[Norman Conquest 01] Wolves in Armour (32 page)

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, before continuing more moderately. “If any of your sergeants need training to be able to train your men, send them here and we’ll teach them how to lead and train men. Those of your men who do not have swords or battle-axes can use spears and bows- they’re cheap and effective enough if the man knows how to use them properly and fights as part of a team. You should each send huntsmen here for a fortnight for Warren to teach how to use a bow in battle. Warren will begin his classes on Monday week. Each man will make his own shield. They are easy enough to make, taking just a couple of hours even for an unskilled man, and we’ll use the standard ‘kite shaped’ design. I want every fyrdman in every village to have a linden-wood and ox-hide shield in a week. They can hew, cut and glue the linden-wood; you can provide the rawhide. In the unlikely event that a village doesn’t have somebody who can instruct others to make a shield, lessons can be arranged.

“Horsemen. You saw how my meagre twenty horsemen could dominate their part of the battlefield. A few of you were at Hastings. Most have not seen a battle where there are hundreds or thousands of horsemen involved. I need five young men, each in some of the armour you have just received, and five fit young rounceys from each of you for me to train to fight on horseback. The future of warfare is on horseback and I’d suggest that sending some of your own younger sons would be suitable. I’ll be doubling my own force to 40 trained men. That will give us a significant force of 100 men on horseback. Again, have them here on Monday week.

“After we have equipped and trained our men, if the Danes, Norwegians, rebel English- or our Norman neighbours Geoffrey de Mandeville or Richard of Clare or Aubrey de Vere- come calling with sword and fire we will meet and defeat all of them. We will be able to beat anybody who comes with less than a full army at his back. Hlaford, don’t go away today feeling self-satisfied. You have work to do!”

The thegns were all thoughtful after being addressed in this manner. Some were clearly upset at being told that their performance of their positions had been lacking and that improvement was demanded. However, most appeared to accept that change was needed in changing times- largely prompted by Alan’s success in the encounter with the Danes.

After a light lunch and several more tankards of ale, the thegns had their men load the booty into their wagons, while the thegns themselves went to visit the ‘incredible palace’ that Alan had built. Most admiration was reserved for the toilet system. Any warrior respected good latrines.

The meeting developed into a drinking session in the afternoon, when the rest of the wine was finished off and Alan’s innovative plans discussed. By ten that night most of the thegns were snoring on beds in the guest quarters. Each left next morning after they woke, ate the traditional small breakfast washed down with ale to ‘take away the headache’ and rode away.

“That went much better than I expected,” commented Alan to Osmund, Faran and Anne at lunchtime.

“Not really,” said Osmund smugly. “I put up a reasonable argument, one that was fair. I put it in writing to everybody so they can see it is fair and know that you can’t change it later. Everybody received the same offer, without favour. If they argued about it, their fellow thegns would have seen them as penny-pinching slugs who can’t be trusted. Our Hundred system is built on mutual trust. It just wasn’t worth anybody’s time to argue about what was clearly fair. Of course, they didn’t know about the 100 sets of arms and armour we took two days before, the contents of those ships, or the ships we took the day after the main battle. None of that was their business because they weren’t involved in those fights, but if they had known about it that may have caused some arguments- after all you got nearly a quarter of the arms and armour on offer today. However, I did think some of them were going to wet their pants during your little lecture. Now what happens next?”

“Faran and Wybert, Anne’s steward at Wivenhoe, are to get the Quarter Day taxes ready to be paid and the rents in by Midsummer. Osmund, you and I will ride a circuit of the manors and talk to the stewards and the village head-men. Faran, get the second ploughing of the fallow fields and the haymaking completed. Hugh, recruit as many men as full-time soldiers as you can. Talk to the male refugees and see if any want to take service. Increase the number of beds in the barracks until this training cycle ends. Buy some decent chargers or rounceys at Colchester, say ten of the best you can find. Roweson and the stud at Ramsey can’t be expected to cope with these numbers, not after we already stripped them bare a few months ago. Anne and I will be off to visit her family in Ipswich, but we should be back well before Midsummer Day. We can buy some horses while we’re there.”

*
 
 
*
 
 
*
 
 
*

It was shortly after sunrise at four in the morning on Saturday the 9th June when Alan, Anne and an escort of a dozen mounted men-at-arms rode out for the 28 mile ride to Ipswich. The men were armed, but not wearing their armour, the rolled up chain-mail being carried on two
sum
p
ter
horses. Two other horses were laden with bundles of cloth which Anne had removed from one of the trading cogs, well wrapped in hessian.

When they had discussed the escort in the privacy of their chamber Alan had thought that half a dozen men would be more than adequate and a dozen was ostentatious. He had quickly changed his mind with Anne’s reply. “It’s not for going there, or for us at all really. Father will no doubt have sold the cargo of the first two longboats, as I instructed him. As the Danes took the best of what was available in the warehouses at Colchester, I doubt very much whether the value would have been less than £100 per boat. For the two boats that is 2,000 shillings or 24,000 silver pennies. You can’t hide that in your pocket. We’ll be a tempting target on the way back.” Alan had to admit that there was little that Anne did that was not well thought out and logical.

Her dress for the journey was an example of this thoughtfulness. She wore a broad-brimmed hat and a long-sleeved blouse, both to keep off the hot sun and preserve her fair complexion. Innovatively, she wore a pair of men’s trews covered, in the main, by a loose skirt that had been slit at the front and back, as she was determined not to ride side-saddle for 28 miles.

They paused at Manningtree after a ride of a little over an hour to rest the horses, stretch their legs and have something to eat before crossing the river on the wooden bridge, paying the pontage fee as they did so. The rutted dirt road wound through field and meadow, but the land was mainly large tracts of forest or unused ‘waste’. They pressed on to Ipswich, arriving - in Anne’s case quite sore- as the priory bells were ringing for Sext at mid-day.

They passed over the wooden Stoke Bridge and approached the South Gate in the city stone wall, the water-mill on their right clanking and grinding. The gates were attended by two guards who looked closely at the armed party as they rode past. Passing St. Peter’s Church, they took the main thoroughfare up Brook Street, passed the small church of St. Stephen and continued until they reached Carr Street, where Anne’s family had a large house and a nearby warehouse at Cornhill. Anne had sent a message several days before with a carter, and so they were expected- although the size of the escort surprised the elderly porter, Rinan. At Anne’s suggestion Alan sent the men to the ‘Fox’s Head’ inn at nearby Tavern Street.

Odin, Anne’s white palfrey Misty and the four sum
p
ter horses were taken by a stable-lad to the stables at the rear of the building. The porter summoned a servant to carry the saddle-bags and cases to the guest rooms. Attracted by the commotion an elegantly dressed good-looking woman of about 35 with red hair appeared at the doorway to the vestibule. Anne threw decorum aside and with a cry of “Mother!” rushed up to embrace and kiss the older woman. After a few moments of mutual hugs and laughs Lora, Anne’s mother, held her daughter at arm’s length to look closely at her.