‘Won’t do us much good if we’re walking to Wales along the bottom of the river will it?’ Cwen observed.
‘So,’ Wat turned to More, ‘how much?’ He asked this as if expecting any reply to be ridiculous.
‘To Staines?’ More nodded and grinned, ‘well, it’s usually fourpence, but there’s five of you see.’
‘Yes,’ said Wat, slowly, cautiously, and with just a hint of threat that he could take his business elsewhere.
‘So that’s a, erm,’ More screwed up his face even more than time had already done, and gazed at the clouds while he worked this out. ‘A pound.’
‘A pound?’ Wat’s voice was high and shocked. ‘No it isn’t,’ he said, ‘five people at fourpence is twenty pence. One shilling and eight pence.
‘Oh yes,’ said More, ‘a shilling, that’s the one.’ He held out his hand.
Wat opened his mouth to object but realized it had been his offer. This More wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Mind you, no one could be quite as stupid as More looked.
‘Of course if you want to go to Wales, that’s extra,’ said More.
‘Let’s get to Staines in one piece shall we?’ said Wat.
More now scurried around taking people’s packs, and stacking them in the depths of the boat, before he gestured them all to climb aboard. On the prow seat he placed the druid. This could be to set the balance of the boat, the druid being the largest of them all. Or it could be that rowing down the river with a large druid in the prow of your boat looked pretty impressive, and was probably good fortune.
Hermitage noted that More didn’t seem at all disturbed by the druid, and generally appeared to be very happy with his lot. As his lot was plainly pretty awful, this could only mean that he was mad. On the river with a mad boatman. Marvellous.
The boat was fended away from the bank and pulled out into the stream without sinking once.
…
The row along the river slipped quietly on for hour after hour. With the sun shining and the ripples no more than gentle sparkles on the surface of the water, Hermitage even found himself feeling quite relaxed. He’d come up with something to worry about in a minute.
‘At least old Bones of the River here seems to know his stuff,’ Cwen noted as she trailed a hand in the passing water. She hastily withdrew her hand when something soft and lumpy bumped into it.
‘Oh, yis,’ More nodded as he pulled on the oars with efficiency. ‘I been rowing this river for as long as I can remember.’
‘Probably about a week,’ Wat commented with a laugh.
‘You say you used to be a ferryman?’ said Hermitage, always uncomfortable when conversations drifted toward mockery, or insult.
‘Oh, yis, that’s right,’ said More, as if he’d only just remembered the fact. ‘Down Gravesend way it was. Backwards and forwards I used to go. Regular as the tides. That was when I was rowing for the King.’ It sounded like he was about to embark on his very lengthy tale. ‘But me boat got burned after his man had used it. And not paid me for the trip. And there was three of them as well. Three at fourpence, I should have had a pound.’
‘Shilling.’
‘That’s the one.’
More rowed on in silence.
‘There was a snooty one,’ he piped up for no good reason.
‘Beg pardon?’ Hermitage asked, wondering if one of the birds on the river was called a Snootyone.
‘In me boat,’ More explained, ‘there was a snooty one and another, one who kept very quiet and wanted to go home all the time. Very sensible, if you ask me. Then there was some talkative Saxon who complained all the time, and the horrible one of course.’
‘A horrible Saxon?’ Hermitage asked.
‘No, no,’ said More, ‘the horrible Norman. All thin he was.’
That was a bit much coming from the man who made a sliver of parchment look like it had let itself go.
‘And with an eye patch and all.’
The boat was already pretty silent, but now it became more so.
‘Eye patch?’ Cwen asked as nonchalantly as she could, her capacity for nonchalance being very limited indeed.
‘Le Pedvin,’ Wat spat.
‘That’s him,’ More exclaimed, as he stopped rowing. ‘You know him?’
‘Oh, we know Le Pedvin alright.’
More looked at them all, his familiar inane grin was gone. ‘Well as far as I’m concerned, any friends of Le Pedvin can get out and walk.’ He nodded towards the river.
‘We’re no friends of his,’ Wat explained, ‘well, most of us.’ He looked towards John, who gazed at the river to see if he could spot a Snootyone swimming by.
‘It was him what put a burning stick in me boat.’ More complained.
‘He likes burning things to the ground,’ Hermitage observed, ‘it’s what he does.’
‘So, how do you know him?’ More asked.
‘He keeps giving us jobs to do.’ Hermitage explained, ‘and then he threatens to kill us all and burn us to the ground if we don’t do them. It’s very unimaginative.’
‘But effective,’ Cwen observed with a disappointed scowl.
‘So is this one of his jobs?’ More asked.
Hermitage didn’t like to say yes, in case More rowed them to the shore and made them get out.
‘Yes, I’m afraid it is,’ Wat acknowledged apologetically.
More rowed steadily on, with no more sign of wanting to get rid of his passengers. His paying passengers.
‘What’s the job then?’ he asked after a few minutes, as if he’d only just managed to digest the facts.
‘We’re looking for someone,’ Wat replied quickly, looking at Hermitage as if the monk might have said something about gold.
‘Oh yis?’ More nodded, ‘that’ll be easy then. There’s lots of people about.’
Hermitage frowned as he tried to make sense of this.
‘Don’t find me though,’ More added, ‘I don’t want to be found by Le Pedvin. Not again. I can’t afford the boats.’
‘We’re not looking for just anyone,’ Cwen half shouted, ‘if we were looking for just anyone we’d have found them straight away.’ She shook her head at the idiot in charge of their boat.
‘Well,’ More responded equitably, ‘I did wonder why you’d need a boat to find someone. There’s plenty of people on land.’
Hermitage, Wat and Cwen exchanged glances that said they thought getting out of the boat soon would be quite a good idea.
Hermitage spoke clearly and slowly, ‘We are looking for someone particular, an individual person. Just the one. With his own name.’
‘Who you looking for then?’ the master mariner enquired.
Cwen huffed her impatience, ‘A Norman called Martel. ‘Know him?’
‘Yis,’ said More, without surprise.
‘Oh really.’ Cwen’s disbelief added to the weight in the boat.
‘He was the one in me boat. Nice chap.’ More nodded happily, but then had a thought, ‘small world isn’t it?’
Hermitage, Wat and Cwen exchanged another look. This could not be right. There was no way they would wind up in the boat of a man who knew the person they were looking for. Coincidence wasn’t even the word. It was as if someone had made up a ridiculous connection to put in a story, just to make the thing work.
‘You know Martel?’ Hermitage asked slowly.
‘That’s right,’ More confirmed. ‘He was the one who was quiet and wanted to go home all the time. There was rotten Le Pedvin with his eye patch. Another horrible know-it-all called, what was it?’ More racked his brains, which didn’t take long, ‘Randolph?’
‘Ranulph?’ Hermitage asked, recalling the name of Le Pedvin’s map maker.
‘That’s him.’ More confirmed. ‘Then there was the Saxon who complained all the time. I think he was called Mabbut, or something like that. He went north but didn’t come back. And then there was Martel. He went north and did come back. Didn’t look like he wanted to though. Seemed to be in tr
ouble with old eye-patch-man, goodness knows what he’d done. Nothing was ever good enough for that man. Martel was being taken back for some sort of punishment.’[ If you’ve already bought The Domesday Book (No, Not That One), buy another copy – it might be different. (It also might not.)]
‘Being sent to Wales,’ Hermitage breathed.
Wat looked the boatman up and down before asking very carefully, ‘So, you know what he looks like?’
‘He’s hard to miss with that eye patch,’ More replied.
‘Martel.’ Wat kept his temper.
‘Oh, yis,’ More nodded.
‘Can you describe him?’
I’ve got a better idea,’ the old boat man sounded very enthusiastic for his better idea.
‘Which is?’ Wat asked very cautiously.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No,’ said Wat, ‘you won’t. You’ll tell us what he looks like and we can find him.’
‘But if I was with you I’d be able to point to him. What if I suddenly lose the power of speech?’
‘You’ll lose the power of something in a minute.’
‘And he would know me. I wouldn’t be able to say, “that’s Martel” at the first Norman looking type I saw. I expect he’d remember.’
‘If he’s been in a boat with you, he’ll never forget. I doubt if he’ll recognise you now though,’ Wat explained with grim seriousness, ‘him being murdered and all.’
Hermitage thought this was a good plan to make More see that going to Wales was a very bad idea. Hermitage was certainly convinced.
‘Murdered?’ More asked, in a saddened tone.
‘To death,’ Wat added with a grimace.
‘Oh dear,’ More squeaked. ‘Still,’ he brightened enormously, ‘perhaps he left me something.’
‘Left you something?’ Hermitage did not know what was going on.
‘Yis. I liked Martel, we got on. Perhaps he left me some money when he died.’
‘Got murdered,’ Wat corrected, with some malice, ‘along with two other Normans, one of them a knight. You are not coming with us,’ he said quite plainly, ‘absolutely no way whatsoever. There are too many of us already and we do not want you. Is that settled?’
…
‘Well, that was inevitable,’ Hermitage muttered to Wat as the six of them disembarked for the evening and set up camp, More included. ‘It looks like everyone we bump into wants to come along. Almost like Wales is calling them.’ He shrugged at this patently ridiculous idea.
Caput VII
The Scent of Gold.
In Wales, in the heart of it, in the great hall of the stronghold of Lord Bermo, who proclaimed himself ruler of quite a lot of it, the druids were the topic of conversation, once more. (Great Hall and stronghold being more by the way of convenient terms rather than actual descriptions.)
King William would have been very disappointed to hear that this conversation included several references to druid gold, his druid gold as he saw it. If Lord Bermo had any idea that this was William’s view, he would have taken issue with him immediately.
Lord Bermo had a very physical approach to taking issue with things, most of which ended up so comprehensively damaged that they weren’t an issue any more. People, livestock, furniture, nothing was safe.
Druid gold had long been a topic of interest, but the druids themselves were always there to get in the way. The druids controlled access to the Gods and that was that. Lord Bermo was a straightforward, practical and action-oriented chap. But he was also God fearing. Actually, he was God terrified. He could lop the head off most things at a moment’s notice but even he drew the line somewhere. It was much further out than where most people drew their lines, but at least it was there.
Now though, other options were appearing in his head, or rather were being dripped in through his ears. Apparently the Christian God was much more powerful than all the Gods of the druids put together.
Christian priests and pilgrims passed through this land and had been telling him this for years. The problem for Bermo was that the druid Gods were in the woods outside his window. The Christian God was miles away. This usually meant that the Christian priests and pilgrims became issues, which were dealt with in the usual manner. Their actually completing a passage through his land was so unsuccessful they had taken to going round instead.
This latest visitor had a very interesting view though. He was pointing out that if the druid Gods could be defeated by the Christian God then all the druid gold would become Christian. He then went on to explain that the Christian God didn’t care for gold and the like and so Bermo could look after it.
The visitor had been with Bermo for several days now. That he was a stranger and was still alive at the end of those several days meant that change really was in the air.
On this evening, the fire glowed dull but hot in the middle of the floor. The stranger thought this was also a fairly accurate description of his host. He sighed as he went over the argument. How many more times? He knew English was Bermo’s second language, but he was starting to have doubts the man even had a fully functioning first one.
‘We have swords,’ the visitor explained, nodding towards Bermo’s sword on the table so the lord got the idea. ‘We use them to chop the heads off the druids, which will make it easier to get the gold off.’
Bermo screwed his face up in thought. The visitor couldn’t tell whether this was because the concept of such an overt challenge to established religious authority was raising fundamental doubts about the stability of society, or because he was trying to work out whether it was the shiny bit of the sword that did the chopping.
‘Druids,’ Lord Bermo mumbled in worry.
No, the visitor realised, the thoughts that were actually in Lord Bermo’s head were about the giant squirrel-God which lived in the woods. Apparently, it also hid under the beds in the castle, ready to bite Bermo’s bits off if he got too close so it could bury them back in the woods, where they would grow into something unspeakable.
It had taken two long evenings of barely coherent conversation to get to the bottom of that particular pit.
The visitor put his face in his hands. Again. ‘The Christian God will defeat the squirrel,’ he assured the master of the place.
‘But even so,’ Bermo drawled, ‘killing druids?’
‘You don’t have to kill the druids,’ the visitor explained, with a hint of annoyance, ‘not personally.’
‘Don’t think my men would like to do it either,’ Bermo confirmed.
‘I’ll kill the first one,’ the visitor sighed heavily. ‘Then, when the squirrel doesn’t come and eat my bits, you’ll see that it’s alright. If the squirrel does eat my bits, you can blame me. How’s that?’
Bermo didn’t respond.
‘Look,’ the visitor used his hands on the table to explain the situation he had explained every mealtime since he’d arrived. ‘King William will be coming this way looking for gold. He has a very big army and is very keen on using it to kill everyone in sight.’ He put his right hand on the right hand end of the table.
‘He will bring his army to kill you and the druids and take the gold.’ The left hand represented Bermo. The right hand came across the table and flattened the left.
Bermo started at the sudden capitulation of his forces. ‘William,’ he scoffed. He clearly believed less in this King William than he did in the squirrel-God.
‘That’s right. The King William who has already defeated the Saxons. The same Saxons who defeated the Vikings.’
This did seem to register on Bermo’s largely vacant face.
‘But if you have the gold first you’ll be able to pay for a bigger army to defend yourself and drive William away. Get some big Irishmen, they’re always good in a fight.’
‘So you want to kill a druid?’ Bermo checked.
Perhaps, at last, the idea was sinking in. The visitor nodded and spoke as he would to deaf man at a distance. ‘Yes please.’
…
‘He wants to kill a monk,’ Wulf hissed his alarm at the Arch-Druid. ‘A real live monk. Not a chicken or a goat like we usually do, but a person.’ They were outside the temple, where the Arch-Druid had stopped to pick up his staff. The long piece of carved oak leant the old man even more authority than he had already. And helped him hit people who were out of reach.
‘One thing at a time. Let’s just start with the stone, we’ll worry about the sacrifices later.’ said the Arch-Druid, although the concern was clear in his voice. ‘We haven’t even got a monk,’ he added.
Lypolix was there, weeing against a sacred oak.
Wulf gaped at the old seer. If he had so much as had the thought of discussing such an act, in secret with the other acolytes, all of them sworn to secrecy by the most hideous vows, the Arch-Druid would have removed his weeing apparatus with a blunt sickle.
‘We go to the village,’ the Arch-Druid called, trying to distract Lypolix from the task in his hand.
The seer cackled and nodded, re-arranged his robes and gave the oak a friendly pat.
The route to the village was clear and relatively short, although there were several twists and turns in the woodland trail.
At the first hour of the day the people of this modest place in the depths of the welsh hills found themselves wishing the sun would go back down again and leave them alone until their heads stopped throbbing.
The deerskin over the entrance to the village head’s hut was thrown aside and a figure stepped out into the daylight. It immediately clamped its hands over its eyes and groaned loudly.
‘Good morning Hywel,’ the Arch-Druid boomed.
‘No it isn’t,’ Hywel replied, dropping to his knees and resting his forehead against the ground, perhaps in the hope that the monsters in his head would migrate to the earth, and from thence to the hell from which they came. ‘This is your fault,’ the man added in a pathetic moan. ‘If you hadn’t shouted for the feast to begin as soon as Wulf did his reading, we wouldn’t have drunk all the mead.’
‘All of it?’ the Arch-Druid was either surprised, impressed or disappointed. It was always hard to tell.
Hermitage, Wat and Some Druids Page 6
