late before breaking their fast on pottage and day-old bread. Anne missed breakfast, being ill in her room and attended by her maid Synne, the only one of her four maids to accompany her on this journey. Eventually Anne appeared downstairs and spoke for a while to the wife of the taverner. The drizzle had turned to heavy rain, but despite this Anne asked for the services of one of the huscarles as an escort when she ventured outside. She declined both of Alan’s suggestions that she either stay warm inside or that he walk with her. Well rugged up against the weather she left together with Synne and the huscarle, returning damp and bedraggled an hour or so later. Alan and Robert were playing a game of ‘Fox and Geese’ with a wooden playing board and pegs. Robert’s Fox had cornered nearly all of Alan’s Geese. Anne bullied them, together with Osmund and Leof, into changing their clothes to attend the noon Mass at Sext at the nearby abbey, only a few hundred paces away.
The vast stone nave of the abbey, with its huge columns and high vaulted ceiling, was chillingly cold. The Benedictine monks sitting in the massive wooden Choir had their breath freeze before them as they sang and they hid their hands inside the sleeves of their black woolen habits. Despite the weather several hundred of the town’s 2,000 residents were in attendance, including those sufficiently well-dressed as to clearly be the leading burgesses of the town. The singing and chanting of the monks was a thing of beauty. However the abbot, who was a tall man of spare build wearing rich vestments, was the only person in the church with a chair or a cushion on which to kneel. The hour and a half taken to cleanse their souls, alternately standing or kneeling on the cold stone, were a trial to the congregation. “By St Peter’s toenails, it’s as cold as a witch’s teat in here. What have we done to deserve having to pay such a strong penance for our sins?” Alan whispered to Anne. She replied with an elbow in his ribs.
After the parting benediction they hurried back through the heavy rain to the ‘Bear and Bull’, quickly quaffing a warming drink on their arrival and gathered close to the fire, rubbing their hands by the flames while their cloaks were dried in the kitchen. Washed clean of sin, either by attending Mass or by the rain, they felt uplifted and comfortable.
The huscarles passed the time by either sitting near the fire and playing knucklebones for small wagers or outside in the stables tossing horseshoes at a stake driven into the ground. Alan was about to resume his interrupted game of ‘Fox and Geese’ with Robert when Anne asked him to come upstairs to their bedroom. The room was not large, little bigger than the bed with its down mattress and quilted counterpane, and had a small brazier in one corner to take the winter chill from the room. Anne sat on the bed and indicated with a pat for Alan to do the same.
“I have good news, my husband,” she said. “You’ve probably guessed by now, but after seeing a midwife of this town this morning I can confirm I’m with child,” she continued quietly but proudly.
“Praise be to God!” replied Alan fervently, his face suffused with emotion as he hugged her to him. “We’ll get this business dealt with in Herefordshire and get off back home to Thorrington. Are you able to travel?”
Anne laughed delightedly and said, “I’m pregnant, not sick. Pregnant women travel all the time. I’ll just take it easy and travel in the cart instead of riding. The child isn’t due until early August, so it’ll be May before I’m much restricted.”
After another hug and kiss they went downstairs, Alan keen to share the good news with his friends. It was nearly dark outside, the abbey bells having just tolled for the None service at three in the afternoon. The men who had been outside had come into the warmth cast by the roaring fire in the inn’s Commons. The fire, smoking rush torches, the usual smells of stale ale and stale rushes that identified any inn, together with the sour smell of unwashed bodies, made the air thick and noisome.
After making the announcement to his close associates Robert, Osmund and Brand, the news was quickly passed to the rest of the party and Alan found himself having to pay for celebratory mugs of ale and listen to the often ribald words of congratulation from his Anglo-Saxon troopers. Not least amongst the things causing Alan to be in good spirits was the genuine enthusiasm with which his retinue had received the news, showing that the Norman knight and his Anglo-Danish wife had indeed been fully accepted by the parochial men from Essex in the year or so that he had been lord of Thorrington and the somewhat lesser time that Anne had been its lady.
The next morning the weather had improved to a slight drizzle, but still with a bitingly cold wind howling from the north. Accompanied at her insistence by Anne, and with the youth Leof in tow, they went to Cornhill to negotiate for a cartload of flour- wheat and rye. All the lands on the Welsh border had been devastated by invasion barely six months ago and Alan had no doubt that even basic food items such as bread would be at a premium on the border. For that reason he was buying at Gloucester, rather than Hereford, as at this distance from the ravaged area prices should still be reasonable. Anne handled the negotiations, first checking the quality of the goods on offer and then negotiating a good price, with delivery to Staunton-on-Wye and the wagon to leave on the morrow. The muddy dirt tracks that passed for roads would be in such poor condition after the rain that delivery was expected to take at least two to three days after leaving Gloucester.
Next they passed out of North Gate and entered the Monastery of St Oswald, located next to the river just outside the town walls. The monastery was not as large or as prosperous as St Peter’s Abbey and the Sext Mass which they attended at noon was conducted in a small chapel rather than at the main altar. The service was conducted in Latin by a Canon and proceeded expeditiously, the small congregation gathered presumably not being adjudged worth the effort of a sermon or more than basic bible readings. Afterwards Alan approached an acolyte and obtained an invitation to dine in the refectory before seeing Brother Brunwin, the librarian. The fare provided at the table in the refectory was plain, basic and relatively meager.
Alan had a project in conjunction with Brother Leanian, the librarian at St Botolph’s Priory at Colchester, in which as Alan moved around the country he sought out various books on Brother Leanian’s ‘wanted’ list. In return, when the books were copied in exchange for books held at Colchester, Alan also received a copy. He had built up a considerable personal library of over two dozen books, including medical and military texts, poetry and classical works from the Greeks and Romans, as well as a number of books of English poetry.
On being ushered into the small dark room that was the library, Alan cast an eye at the small collection of books that lined one wall and immediately reached the conclusion that it was unlikely there would be anything of interest either to himself or to Brother Leanian. After a brief discussion Brother Brunwin took Alan’s list and then stood to read it in the light cast by the sole window of the room. Nearby were two monks sitting at small tables copying and illuminating basic religious texts. Alan’s expectations were fulfilled, in that Brother Brunwin would have wished to obtain many of the works on Brother Leanian’s ‘available’ list, but had nothing to offer in return.
Leaving St Oswald’s they walked the short distance to St Peter’s where they entered the larger and more brightly lit library overseen by Brother Alwin. This library was of obvious learning and industry. There were over a dozen small oak desks each with a wooden book-holder. Half a dozen monks in black habits were studying and making notes on wax tablets- even scraps of parchment were valuable and any important notes would be copied out later.
“Several of these Brothers are our scholars and teachers,” explained Brother Alwin. “We have something of a reputation as to the abilities of the scholars who live amongst us.” Half the adjoining large workroom was taken up by a dozen wooden desks and work-benches, each with a copy stand; each was occupied by a monk, all with the utmost care copying ancient tomes onto sheets of parchment or vellum. Three were undertaking what appeared to be commercial works, copying Psalters or Books of Hours for sale.
Here Alan was more successful and an agreement was reached to exchange three books between the abbeys. Two were medical works by Hippocrates and Galen, in Greek, and one an early English religious text from the seventh century. The copying would only take two months or so as the books were not large and Brother Leanian had specified he did not want ornate illumination. Alan would then receive his own copies in due course from Colchester Priory.
The following day the rain stopped, although the wind was still bitterly cold. Well protected by warm clothes and cloaks, and with Anne and her maid Synne sitting wrapped in blankets on the light cart, they departed out of West Gate, rode across the wooden bridges over the River Wye after paying the pontage fee and headed north to Hereford.
Before departing from Winchester Alan had sent word to his manor at Thorrington in Essex for more men to meet them at Hereford. He expected the arrival of Normans Baldwin, a trained man-at-arms, and Warren, an archer; also the Anglo-Saxon huscarle officer Leofwin and a force of five huscarles and ten Anglo-Saxon mounted men-at-arms from the company that Alan called his ‘Wolves’. Although they had further to travel, the slow progress of Alan’s party meant that the men from Essex should have covered the greater distance in less time.
Normally Alan would have expected the 37 miles from Gloucester to Hereford to be accomplished in half a
