Hermitage turned to face back down the road and saw that a number of the hovel dwellers were outside their mud and stick constructions, probably to see the most exciting thing that had happened around here for years.
As More wandered on, Hermitage noticed that the hovel dwellers seemed to be wandering as well. They were definitely further away from their hovels than they had been.
Wat stopped and so the rest of the band stopped as well.
So did the population from the hovels.
Impatiently, Wat gestured to the band to join him down the road.
For perhaps the first time, Hermitage, Wat, Cwen, John, the druid, More, the pilgrims and the robbers got together in a reasonably tight bunch. They soon spread themselves out a bit.
The bunch was observed from a distance by the hovel owners, who didn’t look like they wanted to get any closer.
With an abrupt gesture Wat moved his team several steps along the road away from the town.
The hovel people hesitated, but then moved as well.
‘Alright,’ Wat cried out in frustration, ‘just what is going on?’
He strode back through his followers until he came face to face with one of the women from the hovels.
She showed no sign of retreating in the face of Wat’s approach, and in fact folded her arms to wait for him.
Hermitage appraised the woman and saw that she was probably no older than Wat. That she was a lot less comfortable than Wat was blindingly obvious. Her clothes were rent with rips and snags, a long floor-length skirt dragged on the ground. Her top was a thick, ill-fitting jerkin and her hair was roughly cut.
‘Who are you?’ Wat asked, ‘Camp followers?’
The woman looked horrified and slapped Wat’s face.
The weaver didn’t know what to do, so he stood still and looked shocked.
Cwen sniggered.
‘How dare you,’ the woman put her hands on her poorly clothed hips and glared at Wat. ‘We are not camp followers.’ She spat to give the statement extra emphasis. ‘We are stragglers.’
Wat didn’t look any less confused. ‘Stragglers?’
‘That’s right. Stragglers and proud of it.’
Hermitage was as lost as Wat. He’d never heard of anyone actually calling themselves a straggler. Surely it was a failing of people who couldn’t keep up. This woman made it sound like it was a profession.
‘You, erm, straggle?’ Wat tried, looking to Hermitage as if this some new sea of specialism, and he was drowning.
Hermitage wandered over to join the conversation.
‘Of course,’ the woman clearly thought that so much was obvious.
Hermitage didn’t know what to ask in this situation. He had not a clue what was going on. But that was pretty normal so he just said the first thing that came into his head. He’d worry about consequences later.
‘What do you straggle, exactly?’
‘Anything of interest,’ the woman confirmed.
‘Aha,’ said Hermitage. The first thing in his head having proved to be no use at all.
Helpfully, the woman continued. ‘Militia, wagons, merchants. We’ve straggled them all. ‘Course merchants are the best for straggling but militia aren’t bad. Plenty of supplies.’
‘So,’ Hermitage thought the information through, ‘you straggle along behind people and live on what’s cast aside or left over?’
Again the woman looked at Hermitage as if he was some sort of idiot. ‘Don’t know of any other sort of straggling.’
‘Is it a good living?’ Wat asked, seemingly bemused by the whole thing.
‘Oh, this is a good spot, this is. Roads from east and west and from the south. Just the sort of place you need for really effective straggling. Course, it’s been a bit quiet recently.’
‘But if you straggle,’ Hermitage couldn’t help himself, ‘surely you don’t stay in one spot? You follow, sorry straggle along behind a group and go wherever they go?’
‘Look,’ the woman gave Hermitage a harsh stare. ‘If you are going to carry on being insulting we shan’t bother straggling you at all.’
‘Suits me,’ Wat mumbled.
‘If we was to follow you, we’d be followers see? But we aren’t. We’re stragglers. So we straggle along a bit and then come home.’
‘Well, we’re going to Wales, and we aren’t merchants or militia so if I was you I’d stay at home and straggle round your own hovel if I was you.’ Wat folded his arms and glared at the stragglers, many of whom were looking the other way.
‘Oh, it’s been a bit quiet for a while now,’ the woman explained, ‘don’t know what’s going on. We could do with a bit of a straggle up Cirencester way, might pick up someone useful.’
Wat did a quick appraisal of the group loitering on the road. None of them were any better dressed than the first woman and it was hard to tell which were male and which female. ‘There are seven of you for goodness sake! There are only fifteen of us. What is it where there are half as many stragglers as the people they’re straggling?’
Hermitage thought this was a fascinating question.
Wat clearly didn’t.
‘Free country,’ the woman responded. ‘We can go to Cirencester if we want. There’s safety in numbers anyway.’ She nodded to her group who took this as the signal to get ready for a good straggle.
Wat counted off the answers on his fingers. ‘It is not a free country. The Normans have taken over, in case you hadn’t noticed. Which probably accounts for the dearth of passers-by to be straggled at. And if you come with us I can assure there won’t be safety in numbers. If robbers start picking you off, don’t expect us to help.’
The woman snorted and gestured at Wat’s gathered party. ‘You’ve got the robbers with you.’ She exchanged a wave with the leader of the robbers. ‘Be much safer having them where you can see ‘em.’
‘Come on then,’ said Wat with an enthusiasm that sounded completely out of place, and which made Hermitage look at him warily. ‘Let’s all go to Wales. Let’s all go and find the druids together. Twenty two of us. That’s a nice number. Twenty two people where there should have been three.’ He gave a slightly hysterical laugh and walked away from the group.
Hermitage, left alone with the stragglers didn’t know whether he was supposed to continue the discussion or follow Wat. The head straggler looked at him as if he needed to move away before she could start straggling. He did so, more confused than he had felt for quite some time.
Back at the front he joined Wat and Cwen.
‘Twenty two?’ Cwen was incredulous. ‘Twenty two people walking along the road to Wales? I thought this was supposed to be a secret mission.’
‘Well you try getting rid of them then,’ Wat growled. ‘We’ve tried telling them they’re not wanted. We’ve tried telling them not to come. It’s completely ridiculous. If I made a tapestry of this as a great quest, nobody would believe a thread of it.’
Cwen exchanged a hopeless look with Hermitage. His was much more hopeless.
‘And it’s not as if any of them are any use,’ Wat went on as they walked on down the road. ‘We’ve got John who can handle a sword and that’s it. If a real enemy descended on us from the hills this lot would run a mile. More might talk them to death but the rest couldn’t form a defensive circle if it was drawn on the ground for them.’
‘Perhaps once they see we’re really going into Wales they’ll turn around,’ Cwen suggested.
‘Possible,’ Wat grunted. ‘After all, no one in their right mind would go there out of choice.’
This did nothing for Hermitage’s confidence.
‘Still,’ Wat mused, ‘if they do come with us into Wales it might solve the problem.’
‘How?’ Cwen asked.
‘Twenty two people walking into a Welsh village uninvited? We’ll probably all get slaughtered.’
Caput XV
Making Your Sacrifice Feel At Home.
‘I still don’t think twenty two people, one of
them a monk, are just going to politely wait around while we put them in holes and drop stones on them.’ Wulf was continuing his argument with the Arch-Druid back at the temple. There was no point taking this up with Lypolix. Interpreting the various noises and movements was tiring and probably inaccurate.
‘Will of the Gods,’ the Arch-Druid confirmed to Wulf.
‘Will of the Gods or not, I think they could put up a fight.’
The Arch-Druid looked puzzled, ‘Why?’
‘Why?’ Wulf couldn’t understand how this wasn’t perfectly clear. ‘Wouldn’t you struggle a bit if someone was trying to sacrifice you?’
The Arch-Druid gave it serious thought. ‘They’re coming to be sacrifices, Lypolix has said so. Why would they cause trouble if that’s the reason they’re coming in the first place?’
‘They might be coming, but I don’t think he’s said anything about them knowing why. Be a bit of a problem anywhere, finding twenty two willing sacrifices.’
The Arch-Druid frowned.
‘Heathens,’ Wulf added for completeness. ‘Twenty two heathens, lining up by their stones?’
‘Hm,’ the Arch-Druid hummed, ‘I suppose the heathen doesn’t know he’s going to the spirit world to be with the Gods.’
‘Exactly.’ Wulf was glad the man was seeing the problem. ‘Heathens probably kick up an almighty stink if you try to sacrifice them. And with so many of them, we could end up in the holes ourselves.’
The Arch-Druid was thoughtful, ‘What do you suggest?’
‘I really don’t know,’ and Wulf really didn’t. ‘Can’t we get Lypolix to organise them one at a time? You know, form a bit of a queue? Twenty two at once is a bit of a handful.’
‘He’s a seer,’ the Arch-Druid pointed out with one his tutting noises, ‘he sees things. He doesn’t organise them.’
Wulf thought hard. ‘I suppose if they did line up, the ones at the back of the queue would see what was going on at the front and decide not to stay. Or worse.’
The two men frowned and thought and tried to come up with ideas to control twenty two wouldn’t-be sacrifices.
‘The Gods will help,’ the Arch-Druid offered, although he didn’t sound very sure.
‘From what Lypolix said, it doesn’t sound like the Gods are going to play a terribly active role.’
They returned to thinking.
‘Could we dig a pit?’ Wulf suggested. ‘You know, a great big hole large enough for all of them. Then we can pick them out one at a time when we’re ready.’
‘With that many people I don’t think they’d fall into a pit in one go. The ones at the back would see the first ones go in and they’d hold back. Then they’d probably even help the first lot out again.’ The Arch-Druid snorted at such uncooperative behaviour.
Wulf took to pacing up and down. ‘If they didn’t know they were sacrifices they wouldn’t run away or start a fight,’ he reasoned.
‘Bit hard to miss when you’re in a hole with a rock on its way down.’
‘Ah, but what if they didn’t know until then?’
‘They’d be pretty stupid.’
‘No, no, think about it.’ Wulf’s idea was taking shape and he suddenly felt confident enough to give the Arch-Druid instructions. ‘We welcome them all as guests, give them a feast even, make them comfortable.’
The Arch-Druid scowled at this generosity.
‘Then, when they’re all settled and off their guard, we grab the first one for the first stone and no one’s any the wiser.’ He held his arms out to demonstrate the conclusion of the plan.
‘Until they ask where the missing one has gone.’
‘Well, we don’t know do we? People wander off all the time. Maybe he’s gone home again?’
‘And when half a dozen have disappeared and there’s six new stones in the circle?’
‘They’re heathens,’ Wulf dismissed the problem, ‘and probably English as well. What do they know?’
The Arch-Druid gave a grudging acknowledgement that if anyone could be relied upon not to notice their companions being sacrificed, it would probably be an Englishman. What with their reputation and all.
‘I’m not sure,’ the Arch-Druid shook his head slowly.
‘If Lypolix is right, twenty two people will be turning up here any moment. We either say “hello, have you come for the sacrifice? What size hole do you take?” or we settle them in nicely and bide our time. I don’t see how we can do the first. This village isn’t capable of dealing with a large group of anything. Hywel will run a mile and Caradoc would probably use his head as a battering ram.’
The Arch-Druid seemed to be coming round. ‘I suppose we don’t have the holes and the stones for the circle ready yet anyway. And the master stone is going to take some moving.’
‘In fact,’ Wulf had another good idea, ‘if we’re very generous and feed them well, they might even help us dig the holes. Tell them it’s a sacred duty and so on.’
‘Dig their own holes?’ the Arch-Druid gave a chuckle. Another one.
As they stood, satisfied that at least they had a plan, the sounds of shouting could be heard from over the mist-topped trees. These were followed by a loud splintering noise and an ominous silence.
‘I don’t think moving the master stone is going very well,’ Wulf observed.
‘Let’s hope we haven’t already had our first sacrifice,’ the Arch-Druid raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m not scraping Caradoc off the bottom of the master stone.’
…
In fact, moving the master stone had started quite satisfactorily. The technique of cutting out underneath and letting the rock come to rest on the rollers had been a surprising success. Surprising to everyone involved. Caradoc had even emerged unscathed from his excavation.
The first problem had been that the weight of the great master stone had immediately sunk the rollers up to their tops in the mud and soil. They weren’t so much rollers as props.
The first suggestion had been to repeat the process used for the stone; lever up the rollers and put more rollers underneath.
It was Wem the Strange who pointed out that the new timbers placed under the rollers would probably sink into the ground as well, if the stone didn’t just fall off.
Wem the Strange was rightly named as he had a constant supply of strange ideas which meant that he was always held at a distance in the village. It was Wem who suggested putting the very thin, flat grey slates which littered the hillsides onto the roofs of the huts to keep the rain out. Everyone knew earth was best for hut roofs. Wem was an idiot.
He was roundly castigated as a know-it-all, but the idea of an ever increasing stack of rollers was abandoned.
Wem hesitated to suggest that they use some flat rocks to rest the rollers on, instead of more timbers, but he did anyway. Flat rocks being less likely to sink. Everyone scowled at him and grumbled incoherent insults but went off to get some rocks anyway.
With the rocks prepared, the task of levering up one end of a front roller was a lot easier than lifting the whole stone. No one could figure that out, not even Wem.
Wem then suggested that if they did get the rocks under the rollers and the stone moved, the rollers would sink again once they rolled off their rocks.
Oh, yes, and what did he think they should do? The crowd was getting restless.
He thought they should build a small road of flat rocks under the rollers. This would stop the timber sinking into the ground and help the master stone move.
The assembly looked at the rocks and the timber and the soft earth. Without saying anything, they went to gather more rocks.
With a solid path of flat rocks laying out the route down the hill, the villagers moved round to lever the remaining rollers out of the earth and slip their new surface underneath.
The other side of the front roller slipped easily into position and so they moved to the back. As they levered the first back roller up, the stone shifted slightly, which gave them great encouragement.
&nb
sp; When they levered up the final roller and dropped it on its road, the stone left.
The party watched with huge satisfaction as the great stone, the huge monolith which no one had thought even movable, set off down the hill.
The rollers were rolling, the stone was moving, it was all absolutely marvellous.
Trust Wem to point out that the stone appeared to be moving faster than the rollers. The great rock was sliding across the top of the timbers in such a manner that the tree trunks would soon be left behind.
‘We should have had more tree trunks,’ Wem pointed out.
Even Caradoc wasn’t stupid enough to run down to the front of the stone to try and make it stop.
Screwed up faces watched the inexorable progress of the stone and saw that they were going to have to start the whole process all over again when the stone came off the end of its rollers and buried itself in the ground once more.
In fact, not only had they not got enough tree trunks for rollers, they hadn’t realised that the tall pine tree which grew in the middle of their path was going to be a problem.
Before it came to the end of its rollers, the great master stone slammed into the innocent tree which gave way with an equally great splintering. It had stopped the stone, literally in its tracks.
There was much shouting and waving of arms as people tried to figure out whether what had just happened was good, or bad. They looked to Wem.
‘At least we’ve got another tree trunk now,’ the man observed. ‘And we know what not to do next time.’ He smiled.
It must be good, then.
‘I think we’d better ask Wulf where he wants this stone before we build the track. If this road and rollers thing works, it could get there pretty quickly. And the Gods help anyone who gets in its way.’
‘Hm,’ Caradoc mused as he surveyed the wreckage of quite a sizeable tree. ‘If it can do that to a tree trunk, think what a mess it’s going to make of a monk.’
They all had a good laugh at the prospect as they went to get more tree trunks.
Caput XVI
Hermitage, Wat and Some Druids Page 12
