‘I said I think it’s a Kingdom,’ Hermitage started.
‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ the lead straggler was standing now. ‘I asked where Leon was.’ She sounded rather snappy and irritated with Hermitage for some reason.
‘And I was giving you the best information I have,’ Hermitage defended himself.
‘You’re an idiot,’ the straggler announced, which was entirely uncalled for.
Hermitage looked to Wat and Cwen who seemed equally confused by the straggler’s outburst.
‘He’s missing,’ the straggler said in a very pointed manner.
‘He?’ Hermitage was lost. Why would anyone call a Kingdom over the seas a he, and how could it be missing anyway? Ah, now he got it. ‘One of your number is called Leon and he is missing.’
‘Well obviously,’ said the straggler, stepping through the seated crowd and coming over to Hermitage in a very purposeful manner which did nothing for his digestion.
‘We don’t know any of your names,’ Hermitage pointed out. He thought this was a very reasonable argument, but it didn’t seem to placate the straggler. ‘I don’t even know yours,’ he added, ‘I can’t just call you straggler.’
The woman scowled at him. ‘I’m Ellen,’ she said, as if it was an accusation.
‘Ellen,’ Hermitage repeated. ‘And you say one of your number is missing?’ He asked the question lightly, but worry soon followed.
‘That’s right,’ she snapped, as if Hermitage was obviously hiding the missing straggler somewhere. ‘He was here at the start of the feast and now he’s not.’
‘Perhaps he’s just gone to relieve himself?’ Hermitage suggested cautiously. Partly cautious because this Ellen seemed a terribly aggressive woman and partly cautious because he didn’t like to talk about such things.
‘He did that ages ago.’ Ellen explained, ‘then he came back and now he’s gone.’ She glared at Hermitage, Wat and Cwen in turn.
‘Well we don’t know where he is,’ said Cwen with a stare to match Ellen. ‘If you can’t look after your own stragglers it’s hardly our fault.’
‘Where is he?’ Ellen demanded, apparently now convinced that they had this Leon.
‘We don’t know,’ said Cwen slowly and clearly and aggressively. ‘Perhaps he straggled off again?’
‘Don’t you get smart with me girl,’ said Ellen.
‘Even the sheep’s smart compared to you,’ said Cwen as she popped a piece in her mouth.
Ellen took a decisive step forward but Wat leapt to his feet and held his arms wide to stop a fight.
‘We really don’t know where Leon is,’ he explained calmly.
Hermitage got up as well. He was pretty sure he didn’t want to get caught between Cwen and Ellen but he felt he should support Wat.
Ellen scowled at them both and tried to look over Wat’s shoulder to give Cwen a withering glance.
‘Perhaps he’s gone with More,’ Cwen offered, showing no interest in Ellen’s impending attack.
‘More what?’ Ellen snapped.
‘Our, erm, friend,’ Hermitage couldn’t think of a better word. ‘Our friend More is missing as well. Don’t know where he’s gone.’ As he said this he felt his familiar sinking feeling plumb new depths. He turned to Wat and Cwen. ‘We’ve only been here a few hours and two people are missing.’
‘They’ve just wandered off,’ Cwen dismissed his worry. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere, they’re hardly likely to just vanish.’
‘Unless they’ve been taken,’ Ellen’s words were less suggestion than accusation.
‘Who’d take More?’ Cwen scoffed. ‘And once they’d taken him what would they do with him?’ What would anyone do with him?’
‘I don’t know do I?’ Ellen snapped, ‘if you can’t look after one old man, it’s hardly my fault.’
The glares between the two women could have lit the whole valley.
‘We’ve only just got here,’ Wat pointed out, ‘who’s going to start taking people? And in this place? There’s hardly enough of them to bother a flock of sheep, let alone start stealing strangers.’
Hermitage’s sinking feeling was trying leave his body by the lowermost exit. ‘We were expected,’ he croaked out.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘We were expected. The villagers were expecting us. The druids were expecting us. All of us. Especially a monk.’
‘So?’
‘So perhaps they were expecting us because they were going to steal us away?’
‘Twenty two of us?’ Wat clearly thought the idea was ridiculous. ‘And one of the twenty two is a druid anyway. They’re hardly likely to start stealing other druids. And what could they possibly do with twenty two people? Cwen’s right, we outnumber them.’
‘Not if they keep stealing us.’
‘It’s ridiculous,’ Wat waved the whole idea away. ‘It’s dark. We’re in a strange place. More and Leon probably just wandered off and got lost. Nothing more to it.’
Hermitage mumbled a bit.
‘Anyway,’ Wat said brightly, ‘if people really are being stolen away we’ve got the perfect answer.’
‘What’s that?’ Hermitage asked, feeling encouraged by Wat.
‘A King’s Investigator,’ said Wat, ‘he can sort out what’s going on.’
Oh yes, thought Hermitage. Then he remembered it was him.
Caput XXI
Surprise, Surprise.
If eyes could slaver they would be doing so right now. The odours of the feast had drifted up the valley until they reached the bottom of the cliff. Here, the heat of the cooking and the wood smoke forced them to climb until they located the cave. They wandered into the depths and found a nose which hadn’t smelt anything similar for what felt like years.
The comforting scent of burning pine, and the appalling insult of roasting meat produced a groan from the figure in the cave, who came to the entrance to look down and see what was going on.
From this high vantage point the village and the valley was laid out like a tapestry. The glow from the fire was clear and one or two lamps bobbed about the place. The figure could tell that people were eating, he could almost taste the meal and feel the chewing and swallowing. How dare they?
He had planned to survive in his cave by finding some berries and snaring the odd rabbit. The berries around these parts did the most appalling things to his stomach and the rabbits were very odd indeed. More like deformed mice. He had come rely on stealing left-overs and cast-offs from the village. And this village was positively parsimonious in its leaving-over and casting-off.
This feast, whatever the reason for it, would give him plenty of material to work with. He was already imaging a magnificent broth of mutton bone. The only snag was that this feast seemed to involve an awful lot more people than was normal.
On the worst of his days and nights he had considered walking down to the village to introduce himself. The villagers were few in number, and while they might react badly to a stranger in their midst, it had to be better than starving to death in a cave.
But then there were druids. The place seemed to be swarming with them, and he had not had good experiences with druids. He found it hard to understand why such a small place, with so few people, needed quite so many of them. Just the sight of a white robe was enough to send him scurrying to the recesses of his dismal dwelling.
The old druid, the serious one with the beard and the staff was something from a nightmare. There was no way he was going anywhere near a village with a man like that in it. Perhaps they’d all go away at some point.
But they hadn’t. And they’d had horrible pagan ceremonies at that awful stone circle of theirs. He hadn’t seen any virgin sacrifices yet, but imagined it was only a matter of time. Sacrificing strangers was probably a regular occurrence.
Still, at least they’d all got drunk and he’d managed to gather some cast-off mead, which had warmed him a bit.
And now the place looked like it was preparing
for war. Where had all these people come from? He knew he was in the middle of nowhere. It had taken him so long to get here that he couldn’t be anywhere else. How had the village suddenly doubled in size?
Perhaps it really was war? Or maybe the neighbours had just come over for a visit? Whatever the reason it disturbed him, and he did not handle disturbance well.
As if the Gods of this place wanted to ram the point home, there was another disturbance a lot closer down the hill somewhere. The scree was moving as feet trod its treacherous surface. He could tell the difference between human and animal climbing his hill, and this was human. A human treading lightly by the sound of it. Which probably meant someone sneaking up here who shouldn’t. Or someone with a nefarious purpose.
Nefarious purposes up welsh hills at night could only mean trouble. He retreated further into the cave.
The clattering of falling rock did not diminish as the person climbing clearly thought there was something up here worth the effort. Perhaps the cave dweller had been spotted. Maybe the wretched villagers had left him up here on purpose, until they were ready. Ready for what, he didn’t know, but it would be horrible.
At least it was only one pair of feet. He might be able to defeat his attacker and escape. Escape to where, he had not a clue. He couldn’t conceive of anywhere worse than this place.
The cowering in the cave and the clattering up the hill drew closer and closer together until the dark mouth of his home fell into even deeper shadow as a figure appeared.
He waited for the inevitable and steeled himself as best he could.
‘Excuse me,’ a voice called from the cave-mouth, ‘is this the way to the village?’
He stood up from behind his rock and wandered to the front of the cave in a daze. He looked at the man who had asked the question with a slack jaw. ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘it’s you.’
Caput XXII
Attrition of the Fellowship.
‘People do not go missing from the middle of nowhere,’ Wat reasoned, ‘where is there to go when you’re already there?’
Hermitage tutted his frustration at such poor thinking.
The morning had arrived and there was still no sign of More or Leon, the missing straggler.
Cwen had made some very amusing comments about stragglers who went missing. Well, she thought they were amusing but Hermitage suspected they were intended to antagonise Ellen. Which they did very well indeed. But then the straggler did seem the sort of person who kept her antagonism close at hand.
‘All we have to do is look,’ Wat went on, ‘and we don’t even need to do that very hard.’
Ellen gave him a hard stare.
Hermitage thought that for all her talk about the wonders of straggling, she didn’t seem to enjoy it very much.
‘We just get everyone who’s here to gather in one spot and then have a look around.’ Wat explained the process he was thinking about. ‘We should be able to spot More and Leon if they’re up the valley or over by the woods. After all, it’s not a very big place.’
Hermitage shook his head. ‘What if they’re in the woods?’ He gestured to show where the woods were. ‘Or they’ve gone back up the track out of the village?’ He indicated where that was for those who might have forgotten.
‘Why would they do that when the feast was only just starting?’ Ellen demanded, ‘hardly likely to wander off when there’s a free feed in the offing.’
‘They could have already eaten. Or they grabbed some food and went off with it. Probably still asleep somewhere.’ Wat clearly wasn’t worrying about them. ‘What’s the fuss anyway? We can manage perfectly well without More.’
Ellen stopped glaring at them all and looked down at the ground. ‘Leon can get a bit carried away sometimes.’
‘What do you mean, carried away?’ Hermitage couldn’t make any sense of this.
‘If someone wanted his food, or started an argument, he might have taken it the wrong way.’
‘Ha,’ Cwen snorted, ‘you mean if he thinks anyone’s looking at him funny, he starts a fight.’
‘Not at all,’ Ellen answered back smartly. ‘People don’t understand him, that’s all. You just got to be soft and gentle with him.’
‘Don’t look at him. Don’t touch his stuff. Don’t talk behind his back. I know the sort,’ Cwen wasn’t giving up. ‘He thinks everyone hates him so he starts trouble all the time. And that’s why everyone hates him.’
‘I’ll start some trouble with you in a minute,’ Ellen offered.
‘Chances are he had a go at one of the locals. Got thumped on the head for his trouble and is now lying in a ditch somewhere.’
‘Perhaps More annoyed him,’ Wat suggested lightly, ‘he annoys everyone else. Could be they’re both in the same ditch.’
‘Then we look in the ditches,’ Hermitage offered, wishing the simmering fight between Cwen and Ellen would go away.
‘What’s this about ditches?’ Hywel walked up the group, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and the look of disgust at the state of his village from his face.
‘Oh, good, it’s you,’ said Wat, ‘what’s for breakfast?’
‘Nothing,’ Hywel replied, unhappily, ‘you’ve eaten all the food we were going to have this week.’
Hermitage felt very bad about that.
‘And what’s wrong with our ditches?’
‘They might some of our people in them,’ Hermitage explained.
‘Not surprised, the way some of them was behaving last night.’ Hywel tutted a tut Hermitage would be proud of.
‘There are two missing,’ Hermitage went on, ‘More and Leon. Don’t suppose you’ve seen them.’
‘Wouldn’t know if I had,’ said Hywel. ‘I expect they’ll turn up. There’s nowhere else to go.’
‘See,’ said Wat, seeing his explanation vindicated.
‘We’ll just go and look in the woods then,’ Ellen announced, ‘they’re obviously not here.’
‘You most certainly will not.’ Hywel looked at her in absolute horror. She might as well have said she was going to dig up the dead and see if the missing had climbed in the graves by mistake.
‘Why not?’ Hermitage didn’t think it was such an odd suggestion.
‘Those are the sacred woods,’ Hywel almost shouted as if even idiots from out of the valley should know that.
‘Sacred woods?’ Hermitage tried to make it sound as if the very idea was nonsense.
‘Yes, sacred woods,’ Hywel said, making it clear the idea was not nonsense at all. ‘And there is no way any strangers are going into our woods.’
‘You go and look then,’ Ellen suggested, quite reasonably.
‘I can’t do that,’ Hywel was getting quite agitated now. ‘Sacred woods,’ he repeated. ‘Meaning that the woods are sacred and we don’t just go into them for a look round.’
‘Where do you get your wood then?’ Wat asked, nodding his head towards the still smoking timbers of the village fire. ‘They don’t look very sacred.’
‘The druids tell us which trees we can take. And of course some just fall down.’
‘The non-sacred ones,’ Wat nodded sombre understanding.
‘And not all the woods are sacred,’ Hywel tutted again at these strangers who didn’t know anything. ‘But the woods by here are. Very sacred.’
‘Let’s ask the druids then.’ Ellen was not giving up.
Hywel almost sat down in shock.
‘That young Wulf seemed quite pleased to see us, I’m sure he’d help.’
‘You are not going into the woods, and you are not asking the druids anything.’ Hywel was insistent. ‘You can look around here for your friends and if you can’t find them, that’s that. I’m not wasting any more time with you.’ He turned to leave.
‘Oy, you!’ Banley the robber called before Hywel could get away.
‘What now?’ Hywel cried out, but quietly when he saw the rough looking man who was striding toward him.
‘Where’s Stropit?’
‘Stropit. Where is he?’
‘What’s a Stropit?’ Hywel asked in bemusement.
‘Not a what. A who. Stropit. My man Stropit. What’ve you done with him?’
‘I haven’t done anything with your Stropit,’ Hywel was clearly very frustrated. ‘What is the matter with you people? You come wandering into my village, eat all my food and then complain when your own people get lost.’
‘You mean he’s missing?’ Hermitage asked Banley. This really was getting odd.
‘Well, he’s not here and he never strays far, does Stropit.
Hermitage had a burning question in his head, and burning questions in Hermitage’s head tended to set fire to everything close by. He restrained himself admirably, realising that now was not the time for a discussion on why the man was called Stropit.
‘There you are,’ Ellen was triumphant as she confronted Hywel, ‘that’s More, Leon and Stropit all gone now. And they only went and got gone when we come here.’
Hermitage paused while he got his head round this sentence. ‘It could be they did go into the woods,’ he offered, gently, ‘not knowing they were sacred.’
‘Then their fate is their own,’ Hywel replied. ‘I can’t be held responsible if people go walking where they shouldn’t.’
‘This is ridiculous,’ Cwen stepped forward in that determined manner she had, ‘we go and look in the woods, sacred or not.’ She looked at the men gathered around her as if they weren’t capable of finding a tree in a wood. She looked at Ellen as if she were a tree. A rotten one, not even good for a fire.
Hywel looked at her as if the doom of Gods would fall on her head. ‘The doom of the Gods will fall on your head,’ he explained.
‘I’ll cope,’ Cwen had dismissed bigger irritations than a pantheon of ancient gods.
She stood and purposefully led the way to the edges of the wood, where the village ended and a path wound its way between the trees.
The others seemed to take courage from her decisive action and followed, albeit some of them at a bit of a distance. Ellen didn’t seem worried about the doom of the gods but Banley looked decidedly shaky.
Hermitage, Wat and Some Druids Page 17
