I was actually going to post a different memory before this one, but I had another dream about it two nights ago.
These are in the form of dreams and flashbacks...so Ill tell the whole story as I know it:
Myself and a detachement of men are riding horses, two abrest. We have been summonned to see a local lord of some type. We are left with the impression that it is a social type call...a peaceful meeting, but we are suspicious about something and are armed, wearing armor, etc...so we turn out in our very best. We are equipped with chainmail armor and helmets and are wearing white long shirts over the armor as part of our uniform.
We ride through a gate with armed guards on the wall. (The arch is low and we have to duck our heads as we go through since we are high up on horses!) The area is a fortified set of buildings...not like a castle as you think of it, but wooden walls with stone corners and a stone archway and gate. The guards at the gate have crossbows, the soldiers on the ground have long poleaxe type weapons. The soldiers are wearing different uniforms than us over their armor, they are dark colors.
The lord's soldiers seem nervous and are watching us strangely. At some point some men in our detachment have been shot with crossbows and fall off their horses.
I turn to look at the commotion and a soldier runs up to me to my front right, surprising me, and brings the poleaxe down on my helmet in a verticle type cut. My face is completly enclosed in the helmet (I beleive it is a crusaders great helm) and I am not hurt from the contact. Where the axe hits my helm is about 1' or 2" just to the right of the center of my chin if you can imagine that. I am not hurt but it is a strong hit and I fall off my horse on the right side face down.
I am in an alleyway about 15' wide that runs between a building and the fortress wall. I am able to get up and run. So I run down this alleyway, it opens into a small clearing between buildings to the left where Ill be seen, so I turn right and go under a stone bridge. I wait there for awhile.
There is alot of yelling behind me. Some men go over the bridge, some are outside the fortress wall..yelling trying to find out where the survivors of our detachment went, etc. Eventually I am able to get out of the main wall, by crawling under the bridge I beleive, and I run. I run out of town and through some woods. At some point I meet up with some of my comrades and there are men back in the woods shooting arrows at us. Some of our people are struck by arrows, injured and we have to leave them. Unsure if they were killed or wounded but there was blood present.
We run until we feel that we've lost our pursuers. We go down a hill which has a creek or a dry creek and up the other side. About 6 or 7 of us are laying on the slope of the hill waiting for the sun to go down so we can move at night undetected. There is a thick canopy of trees above us, high up. The trees are tall but have thin trunks...about 4" thick but there are alot of them. The ground is dirt, no grass. Im assuming from lack of sunlight.
The sun is going down as we lay inclined on the slope of this hill. We are watching the sunset so we are looking westward at that point. Myself and another guy are talking and actually laughing about surviving the ordeal. Maybe its nervous laughter. We know there is a town nearby and I beleive we went there and are hidden by the monks/priests in a monastery or church.
Something tells me we were able to escape to portugal and later to scotland.
I beleive my detachment was an order of religious knights. There was a push at that time to get rid of, change the mission of, or control religious military orders (by secular royalty) since the crusades were over and the religious orders didnt really have a mission anymore. Secular royalty did not like the wealth of the religious orders and their lack of control of these groups. (These groups answered to the pope only and not local kings and lords) What I believe is the lord of this area called us to his headquarters under supposedly friendly releations, but tried to kill us all once we were locked inside the walls.
The strange thing is, I believe I knew my ex wife in that life, although she was a man...and she believes she was a priest of some sort when we knew each other. I feel the same way. We talked about it before and she thought the same thing.
I am unsure if she was one of the priests from our headquarters in spain, the people who hid us in portugal, or someone who aided and housed us in scotland. I do lean toward the first possibility because when I think about it I have the sad feeling that she was someone I knew for a long time and never saw again.
Like Ive said before, my memories are the result of some type of trauma. Two battlefield type and one from a sadness within the family.
Thank you for my long windedness. Like I said I dreamt about this issue again the other night and wanted to write about it while it was still on my mind.
My best to everyone.
These are in the form of dreams and flashbacks...so Ill tell the whole story as I know it:
Myself and a detachement of men are riding horses, two abrest. We have been summonned to see a local lord of some type. We are left with the impression that it is a social type call...a peaceful meeting, but we are suspicious about something and are armed, wearing armor, etc...so we turn out in our very best. We are equipped with chainmail armor and helmets and are wearing white long shirts over the armor as part of our uniform.
We ride through a gate with armed guards on the wall. (The arch is low and we have to duck our heads as we go through since we are high up on horses!) The area is a fortified set of buildings...not like a castle as you think of it, but wooden walls with stone corners and a stone archway and gate. The guards at the gate have crossbows, the soldiers on the ground have long poleaxe type weapons. The soldiers are wearing different uniforms than us over their armor, they are dark colors.
The lord's soldiers seem nervous and are watching us strangely. At some point some men in our detachment have been shot with crossbows and fall off their horses.
I turn to look at the commotion and a soldier runs up to me to my front right, surprising me, and brings the poleaxe down on my helmet in a verticle type cut. My face is completly enclosed in the helmet (I beleive it is a crusaders great helm) and I am not hurt from the contact. Where the axe hits my helm is about 1' or 2" just to the right of the center of my chin if you can imagine that. I am not hurt but it is a strong hit and I fall off my horse on the right side face down.
I am in an alleyway about 15' wide that runs between a building and the fortress wall. I am able to get up and run. So I run down this alleyway, it opens into a small clearing between buildings to the left where Ill be seen, so I turn right and go under a stone bridge. I wait there for awhile.
There is alot of yelling behind me. Some men go over the bridge, some are outside the fortress wall..yelling trying to find out where the survivors of our detachment went, etc. Eventually I am able to get out of the main wall, by crawling under the bridge I beleive, and I run. I run out of town and through some woods. At some point I meet up with some of my comrades and there are men back in the woods shooting arrows at us. Some of our people are struck by arrows, injured and we have to leave them. Unsure if they were killed or wounded but there was blood present.
We run until we feel that we've lost our pursuers. We go down a hill which has a creek or a dry creek and up the other side. About 6 or 7 of us are laying on the slope of the hill waiting for the sun to go down so we can move at night undetected. There is a thick canopy of trees above us, high up. The trees are tall but have thin trunks...about 4" thick but there are alot of them. The ground is dirt, no grass. Im assuming from lack of sunlight.
The sun is going down as we lay inclined on the slope of this hill. We are watching the sunset so we are looking westward at that point. Myself and another guy are talking and actually laughing about surviving the ordeal. Maybe its nervous laughter. We know there is a town nearby and I beleive we went there and are hidden by the monks/priests in a monastery or church.
Something tells me we were able to escape to portugal and later to scotland.
I beleive my detachment was an order of religious knights. There was a push at that time to get rid of, change the mission of, or control religious military orders (by secular royalty) since the crusades were over and the religious orders didnt really have a mission anymore. Secular royalty did not like the wealth of the religious orders and their lack of control of these groups. (These groups answered to the pope only and not local kings and lords) What I believe is the lord of this area called us to his headquarters under supposedly friendly releations, but tried to kill us all once we were locked inside the walls.
The strange thing is, I believe I knew my ex wife in that life, although she was a man...and she believes she was a priest of some sort when we knew each other. I feel the same way. We talked about it before and she thought the same thing.
I am unsure if she was one of the priests from our headquarters in spain, the people who hid us in portugal, or someone who aided and housed us in scotland. I do lean toward the first possibility because when I think about it I have the sad feeling that she was someone I knew for a long time and never saw again.
Like Ive said before, my memories are the result of some type of trauma. Two battlefield type and one from a sadness within the family.
Thank you for my long windedness. Like I said I dreamt about this issue again the other night and wanted to write about it while it was still on my mind.
My best to everyone.
