Hywel held back, clearly happy to leave these strangers to their awful fate.
‘There you are,’ Cwen said in some triumph when they arrived, ‘there’s even a path. Can’t be very sacred if there’s a path.
She stepped onto the path and past the first pine tree.
‘Yes?’
She was a woman of calm control, not to be put out by the unexpected or by the foolishness of others, but even those at a distance could tell that every morsel of her body had jumped half an inch when the druid appeared.
The white robe seemed to be exhaled from the trunk of one of the trees and stood on the path before her.
If it had been a simple man who had jumped out from behind a tree she would have given him a simple punch in the face and moved on. This though was a druid. A man in a white robe who seemed to have been hiding inside a solid tree. She paused.
‘Yes?’ the druid repeated.
And worse than it being a simple druid emerging from a tree, this was the little wizened one, Lypolix. This one who would look quite unpleasant in a gathering of the unpleasant and wizened.
Cwen recovered herself with a couple of quick breaths. ‘Where are our friends?’ she demanded of the wizened one. Attack always being the best option.
‘Aha,’ Lypolix cackled.
Cwen gestured into the woods behind the druid, ‘We want to go and look for our missing people. We think they may have wandered into the woods.’
Lypolix cackled again, pretty much in exactly the way he had only just cackled, which added very little by way of explanation of anything.
‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ Cwen made to brush the little inconvenience aside when a second shape appeared. At least this one walked down the path like a normal person. It also had two other druids at its shoulders.
‘What is it?’ The Arch-Druid asked as he joined Lypolix. Wulf and the still unnamed druid from their journey stood respectfully behind.
‘I was just explaining to your tree-sprite here,’ Cwen beckoned at Lypolix who seemed to like the title, ‘that we are looking for some missing people who may have gone into the woods.’
‘Not into our woods,’ the Arch-Druid explained with slow authority, ‘they are..’
‘Sacred, yes, we were told. Doesn’t mean they couldn’t wander in here. Them being woods and all.’ Cwen’s impatience was in full flight. ‘And the people involved probably not being able to spot the sacredness in the dark and all.’
The Arch-Druid smiled magnanimously. ‘We would know.’ He nodded beard and head authoritatively.
‘And now we’d like to know,’ Cwen was not giving up.
‘It is quite simple.’ The Arch-Druid’s languorous speech forced Cwen to slow down. ‘The woods are sacred and you may not enter. Not until invited.’
‘Well, invite us then.’
‘Now is not the time.’
‘And when, exactly, will the time be?’
‘Soon.’
‘That’s not very exact.’
The Arch-Druid held out his hand to demonstrate that this was the best he could do.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Cwen snapped out of the druid’s gaze, ‘we’ll just go round.’ She waved her arms about to instruct those accompanying her to go round the large druid.
No one moved.
She turned to see John had separated himself from the group, and was offering support to the Arch-Druid’s instruction by pointing his best sword at everyone.
‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.
‘You can’t disobey the druid,’ John explained as if the very idea was unthinkable.
‘I was doing quite well.’
‘If he says we may not enter, then we may not enter.’
‘There’s an awful lot more of us than there are of them,’ Cwen reasoned with a prominent threat in her voice. She looked to Hermitage and Wat for support.
Wat shrugged. ‘The man with the big sword says he’d really rather we didn’t go into the woods.’
Cwen tutted at his lack of gumption.
Hermitage put on one of his hangdog looks. ‘If the people really believe the woods are sacred, perhaps we should wait until we’re invited? I mean, obviously they’re wrong,’ he hastily added, ‘and will be held before the Lord to account for their evil ways.’
‘But there’s a man with a sword,’ Cwen commented with contempt for everyone.
Even Ellen and Banley were keeping their distance from John and seemed a lot less interested in finding their missing companions now.
Cwen sighed her sigh of defeat. It was more a sigh of “I’ll get you later”, but it was the only one she had. ‘What are they hiding?’ she demanded with a backwards glance at the gathering of druids.
‘I’m sure they just want to protect that which they hold most dear,’ Hermitage argued, although he didn’t really believe a word of it. After all, how on earth could a wood be sacred? Unless it was a thorn bush of course. Or a piece of the true cross. But that was different. These were real, big trees. The whole thing was ridiculous.
‘We’re hardly likely to burn down a whole forest, just looking for some missing people,’ Cwen persisted. ‘And what if they’ve been stolen away by these druids and hidden in the sacred woods. That would be a good reason for not letting us go and look, wouldn’t it?’
Hermitage admitted that yes that would be a very good reason indeed. But why on earth would druids steal a robber, a straggler and More of all people?
The Arch-Druid laughed a light yet booming chuckle at the suggestion. ‘We are not saying that you may not enter the woods, just that now is not the time. When the time comes, you may enter. In fact you will be welcomed with open arms.’
Cwen scowled her scowl at them.
‘It’s just that we’re not quite ready yet,’ Wulf offered with a smile. For which he got his own scowl from the Arch-Druid. ‘Won’t be long,’ Wulf tailed off into silence.
‘Well I don’t like it,’ Cwen concluded with a final hard look at all of them.
Everyone seemed to accept that that was the end of it for now and began to move away.
‘Just a minute,’ Cwen called out with a very suspicious, extra heavy glare at Lypolix.
The old druid skittered about in reply.
Cwen pointed very deliberately at Lypolix, who pointed back as if it was a pointing game.
‘Is that blood?’ Cwen demanded, looking at a very particular part of Lypolix’s robe.
They all looked at Lypolix now, who seemed quite happy with the attention. Hermitage gazed at the robe.
Being Hermitage, his immediate question was how much of a robe had to be missing before you stopped calling it a robe. There was the underlying foundation of a garment in there somewhere, but it had long since vanished beneath the years of accumulated detritus. Most of it dirty detritus.
Hermitage had never felt the inclination to give the old druid his detailed attention, and now he did, he could see that that had been very wise.
There were Things. Some of them appeared to have been deliberately attached to the druid’s clothing, others looked like they’d been squashed against him in some horrible accident.
The colour of the ensemble was not white. It was not even an approximation to white. Neither was it a simple opposite. It was more like white’s evil enemy.
There were rents and tears and holes, and the whole was coated with a grubbiness which seemed to have its own aura.
Like the Things, Bits of the woodland were scatted about the place, some attached by twine, some perhaps innocently caught up as the horrible train passed by.
But Cwen was right. There was something down the right hand side of the garment. It was only obvious because it had a freshness which was completely out of place.
‘Well?’ Cwen demanded of the Arch-Druid, not expecting to get anything sensible out of Lypolix, ‘is it blood?’
‘Quite probably,’ the lead druid replied in an off-hand manner. ‘I dare say Lypolix has cut himself somewhere.
He is rather careless.’
‘I don’t see any cuts,’ Cwen pressed,
‘Ah, but you wouldn’t,’ the Arch-Druid explained, quite reasonably. A simple gesture to Lypolix’s grimy body demonstrated that you probably couldn’t see if the man was bleeding to death.
‘Cut himself on what?’ Cwen asked.
‘Could be anything. He’s always finding things of interest in the woods. If he wants to keep one he cuts it off. Or stabs it. Always having little accidents.’
‘Doesn’t look like a little accident,’ Cwen pointed at the large stain which overwrote the others on Lypolix’s cloth.
‘Be that as it may,’ the Arch-Druid waved the question away, ‘as Wulf says, we are not ready for you yet, but it won’t be long. We will send word and you can all join us.’
Cwen still didn’t look convinced.
‘In fact we’re actually looking forward to it,’ the Arch-Druid offered in a tone which gave Hermitage a little worry.
Hermitage had far too many worries to notice another one, and with John still warding everyone off the druid, the group gave up and wandered back towards the village.
‘I don’t like it,’ Cwen said to Hermitage and Wat when they were back among the huts, ‘they’re up to something.’
‘Maybe it’s another feast,’ Banley suggested brightly.
‘Yes,’ Cwen replied thoughtfully, ‘with us as the main course.’
Caput XXIII
Secrets of Some Sacred Wood.
‘See,’ said Hywel when they returned looking disconsolate, and no more numerous than they’d been when they set off. ‘I told you. Sacred wood I said. Didn’t I say? I did, I said so, Sacred wood, I said.’ At least he hadn’t started his speech with “now I don’t want to say I told you so, but…”
‘Yes, yes,’ Cwen waved him away. ‘A sacred wood. Very good. And a sacred wood full of blood-stained druids who won’t answer a straight question.’
‘Ah, well,’ said Hywel, as if blood-stained druids were coming out of the woods all the time.
‘I still say we go into the sacred woods and look for ourselves,’ she grumbled, but mostly to herself.
Banley and Ellen were grumbling to themselves at the unsatisfactory conclusion as well. There didn’t seem anything to do about it though, so they wandered off, looking for the missing among the left-overs of the night before.
Hermitage subtly beckoned for Wat and Cwen to join him. ‘I think there’s something going on,’ he whispered when he was sure they wouldn’t be overheard.
‘Really?’ said Cwen, and she sounded very surprised. ‘Three people missing. A wood we aren’t allowed to go in, and a druid drenched in blood? It’s a good job you’re the King’s investigator Hermitage, I’d never have spotted that.’
He looked at Cwen with a frown. ‘I think drenched is going a bit far,’ he noted, ‘stained, perhaps.’
‘Alright stained, perhaps,’ she acknowledged with hissing outrage. ’It is blindingly obvious there is something going on. We have got to find out what it is.’
‘Ah,’ Hermitage realised she had been sarcastic again. He would really have to look out for it more. ‘What can we do? No one is willing to go with us so we can hardly storm the place.’
‘We can sneak in, when they’re not looking. After all, it’s a bit difficult to guard a whole wood.’
Hermitage swallowed, ‘Sneak into the sacred woods. The ones full of blood stained druids.’
‘We don’t know they’re full. We’ve only seen four druids, and only one of those was blood stained.’ Cwen smiled.
Before Hermitage could start to voice a number of concerns he was working on, there was a commotion around the huts towards the head of the valley and a number of the men of the village seemed to be gathering around one in particular.
‘Now what’s going on?’ Wat asked, ‘perhaps they’ve found the missing men.’
‘I do hope they’re alright,’ Hermitage said plaintively. He really did think that being called King’s Investigator was a bit of a curse, not that he believed in curses. Wherever he went, horrible things happened and he ended up having to sort them out.
They made their way towards the gathering, which was not at the village hut they had spent the night in, but one very nearby. Hywel was there again, but as village headman, he probably had a say in everything that went on.
When Hermitage, Wat and Cwen arrived there was quite a heated discussion going on between Hywel and a small crowd of the village men, all of whom had tools in their hands. It looked as though they were on their way to till the fields.
‘And I don’t care what Wulf says,’ Hywel was raising his voice, ‘you are not bringing the bloody thing into the middle of the village.
The men were about to argue back, but when they saw Hermitage’s party arrive they fell silent – apart from a few quiet whispers between themselves.
When it was clear that Hermitage had nothing to contribute, other than to watch, the villagers got back to business.
‘That’s not for us to say,’ one of them, who seemed to be sort of in charge of the working party, answered back. ‘If Wulf says it’s got to come here then it’s got to come here, hasn’t it? Stands to reason. If you want it put somewhere else, you’ll have to talk to Wulf and the Arch-Druid and get them to tell us to put it somewhere else.’
The other workmen nodded that this was undoubtedly the way to resolve whatever problem it was they were working on.
‘Well, you just see if I don’t,’ Hywel challenged them. ‘I’m not having this, I shall go and see him straight away.’
‘Erm,’ Cwen put in, ‘you can’t see Wulf now.’
‘What?’ Hywel barked at her, ‘I can see him whenever I want.’
‘I don’t think so. He’s in the sacred woods you see? And we’re not allowed in.’ She put her hands on her hips and gave Hywel one of her best stares.
Whether it was that, or the situation with the workmen wasn’t clear, but Hywel stomped off across the village anyway. ‘I’m the village headman,’ he called back, ‘I can wait by the woods if I want to.’
‘Right then lads,’ the leader of the workmen instructed. ‘Caradoc, you, Daffydd and the others start getting the rest of the road stones laid out, I’ll mark out the hole.’
Hermitage watched in fascination as the men went about their tasks. Several of them headed back off up the slope of the valley towards the cliff face at the end, while their leader approached a single hut. He didn’t go in this, but rather walked around it a couple of times, crouching and squinting now and again as if judging its size.
There was only so much of this Hermitage could stand before he had to know what was going on.
‘This looks interesting,’ he said to the workman while Wat and Cwen looked on, clearly not finding it interesting at all.
‘Oh, yes,’ the workman nodded, without giving anything away.
‘Some work going on then,’ Hermitage observed.
‘That’s right,’ the man looked up from his work and seemed to register that Hermitage was there. ‘Aha,’ he said, as if Hermitage was holding just the tool he needed, ‘it’s the monk.’
‘Er, yes,’ said Hermitage, not thinking that it required much in the way of confirmation.
‘Just the chap I need,’ the workman stood from his task, whatever it was and came over to the group.
Hermitage beamed. Perhaps he was going to be able to assist this fellow with some fine points of planning or calculation. He had heard that building involved calculation and it was a topic he had promised himself he would study, if he ever got five minutes to himself.
‘Come over here would you.’ The man beckoned him to join him by the hut.
Hermitage did so, glancing regularly at Wat and Cwen to assure them he was alright. They didn’t seem to need much assurance as they had started talking in low whispers.
‘Now,’ the builder began.
‘Brother Hermitage,’ Hermitage introduced himself.
&nb
sp; ‘What is?’
‘I am.’
‘Oh, right. I see. Brother Hermitage.’ The man tried the sound out. ‘Funny name for a monk,’ he commented.
‘A lot of people say that,’ Hermitage acknowledged with a shrug.
‘Well, I’m Wem,’ said Wem.
‘Wem the builder eh?’ Hermitage nodded. ‘I knew a builder once. Chap called Chirk, don’t suppose you know him[ You can find out all about Chirk the builder if you buy The Heretics of De’Ath – and then read it.]?’
‘Er, no,’ said Wem, starting to look very confused.
‘No, I suppose not,’ Hermitage agreed, ‘he wasn’t a very good builder anyway.’
‘Ah. Right.’ Wem seemed to be having trouble keeping on topic.
‘And of course he’s miles away. Over Lincoln way. I don’t suppose…’
‘No.’ Wem was emphatic, ‘I have never been to Lincoln. Now. If you could do me a favour it would be a big help.’
‘Of course, yes,’ Hermitage smiled. He was always keen to help other people and do favours. Wat said that if he didn’t sort that out he’d end up in real trouble one day.
‘Could you just come and lie down in the hut,’ Wem asked.
Hermitage looked at Wem. Wem beckoned Hermitage towards the hut. Wat and Cwen stopped their whispering and looked on in interest.
‘Lie, erm, lie down in the hut?’ Hermitage knew that Chirk the builder had been a pretty strange sort of chap, but this really was too much.
The request took him back to the time Brother Amard had asked him to lie down in his cot, just to see how soft and comfortable it was. He had stood up again pretty sharpish when he discovered what Brother Amard’s idea of comfortable was.
‘It’s for the stone,’ Wem explained quickly.
‘I need to lie down in the hut for the stone,’ Hermitage was not convinced. ‘How much building have you actually done?’ he asked.
‘Oh, none,’ Wem explained cheerfully, ‘I’m not really a builder at all.’
‘Not really a builder at all,’ Hermitage repeated as he stepped slowly backwards.
Hermitage, Wat and Some Druids Page 18
