suggested.
Anne agreed. “Wash the bed linen and sheets,” she ordered.
CHAPTER TEN
THORRINGTON JUNE 1067
Edyth proved to be a very pragmatic woman. She’d never expected marriage or anything other than a temporary arrangement with Alan, as after all she was just a simple daughter of a country miller. Despite the short notice she was more than happy to accept the offer of a twenty acre dairy farm at Dovercourt, along with a dozen dairy cows, a house and outbuildings and two slaves, one male and one female. The offer of a small cart and a donkey to take her effects and an escort of two cheorls was accepted. As he had promised Anne, Alan graciously declined her offers of companionship for the two nights until she departed on Monday morning.
The entire Hall was in an uproar over the move to the new quarters, with three wagons trundling back and forth to transport the packed boxes, bags, chests and food stores the several hundred yards from the old house to the new. The new Hall was indeed ready for occupation, with the roof completed. Fresh rushes had been strewn on the paved floor and the fire lit.
The chimney still wasn’t drawing properly and smoke drifted through the Hall like in any other. The system of heating the bath-house and laundry water using the heat from the kitchen fire did work, and a trial run of the furnace for the hypocaust heating system showed it was apparently effective. All that was lacking was glass for the windows, but given the heat of summer that was no hardship.
When Anne arrived at mid-afternoon on the Tuesday the 5th of June she arrived in style. Three wagons drawn by oxen delivered essential goods, a dozen male servants for the house and her two maids Udelle and Esme, with Anne herself riding on her palfrey Misty and with an escort of a dozen warriors. With Synne and Willa, the Thorrington housemaids, this gave her four maids, together with the various cooking, cleaning and other domestic staff.
Despite the lack of vows made on the church steps there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that the new Lady of Thorrington had arrived, although the irregularity of their position would no doubt make it embarrassing the next time that Alan had to pass sentence in the Hundred court for the offence of illegal cohabitation. Anne had also brought her small pack of wolf-hounds and these settled into the Hall after some judicious posturing and position- making with the several dogs that usually were present in the Hall.
Alan of course made a great fuss of her, introducing her to the staff as his lady and instructing his steward Faran and cook Otha to take their instructions from her. As the other thegns would be attending on Friday, Alan had only invited to the meal Brother Godwine, together with his own senior staff of Faran, Osmund, Hugh, Baldwin, Roger and Warren, and also Toland the Torrington headman.
With plenty of warning the cook Otha had excelled herself with the food. Beef soup was followed by stuffed suckling pigs, roast pheasants, pork pies, veal and herb stew, glazed pork chops, roast venison, spinach tart with mustard greens, almond cress, turnips with cheese. Dessert was fresh blackberry pie, strawberry tart, gingerbread and some of the excellent cheeses that Alan favoured. A cask of the fine French wine taken from one of the Danish ships (origin not disclosed) was broached and drunk along with ale, mead and cider.
Anne played the perfect hostess, no doubt used to English dinners turning into drinking sessions, putting up with the bawdy jokes, kisses from beer-moistened moustaches and the groping of the serving wenches- the latter especially by Brother Godwine. She and Alan took the opportunity to quietly sneak out of the Hall and up the stairs into the bedchamber when nobody but Faran was looking, Alan giving Faran the nod to take over as host.
Upstairs in the bedchamber Anne ceremoniously sniffed the newly-washed bed linen, announced that she was satisfied and allowed herself to be undressed before the two of them went to sleep after a simple cuddle.
Next morning Anne left nobody in doubt as to who was in charge of the household. Work was allocated and re-allocated. Synne was chosen as head-maid, much to the chagrin of the others. The Hall was obviously spotless, being brand-new and just occupied, but the store-room needed restacking to Anne’s satisfaction and a myriad of other work undertaken.
On the Thursday the meeting of thegns which Alan had called was held at the Old Hall, which was to become the meeting-hall and court-house for the village in place of the previous intermittent use of the tithe-barn. All the thegns were in attendance by the appointed hour of ten o’clock. Each greeted both Alan and Anne and received from Osmund an inventory of the items taken in the joint battle at Wivenhoe, marked with which items had already been distributed to the warriors, and sat down to study the list over a tankard of ale.
Alan knew that, unlike Norman lords, almost certainly each one could read and understand the figures. English nobles had a very high rate of literacy in their own language and took learning seriously. As a scribe Osmund was granted equal status by the men around the table, who listened closely to his explanation about what had been taken, what had been disposed of and how.
Much of the coin and jewellery had been distributed to the warriors as their bounty after the fight. Apart from the arms and armour, most of what was left were larger items such as bolts of cloth. “You’ll each receive your head-money when the slaves are sold, which should be received in the next week or so. These larger items are saleable, or you may wish to take advantage of the fact that in another two weeks is the next Quarter Day, on the 24th. You can use these to pay some of your taxes in kind. Any questions?” Questions lasted a little over half an hour and were smoothly dealt with by Osmund and his references to the inventory.
“Now as to arms and armour, we have 437 usable sets of armour. Quite a few were melted to slag by my lord Alan and his engineers. There are 163 battle-axes; 210 swords; 136 spears; 480 shields; 582 helmets. These are, of course, all very valuable. The different villages and thegns provided different numbers of warriors. The warriors each received the same bounty of five shillings a head- the dead and injured more, as you know. Apart from the head-money, and how you divide that up will be up to you and you can talk about that later, the arms and armour are the main valuables left to be divided.
“My recommendation is that we divide them up on the basis of the number of warriors each village and thegn provided, except I would suggest that we make special provision for Wivenhoe where they had many untrained cheorls and sokeman take part in the fight. Other than that, the largest number came from Thorrington. You each have a listing of how many men came from where. I suggest that Wivenhoe gets all the spears and one eighth of the rest. The split up of the remainder would be according to this list I’ll now hand out.”
With only a few questions and items to be sorted out, agreement was reached with a speed that surprised Alan, who had known wealthy Norman lords argue for half a day about a couple of swords.
At the conclusion of business Alan thumped his tankard on the table to attract attention. “Hlaford! Last week we were fortunate at Wivenhoe. Yes we won a battle that those of you who are bards can weave into a memorable song. But the simple fact is we were lucky. We had 500 poorly-armed farm-boys who barely knew which end of the spear to hold. The few Danes who reached our line and fought man to man massacred our men.
“We won because they fought dumb and did exactly as we expected. That will not always happen. At some time in the future we will fight against capable leaders who deploy their men innovatively, or know how to either use combined arms or how to fight against them. We won’t always fight defensive actions. Some of you have huscarles, professional full-time soldiers, in your households. They should be professional enough to know that they need to train every day. Your fyrdmen should not come straight from the plough to the battle.
“Before now you could say that you didn’t have arms to give them. That is not now the case. Each fyrdman must receive half a day of training a week in individual weapons skills and formation fighting. If he complains about spending his time doing that, particularly in the busy seasons, remind him of Wivenhoe and the fact that he may not be lucky enough to avoid facing a Danish battle-axe next time, and it’s his life you are trying to save. Appoint your fyrdmen into squads and put a senior man in charge and drill them. Next time I call I expect- no demand- to have 500 trained men on the field. You, along with every freeman in the Hundred, have a duty to be ready to defend your village, your Hundred or your country. At the risk of offending you, the national fyrd performed badly at all the three battles fought last year. The performance last week of the local fyrd was unacceptably bad. The Wivenhoe farm- hands and slaves fighting for their village and homes fought at least as well as the fyrdmen.
“You will ensure that in three months time that does not happen again,” he continued in a thunderous voice,
