Thorrington August 1069
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 blonde 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 Court, to be sent to the Judiciar’s office on the next Quarter Day, Michaelmas on the 29th 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. After 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 service 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 works 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 damned 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 share 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; me, the 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.
With a frown, because a young maid wanting to attract a husband found such stories disturbing, Lora asked, “And Sir Alan?”
Anne’s face lightened and she gave a smile. “He’s as different as can be. He was nineteen and I woke up to find myself naked in his bed,” she said with reminiscence. She laughed at the startled look on Lora’s face. “I always say that to tease people, although it’s true. I’d been riding through the forest near Alresford, well-escorted I’d thought. We were set upon by a band of robbers in ambush, and all but my maid Bathilda were killed, and she was ravaged. I had been thrown from my horse and was unconscious. Alan killed the men about to ravish me and brought me back here, to the Old Hall where he was then living as he’d only just started to build this palace. He tended to my wounds. That is another story in itself. I had a badly broken leg, broken ribs and a deep cut to my thigh from when I was thrown by the horse. Alan does now admit that I could have traveled some time before he finally gave approval for me to go home, and that perhaps he didn’t need to inspect my ribs and leg as oft as he did.” She smiled again at the memory. “I hated to be confined and made his life hell, even though he treated and dosed me and read to me, and let me read his books. A very educated man is my lord. He probably has more books in his personal library than the king.”
“And you fell in love with him?” asked Lora.
Anne sighed and then gave the other girl a quick smile. “Nothing is ever that simple. He’d taken care, with the greatest of respect, to make his interest in me known. I was rude and unresponsive both before and after I returned home, giving little thanks for my deliverance. I’d just escaped a very unpleasant marriage and for the first time in my life was in charge of myself and what was going on around me. I enjoyed being the lady of the manor at Wivenhoe, running the estate and dealing with all the problems and decisions. Aelfric had refused to even let me chose dinner and kept the purse-strings tight in his own hand. No, Alan saved me twice more. The first was when the Danes landed at Wivenhoe in the year ’67. Alan led a small force that defeated the much larger contingent of Danes, who’d laid waste to much of Lexden Hundred- looting, murdering men women and children, raping and torturing and taking away men and women for slaves. He had just a handful of trained men and a bunch of farmers wielding pitchforks and sharpened sticks. What happened a few weeks ago was child’s-play in comparison.
“By then I was resisting mainly out of contrariness. What finally made up my mind was when the sheriff tried to take Wivenhoe from me. I never did locate the landboc. I was to be forced to marry a man of the sheriff’s choice, or lose my land. Marrying would of course mean that my land would be owned by my new husband anyway. Having to marry, I made my own choice, with no regrets at all. My only difficulty was that his bed was already occupied, so I had to take some… forthright… action to put myself in there in place of Edith,” completed Anne.
“You have a husband of many parts,” commented Lora.
“And some of them more useful than others,” said Anne with a saucy smile. “Seriously, the Benedictine’s loss of the services of Sir Alan is our gain. Another failed monk, like Osmund.” She paused before continuing, “No, not ‘failed’- both found that the path for their life didn’t lie in a monastery.”
“Why did they leave?” queried Lora.
“In Alan’s case he tells me it was for whoring. He was found in the bed of a noviate nun, although he says that he was always in trouble before that. From what I hear of Osmund that in his case it was because he asked too many questions and didn’t respect authority if he felt that the man didn’t deserve respect.” Anne reached forward and patted Lora’s hand. “You’ll do alright with Osmund. He’s gentle, thoughtful and loyal. All the qualities you want in a husband- or a dog! He also has a good position and a moderate estate, is young and not at all ill-favoured in appearance. You’ll be able to train him well enough. The only problem you may have with him is that he’ll be so intent on his work and his books that he’ll overlook you. But that can soon be remedied by use of a firm grasp on his short-handle! Now, judging by the hubbub downstairs, the mid-day meal is about to be served and we had best join the others.”
Indeed, downstairs the tables had been set up and most of the household were either seated or gravitating to the tables. Alan was there, hot and sweaty and with his old brown woolen tunic and trews streaked with the semi-liquid animal fat used to lubricate the catapults. Anne endured with equanimity a ten-minute diatribe from Alan as to the problems he had experienced and in particular the problems with the crews’ attitude to training. It wasn’t her problem and her input was not expected, but it made Alan feel better to let off steam.
Lora was sitting next to Osmund and had asked him how his work was progressing, nodding and pretending interest. After a tasty but relatively simple meal of pork pies and braised chicken with herbs, with two dishes of braised vegetables followed by cheese and fruit, Anne suggested to Alan that they share the hot-tub for a relaxing bath, which offer he accepted with alacrity. Anne gave Lora a slight wink. Lora then asked Osmund whether he could show her the spring and pool just inside the forest, to which Osmund with a slightly surprised expression agreed readily enough.
“Is it safe to go into the forest? Are there bears and wolves?” Lora asked with apparent anxiety. While she was receiving reassurance from Osmund, Anne moved a finger to attract Lora’s attention and then rolled her eyes to indicate that she was overdoing it. After all, Lora was not a city-girl but a country lass who’d lived all her life just five miles away. ‘Osmund might be gullible but he isn’t stupid’ Anne mused.
After a pleasant hour or so soaking in the hot-tub, followed by a leisurely afternoon in the bedchamber, Anne caught up with Lora after the evening meal. “How did things go?” she demanded.
Lora gave a demure smile and replied, “We had a pleasant walk, hand in hand. The pool is quiet and peaceful under the large overhanging trees. We saw some deer come to drink. We had a delightful talk, a kiss and a cuddle. And you are right, a firm grasp certainly does get a man’s attention.” She reflectively licked her lips and touched her left breast. “Messy, though,” she concluded.
Anne gave a light peal of laughter and instructed, “Come back on Saturday and see Osmund again. I can recommend the bath-tub!”
Alan was sitting with a rather wild-eyed and worried-looking Osmund and after hearing the story replied, “Well, at least now you have another interest in life! Don’t worry about having offended her by taking advantage of her! You’ve been set up! Just sit back and enjoy the ride!” he advised with a cheery laugh.