Anglo Saxons and Love

The novel Courting Trouble is set in the early days of the Anglo Saxon era. At this time, Christianity was relatively new for the group, and customs were still influenced by their early pagan culture. In this scene, Cynethrith wants to foil what she believes is her stepmother's plan to send the girl to a convent and keep her inheritance. Cynethrith resolves to set out on an adventure, and justifies her decision by quoting an old Anglo Saxon poem.

I knew perfectly well that [my stepmother] was planning to ship me off to a convent as soon as she could without causing a lot of talk. In any event, I certainly wasn’t going to sit around and wait for her to arrange a match for me. As the ancient wisdom of our people advises:

Girls, steal secretly to your sweethearts
So no one says
That you were bought with booty.

But for the time being I went along with her pretense.

Food

Today's illustration  from Courting Trouble shows a cook stirring a pot over an open fire. There will be more about the kitchen and food in future posts, but for today I'll quote a few lines from the feast Cynethrith observes on her first night at court.

Each diner ate according to his station, with the best dishes and the greatest amount reserved for the head table. The hall servants dished out stew from the cauldron and placed one bowl between each foursome at the low tables. I carried in a large dish of two dozen young pigeons for a mid-ranking table, the birds culled before they learned to fly so their flesh was fat and succulent.

Wulfwaru's Diet

In medieval times, just as today, young women worried about their figures. Wulfwaru, the heroine's stepsister in  Courting Trouble, instructs the servants about what she'll eat, and the heroine Cynethrith taunts her sister.

Two servants entered to prepare the hall for supper. Wulfwaru called to the younger one.
“Does cook understand that I will eat nothing but goosegrass soup?”
“Yes, miss. I told her, miss.”
“Are you still trying to lose weight?” I asked.
“You must eat a balanced diet, Wulfwaru,” lectured Waldberg [her mother]. “The way you starve yourself is absurd. You’ll get sick.”
“I know what I’m doing, Mother,” said Wulfwaru. “All the thanes’ wives in town use goosegrass.”
“It wouldn’t hurt her to lose a few pounds,” I said. I don’t think she appreciated the way I jumped to her defense.
“This doesn’t concern you, Cynethrith,” said Waldberg.
And I’m afraid we continued in this manner until supper, when the whole focus of the meal was on what and how much Wulfwaru would eat. I tried to console Waldberg by pointing out that it didn’t matter how little Wulfwaru ate at supper: her serious eating always took place about an hour afterwards. I was so busy trying to mediate this family dispute that I completely forgot the purpose of our earlier discussion.

Hilda Recites Poetry

In the novel Courting Trouble Hilda is one of the heroine Cynethrith's stepsisters. In this scene Cynethrith has come across Hilda in their shared bedroom reciting a poem.

   “Listen,” she said, practically gasping for air. “Listen to this.”
     She began to recite an overwrought poem about a woman who had allowed herself to be seduced by a warrior who, after impregnating her, was nowhere to be found. Hilda had the most extraordinary memory. In fact, she was very smart, just not about anything useful. She paused at the end.
     “Wasn’t it beautiful?” she said in a whisper. Her blue eyes misted over.
     “It was remarkable,” I said. The poem had left me befuddled. The woman was deserted, no doubt about that, but otherwise I was lost. “Tell me something,” I asked. “Are Eric and Edward the same person or two different people?”
     “You didn’t understand it at all, did you?” she said. “You have all the higher qualities of a pygmy shrew.”

On a different topic, the March 2019 Itchen Valley News has an article about the influence my friends and neighbors in the Hampshire town of Easton had on the genesis of Courting Trouble.  

Embroidery, Medieval Style

In Courting Trouble the stepmother Waldberg supplements the family income by creating embroideries and illuminations for the church. This is how she works with metallic thread:

She was working with two needles. One sewed a gold thread on the surface of the work, very close to the previous gold thread she had laid down. With the second needle she sewed tiny silk stitches across the gold to anchor it to the cloth. She had explained to me once that this technique was used so that the expensive gold thread was not wasted on the wrong side.