At noon they met with Malachi and his lawyer. Alan and Anne both carefully checked through the deeds of the house at Holebourn Bridge, going back to its original grant from the Crown and the current deed, all written in English, including the clause that no Heriot was outstanding or payable on it and the standard clause that the vendor, an Englishman named Ealdean from Croyden in Surrey, knew of no defects that had not been disclosed. Ealdean had already signed and sealed the deed, properly witnessed by a priest, so presumably Ealdean had either been somewhere closer than Croyden or had been sent for last night. All was in order and Alan and Anne signed the authority for Malachi to debit their account by the sum of?12 and Malachi produced a receipt signed by Ealdean, again witnessed, for that amount.
Business transacted, they returned to the ‘Fox and Goose’ and sent Leof and two of the huscarles on errands to the carpenter, bricklayer and thatcher recommended by Malachi with instructions to the tradesmen to meet them at the house at Holebourn Bridge at Prime early the following morning. They then walked the half-mile to their new house to introduce themselves to the servants and conduct interviews.
They had noticed on their previous visit that the house had been kept reasonably clean and they had bought it fully furnished. It had a butler of about 30 years of age, a cleaning maid of about 15, a stableboy of about 12 and a female cook of about 35. The butler’s name was Aikin and had been with the previous owners for the five years they had owned the house. The maid was his daughter Aidith and the stableboy his son Tiw. They shared one room in the servants’ quarters in the attic. The cook was a fat and bad-tempered woman called Frithswith who lived with her family in the city.
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.