[Norman Conquest 02] Winter of Discontent (49 page)

After the parting Benediction, Alan quickly circulated amongst the thegns, again expressing his thanks.

*
*
*
*

A week later Alan was sitting in the office of
Robert fitzWymarc, the
sheriff
of Essex, at the castle at Colchester. FitzWymarc’s deputy Roger and also his clerk were sitting in the room, as was Alan’s clerk Osmund.

“So you saw fit to call out the fyrd again,” commented fitzWymarc sourly. “You know you don’t have that authority.”

“I didn’t formally call out the fyrd, and
you
know
that
Sir Robert,” replied Alan.
“The Danes had landed. The
sheriff
was nowhere to be seen, as is the case with such raids. Nobody can know in advance where they will land. They land and we have just a few minutes, n
ever
more than a few hours, to respond. We aren’t talking about an invasion by
5,000
men and the need to raise a large army. Small raids must be dealt with whatever is available at short-notice. The Danes were on the doorstep. I asked my fellow thegns for assistance which they kindly sent
-
even your own man. Villages burning in the distance give men some motivation to act
!
”

FitzWymarc scowled and said
,
“I don’t know that a landing of nearly
1,000
men is ‘a small raid’, and I received no request for assistance.”

“No message was sent. No assistance was needed
- and we couldn’t afford to wait for assistance even if it had been dispatched
,” said Alan baldly. “There was no time for you to respond. Unless Swein’s whole army arrives we are unlikely to need any assistance. Tendring Hundred has a good group of thegns and
gebur
s who take their defence seriously and fight like lions when they have to. As to the size of the raid, we collected over
350
swords from the dead.”

“De Cholet accuses you of cowardly allowing the enemy to escape instead of engaging them,” said fitzWymarc sharply.

Alan gave a snort of amusement. “
D
e Cholet is a good man with a sword, but not himself the sharpest sword in the armoury. The Danes still outnumbered us
even at the end
. They were better equipped and better trained. We’d had a good run up to that point and there was no benefit in pushing our luck. A good gambler knows when to fold and walk away and a good leader of a war-band knows the same.” Here he gave a shrug. “We buried
63
of our men the next day. That was enough. Two of them were thegns and three were the sons of thegns. I’ve fought at Hastings, in Wales, at York and twice fought the Danes in my own lands
- a
ll winning battles.”

FitzWymarc scowled again. He couldn’t understand how a pack of farmers, thrown together at short notice and
Englishmen
could rout a larger army of professional Danish raiders while inflicting five times as many losses as they suffered.

Before he could comment further Alan continued
,
“Anyway, what I came here for was not to debate my actions, but to offer you five longships and forty sets of arms and armour if you undertake to man them, based at Colchester and use them to discourage the raiding on our ships which I understand is causing considerable concern and loss amongst the local merchants.”

“I don’t give a damn for those money-grubbing bastards!” exclaimed the
sheriff
. “All I hear is their whining about lost profits!”

Alan smiled, but it was a smile of contempt
. He
replied
,
“Those ‘money-grubbing bastards’ and their profits support the kingdom and help pay your wages. Mercantile activity means jobs and income for many, and
put
s
money into the coffers of both the king and yourself. I’m offering you a way, at minimal cost, to provide some protection to ships off our shores and to deter small raids. Perhaps you can consult with
Chancellor
Herfast
and King William before you reach a decision. In the meantime I’ll beach the boats in a safe place. Now, if you will excuse me I have some shopping to do
- s
tores to replace and medicines to replenish. Good day, Sir Robert.”

Anne was having an interesting afternoon and thoroughly enjoying herself. She was sitting an a chairs in the light of a window, a small table with board and markers in front of her, playing Tabula with Lora, who sat opposite with a frown of concentration creasing her brow as she examined the board and rolled the dice. At eighteen the pretty blond
e girl was the same age as Anne-
although the latter
was more experienced
with her three years of marriage
,
first to Aelfric of Wivenhoe
,
who
had been
killed at Stamford Bridge
,
and then to Alan,
and she
felt ancient in comparison. From time to time Lora’s eyes would flick across to where Osmund was working, carefully using ink and a rather battered quill to write out the fair copy of the record of the last sitting of the Hundred
C
ourt
, to be sent to the Ju
diciar’s office on
the next
Quarter Day
, Michaelmas on the 29
th
of September
.

Lora was hunting and stalking her prey, with poor Osmund totally oblivious to his pending fate. Lora was the third daughter of Alfward
,
the thegn of the nearby village of Tendring
. A
fter she had met Osmund when he and Alan
had called to visit her father,
Lora had arranged for her father to bring her to Thorrington several times, usually
with
the excuse of attending the Hundred
Court
. She had then cultivated a friendship with Anne
,
which gave her excuse to visit several times a week. Anne was none loath as she found the other girl’s quick mind and sharp tongue refreshing.

Another part of the interest was the presence of another lass, slightly older at twenty-two, named Swanhild, who was the daughter of
Leofgyth
of
Saffron Walden in Utlesford Hundred in the north-west of Essex
.
Leofgyth
was a minor thegn with a small holding of just over half a hide of land, two older sons and another younger daughter.
Like a number of residents of that town he had an unusual
and
valuable cash-crop- saffron picked from fields of crocus
flowers
.
His family was known to Brand’s family and Brand had called to visit Swanhild several times. At about thirty years of age Brand had been considering that it was time to put down roots and the gift by Alan of sixty acres of land to each of Brand and Osmund to reward past loyal service and ensure future servic
e had made him quite affluent.

Swanhild had traveled with an aunt as chaperone and four men as escort and had been pleased to see that the stories of Brand’s wealth and local importance had not been exaggerated. While Anne privately though Brand could do somewhat better than this plain and slightly unintelligent woman,
the lass
did have an excellent placid personality
which
meant he could also do worse
.
Anne was sure wedding bells would soon be ringing and that Brand’s two-roomed cottage at the edge of the village would soon have another resident.

From outside came occasional dull thumping noises and muffled shouting. Alan was playing with his toys. Ballistae with short but very stiff arms which were drawn using a ratchet mechanism and used a torsion spring made of animal sinew could accurately throw a bolt out to
500
paces like a giant cross-bow. Onagers, a catapult the size of a wagon and constructed from heavy beams of timber, again used a torsion spring
-
this time to throw rocks and similar projectiles weighing as much as
50
pounds over similar distances. Alan had built the engines from the detailed instructions contained in his manuscript of the work
s
of the Roman general Vegetius and was making the crews practice to achieve both accuracy and speed. A ballista should be able to be accurately fired two or three times a minute
,
but
as with
any military skill
this
had to be practiced regularly.

Unfortunately on a warm and sunny summer’s afternoon the crews had just been ‘going through the motions’ and spending most of the time swapping stories and jokes. From the tone of Alan’s indistinct shouts he was less than happy with the progress of his afternoon.

Juliana was sitting semi-upright in a cot, supported by pillows and looking about herself with interest, making gurgling noises and shaking a bead rattle in one hand. Anne was glad
that the baby had been weaned as this had allowed her to dispense with the services of the wet-nurse Bisgu, a rather plain, coarse and stupid woman from the village of Beaumont who Anne had heartily disliked. Juliana’s pink and chubby face took on a look of intense concentration and moments later a distinctive smell wafted in the air. One of Anne’s maids, Esme, had taken over the duties of nursemaid and Anne called her over in a quiet voice and waved her hand at Juliana. Being mistress of a large household did have its advantages.

While Tabula contained an element of chance, with the dice, it did also require concentration and tactical knowledge, which Lora was lacking that day. After an easy win, and a sniff at the enticing odors wafting in from the nearby kitchen building which told Anne that the mid-day meal would be ready in about half an hour, Anne rose a little unsteadily and with a smile and a gesture said
,
“Come, child,” and led Lora upstairs to the privacy of the family Solar. “
These d
amn
ed
stairs are a problem when you are pregnant,” she grumbled as she waved Lora to a padded stool opposite. When Lora had seated herself Anne bent forward, with some difficulty due to her swollen belly, and took Lora’s hand. “Now, my girl, you are going to have to make a decision about what you do. You’ve been calling here regularly for about three months now and you’re always welcome. But it’s no use sitting there making calf-eyes at Osmund. The young man is the son of a priest and spent most of the last ten years in a monastery. While he may not be
completely
unused to the… intimate… company of women he is by no means a ‘man of the world’. You’ve been like a fly-fisherman, casting a delicate and understated lure in front of a fish and expecting its greed to overcome all. Quite simply, my dear, Osmund does not understand the signals you’ve been throwing out, or at least is confused by them. You need to be more direct and militant if you don’t expect to be an old maid of thirty.”

Lora dropped her eyes demurely, before deciding to abandon pretense and still holding Anne’s hand looked her in the eye and said with a small smile
,
“You’re right. What do you suggest?”

Uncomfortable at leaning forward, Anne let go of Lora’s hand and sat back into her padded chair. “I’m by no means an expert, but to get a man’s full attention you need to grab him by the short-handle. Depending on how forward you might want to be, you could be naked in his bed waiting for him tonight. He’
ll
get the message then. You might like to be a little more subtle and invite him to s
hare the hot-tub in the bath-
house. Or you can be more subtle still and ask him to take you for a walk, hold his hand and give him a few kisses. Men tend to be slow of intellect, but even that would
probably
work
-
but without immediate results and would be less fun.”

“Which did you use?” asked Lora.

Anne paused and gave a sigh. “The affairs of the ‘high and mighty’ are more difficult. I married Aelfric the thegn of Wivenhoe when I was fifteen. He was fairly old, thirty-five or so. His previous wife had died and he had no children. My father was, and is, a wealthy merchant in Ipswich, and had just become thegn-worthy. He thought it would be beneficial to me if I improved my station, so he was happy to receive the offer from Aelfric. My father thought that Aelfric may want to dip his hands in his purse occasionally but was prepared to live with that. I only met Aelfric twice before the marriage, with him coming to Ipswich. He seemed nice enough. A little rough in manner, but what do you expect from a country thegn?”

Anne was now staring into the distance, hands clenching and unclenching in her lap. She wasn’t talking to Lora anymore, but to herself and experiencing past demons. “Unfortunately, I very soon found out he was a whore-mongering, cheating, drunken gambler- and a poor gambler at that. A man who cowardly beat those in his power who couldn’t protect themselves
; m
e
,
t
he servants and the villagers. Less than a week after our marriage day I had the shame to have to appear in the
Hall
at Wivenhoe with my face bruised and a black eye
while my lord was rutting like a pig in the next room with a wench from the village. Within a month he had gambled his way through the cash part of my dowry. I
’
d hidden my jewellery and he beat me repeatedly to try to get my to hand it over. Fortunately he was killed at Stamford Bridge before he gave me physical scars to match my mental scars. I suspect, knowing him, he would have died from a sword in the back as he ran away.” Anne sighed again.