Hermitage, Wat and Some Druids

by Howard of Warwick

  ‘That’s right. Wulf and the druids want their stone moving and I’m the only one who seems to have the first idea how to go about it.’

  ‘I’m not sure lying down in the hut will help,’ Hermitage suggested.

  ‘Oh, it will,’ Wem nodded encouragement, ‘it’s for the size you see.’

  ‘The size?’

  ‘That’s right. If I can measure you against the floor of the hut we can get the hole the right size.’

  Relief flooded through Hermitage although Wat and Cwen still looked pretty suspicious.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he said. ‘You think I’m about the right size for the hole.’

  ‘Well, obviously,’ said Wem as if Hermitage should know that. ‘We lie you down in the hut, dig the hole, run the stone down the hill and there you are, see?’

  ‘The stone goes in the hole,’ Hermitage could see what was planned, he just didn’t know why.

  ‘Course it does,’ said Wem. ‘That’s my plan anyway.’ He rubbed his hands and spoke to Hermitage full of enthusiasm. ‘You see, I reckon if we have the hole dug first, and the stone is on the rollers, we can drive it straight in. Caradoc reckoned we should bring the stone and then dig the hole. But that way we’d have to lift the stone from stationary. My way, we just let it roll on right into the hole. Good isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ said Hermitage. He couldn’t for the life of him see why anyone wanted a stone in a hole, but if you did, this might be the way to go about it. ‘And the idea is that the stone ends up sticking out of the hole?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Wem, very pleased that Hermitage was getting the idea. ‘Just like the stone circles.’ Wem paused for thought, ‘Except of course the Gods threw the stones into the ground in the olden days. Now we have to do it. Apparently.’

  ‘It must be a very big stone if it’s about the size of me,’ Hermitage noted.

  ‘Well, of course it is,’ said Wem, frowning at Hermitage. ‘it’s your stone. It would have to be the same size as you, wouldn’t it? How else would it work?’

  Now Hermitage was completely lost. He spent a lot of the time not really knowing what was going on, but just now and then a set of circumstances occurred which made him think he’d popped into the wrong body for a moment, and was in somebody else’s situation altogether.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Wat asked, stepping into the conversation, ‘what do you mean, it’s Hermitage’s stone?’

  Wem looked at them all as if they were idiots. ‘It’s the monk’s stone. The master stone. And he’s the monk. What’s to understand?’

  ‘I haven’t got a stone,’ Hermitage was very lost indeed.

  ‘You will have,’ Wem smiled.

  ‘I’m being given a stone?’ Hermitage looked at Wat, Cwen, Wem and the hut, hoping that one of them might explain.

  ‘You certainly are,’ Wem looked very happy at the prospect, ‘the most important of them all.’

  ‘There’s more than one?’

  Now Wem looked puzzled. ‘How can you have a circle made up of one stone?’

  Hermitage thought that was a very interesting question. Just not for now.

  ‘Let me get this straight,’ said Hermitage, hoping that saying it out loud might force it to make sense. ‘You are putting together a stone circle.’

  ‘Yes,’ Wem stated the obvious.

  ‘And the master stone is going here, in this hut.’

  ‘In Hywel’s hut, yes.’

  ‘I can see why he wasn’t happy,’ Cwen muttered.

  ‘And it’s about the same size as me.’

  ‘Exactly the same,’ Wem confirmed.

  ‘So where are the other stones? Where does the rest of the circle go?’

  ‘In the woods,’ Wem nodded in the right direction.

  ‘The sacred woods,’ Cwen confirmed.

  ‘That’s right.’ Wem nodded happily. ‘There’s a stone for everyone, and everyone shall have a stone,’ he quoted.

  ‘Very nice,’ said Hermitage, suddenly thinking it might not be very nice at all.

  ‘When you say everyone,’ Wat enquired very slowly, ‘you mean Hermitage and me and Cwen and the other new arrivals?’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Wem, clearly thinking they would all be delighted.

  ‘Including More and Leon and Stropit, who are now missing.’

  ‘Really?’ Wem enquired with interest. ‘Perhaps they’ve been done already.’

  ‘Done already?’ Cwen made no attempt at all to remain calm. ‘What do you mean they’ve been done already? What exactly is going to happen when you give this master stone thing to Hermitage?’

  Wem sighed the sigh of a builder being asked to explain how to put one brick on top of another. ‘We dig the monk-sized hole in the bottom of the hut and then bring the master stone down the hill on the rollers.’

  ‘Rollers?’

  ‘Very clever they are. We started off getting it a bit wrong but think we’ve got the hang of it now. Run along sweet as anything they do.’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘So we put the flat stones down for the rollers to run on and lead them right up to the edge of the hole.’

  ‘Go on,’ Wat said, carefully.

  ‘Stone comes down rollers, gets to edge of hole, tips up, falls in. Easy.’ Wem held his arms out to illustrate the brilliant simplicity of his plan.

  Wat asked the next question very carefully. ‘And where exactly is Hermitage, the monk,’ he used one hand to point out the monk, ‘when the stone gets to the edge of the hole, tips up and falls in?’

  ‘At the bottom of course,’ said Wem.

  ‘The bottom of the hole,’ Wat confirmed.

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘Eeek,’ Hermitage couldn’t think what else to say.

  ‘Where else would you be?’ Wem demanded, ‘not going to be a very effective sacrifice if you’re standing at the top watching, is it?’

  ‘I told you,’ said Cwen, ‘I told you they were going to sacrifice us.’

  ‘You’re all mad,’ Wat concluded, stepping back from the hut. ‘Come on,’ he spoke to Hermitage and Cwen, ‘we’re getting out of here.’

  The three hurriedly strode away from Wem and his hut/hole.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Wem called out, not understanding why the sacrifices were running away.

  ‘We find John and Banley and the robbers, gather whatever weapons we can and get out of this place,’ Wat shouted as they now ran back to the centre of the village.

  ‘What about More, Leon and Stropit?’ Hermitage asked.

  ‘Too late for them,’ said Cwen.

  ‘Cwen, really,’ Hermitage chided.

  ‘Well, what do you want to do? Scrape them off the bottom of a stone and take the bits home?’

  Hermitage felt quite nauseous.

  There was no sign of the robbers or John, but Ellen came running across the village to meet them.

  ‘Where are the men?’ Wat asked, ‘John, Banley, that lot?’

  ‘I was coming to ask you,’ Ellen replied, and she sounded worried, ‘they’ve all gone missing.’

  Caput XXIV

  The Sacrifices Object.

  ‘Oh, hellfire and tiny fleas,’ Wat swore.

  ‘Now then, Wat,’ Hermitage admonished.

  ‘Don’t tell me this is not the time for profanity,’ said Wat, ‘this is exactly the time for profanity. What the hell are we doing to do?’

  ‘We get out of here,’ Cwen confirmed the original plan.

  ‘What is going on?’ Ellen demanded.

  Wat turned to her and looked right into her eyes. ‘The whole village is mad. They have brought us here to sacrifice us to their stone circle. They’re digging a special hole just for Hermitage. More, Leon and Stropit have probably already gone. Now the rest of the men are missing I can imagine what’s happened.’

  ‘Sacrificed?’ Ellen was in such a state of shock at the word that she could hardly speak.

  ‘Well, they put you in the bottom of a ho
le and drop a massive stone on you, if that’ll do.’

  The look in Ellen’s eyes, said yes, that would do it.

  ‘So, we gather what we can save and head back over the hills,’ Wat explained. ‘We used to outnumber them, but not anymore.’

  The whole group now comprised three women left in the group of stragglers, Hermitage, Wat and Cwen. Even the pilgrims had gone. Hermitage knew that if there was to be a battle to escape the village their chances would not be good. Evaluating the little band he reckoned their best chance would be to give the best weapons to Ellen, Cwen and Wat. Except of course they didn’t have any best weapons. They didn’t have any weapons at all.

  ‘But, the others?’ Ellen asked, plaintively.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do for them,’ Wat shook his head sadly.

  ‘We can’t go,’ Hermitage said plainly, having thought it through.

  ‘Eh, what?’ Wat and Cwen couldn’t understand what he was saying.

  ‘We can’t go,’ Hermitage repeated. ‘We cannot run away and leave all those people to their fate.’

  ‘They’ve already had their fate,’ Cwen pointed out.

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Hermitage was insistent. ‘It is our Christian duty to stay and find out what has happened.

  ‘We know what’s happened,’ Cwen went on, ‘that mad builder told us what happened. Holes. Stones. Squashed. Remember?’

  ‘No,’ Hermitage corrected, ‘Wem told us what was going to happen. To me. It seems very likely the same thing is planned for everyone else but we most certainly do not know it’s happened already. In fact if I’m the one who gets the master stone, they might be saving me for last. The others could still be held captive in the woods.’

  ‘No wonder they wouldn’t let us in,’ Cwen snarled.

  ‘So what do you suggest Hermitage?’ Wat asked, ‘the seven of us storm the druid stronghold, the one in the middle of the sacred woods, the one full of druids that want us all underground, and we release the prisoners?’

  ‘Could we?’ Hermitage asked, as if being invited to a tour of a cathedral.

  ‘No, we couldn’t’ Wat half shouted. ‘We’d get slaughtered.’

  ‘I think that’s the plan anyway,’ Hermitage observed.

  ‘If we leave, we won’t get slaughtered at all,’ said Wat, ‘and of all the options, I think that’s my preference. And don’t give me that look.’

  Hermitage was giving Wat the look that said the weaver knew perfectly well what the right thing to do was. He just wasn’t planning to do it.

  ‘Yes, we could run away.’ Hermitage gave the words “run away” their own peculiar character, a frankly cowardly and disgraceful character. ‘But that might not work. As you said yourself, we’re in the middle of nowhere, we could easily be captured again.’

  Wat glared.

  ‘And no one seems to be paying us any attention, Hermitage observed.

  That was true. No one in the village was paying them the slightest notice. It was as if large groups of sacrifices turned up every day of the week. Perhaps they did.

  There were only one or two people wandering about, and even Wem had stayed at the hut, presumably to get on with digging Hermitage’s grave.

  ‘All we need to do is go over to the woods and see if we can find out what’s happened,’ Hermitage explained.

  ‘And if they’re all lying around in holes with stones on their heads?’

  ‘Then we can leave,’ Hermitage granted.

  ‘Oh no we can’t,’ Ellen growled from somewhere very deep inside. ‘If harm has come to a hair of their heads it will be a day of druid disaster.’

  The others looked at her with newfound admiration, if tinged with a bit of fear.

  ‘We can’t take them all on.’ Surprisingly it was Cwen who spoke up to soothe Ellen’s temper.

  ‘You don’t have to,’ Ellen replied, ‘but I shall take as many of them with me as I can.’

  ‘Leon,’ Cwen said, reaching a conclusion.

  ‘My son,’ Ellen confirmed. ‘Thick as a barn door and thinks with his fists, but if a druid hand has been laid on him, look for the druid with no hands.’

  Wat looked hopelessly at them all, and longingly at the path over the hills which led out of the village. Hermitage looked at him pleadingly, urging him to search his conscience and consider whether leaving was really the right thing to do.

  Cwen and Ellen glared at him, urging him to consider whether he’d still be able to leave the village if they chopped his toes off.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ he cried aloud and headed for the woods.

  …

  Their entry to the sacred forest was not hindered this time, and the much reduced band made its way into the depths of the trees. Wat led the way. Hermitage suspected this was so he could prevent Cwen and Ellen diving head first into the first druid they came across.

  Paths criss-crossed between the trees but the party followed what appeared to be the most well-trodden way. This was clear of leaves as if it had been swept religiously. Which seemed to be a good sign that they were heading in the right direction.

  After a while there was a smell to follow as well. It was a sweet, sickly odour, with an undercurrent of bitterness which said that the cooking involved bits of the forest.

  Without warning, the wood stepped aside and deposited a clearing at their feet. It was quite a sight.

  Hermitage gaped at the stone circle which was laid out in neat and well maintained order. The thing must be a hundred feet across and some of the stones were pretty massive. As he gazed upon the construction he wondered why the villagers wanted another circle when they already had this one. Perhaps one doubled the power of the other. Not that stone circles had power, that was ridiculous. It was just that these people were ignorant pagans who were about to double their cursedness.

  ‘Look,’ said Ellen with a sharp command and point of her finger.

  Across the circle, buried somewhere in the trees at the back, was the fire from which the smell was coming. Smoke wound up into the cloudy sky and hints of a wooden wall could be made out between the foliage.

  Leading them round the circle, (Hermitage thought walking straight across it would be most sensible but it didn’t feel polite somehow), Wat brought the group to sight of the druid temple. The sight which knocked them back and drove all plans from their heads.

  In the middle of the space in front of the temple was a large cauldron on a stand with fire crackling beneath. At the lip of the cauldron stood the Arch-Druid, stirring the contents with a large wooden spoon. Every now and again Lypolix would skip out of the undergrowth and throw something new in the pot. Wulf and the other druid sat nearby in relaxed conversation.

  Scattered about at the feet of the cauldron, chatting amiably, or leaning against a tree trunk with eyes closed were the pilgrims, John and the rest of the stragglers. Leon, More and whoever Stropit was, were still missing. As was the entire band of robbers.

  ‘What the devil is going on here?’ Ellen demanded.

  ‘Welcome, welcome,’ the Arch-Druid called, pausing in his stirring for a moment, ‘I said we would welcome you when the time was right. And now it is. It is indeed.’

  ‘Where’s Leon?’ Ellen demanded.

  ‘Leon?’ The Arch-Druid looked to his fellows for some explanation. Wulf and the spare druid shrugged.

  ‘My son,’ Ellen pressed, ‘one of the stragglers.’

  ‘Ah,’ the druid nodded acknowledgement, ‘I don’t know I’m afraid. I think there are some people off in the woods, but they’ll come back in due course, no doubt.’

  Hermitage couldn’t quite take this in. There was a whole village preparing to sacrifice them, him in particular, and now the Arch-Druid seemed to be hosting some sort of gathering.

  ‘What about the stones?’ Hermitage asked.

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘You’re going to sacrifice us all to the stones. I even have my own special stone, the master. You’re going to pu
t me in the ground and squash me with it.’

  The Arch-Druid burst out laughing. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Well, er, Wem the builder,’ Hermitage explained, suddenly doubting his own memory. ‘He was bringing the stone down to Hywel’s hut especially for the purpose.’

  ‘My goodness me,’ the old Druid chuckled, ‘the things people come up with when they’re left on their own.’

  Wat stepped forward and looked at the Arch-Druid as if he was trying to see what was underneath. ‘What is going on then? You are building a stone circle.’

  ‘That’s true,’ the man explained. ‘We have discovered that young Wulf here is a stone seer. Very rare thing, a stone seer. Only a seer can build a circle, so that’s what we’re doing.’

  ‘And the sacrifices?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, we aren’t primitives. We don’t really sacrifice people anymore. Is that what you thought?’

  Hermitage thought that yes that was what he’d thought. And he’d also had good reason as people kept telling him it was going to happen.

  ‘No, no, no,’ the Arch-Druid protested, ‘we have a purely symbolic ceremony of blessing the stones.’

  ‘But Wem was most insistent there was going to be a sacrifice,’ said Hermitage, ‘of me.’

  The Arch-Druid leant in close, away from Hywel’s hearing. ‘Do you think he’d have lugged a massive stone all the way down the mountain if he thought all we were going to do was sprinkle it with berry juice? These are simple people, you have to give them something of a sensation to stir them to action. We spun them a yarn about great sacrifices to get the stone circle going and so they started work.’

  ‘That’s rather dishonest isn’t it?’ Hermitage chided.

  ‘Better than squashing real monks with real rocks,’ the Arch-Druid observed.

  ‘So all this business about us being the chosen ones and summoned here across Wales was nonsense?’

  ‘Oh, not quite,’ the Arch-Druid confessed. ‘The locals are well known to the stones and so strangers were needed for the ceremony. You just happened to be the first ones we found.’

  ‘Well known to the stones,’ Hermitage muttered at such nonsense.

  ‘That still doesn’t explain where my Leon has got to,’ Ellen piped up.