After a circuitous walk and the engagement of some men of the rougher sort outside a tavern to delay the men the bishop had sent to follow them, they arrived back at the ‘Fox and Goose’. Osmund, who had carefully been taking in the conversation verbatim, went to his room with a jug of ale and plate of food to record the conversation that had occurred whilst it was still fresh in his mind. Alan gave a summary to Anne, who expressed her thrills and outrages at the various twists and turns of the conversation as they were related to her.
In honour of Queen Edith’s soiree Anne decided that Alan should attend at a professional barbershop for a proper shave and haircut, instructing him not to have his hair shaved at the back in the Norman fashion and over-riding Alan’s objection that this was done as a matter of practicality as the chain mail coif of the hauberk caught the hair that was not protected by the padded cap worn under the helmet. “You’re unlikely to do any fighting for some time and you aren’t such a baby that a few pulled hairs should make any difference to you,” she scoffed. “To have the back of your head shaved in the Norman fashion makes it obvious to all that you are a Frank. I think you’d look dashing with longer hair and a beard, in the Saxon style!”
Anne also wanted to wear the matching gold coloured clothing, but the freshly-shaved and barbered Alan felt it impolitic to appear too ostentatious on their first journey to the city, like country black-birds pretending to be peacocks. He felt they should stay in the background until they had developed good relations with the Norman barons, many of whom were in Normandy with King William. Even though Queen Edith was seen as a strong supporter of the new king and had assisted him in gaining the submission of the West Saxon lands immediately after Hastings, it may not be wise to have better relations with the English nobility than that of the Normans.
Logic won out and Anne wore a tight-fitting dress of mid-green velvet, low but not immodestly cut at the front, and a similar coloured and highly-embroidered shawl completed the obligatory covering of the hair- a fashion that Alan always found disappointing as it prevented Anne showing off her long and lustrous auburn hair. Alan wore a tunic of black linen embroidered with silver, a tooled black leather belt with silver buckle, plain black hose and boots, with his head uncovered, revealing his red hair flowed almost to his collar. As it was a social occasion he was unarmed other than the small knife at his belt that he would use for eating- indeed Anne with the larger seax knife that denoted her position as a freewoman was better armed than he was. Like all the guests they brought two armed retainers, who left their swords at the door and were shown into a separate Hall to await the pleasure of their betters.
Queen Edith’s townhouse on the Strand was very large. They arrived just after the appointed starting time of an hour before Compline and entered the house forecourt as the sun was setting behind Westminster Abbey. The house backed onto the Thames and being upstream of the city the water flowing past was clean and unpolluted. Ducks and swans swam close to the riverbank and children were splashing and playing at the water’s edge.
The Hall that the doorman showed them into was quite large without being overly so. It was thirty paces by forty, well lit with lamps attached to sconces and with fresh rushes on the floor. Several tables had been placed against one wall and chairs and benches lined the other walls. When they arrived there were about a dozen other guests present and Queen Edith was just entering through another door with an arm linked with Eadnoth, the Steward of her late husband, who was a tall and elderly man. The queen was of medium height, 38 years of age and still showed the beauty of her youth. She was soberly dressed in dark red, heavily embroidered with gold. Alan was glad that Anne had not worn her gold dress as it would not have done for a simple country girl to have outshone her noble host.
Alan noticed Chancellor Regenbald standing with a somewhat flashily-dressed dark-haired woman of about 40 on his arm, and a boldly-dressed man of about the same age with long blond hair and a flowing moustache. Presuming on his acquaintance with Regenbald, Alan walked across the Hall towards him with Anne at his side, hand on his arm, and he introduced her to Regenbald. The Chancellor in turned introduced the other woman as Aethelu, his current wife, and the man as Cynebeald, his son by his first marriage. He pointed out his daughter Swanhild, who was talking animatedly in an adjoining group and then took Alan and Anne to that group, made introductions and asked Swanhild to take care of them for the evening as they were new to the city and had few friends.
Swanhild, a tall blond and shapely woman of about thirty-five, took the duty in good cheer and she and Anne were soon chatting together like old friends as she introduced the couple around and made a point to introduce Anne to a number of young women of around Anne’s own age.
Alan noted something peculiar about the group. There were women of all ages from 16 to 60 and many men over 40. Other than two or three young clerics in their distinctive monk’s garb and tonsures, there were barely a handful of men of fighting age. As he chatted with them he found that most of these few had been wounded at Stamford Bridge, or had otherwise been fortunate enough to miss the battle of Hastings by being overseas or on the western border fighting the Welsh. There were probably two women for every man present.
The side-tables had been filled with plates of finger-food. Eggs stuffed with fish roe; smoked salmon on toast; pickled herring on rye-bread; mini-mushroom pastries; quiche; pork pies; chicken pasties; small sausage rolls; small meat pies; sage and parsley tarts; mushrooms stuffed with cheese; Lorenz pies with minced meat, pine nuts, currents and cottage cheese gilded with gold leaf. This was the first time that either Alan or Anne had eaten gold. Available sauces in separate jugs were melted spiced cheese sauce, carmeline sauce, garlic with walnuts and onions, jaunce, mustard and several types of chutney.
A separate table carried platters of small cakes, various sweet fruit tarts, custard tarts, fried almond pastries with honey and half a dozen different fried or baked pastries coated with sugar. There were platters of a dozen types of cheeses from soft Brie, Neufchatel, Roquefort, Gorgonzola and Emmenthal to the harder cheeses including Cheddar, Cheshire, Parmigiano and Romano.
The guests helped themselves, placing the morsels of food on small wooden plates and eating with their fingers as they chatted. Most of the ladies were drinking mead or fruit juices, either alcoholic or non- alcoholic, or sweet white wine. The men drank either pints of ale or cups of fine red wines from the Loire or Bordeaux. Harp and lute players were quietly playing music in the background.
Eventually Regenbald collected Alan and Anne and took them to the small group where Queen Edith was sitting with half a dozen others and introduced them.
“Anne, my dear, so nice to meet you!” said the Queen. “We so rarely see new faces these days. Such a beautiful and, if I hear correctly, literate young lady. And Sir Alan, I do believe you are the first Norman to attend one of my soirees. It’s so hard to find a Norman noble who is literate and not totally consumed by making war!”
“It’s a hard life to train to be a knight, Your Grace,” replied Alan. “Training as a warrior begins at eight years of age and leaves little time for learning social graces or book learning. I had a more diverse childhood and adolescence before I became a soldier, and I’m glad finally to have the time to read almost as much as I would like. I must say that I prefer the iambic meter of Greek poetry to the alliterative of English poetry. In some of the English poetry I have read, which is not a great deal, I have found the story hard to follow. The Dream of the Rood for example, where I found the second part, where the Cross tells its own story, was difficult to plod through. Andreas is a good, enjoyable story and well-told. I’ve only recently started to study English poetry of course.”