[Norman Conquest 01] Wolves in Armour (49 page)

Anne said, “You’re each employed on for a trial period of one week. Aitkin get some good wine and ale for a dozen hungry men. Frithswith, do the same for food- if you want to keep your job you’d better make certain you show off your cooking skills for the next week. Aitkin, order firewood for the kitchen and the fire for winter and make sure it’s stored in a dry place. Get hay and oats for a dozen horses for a week. Tiw can muck out the horses and the men can look after them this time. After this visit, if you are retained, when we are in residence you can hire an extra stable hand, a serving maid and a scullery maid.

“Aidith, it looks as if you know your job as you’ve been keeping the place tidy. I have my own personal maid and will usually have a second maid. They can help with the work around the house. Aidith, you move into your own room in the attic. It’s not fitting for you to be sharing a room with your brother and father. Air all the rooms, particularly the bedrooms and the beds. Get some men to remove all the old rushes on the floor and scatter new ones.

“Aitkin, get the rat-catcher in- today. I’ll order linen and have it delivered here tomorrow for when we move in. Aidith, there will be ten huscarles, all young and full of their own self-importance. They’ll be told to leave you alone and it is up to you to repeat that to them if one of them gropes you without your permission. If they do so, you tell me. You aren’t employed to put up with that and I want to hear of any problems. Whether we retain any of you depends on how you perform this week, so I expect you all to be at your best.”

The tradesmen were present on time next morning. Anne had each of them spend the morning taking a full inventory of the work to be done on the house, including wood to be replaced because of dry rot, weathering or insect attack, brickwork needing attention and the whole of the building to be painted inside and out. Anne and the carpenter sketched out plans to convert the outhouse into a barracks for a dozen men. Then Anne returned to the City to buy mattresses, bed linen, towels, drapes and those items the previous owners had removed, including ordering a large bed to be made for the main bedchamber by a cabinet-maker in Wood Street, extra storage boxes, benches, tables and chairs.

The following morning the tradesmen were back and they provided detailed specifications of the work they proposed be done. This Anne and Alan adjusted to remove some work they felt was unnecessary, and prices were agreed. Half was to be paid on commencement on Friday 3rd August and the balance on completion, to be no later than All Saints Day on 1st November when Alan and Anne intended to return.

The horses were led into the stables by the huscarles, to the great excitement of Tiw, who clearly loved the animals and spent all his time fussing over them. A series of carts drew up making deliveries and Anne spent the afternoon making payments from the cash that they had withdrawn from Gideon’s office. By evening, when they had settled in, the house had been changed from being semi-derelict into something with some degree of vibrancy. Anne was sure that when they returned in three months that the property would be virtually unrecognisable.

*
 
 
*
 
 
*
 
 
*

Anne spent a large part of the next week shopping. Alan spent a morning going through three apothecary shops to refill his supplies of medicines and an interesting couple of hours visiting the medical instruments shop, having the different instruments explained to him and making a number of purchases. The two bookshops that the city boasted held little of interest to him except a relatively plain copy of the Bible that Alan intended to donate to the Wivenhoe church. Brother Cuthbert, the librarian at the abbey, was most helpful. He examined most carefully the list produced by Brother Leanian, the librarian of the Colchester Priory, promising a number of works missing from that list including two more chapters of Hippocrates’
Corpus
and some works of Galen, and was most interested in the three chapters of the
Corpus
not in his library. Alan’s personal library continued to grow by this means.

He also spent a day at the Saturday livestock market at Smithfield, which was quite near to their house, purchasing twelve chargers, six stallions and six mares, for delivery at Aldgate on Friday morning at Terce. Next was a visit to Wood Street to purchase from the bowyers the 22 crossbows that were the entire stock of the seven shops, and an order for 10 more from the best of the bowyers to be ready on the 1st of November, with a 20 percent deposit paid in advance.

They spend several days wandering through the winding streets of the city. A person could barely walk a dozen paces without being accosted, and in the crowds was the every-present risk of the attentions of a cut-purse waiting to relieve the unwary of their money. For this reason Alan and Anne both rarely walked abroad in the city without at least two burly huscarles with them, one close ahead forcing a passage through the crowd and the other close behind to watch for trouble. In Anne’s case she frequently also had Tiw the
stable hand
or Leof the page, or sometimes both, with her to carry her purchases.

There were many spectacles to be seen as one walked through the city, with something always happening. This may be a group of barefoot flagellants walking through the city, beating themselves and each other with thorn branches or short leather whips; those guilty of some misdemeanour such as adultery standing in the double stocks located in the square outside St Paul’s Cathedral, being pelted with rotten fruit or other filth as punishment for their sins; cock-fights, with a crowd of 100 or more spectators standing in a circle, shouting and betting as the birds leapt and struck at each other with beak and spurs, feathers and blood flying; bull-baiting with a tethered bull struggling to protect itself from the attack of a small pack of hounds; puppet shows and mummer’s plays; religious processions on the days of the many saints, many processions quite small with just the congregation of one of the many dozens of small churches scattered throughout the city.

Finally, on the 3rd August after meeting with the tradesmen and making the agreed payments, Anne met with the house staff and advised Frithswith that she would not be retained as cook as both her culinary skills and temperament were lacking. The cook was paid off and Aitkin instructed to find another cook to commence when they returned, with Aitkin being given a purse of pennies for the next three months wages for himself and his children. After leaving the house they collected the apprentice glassmaker and the metalworker, who rode on a small cart pulled by a donkey that carried the purchases which to were being taken to Essex. They departed from Aldgate at mid-morning, each man leading a spare horse, on what would be a leisurely but uncomfortable two day ride to Thorrington. It had started to rain heavily.*

The next two days spent on the road were wet and uncomfortable. Alan rode wearing a large square of oiled cloth with a central hole for his head and a leather wide-brimmed hat, which together kept most of the rain off his upper body, although water ran down the back of his neck. His
woollen
trews were soaked and rubbed uncomfortably against his legs as he rode. Anne, her maid and Leof travelled in the cart, with another large piece of oiled cloth keeping most of the rain off them. The others rode soaked and miserable, sitting like wet sacks on their mounts.

They saw few other travellers in the Great Forest. The huge beech, oak and birch trees, resplendent in their summer foliage, formed a virtual canopy over the winding and now muddy track that formed the roadway. Water dripped from the trees and lay pooled in the ground from the constant rain.

The horsemen rode at the edge of the road on the firmer ground, while the poor cart-horse plodded on up to its hocks in mud in the middle of the track. Even after emerging from the Great Forest traffic on the road was slight as most travellers were clever enough to wait for better conditions before travelling.

When on the afternoon of the second day they rode into Thorrington they saw a cog, a small trading vessel, floating on the Alresford Creek. Like most of its kind it was a single-masted ship, rather short at sixty feet at the waterline, wide and shallow-dra
ft
ed, rounded towards both ends and with a stern-mounted steering-oar. At the moment the ship was partially empty and rode high, showing above the waterline five strakes each of a plank of oak twelve inches wide.

Unusually for such a ship it was fully decked rather than having a half-deck, making it a proper sea-going vessel. Orvin had kept his word and also sent a good crew. These simple ships were usually manned by a small crew of three, but for this longer and more difficult voyage he had recruited a crew of six, including an experienced trading captain named Bjorn from Oslo, who claimed in his many years of sailing, both Viking and trading, to have sailed as far as the Levant. Orvin’s letter highly recommended the man and attested that he had the usual good navigation and sailing skills of his people. He also mentioned that Uncle Lidmann had made arrangements with an agent in Exeter and that the required tin ingots had been bought and were awaiting collection.

Both Anne and Alan were taken with Bjorn’s gruff no-nonsense manner, long red hair and weather-beaten features. He expressed himself delighted with the ‘Zeelandt’, declaring it as a “trim and weatherly ship, and as good as any of its kind I’ve seen.”

Orvin had also sent six young men, described as ‘being of good repute and looking for adventure,’ to act as guards in addition to the six crewmen.

Knowing Alan’s intentions, Baldwin had for the last week been training all the men with the short-sword (except Bjorn, who had his own single-handed battle-axe), with Warren training them on the four crossbows that they had in the armoury. Some of the newly purchased cross-bows would also form part of the equipment for the ship when they arrived.

Alan had given up on his idea of putting war-boats to sea, as that would not protect his ships on the high seas or on foreign coasts. When Alan explained his alternative intention of arming the ships to fight off pirates Bjorn was delighted, saying that having a dozen men firing cross-bow bolts and waving swords was likely to deter all but the most determined of pirates, except of course the Norwegians and Danes.

Alan gave a small smile and told him to move the ‘Zeelandt’ further down the creek on the tide so it was out of view of the village. Bjorn gave a non-committal shrug and did as he was told.

After spending the evening and most of the morning tinkering in his work-room, Alan had what looked like a huge wooden cross-bow put on the back of a wagon and driven down to where the ship was beached on the low tide. Baldwin, Warren and Aldwin tagged along to see what was happening, but Alan gave instructions to all the other villagers to stay away.

“What’s that?” asked Anne.

“That’s one of the ballistae I’ve been telling you about,” replied Alan, as he had the machine dragged across the mud on wooden boards and then hoisted onto the foredeck of the ship, where it was bolted in place. Several small barrels and two dozen spear-like projectiles, most with an enlarged head about eighteen inches long and four inches wide made of absorbent lambs-wool, were carried across to the ship. He had a dozen wooden boxes and crates set up along the shoreline, some sitting just in the water. One box made of four-inch thick oak was placed 200 paces away.

The dozen crew members looked intrigued.

“You pull on these spokes, which puts torsion on the bow arms like this. Then you load the bolt like this.” Alan slipped a plain metal rod four feet long and two inches wide into the slot. “You adjust the sights like this, which give you the range- although it fires with a very flat trajectory so a little inaccuracy doesn’t matter, and you pull the trigger, like this.” With a loud ‘thunk!’ the ballista discharged and the thick wooden box disappeared in a shower of splinters. “It has a 500 pace range,” he concluded.

“Gruss Got!” exclaimed Bjorn. “Not even Vikings would take on a ship that is blowing holes in their hull like that!”

“Now, for when they are really determined!” Alan measured out equal amounts of powder from two of the small barrels into an earthenware pot about the size of a bucket and spooned in some thick black pitch, stirring thoroughly.

After recharging the ballista he took one of the large-headed projectiles. “We’ll see if this works. I’ve never done it without heating the mixture in a cauldron so that it turns into a liquid.” Alan dipped the lambs-wool into the mixture and put the projectile in place. He lit the pitch, which burnt with a dull flame, then carefully aimed at a box that was just starting to float on the incoming tide and pulled the trigger. The shot missed the box by several feet, but when it hit the water it exploded in a shower of flame that blew the box to pieces and threw burning material thirty feet in each direction.

Everybody, including Alan, was stunned. “Well, yes it did work! I didn’t think you could light a fire to heat the caldron and make a liquid on a boat in the heat of the moment when you’re under attack. The thing that you must not do is allow any water into this pot. The water causes the fire. This requires the greatest of care, or you send your own ship up in flames. What’s really good about it is that if the shot hits the target ship, they’ll throw a bucket of water on it to put out the pitch that’s on fire, and blow up their own ship.”