Hermitage, Wat and Some Druids

by Howard of Warwick

  Hermitage looked at Banley. This could not be any clearer.

  ‘Aha,’ said Banley, in an overloud whisper that said he had now got the message.

  Well, thought Hermitage, that was a relief.

  ‘We shall follow discreetly.’ Banley tapped the side of his nose.

  ‘No,’ Wat explained, quite loudly. ‘Do not follow discreetly. Do not follow at all. Stay here and do whatever it is you do. Here. Not with us. Not following us, but right here.’ He even pointed to the road.

  ‘You want us to guard the road for your return?’ Banley asked.

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘No need sir,’ Banley beamed again. ‘There’s only us here, and if we’re with you, the road will be safe.’

  ‘Ahrgh,’ Wat expostulated.

  Hermitage realised there was no talking to this Banley. He had come across a number of obstinate people in his time, those who didn’t listen to what he was saying and did what they wanted anyway. Churchmen who cut his very reasonable arguments short and insisted that they had perfect scriptural justification for taking the alms intended of the poor and spending them on a new saddle. He had never come across anyone who listened carefully to your arguments, acknowledged them, and even agreed with them, and then went and did exactly the opposite.

  ‘Banley,’ Wat took the man by the elbow and held his gaze, ‘will you do something for me?’

  ‘Of course,’ Banley was proud to be asked.

  ‘Stay here. Do not accompany us. Do not follow us. Simply stay here. Understood?’

  ‘Oh, yes sir.’ Banley nodded a very knowing nod.

  Well, that was a direct order. Hermitage noted how the exchange had gone, and put Banley away in his expanding register of experiences. Perhaps that had been the point of Wat asking him to join the conversation. More of what Wat called Hermitage’s education in the real world.

  They left the man and joined Cwen, More, John and the Druid, all of whom had taken the opportunity of the discussion to sit down and rest their feet.

  ‘Up everyone,’ Wat called enthusiastically, ‘we’re off. Banley and his band are staying here.’

  Everyone rose and brushed the dust of the track from their clothes. Hoisting packs and adjusting weight, they set off once more to the West.

  After a few paces, Hermitage looked back over his shoulder. He turned to Wat. ‘They’re following,’ he said in frank amazement.

  ‘Of course they are,’ Wat replied, without surprise.

  ‘But,’ Hermitage simply could not understand this. ‘You told them not to.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But they are.’

  ‘Correct again.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’re just what we need on this quiet mission into a foreign land to steal gold from a bunch of mystic killers - six more idiots.’

  Caput X

  How to do a Sacrifice.

  ‘What do you mean drop it on him?’ It wasn’t clear whether Hywel was more outraged at the thought of killing a monk, or of being expected to lift the stone up at all.

  ‘Ha, ha,’ Lypolix cackled in a full explanation.

  Hywel turned his demanding look to the Arch-Druid and Wulf. ‘What does he mean, drop it on him?’

  The Arch-Druid was thoughtful. ‘Not sure, exactly. It could be we just sort of hold the monk down and slide it over him, or it’s possible he needs the whole thing lifting. He’ll explain closer to the time.’

  Hywel’s mouth moved about as if it had some words inside, but they didn’t want to come out. Eventually he spluttered it to working order. ‘I don’t mean the detailed process,’ he shouted, ‘I mean killing a monk at all. Killing anyone at all. Why is he suggesting we kill anyone at all?’

  ‘Got to have a sacrifice to the Gods for the circle. And for the Grand Complication it would have to be something pretty special.’ The Arch Druid nodded to himself.

  ‘Are you serious?’ Hywel was not coming down from the high plateau of excitement he had climbed. ‘We do not sacrifice people to the Gods. We do not sacrifice anything to the Gods. You do the odd chicken, which we eat afterwards. Maybe a goat or a sheep for a special occasion but not people. And certainly not monks. For the Gods’ sakes, you’ll be suggesting virgins next. This isn’t the dark ages you know.’

  The Arch-Druid looked calm and disinterested, as if this was just so much raving from the uninformed.

  ‘He’s, erm,’ Wulf started, and then immediately thought he shouldn’t have done.

  ‘He’s what?’ Hywel snapped.

  ‘I was only going to say that Lypolix has already done three stones.’

  Hywel didn’t need to say anything. It was enough that his face managed to simultaneously portray shock, horror, revulsion and the anticipation of real trouble on the way.

  ‘He started the circle,’ Wulf explained, ‘the Grand Complication. He put the first three stones in place and I had to find the master.’

  ‘And just who did he sacrifice for those?’ Hywel demanded, looking hard at the old seer who was sitting cross legged on the ground, talking to a fern.

  ‘Not sure,’ Wulf confessed. He didn’t really know how to ask the next question. ‘Is, erm, is anyone missing?’

  ‘Is? What? Who?’ Poor Hywel looked like he was trying to turn round inside his own body.

  ‘You know,’ Wulf encouraged, ‘sort of not around anymore?’

  ‘I know what missing means,’ the head of the village screeched in a most unleader-like manner. ‘Are you suggesting that villagers have been killed for this circle?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Wulf tried to calm things. Things he had started in the first place. ‘It’s just that he won’t tell us what he sacrificed. Says the Gods helped him. And there is a lot of blood on the stones.’ He tried a shrug. It didn’t help.

  ‘Show me,’ Hywel demanded, gesturing down the hill.

  Wulf reluctantly stepped down the hill. He didn’t really want to leave the master stone now he’d found it but reasoned that it wasn’t going to go anywhere.

  Hywel followed, scowling intently with the Arch-Druid in his wake. Lypolix noticed the movement and got up from his conversation, skipping down the hill in front of them.

  …

  The ears on either side of the eyes at the back of the cave heard Hywel’s outburst and emerged from behind their rock. The eyes saw the figures departing amidst gesticulation and shouting, as well as a bit of dancing from the old, mad one. This was too intriguing.

  The cave was a happy place, peaceful and undisturbed but the eyes had been alone for a long time now. Snaring the odd rabbit and stealing bits of food from the village under cover of darkness was not what could be called a life, and now there was clearly something going on. Curiosity and the need for some human engagement – at a safe distance – was too much for the cave-dweller. He emerged from the mountain and made his way down the hill. Once the others were out of sight of course.

  …

  ‘This is not chicken blood,’ Hywel announced as he examined the first stones of the Grand Complication. ‘And before you ask again, no, there is no one missing. People don’t go missing without other people mentioning it.’

  The three of them stood by the stones, with Lypolix skipping from one monolith to the other, making sure they were comfortable.

  ‘But the Gods,’ Wulf began.

  ‘Even if the Gods took someone away in the middle of the night in a shining mystical fog, someone else would notice. There aren’t that many of us. You don’t wake up in the morning and think, I’m sure I had a wife last night, wonder where she’s gone.’ Hywel was getting over excited again.

  ‘You,’ he called to Lypolix in a less than reverential manner. The Arch-Druid scowled at the impertinence but didn’t interfere. ‘What did you sacrifice here?’

  The old seer looked up, at least that was progress of a sort.

  ‘The Gods,’ Lypolix nodded and gave a little laugh.

  ‘You sacrificed the Gods?�
�

  This got the seer into a positive laughing fit.

  ‘Explain,’ Hywel commanded.

  Lypolix looked quite surprised, ‘The Gods came from the clouds in their shining raiment and brought the sacrifice for the first stones from the other side of the sky.’

  Well, there was a surprise. Wulf had never thought to simply tell Lypolix to explain himself. Perhaps it was a magic word.

  The Arch-Druid looked positively alarmed, and a little envious.

  ‘And what did this sacrifice look like?’ Hywel pressed on.

  ‘Strange,’ Lypolix breathed the word.

  ‘A stranger,’ Hywel interpreted the seer’s words quite literally.

  Wulf thought it was hardly likely to be that simple.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said Lypolix.

  ‘You killed a stranger?’ Hywel had run out of excitability. He had now moved to a dead calm of concern and fear. ‘Three of them?’ he asked in worried whisper, glancing at the stones. ‘You killed three strangers?’

  ‘More will come, even now they come,’ Lypolix laughed and danced about a bit. ‘We can gather more stones now and get them ready. Every stone will have one.’

  Even Wulf felt himself turn cold at this. It was all very well talking about sacrifices for the stones but Hywel was right, no one sacrificed people anymore. The ancient ones used to do it all the time of course, but then they were ancient and the people they sacrificed would have been dead by now anyway.

  It was bad enough even discussing squashing some monk under the master stone, Lypolix now seemed to be suggesting one person would be sacrificed for each stone. He did a quick sum in his head. They’d need a lot more strangers from somewhere. No. It was unthinkable.

  Wulf had done the odd chicken, but everyone killed chickens, druid or not. He looked at Lypolix, who had gone back to scittering among his stones. If three strangers had really been sacrificed for the first stones, Wulf wondered how the old seer had managed to do it. There were too many incongruities; Lypolix was a tiny old man, how could he control and sacrifice three strangers? If he had managed it, where were the bodies? And most alarming of all for these parts, where on earth had three strangers even come from?

  Wulf realised that he was doubting the tale that the Gods had done it. Of course if the Gods had done it, it wouldn’t have been a problem at all. The Gods could sacrifice a hundred people at once if they wanted to, big strangers or not. It was just that in all his experience under the Arch-Druid he had never seen them do anything so obvious. In fact, as he thought more about it, he’d never seen them perform the obvious. In an alarming step he found himself wondering if he’d ever seen the Gods actually do anything at all.

  If anyone was asking to become a sacrifice it was Wulf with blasphemous thoughts like this. Of course he’d never seen the Gods do anything, he was an acolyte, not an Arch-Druid. And he was a stone seer. He’d had the vision Lypolix had planted in his head. How to explain that if not the Gods?

  ‘If the Gods wanted three strangers sacrificed for the stones there wouldn’t be much we could do about it.’ He nodded to himself in satisfaction at this entirely proper explanation. He was grateful to see the Arch-Druids beard nod up and down in agreement.

  ‘And if the Gods want a great stone moved down the mountain they can do that as well,’ Hywel argued.

  ‘Now that is ridiculous,’ the Arch-Druid countered. ‘The Gods may well do the sacrifices themselves but if they want us to move the stones, that’s what we do. They can’t do everything you know.’ He tutted at Hywel’s presumption.

  The village head grumbled defiance, ‘I thought that’s exactly what they could do.’

  ‘Now then Hywel, careful,’ the Arch-Druid warned.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Hywel offered, ‘if we get this rock down off the mountain, the Gods can lift it up and drop it on the monk. They sacrificed strangers for three tiddling little stones, the least they can do is a monk for the big one.’

  ‘If the Gods,’ the Arch-Druid began.

  ‘I am not waiting for some monk to come wandering along the road for me to drop half a hillside on his head. If word got out to our Lord in his mighty castle that we were going round killing strangers, he’d have my guts. You know he gets to kill all the strangers himself.’

  The Arch-Druid frowned at this mention of the bane of his life, the wretched Lord Bermo who kept staring at the gold all the time. The man wouldn’t dare take it of course, but in a balancing act between the old Gods with their mighty powers in the spirit world, and Lord Bermo just down the road with a lot of big men, the Arch-Druid had to be careful.

  ‘We shall wait until the monk is delivered to us,’ the Arch-Druid sounded sage and reasonable.

  Lypolix had wandered back into ear shot. ‘We shall, we shall,’ he sounded very certain, ‘and when the monk arrives and the stone is ready, the Gods will squash him flat.’

  Caput XI

  The Doubtful Pilgrims.

  ‘Wat,’ Hermitage hissed into the weaver’s ear, ‘this is getting ridiculous.’

  ‘Really?’ said Wat, sounding as if he didn’t have a clue what Hermitage was talking about.

  Hermitage cast another look over his shoulder and appraised the entourage that now stretched down the road.

  The three original members of the group were together, Wat leading as normal, Cwen scowling along slightly behind and Hermitage fretting backwards and forwards between them.

  They had been walking for several hours along the old Roman road towards Silchester.

  ‘The King and Le Pedvin gave the three of us instruction about Martel and the you-know-what in Wales.’ Hermitage paused in thought for a moment. ’Well, actually he gave me instruction. Then he added you in, and I don’t think they thought about Cwen at all.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Wat, still managing to ignore the rest of the party.

  ‘Then we get John the mercenary forced upon us.’

  ‘Hm,’ Wat grunted.

  ‘And then a druid of all things,’ Hermitage went on, ‘and a boat man, and now six more people who started off trying to rob us.’

  ‘But not very well,’ said Wat, as if that made a difference.

  ‘I’m not sure that helps. We shouldn’t have six people following us at all. Even if they were very good robbers.’

  ‘Well,’ Hermitage pressed on, ‘we can’t make six robbers, a druid, a mercenary and a boat man disappear.’

  ‘No, we can’t.’ Wat had the look that said he was thinking. Hermitage was always encouraged by that look. It usually meant the weaver had come up with some way out of whatever awful situation they found themselves in. Locked in a dungeon, pursued by Normans, standing accused of murder; all the things that had become run-of-mill to Hermitage were alleviated by that look.

  Come to think of it, the awful things which were now run-of-the-mill only started when he met Wat. No. He would put that thought away for some other time.

  …

  As the outlying dwellings of Silchester came into sight, Hermitage didn’t know whether to be encouraged or discouraged. Discouragement came more naturally and they were several steps closer to their goal. A goal he wanted nothing to do with. He absolutely did not believe in Druid prophecies. However, he absolutely did not believe in them just a little bit less with each step closer to Wales.

  Wat assured him they were still miles away from Wales. After Silchester would be Speen and Baydon, as they headed north-west towards Gloucester and the river. But then over the river what lay in wait? Hermitage could only imagine. He had always been very good at imagining things lying in wait. They were usually big, scary things with no good intent. Many of them had given up laying and were now standing in wait.

  He glanced again down the ragged band on the road, who, far from being an ordered column, had drifted apart as their interest and enthusiasm varied. The main protagonists were still to the fore, himself, Wat and Cwen with John and the Druid slightly behind. The erstwhile robbers straggled along at the
back, with More hopefully boring them to death with his tales of the riverbank.

  He counted them again, just to confirm his concern.

  ‘Erm, Wat?’ he asked as nonchalantly as he could.

  ‘Hm?’ Wat answered, his attention being on the road ahead.

  ‘Where did the, er, extra people come from?’

  Wat woke from his light daze and frowned at Hermitage. ‘We picked them up when they tried to rob us,’ he said with some worry, ‘are you losing your mind Hermitage?’

  ‘No,’ Hermitage explained, ‘not those extras. The extra extras.’ He nodded back down the line of the road.

  Wat turned his head to look and his eyes widened.

  If just one more person had joined the round dozen it might have been easy to miss, but there were now three complete strangers among the band, walking along without a care in the world.

  Wat drew the march to a halt and waited for the newcomers to join him.

  Each of them had a travelled look about them, as if their bodies had been used for great journeys through harsh weather. Although probably only a few years older than Wat, they were dark skinned, either because they had been exposed to sun and rain over many summers and winters, or because they hadn’t washed for the last few years. Probably both. They were reasonably well dressed though. Sturdy boots and tied-down leggings over open jerkins and shirts which might once have been white – or a closely related shade. And they all looked pretty well fed and rather happy with their lot.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ Wat asked quite bluntly.

  ‘Just pilgrims,’ the first of them announced in proud tones. ‘I’m Elard, this is Lanson and that’s Pord.’

  The others nodded their smiling welcome to Wat.

  ‘Pilgrims?’ Wat’s confusion made him look to Hermitage, as if the monk would be able to answer this.

  All Hermitage could do was shrug. The men did have the look of the pilgrim about them, but then so did a lot of people who just spent time outdoors.

  As if to prove their credentials they each produced a small shell from somewhere in their jerkins and held them up proudly.