caput II

The King of The Castle

‘Your Majesty.’ Cnud Mabbut bowed deep and low as he approached the throne.

‘What news, my Lord Mabbut?’ King Harold enquired.

Lord Mabbut. Lord Mabbut! Cnud could not believe it. From a downtrodden young hostage of the wretched William, so-called Duke of so-called Normandy, to a lord of the court of King Harold. Wait until his parents heard about this. Then they wouldn’t be so dismissive of his obsession with the Saxon land and all things Saxon. And he would be able to free them from the tyranny of William. It would be the first thing he did. As soon as they got back.

‘I regret,’ Mabbut kept his head down and eyes averted, ‘No sign.’

‘Where have the wretched people gone?’ Harold stood from his throne and walked, rather gingerly, across to the window. He stood silent, his hands clasped behind his back, as if expecting the Vikings to appear over the horizon at any moment.

He released a heavy sigh and turned away. As he did so, he caught his foot in a root sticking up from the rough earth floor and nearly fell. ‘Ow, God blind me.’ He hopped a couple of times and clamped a hand to the site of the wound he had taken at Hastings; the wound the court knew to refer to as a thigh wound, even though it was quite a lot higher and a lot more personal than that.

His hopping brought him back to his throne and he leaned on it for support.

Mabbut knew better than to leap forward and offer his aid; the king was very sensitive about that. Better to let him lean on the ancient tree trunk he called his throne while he recovered.

It wasn’t just a tree trunk, it was a magnificent tree trunk. A trunk from a tree the size of which dwarfed anything Mabbut had ever seen. And it had been carved into a very nice throne-like chair by one of the local craftsmen who seemed excellent at this sort of thing; although, for the life of him this craftsman seemed to have no idea why he was being asked to produce something so bizarre.

The same craftsman had laughed heartily when he eventually understood that the strange men from over the sea wanted a house made of wood. Animal skin was perfectly fine and a lot easier to move when the time came to change hunting grounds. Or, at least, that’s what Mabbut had taken from their gyrations and gestures.

He had explained that they didn’t move. Once they had built a house they would stay in it throughout the year. This explanation, which took quite some time to get across, almost had the craftsman rolling on the floor in hysterics. Then, when he’d been directed to knock a hole in the wooden wall he’d just put up as it needed a window, he had to go and lie down and come back a few days later. He even brought some of his fellows and their children to see the pale men from over the sea, so that they too could have a good laugh.

The main problem with these local people was that they still didn’t understand a word anyone said to them, even after all the months the Saxons had been talking to them. As a result, they still had no idea that Harold was their king, or even a king at all. Mimes of crowns and regalia, and obeisance seemed to mean nothing. They couldn’t even produce a king of their own, or anyone who seemed to be in charge. It was a wonder these people survived at all.

When the Vikings left the Saxons here last spring, in Vinland, as they called it, they might have mentioned to the local inhabitants, perhaps the Vins, that Harold was King Harold and not just