Brother Hermitag, the Shorts

by Howard of Warwick

  ‘What accomplice?’ Bargis’s heart sank

  ‘Oh, he has to have an accomplice or the plan doesn’t work, I think that’s the trick in the puzzle. They tell you about the princess and the sweetheart but they don’t tell you that there definitely isn’t an accomplice do they? I mean a sweetheart rescuing a princess is bound to have a servant or something isn’t he?’

  ‘Perhaps the sweetheart has been impoverished and is a bit of a loner who’s never made friends?’

  ‘Except with the princess?’ Hermitage asked, a bit puzzled.

  ‘Except for the princess. obviously.’

  ‘So, anyway, while the sweetheart is swimming the moat, climbing the garderobe and sneaking into the Keep the accomplice starts a distraction at the drawbridge.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Oh I don’t know, perhaps a fire or something, or he could fake an attack on the castle.’

  ‘On his own?’

  ‘Well I’m sure the accomplice can think of something, it’s not as if this is for real.’

  ‘No, no, of course not.’

  ‘The accomplice starts the distraction, all the castle guards rush to the drawbridge and that’s when the sweetheart sneaks up to the princess’s room, rescues her and escapes.’

  ‘Back down the garderobe?’

  ‘Ah, yes, well, perhaps he’d better have taken rope so the princess can be lowered down.’

  ‘Hmm,’ it was Bargis who hummed this time and it was the hum of the unconvinced.

  ‘There you are, puzzle solved and princess rescued. You can take your solution back to that village and I’m sure they’ll all be most impressed.’

  ‘Yes, very good,’ said Bargis in an absent minded tone that indicated his mind was elsewhere.

  ‘Listen Brother,’ he said, after what he felt was a suitable interval as they both gazed into the fire.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’ve been given the job of testing the guards at a castle near here. For the master you know, wants to keep his men on their toes?’

  ‘Ah yes?’ Hermitage asked, wondering where this was going.

  ‘Yes. And I was wondering if you’d be able to lend me a hand. You know, start the alarm while I observe the men at their work and comment back to the master.’

  Well, this really was pushing recompense for a bit of meagre hospitality a bit far thought Hermitage, but, he was in the man’s debt for saving him from bears and robbers.

  ‘Only too glad,’ he offered with downbeat enthusiasm for once.

  ‘Excellent,’ said Bargis, rubbing his hands, ‘I thought perhaps a small fire.’

  The End of Hermitage and the Robber

  Manuscript; MS/BH/HoW/ 004 Folio 7

  Hermitage Home

  Preface:

  This manuscript has rather thrown me into a turmoil. It clearly fits Hermitage; the wilderness week or two, as there is clear reference to leaving the monastery. However, it is the origin and nature of the piece which concerns me.

  I only mentioned in passing to this ‘agent’ individual that we had very little about Brother Hermitage’s life outside the monastery. I happened to say that a monk of the Brother’s clear learning and education might have left some trace of his previous life. If the young man could already read and write by the time of the events told in books such as The Heretics of De’Ath, he must have been an educated youth. Perhaps there was some reference to him, or even by him, in documents outside of the monastic sphere. Maybe even a personal reminiscence of his life and times which would throw a light on his situation.

  Whatever next, but the ‘agent’ arrived, clasping a manuscript which almost exactly met expectations. I did comment that the work seemed remarkably fresh, and indeed even still wet - but he said that he had been caught in a shower and we should be grateful the work had survived at all.

  He made some rather ludicrous claims for the ‘market’ looking for exactly this sort of thing - as if academic research should be subject to a market of all things.

  I suppose I should not have been surprised when Professor Bunley turned up. I really must make it clear to both of these people that my scriptorium is not some sort of meeting place, let alone a shouting shop.

  It wasn’t but a few moments before the accusations were flying again, and some of my archives were being jostled.

  Bunley was making wild accusations about the probity of the agent, while that fellow cast aspersions about Bunley’s weight. The whole thing was in danger of descending into a complete farce and so I took strong measures. I am not a man inclined to forthrightness but certain situations and individuals demand it. There was nothing I could do but invite them to leave - which I did with, I am ashamed to say, a moderately raised voice.

  They both looked at me as if I had undergone some sort of metamorphosis and hurriedly made their exits; not before the agent had firmly placed the manuscript on my lectern, and Bunley had grabbed a quill and tried to cross it out!

  Howard,

  Warwick

  Monday.

  Hermitage Home

  It was with great trepidation that Brother Hermitage took the last few paces around the edge of the wood which would open up a vista not seen since his childhood. He knew trepidation very well indeed, he had experienced a lot of it since he had left this place, and had such wide knowledge of the subject that he had categorised it into a complex variety of orders and types. He had even thought about starting a journal of some sort, but after a couple of days realised that he couldn’t afford that much parchment.

  …

  The biggest revelation that the religious life had given Hermitage was that his fellow monks could behave in most un-monkly, and even un-Godly manner sometimes. Well most of the time if he were honest - which he was habitually - and most of the behaviour tended to lead to trepidation on his part. Early encounters with his fellow monks had made it clear to Hermitage that he was not like them in almost every way imaginable. As a result of this, most of his ways seemed to act as some sort of intimate irritant to those who came into contact with him.

  His learning had immediately been revealed as so far ahead of his new fellows that he began to wonder if his father hadn’t been correct in beating him every time he caught him trying to read.

  Beyond this though, his thinking, his behaviour, his mannerisms, the way he spoke, the way he kept quiet, the way he looked at people and the way he didn’t look at them, the way he wore his habit, the way he prayed and that thing he did with his fingers; what he did in the mornings, afternoons and evenings and apparently his not even being there; all of these things had the facility to drive even the most apparently mild mannered monk to a fit of behaviour most of which was explicitly forbidden by several passages of the bible.

  If all of this had taught Hermitage anything, it was that trepidation was the master of experience. The fear of what was about to happen to him was almost always far worse than the actual event. Being hung upside down from the monastery walls while the ladies of the village gawped at his private business was an exception to this, but then no rule could be expected to have universal application. The events themselves could be uncomfortable, undignified or messy and usually all three. They were always unnecessary, but it was inevitably the trepidation which disabled Hermitage.

  This theorising was all very well, and Hermitage could stand back from himself and realise the truth of the situation, but that didn’t stop him feeling the urge to visit the privy whenever the brothers knocked on his cell door at midnight.

  He reasoned that it must be a consequence of this fundamental trepidation that he felt overwhelming of relief and relaxation when his abbot had suggested he leave. Or instructed he leave, really. Quickly.

  …

  He wondered then, what he was doing coming back to this place. If trepidation had come to be something best avoided, why had his first path brought him to the place and people from whence it all sprang?

  Duty. Hermitage always had the most enormous sense of duty,
a sense of the tasks and roles which fell to him even if they would not be his personal choice. He knew that he was a simple servant in this world, first of all a servant of God, then a servant of his betters and finally a servant of everyone else. It was unthinkable that he should put himself first in anyway whatsoever - and this had really irritated the hell out of the other monks.

  It was, therefore, his duty to return here and inform those who knew him of his future. Now that he was in the place and facing the prospect though, he really couldn’t understand what he had been thinking.

  His father, woodsman to Lord Egwin’s estate, had made it quite clear that the result of Hermitage taking monastic orders would be that they would never meet again, under any circumstances whatsoever. Further, if they did bump into one another at a market or something they should ignore one another completely. That way Hermitage might better focus on his religious life, and his father might not be distracted any further by wondering whether his son was alive or not.

  This had always seemed doubly strange to Hermitage as it was his father who said that the only place he’d be any use to anyone was in a monastery.

  Of the rest of his family, his mother had always been distant. She lived five miles away with a man called Bark who was a professional bear wrestler.

  Hermitage recognised his elder brother as the progenitor of his trepidatious life, or more precisely, his constant carping, complaining, whining and physical assaults.

  The monastic order had given Hermitage more blessings than mere distance as it provided the opportunity to change his name.

  …

  The only one in all those years of his childhood who had showed him any kindness at all had been the Lady Egwin, who had, on occasion treated him with almost parental affection. But even she had seemed very remote and disinterested at the formal farewell Lord Egwin had given him.

  With all this both behind and now in front of him, he wondered for a moment whether he shouldn’t simply turn around and go. At the very least he needed to pop into the woods as, despite his learned thinking, rationalisation and understanding, the trepidation had come back and he really, really needed the privy.

  …

  Squatting behind a tree had never been a comfortable experience for Hermitage. This attitude formed part of what his father had referred to as his “pathetic, weak and wobbly, flimsy-whimsy approach to life by which he would have all the impact on the world of a small lark poo”.

  He should be more like his brother who was a real man, and who would crap in the middle of the market square if the need came over him. It had always seemed to Hermitage that this particular need came over his brother suspiciously often and it was he who would benefit from some of his younger sibling’s qualities of modesty and discretion, rather than the other way round.

  That Lord Egwin himself was more inclined towards Hermitage’s approach to life at least meant that the estate was not one of those which was forever dripping in gore from the latest hunt, or in which the men continually disported themselves in public displays of the very worst kind. Lady Egwin, on the other hand, had been much more interested in the practical, and had spent long hours with Hermitage’s father supervising wood husbandry and the like.

  Being surprised while he was squatting behind a tree was the sort of thing his nightmares were made of. After the incident of the monastery walls and the ladies, these dreams had become far more vivid, disturbing and, Hermitage would be ashamed to admit, explicit.

  He had obviously had a full education in the facts of life, such a thing was unavoidable when you lived the rural life, but he didn’t realise quite so much of it had stuck in quite such detail. He was also quite sure that human beings couldn’t do some of things he had started to dream about.

  Surprised he was though, as a figure almost stumbled out of the thickest part of the woods in his direction. Ignominy jumped on the back of embarrassment as he realised it was a woman who had appeared, and although her constant looking back told that she was being pursued, she didn’t seem unhappy.

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed regarding the rapidly rising Hermitage.

  ‘I do beg your pardon,’ Hermitage offered at the same time, straightening his habit before looking up to see who was before him.

  The shock of his discomfort was immediately replaced by the joy of recognition.

  ‘My Lady,’ he said and bowed low.

  It was as if the intervening years had been swept down a fetid drain as Hermitage looked upon the Lady Egwin. All of the anxieties and disorders he had accumulated since he last saw her were instantly dispelled, and tears even welled in his eyes as the memory of joyous times was ignited by her presence. All of his trials and tribulations, even the trepidation itself seemed a price worth paying for this moment.

  ‘My goodness it’s…’

  ‘Brother Hermitage my lady,’ Hermitage interrupted, emphasising his new name over his old.

  ‘Of course, Brother Hermitage,’ she said, recovering herself and speaking the name carefully.

  It was odd that she seemed as taken aback by this encounter as he was. Whatever she had been doing in the woods had been driven from her attention as she stood and stared at the monk before her.

  There was a crashing in the undergrowth behind her and Hermitage wondered for a moment if she was being chased by some wild animal or other. She looked back quickly and with a gesture to Hermitage that he should wait, quickly disappeared back into the shrubbery.

  There was more crashing in the undergrowth together with some horse whispers, a couple of giggles and some words hissed with quiet intent. With a final high pitched, girlish squeal, Lady Egwin re-appeared straightening her dress which had obviously been disarranged by the bushes and brambles.

  ‘Brother Hermitage,’ she said regarding him once more, ‘How lovely to see you again. What are you doing here?’ This last question was more of a request for an explanation than an expression of pleasant surprise.

  ‘I have become a peripatetic monk my Lady.’

  ‘Oh dear, I am sorry,’ she said

  ‘No, no, it’s good. It means that I have been freed from my order to move to another, doing what work I may in the service of the Lord.’

  ‘Oh, that is nice.’

  ‘And I thought that before I begin properly, I should visit to let people know.’

  ‘Really?’ Lady Egwin seemed genuinely puzzled by this.

  ‘Duty,’ Hermitage said

  ‘Ah duty,’ said Lady Egwin, still none the wiser.

  ‘So here I am.’ He was beginning to wonder if they were going to spend the entire time in the wood, rather too close to Hermitage’s stooping spot than was comfortable.

  ‘So you are.’ She said, and she seemed to regard him at last with some of the tenderness that he fleetingly remembered.

  ‘Well it’s been lovely to see you and erm, enjoy your wandering.’ She said and Hermitage’s heart fell.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought that I would go down and see some of the others.’

  ‘Why?’ Again real failure to understand.

  ‘Well erm.’ Now that he thought about it further he really didn’t know why. Apart from Lady Egwin, there really wasn’t anyone he yearned to see.

  ‘Everything is still exactly the same only more so.’ She sighed. ‘Lord Egwin keeps to his Keep only now he has a companion, one Barsum of Lincoln, and they seem to spend hours together doing, well they spend all their time together. Your brother has been in the stocks most weeks for some crime or other, and he routinely attacks anyone after sundown. And your father is erm…,’ she pondered a bit longer here, ‘your father is still the erm, same as ever. Lots of work in the woods, dealing with this and that. Satisfying the needs of the estate you know.’

  ‘Ah, good.’ With this update Hermitage did see that there was little point in him visiting. It had just been a strange urge to see faces. Even if none of them liked him very much. Something in him wanted to check that they were actually real people, and that
his memory had not built ogres out of phantoms.

  Now that he was within screaming distance of his home, the reality of those he had left behind became only too clear, and the urge to check reality became an urge to leave it alone and move quietly away.

  ‘And both your father and brother maintain the same attitude towards you as they always have I’m afraid.’ Lady Egwin concluded.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So perhaps?’ she suggested.

  Hermitage pulled himself up straight and realised that he had already met the only person he had really come back for.

  ‘Perhaps I should just be on my way to my new life.’ He said this with good cheer. He had tried to put the tone in his voice for her benefit, but it occurred to him that he did, actually, feel quite joyful.

  ‘It might be for the best, Hermitage.’ She said his name with a tone and emotion which he found unbearable. He would not leave without the memory of this, and the thought that he would return one day.

  ‘I have at least met you again my Lady.’

  ‘You have indeed,’ she said and then did a remarkable thing. She took half a step forward and lightly stroked his cheek. One of those rare moments of childhood revisited him as he felt comfort and security and that the worst woes of the world could do him no harm.

  ‘Go well,’ she said as Hermitage smiled and walked past her, back to the path.

  As he turned and looked back at her for one last time as she obviously prepared to return to the dense woodland, she spoke again,

  ‘Go well indeed, my son.’

  As he walked away Hermitage thought deeply. ‘My son?’ What a strange thing for her to say. She clearly had no understanding of the orders of monastic life. She wasn’t a priest, that was ridiculous, it was priests who called people my son. He knew that his home valley was a pretty ungodly place but that was pretty basic. Perhaps she’d been confused by his sudden appearance in the woods, or she thought he was a priest and she ought to call him that. Pah, he would never understand how women worked.