Wolves in Armour nc-1 Read online

  Bertholf spat on the ground, deliberately near Alan’s feet. “I give that for your king and his proclamations!” he said aggressively. Alan noticed out of the corner of his eye that three of his own companion’s hands had gone to their swords and were gripping the hilts. Edric, who preferred the single-handed battle-axe, unclipped it from his belt and held the end of its two and a half foot haft, while resting the eight-inch polished steel head on his shoulder. The movements also caught the eye of the two Kemp brothers who, while they could call on many more men, did not have men under arms immediately available.

  Alan spoke in a dangerously quiet voice, while resting his hand on the hilt of his still un-drawn sword. “King William was anointed by Ealdred, Archbishop of York, the same man who crowned Harold Godwinson. Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury and all the nobles of England have submitted to him. He is not just my king, he is also your king and to defy his edicts is treason punishable by death. I’m also Chief Judge of the Hundred court. I’m happy to carry out sentence here and now if that is your wish? I am prepared to give the two of you three days to vacate the manors. I’m seeking skilled and obedient warriors who will follow my orders. If you wish, I may be prepared to give you a trial amongst my warriors, which may in time result in you being granted laenland. I make no promises and that would depend on both your skills and your attitude, which has been lacking so far today. Take me to the manor strongbox now.”

  There was no movement on the part of the brothers. Alan sighed and drew his sword, as did his companions. Toli and Ordmer moved back to give them room. “Who is the steward here?” There was no reply, but several others shuffled away from one man who was left standing alone. “Your name?” asked Alan.

  “Durand,” was the reply.

  “Well, Durand, you have a chance in the next few seconds to possibly keep your position secure, and to keep your head on your shoulders. The strongbox will be in the bedchamber or solar. I’ll find it within a minute or so and if I don’t have the key, Edric here will simply hit it a few times with his axe.” Alan placed his drawn sword against the steward’s throat. “Your choice,” he said.

  Durand suddenly found the key easily enough, and as expected the strongbox was in the bedchamber. With a turn of the key and a loud click it opened. It contained cash, which without counting it Alan estimated about?6. More importantly it also contained the landbocs that showed ownership of all three manors and the books of account of all three manors. Alan had these placed in a large sack, to be tied to the pack on a spare horse that Alan took from the stable.

  “Remember. I’ll be back in three days,” said Alan to the two brothers as he and his party mounted. They then rode the five miles west to Bradfield, the nearest of the other Kemp manors. That manor was of four and a half hides of land, good farmland with saltpans and a salt house. Already having the landboc, Alan forced the steward Werian into submission and took possession of about?2 in cash and the latest accounting books. Then they retraced their path back to Great Oakley, the second largest of the Kemp estates, four and a half miles to the east. On arrival there they met with the steward Courtney, who told them that Bertholf had been there shortly before and emptied the strongbox of cash, which Courtney estimated at?3, but he had left the accounting books, which Alan now removed.

  After parting with Toli and his men at Great Oakley, with thanks for their assistance, Alan and his men arrived back at Thorrington just before dark on Saturday 29th January.

  The next day Brother Godwine performed Sunday Mass at Terce as instructed and most of the village spent the Lord’s Day in rest or in the tavern, as their leanings took them. Alan spent the day trying to decipher and gain an understanding of the books of account of Aelfric Kemp. The cash collected from Ramsey and Bradfield came to?6 4/ and 8p, which was a little less than the books indicated, but didn’t seem unduly deficient. The books also indicated there should have been?4 2/ at Great Oakley, had the Kemps not got there first.

  Late on Monday morning Alan and Hugh were teaching swordsmanship to the trainee men-at-arms, now ten in number, and Roger was working with five of the village peasant archers at the butts, when word came that a group of horsemen was approaching from the north.

  Alan told Hugh to gather their men, but keep them in the background at the moment. Alan quickly swapped the training sword he had been using for his usual sword Blue Fire, called Baldwin to stand with him and for Kendrick to gather a couple of stable hands. He then waited the few minutes until the visitors rode up. As the riders rode through the gate Alan was standing in his padded practice gambeson jacket, hot and sweaty. He recognised Aelfhare and Bertholf and several others from Ramsey, as well as Frewin and Alward, thegns from Tendring who had each brought one man.

  Following protocol Alan first greeted his equals Frewin and Alward. Alward commented that Aelfhare and Bertholf had been riding through Tendring and from the comments they had made when he had offered them a sup of ale in his Hall as refreshment, he and Frewin had felt that they should accompany them to ensure that nothing untoward happened.

  Alan did not invite the visitors into the Hall and after they dismounted they stood in the forecourt in the thin sunlight of the chill January day. “What can I do for you Aelfhare and Bertholf? We spoke on Saturday and I gave you until tomorrow to vacate the manors you are illegally holding. By the way you owe me the?4 2/ you removed from the strongbox at Great Oakley. Is it that you have come to pay that?”

  Bertholf snarled, “You wish! No, we have come to dispute your right to take the manors from us.”

  Alan gestured to Kendrick, who handed the rolled parchment Charter from King William to Alan, who in turn handed it to Alward. “Please read it aloud Alward, it is written in both Latin and English with the king’s Great Seal at the foot.”

  Alward read aloud the flowery language that granted the honour to Alan, concluding, “Signed and sealed this 27th day of December 1066. William, king of England. I’m sorry Aelfhare and Bertholf, but as one of the Hundred thegns I accept that this is valid and must act to uphold it.”

  “I offered you employment fit for your station and the possibility of advancement when we last spoke,” said Alan. “Those offers are now revoked. Make sure you are out of the Hundred by mid-night tomorrow. Alward and Frewin, may I invite you inside for refreshments while these geburs take themselves off? By the way Aelfhare and Bertholf, the horses you ride belong to me. Make sure you leave them behind when you depart.”

  With a snarl Bertholf launched himself forward, moving to draw his sword from its scabbard. The sword was less than half out when an arrow thumped into his chest, stopping Bertholf two paces away from Alan. With a surprised expression on his face he began to collapse. Alan glanced back over his shoulder and saw Roger reaching for a new arrow from his quiver.

  Aelfhare shouted, “No!” and drew his own sword as he raced towards Alan. Initially Alan didn’t move, although he rose onto the balls of his feet ready to dodge as required. Three paces before he reached Alan, and just as Alan began to move his feet and right hand, four arrows thumped into Aelfhare’s chest, dropping him like a hare. Glancing back over his shoulder again Alan saw that four of his English archers were notching new arrows in their bows.

  Alan looked at the four Englishmen from Ramsey and asked, “Anybody else? You all saw me attacked without provocation outside my own Hall by armed guests.” Turning to the practical he asked Alward, “Do they have any kin surviving?”

  “I think perhaps a sister over Meldon way,” Alward replied.

  “I’ll arrange their burial in the churchyard there and have their bodies taken to the church now. Brother Godwine is around somewhere and can say Last Rights. Alward, can you send a message to this sister and tell them of the death of her brothers and the fact that they died attacking their liege lord without provocation? I’ll arrange men to go to Great Oakley, Ramsey and Bradfield today. Can you arrange your men here to accompany mine and act as witnesses to what has occurred? I would prefer to avoid fu
rther conflict when my men take possession of those manors. Roger, you can give your men the rest of the day off, take them down to the tavern and buy them a few quarts of ale. I think that they’ve deserved it.”

  As Alan escorted the thegns and their men into the Hall, he heard one of his archers named Barclay rather loudly proclaiming, “He may be a ?lfremede foreigner, but lord Alan has done right by us and our village and I wasn’t going to let no bastard from Ramsey cut him down unprovoked when he wasn’t defending himself,” which gave him a warm feeling of both belonging and responsibility.

  After giving Frewin and Alward a rather abbreviated mid-day meal, accompanied by wine and ale, Alan expressed a wish to leave early to take possession of the estates of Great Oakley, Ramsey and Bradfield, preferring to ride with Frewin and Alward as far as Tendring, but offering his guests further hospitality if they wished to stay. Both declared themselves ready to leave at once. Using an ‘all hands on deck’ approach to avoid potential problems, Alan decided to take Ainulf, Edric, Alfward and Ledmer and four archers to Ramsey, where any problems were likely to occur. Warren was to take three archers and two horsemen to Great Oakley, and Baldwin three archers and two horsemen to Bradfield. Frewin and Alward agreed to send one man as an independent witness to each village. This left Hugh and Roger at Thorrington to conduct training, but had removed all the current recruits, making them temporarily superfluous.

  They rode out in the early afternoon, allowing ample time to return the two thegns home and proceed on to their destinations.

  Alan, with Edric ‘The Axe’, Ledmer and Alfward, together with archers Barclay, Abracan, Aethelbald and Oswy and Frewin’s man Irwin arrived at Ramsey as darkness was setting in. Of the archers Barclay was officially a hunter, although Alan suspected that both he and Aethelbald had in fact been poachers.

  Aelfhare’s and Bertholf’s companions had arrived an hour or so before, and the Hall was in uproar at the news of the death of their lords.

  Alan called for the steward Durand to maintain calm and asked for the four village elders, including head-cheorl Putman, to attend at the Hall immediately. A few minutes later, standing at the end of the Hall with his men at his back, Alan explained to the elders and the retainers in the Hall the details of the deaths of Aelfhare and Bertholf. He stated that both had come uninvited to his Hall and attempted to kill him. Frewin’s man Irwin, as independent witness, confirmed this.

  Alan advised all that he and his men would be taking possession of the three manors and that he expected, nay demanded, the whole-hearted co-operation of all the people in each manor. No argument from either those who lived at the Hall or in the village would be tolerated. The manors would be ruled with an iron fist in an iron glove. Those retainers who proved their worth and reliability would be rewarded. Those who did not would be released to find alternative service forthwith.

  That night Alan slept in the bedchamber together with most of his men, with two men on guard outside the door.

  The next day, Tuesday, Alan visited the horse stud property that the Kemps had developed just outside the village. He arranged with stud-master Roweson that the eighteen horses that had reached three years of age would be sent to Thorrington at once. He also promised additional breeding stock, including chargers, rather than just rounceys, and in the springtime the use of his own destrier stallion for breeding duties with suitably chosen mares.

  Over the next week the situation settled down. Alan arranged with Toli of Dovercourt to borrow a huscarle who would administer Bradfield. Baldwin would base himself at Ramsey and train a squadron of ten horsemen, and Warren would supervise Great Oakley and train a squad of archers there.

  Alan and most of the cavalry and archers returned home to Thorrington on Saturday 27th January. There he found to his pleasant surprise that Toland had used this normally quiet time of the year for the peasants to get busy with the construction of the new saltpans, which were nearly complete.

  Construction had not been difficult as the land selected had a clay base, was very flat and below the level the sea reached each month on the flood-tide- although the sea would be held back from flooding the saltpans by levees. Toland had arranged for Aethelhard the blacksmith to make a metal cutting edge on a strong wooden board ten feet wide, which was pulled by a team of six oxen, up and down, across and diagonally on the salt pan. This deepened the pan and levelled its floor and also provided the clay soil with which to build the levees three feet high around each pan.

  Using the ox-pulled board method Toland had the villagers make a single large expanse of pan, which was then in the process of being divided into smaller pans by inserting intervening levees. Sliding wooden sluice gates were inserted in the levees next to the estuary or tidal creek. Alan suggested building in a fall in level across the pan and intervening sluices, so that water of increasingly high salinity resulting from solar evaporation could be drained from one pan to the next to facilitate harvesting at the end of summer, when most of the salt would then be in the final one or two pans. With these modifications the pans were soon completed and Alan arranged for the loan of the levelling board- and for Toland to visit in turn Great Oakley, Beaumont, Bradfield and Great Bentley to advise their head-cheorls on the new construction method they had devised.

  Alan also gave Kendrick and Toland the bad news that after completion and filling of the saltpans that he wanted the construction of a barracks for sixty men and a stable for thirty horses, together with a barn and armoury. These were to be built on the north side of the village close to Alresford Creek, and within the grounds of the fortification that he intended to build.

  After marking out the land Alan specified that the cottars would work their two days a week, the cheorls and sokeman their three days a week and his six slaves full time on digging a ditch, rampart and palisade after the barracks and stables had been completed. He also specified that the barracks was to be of two storeys and that all the buildings within the bailey were to be roofed with wooden shingles, not thatch, to reduce the risk of fire.

  Work would proceed as and when labour was available, with agricultural duties taking precedence- but each peasant and slave was expected to work their full labour allocations each week- and to work hard and for the full day. The intervention of bad weather was to be deducted from their own time, not his.

  This wasn’t as drastic a demand as it may appear, as a sokeman or cheorl usually had several adult members of the family available to provide labour. A cottar, who owed a corvee of two days a week labour for rent of his house and a small parcel of land, usually worked the remaining four days a week for pay. These were usually ‘in kind’ or the provision of food or the waiving of the banality fee charged by the lord for use of facilities such as a mill, the estover right to gather wood or the pannage right to have pigs eat acorns in the lord’s forest.

  All the gebur freemen had an ancient obligation under Anglo-Saxon law to undertake to create, improve or maintain local fortifications, called the burgh-bot. While they were not happy at the work that would be required, they acknowledged Alan’s right as lord to demand it.

  Alan also went to visit the miller Acwel to discuss whether he would be able to handle the additional tonnage of grain if Alan’s plans for the three-field system worked as he hoped. The mill was owned by Alan, who took ten percent of the flour milled as the fee for the service provided. This was a traditional landowner’s fee common to both Anglo-Saxons and Normans, which was charged to the villagers- much objected to by the villagers as they could grind their grain by hand, but were traditionally required to use the mill. It was simply yet another form of taxation. The miller received three tenths of the flour from Alan’s share as his income for operation of the mill.

  When at the mill Alan noticed a particularly attractive young woman of about sixteen years working at handing the sacks down to the worker below the millstones. She was using a pulley system to pull up the full flour bags and tip them over for a large and heavily-built teenager to move
over onto a pile of sacks by the open side-door of the mill, ready to be collected by cart.

  The lass gave him a bold look in return to his own scrutiny of her. The grain currently being ground was of course from the previous summer. Alan mentioned that he had some wheat still needing milling and perhaps the young woman, who Acwel mentioned was his daughter Edyth, could resolve delivery arrangements. Acwel gave Alan a calculating look and agreed.

  Edyth attended the next morning at the Manor Hall, with ten bags of wheat flour, clean and dressed in her best clothes. Alan chatted with her and found her to be a typical country girl, uneducated, illiterate and with a knowledge only of her local area- but also typically open, honest and sincere. She was not without experience and Alan found her a willing and enthusiastic partner in bed that night. She joined his household in an undefined capacity the next day. Acwel was happy to have his percentage from the mill increased from three to five parts, to allow for the loss of her labour. Edyth was happy to be freed from the need to work ten-hour days, the improved food and accommodation in the Manor Hall and the somewhat qualified respect she was given within the Hall as the lord’s bed mate.

  Edyth quickly proved a suitable choice. While her conversation was vapid and concerned local gossip, lacking the intellectual ‘cut and thrust’ that Alan would have preferred, she had a placid temperament and fitted in well with the staff at Thorrington, causing no problems. She was confused, rather than conceited, in her interaction with the staff, not knowing quite what to ask her maid to do as she was used to doing everything herself, both for herself and her family. She made no demands- and obviously as a miller’s daughter would not be offered marriage by Alan. And she was an absolute tigress in bed.