Wednesday afternoon, Portland

Notes for the novel I didn't write #3

Set in England, near Salisbury
Inspired by Narcissus and Goldmund but with female characters.
Time period 1245-1310

Kings and aristocrats traveled with their households for diplomacy, pilgrimages, crusades, hunting, and excitement. One way to display wealth and power was to travel.

Medieval travelers often slept in abbeys or nunneries. Religious houses charged visitors by the night and were aflutter with people coming and going, relaying rumors and intrigues, including descriptions of faraway places and accounts of miracles, fabulous beasts, and exotic people whose languages, clothing, and customs were a source of fascination. There was no mail service, no regular source of news. Travelers might deliver letters or take them away. 

Not all travelers were aristocrats. Some were adventurers, buskers, or traders. A traveling theatre troupe would be a source of great excitement. A peddler’s cart might contain the following: girdles and gloves, pins and needles, embroidered linen kerchiefs, wimples, brooches, buckles, belts, hoods and caps, woolen hose, mid-calf boots for rough outdoor work, razors, tweezers, assorted tools, tooth-brushes, toothpicks, curling irons, knives, ribbons, combs, kitchen implements, rose-water, candles, and bolts of cloth. An enormous hubub would ensue when a familiar and well-fitted peddler showed up once or twice a year.

13th C. meal times: breakfast was a bit of bread and ale taken before dawn. Dinner was the main meal, served around 11 a.m. Supper was a light meal between 4 and 6 p.m.
Special meals would be prepared for aristocratic visitors.

Franciscan dinner (mid-day) menu for a visiting king: fresh cherries, white bread, fresh green beans cooked in milk, fish and eel pies rich with almond milk and cinnamon, roasted eel in a sauce of bread, broth, and vinegar, seasoned with ginger, salt, pepper, and cinnamon.