Chapter 20: Strategy @9th Century

I remembered that I had once thought that all the ingredients for pasta were available to me. After all it was only eggs, flour and water. With little else to occupy the dark hours of the winter evenings I decided to treat all of to one of my favourite and simplest of dishes - tagliatelle.

My first task was to secure a rolling pin but that wasn't difficult as many used them when making bread. I was able to scavenge some dried mushrooms, some cooked ham and even some wild oniony type plant. Access to cream was also quite straightforward. The womenfolk and Gabrain were gathered round watching me with amusement. Their comments were quite derisory, suggesting I was doing women's work - even the girls. Women's liberation was obviously some way off!

I mixed up the flour, eggs and water and kneaded the resulting dough very thoroughly. Once I had rolled the dough out I simply used my dirk to cut it into strips of the required breadth then I hung these up to breathe for a little while. The ham, mushrooms and oniony thing were cooked quickly over the fire and then set aside to keep warm. A pot of salted water was already boiled and I now put it back over the fire and then dropped the tagliatelle into it, boiling the pasta for only a few minutes.

Gabrain helped me carry the pot outside to drain the boiling water off and I then added the cooked ham, mushrooms and onion before pouring cream over all of it, tossing it lightly to ensure the tagliatelle was well coated.

The looks on their faces when they tasted it was a picture, Gabrain especially wolfing his portion down and anxiously glancing at the pot in the hope that there might be a second helping in the offing. There was plenty more to go round.

One night Gabrain and I were reviewing his lessons with the monk so that I could re-assure myself that the content was appropriate to his development. He told me he had already made significant progress in reading and writing and nothing would do but that he showed me his skills. He rushed to get some paper, ink and a feather quill that we used for writing and showed he could write quite well indeed, his script neat and flowing clearly.

Now that we had the paper out I had an idea that young Gabrain and I might have a 'brainstorming' session. I almost laughed out loud when this twenty-first century management jargon popped into my head. Basically Gabrain and I were going to sit down and think up some ideas that would help improve things for our people. He became very excited at this; anything to do with having new ideas was apt to get his attention quickly.

"Ok Gabrain, we're going to do a SWOT exercise. Here's how it works. I write down some headings on the paper - I'm putting down strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats - SWOT. Then we consider each one in turn and we shout out anything that comes into our heads that is appropriate to that heading when we think about the security, health and wealth of our lordships. Clear?"

"Yes, yes it's clear Scott. Come on, let's get on with it, come on!"

"Okay. Strengths. What strengths do you think we have in terms of security, health and wealth for our lordships?"

"You." He said, a big smile on his face.

I laughed at that but took it as a compliment.

The girls and Eilean were intrigued by Gabrain's excitement and enthusiasm and came over to the table to see what we were doing. The more people involved in this kind of thing the better so I explained what we were doing and how they could join in

"Okay," I said again to all of them this time, "what do we see as strengths?"

"Long bows."

"Horses."

"Brave men and true!"

"Longships."

"Trade."

We went on for some time, me scribbling down each of the things we thought were strengths.

"Now, what do we see as weaknesses?"

"We don't know when and where the Vikings or others will attack us."

"Not enough men."

"Illness, although things have improved, people still die regularly from illnesses."

"Skills, we don't have enough of them."

"Raw materials."

Another few minutes and I had a lengthy list of things we considered weaknesses, more of these than strengths.

"Right. What about opportunities?"

And so it went on as we generated what we thought were opportunities and then finally threats that we might face. I explained that the next stage was to go through each of the things we had identified and try to think of ways of either building on our strengths, improving things to try and address our weaknesses, exploit opportunities or avoiding threats.

That began an enthusiastic session of generating ideas with discussion flowing backwards and forwards, initial ideas being developed, some discarded.

Kirsty suggested that my introduction of washing with soap and boiling water was something that needed to be spread wider. Gossip amongst those women who had adopted the use of soap and who had nursed injured husbands; brothers or sons reported that their wounds had healed quicker and without infection whereas in the past infection had been common. She suggested we should do more to communicate these positive effects and seek to get everyone to adopt the idea. She also pointed out that ill health was at its height during the winter months and she asked if this was possibly connected to cold conditions or even to being indoors for long periods in a smoky environment.

Fifi suggested that we should find more ways of freeing up women's time so that they could take on duties normally carried out by men. That would help swell the numbers available for fighting and the like. Some of the things she raised as being a big demand on their time included grinding grain, disposing of human waste, washing and cleaning and the making of clothes. She wondered whether there were things we could do to make these jobs easier or faster.

I was really impressed by the way they were throwing themselves into this exercise and their ideas were great. I noticed Gabrain's attitude to the women began to change subtly as he too saw them with new eyes and gave them more respect. He was next to come forward with some ideas - suggesting we find areas where the Saxons perhaps had a lot of horses and raid them to steal their stock. He also suggested a system of signalling towers be set up so that we could get messages quicker when the enemy attacked us. His final idea was one as old as the hills.

"Scott, if we had some of our people inside the enemy's camps they could give us advance warning of attacks and we could prepare ambushes!"

The possibility of setting up a kind of intelligence or secret service hadn't occurred to me but now I had to seriously consider Gabrain's idea. In fact they had all given me food for thought. I wondered if I could take Fifi's idea of women taking on tasks traditionally done by men a stage further. Could they be trained up to fight? Perhaps only for those occasions when our camps might be attacked rather than going off into battle.

Our other discussions had sparked more ideas in my head too. I wondered if I could develop a glass lens and some reflective materials that would allow us to make a crude form of searchlight, mounted on a tower? Running water, especially hot running water would be an absolute godsend, as would baths and showers. Could we create central heating - I was sure the Romans had done so - and avoid the noxious smoke from the fires? I knew that a big improvement in history was the introduction of mills for grinding grain. Mills could be powered by wind and sails or even by water wheels. I had been thinking about the safe disposal of waste for months now, positively yearned for the simple convenience of a toilet and some toilet paper.

I had two other ideas that I contributed to the session. One was a simple design for Molotov cocktails - although I didn't call them that. The second was a story I told about how I had come across a type of stone that burned and gave of great heat. What I was describing was coal but it would have been difficult to explain my knowledge of it to any other than Kirsty. Kirsty was smiling at me, as she knew I was bringing some of my knowledge from my own time to bear and she was obviously all for it. The others were sceptical though.

When we at last began to run out of ideas I went back over the list and watched as their eyes widened at the scale of what they had just helped me achieve. It was a long list and some of the ideas on it very ambitious. But I thought most of them could be turned into reality and if we managed them all the difference would be huge. Each of us was buoyed and excited by the possibilities ahead.

Gabrain's idea of a raid to steal horses was one that really appealed to me. It may have been the inactivity of the long winter months or perhaps I was becoming hooked on adrenaline, but I was itching for some action. I wondered whether making some sort of attempt now might not catch unwary Saxons napping, after all nobody seemed to fight or raid at his time of year.

I spent time in the hall-house speaking to some of my men to find out if any had knowledge of an area that was rich in horses. My stockmen seemed to know where the best horseflesh, cattle, sheep or pigs were to be found and very quickly I recognised one area kept being mentioned. Lancaster seemed to be the place to trade for good quality horses. Situated on the Saxon west coast, or at least on a firth that led in from the sea, Lancaster was described as a very large settlement, built on the site of an old Roman centre.

Before suggesting a raid I tried to think of all the angles and what issues there would be. I thought two longships could sail to this Lancaster and if we towed four of the smaller boats with us we could possibly load up to twenty-five horse in each. An additional one hundred horses would be a huge improvement in my military position and that prospect alone convinced me that an attempt was worth it.

I think my sense of itching for action must have been a common one for I hardly needed to make a strong case for the raid before men were pushing themselves forward to volunteer. There were enough and more to man the two longships so I sent for them to be brought to Aird Driseig from their moorings and began to make the necessary preparations for the trip to Lancaster.

As part of the preparations I made sure that every member of the raiding party had quilted clothing, sheepskins and Ugg boots. Each man was also told to make himself a pair of snowshoes like those Gabrain and I had made. I asked the girls if there was anyway they could make the sheepskins white so they blended in with the snow and could act as camouflage. There was, and they tended my gear and passed on the instructions to others to do likewise.