The Tapestry of Death

by Howard of Warwick

  'A significant body,' Wat insisted.

  'Oh absolutely,' Hermitage agreed, not wanting to offend his friend. 'Maintain the standards of the craft. Ensure the proper training and appointment of apprentices. Let prospective customers know that their weaver is a man of quality. Perhaps even see off those of inferior workmanship, or expel people in extremis. But execution?' Hermitage found it hard to believe that the guild of weavers had an office of murderers. 'I mean,' he went on, 'it's a bit strict, isn't it?'

  'Only in the most extreme cases, obviously.' Wat was rather defensive.

  Hermitage was still on his train of thought, 'Guild of murderers I could understand, if there is one. Certain chivalric orders, perhaps? They might have to kill their own members. But for a bit of mucking people about and being a, what was it, chancer?'

  'It's more than that,' Wat insisted. 'Much, much more than that.'

  Hermitage thought hard, but couldn't imagine what more a weaver would have to do to justify execution.

  'Did Briston kill someone in the guild?' he asked. It was the only thing he could think of.

  'No, of course not,' Wat answered. 'Don't be ridiculous! We're weavers.'

  'But you just said...' Hermitage began, puzzled that Wat had just described the self-same weavers as a desperate band of killers.

  'It was Briston's subject matter.'

  Hermitage struggled to get his head round this. 'You mean he was executed for what he created tapestries of?'

  'Exactly.'

  'Good heavens. Must be pretty unique for this to happen to you.'

  'Believe me, it was. Even though I know it was the guild, there are still questions. Someone actually wove the Tapestry of Death on to poor Briston and there aren't many who can. I want him first.'

  'Ah,' Hermitage didn't like the sound of that. Wat's tone wasn't of a man who wanted to resolve an intellectual puzzle. It was the tone of a man who wanted to hit things. If there was a first, there would probably be a second.

  'Then there's the guild master who ordered it done. He's second on my list.'

  Now there was a list.

  'You have a list,' Hermitage tried to sound supportive, but it came out as a bit of a squeak.

  'And there could be a third man.'

  'Another one?' Hermitage was concerned that this list was quite long.

  'It's possible someone asked the guild to do it.'

  'Ah,' Hermitage was hoping the list would come to an end soon.

  'Unless there was some sort of group,' Wat speculated. 'A number of the aggrieved getting together and deciding to take action.'

  'Let's stick with two for now, shall we?' Hermitage offered.

  Wat nodded a sombre acknowledgement, 'One at time,' he mused, 'one at a time.'

  'That's the spirit.'

  Hermitage knelt once more at Briston's side and laid a hand on the man's head in blessing. As he touched the large topknot, the body overbalanced and rolled on to its back.

  Wat nodded as the whole structure was revealed, 'Definitely guild work.'

  Hermitage looked at the head of Briston as the covered face was presented.

  'Ah,' he said in some interest at what he saw. 'Erm,' he didn't like to ask the next question of Wat. He didn't know if it was going to be blindingly stupid or blindingly clever. Perhaps this was part of a standard weavers' guild assassination. 'Is he, erm, supposed to have blood all over him?'

  Wat peered down at the forehead area, which had a large and intense red stain all over it. Whether the figure had been bound and then hit or hit and then bound was difficult to tell. It also didn't matter very much. Certainly not to Briston.

  'Ah,' Wat said, rubbing his chin. 'Now that's not in the ritual. Death by tapestry. Not death by being hit on the head.'

  'So, not the guild?'

  'Still the guild. No one else can do this kind of tapestry work.'

  'Are you sure?' Hermitage thought it a bit of an assumption to make.

  Wat gestured at the complex woven structure, 'Who else would bother?' he asked.

  'I suppose so.' Hermitage could see it would need a lot of training and practice to produce something like this. Not the sort of thing anyone would do as a pastime.

  Wat was thoughtful, 'This only doubles the force of my promise.' He came to some sort of conclusion.

  'Promise?'

  Hermitage hadn't heard any promise. Wat had promised a couple of things to the peasant who brought them here, but Hermitage thought them inappropriate at the time. They were certainly not relevant now. What else could the weaver be talking about? He rubbed the death note between his fingers and thought. The old familiar sinking feeling descended on his stomach. 'These notes?' he asked with a slight tremor.

  'They were promises,' Wat said. 'Promises that if either of us died and left the death note, the other would avenge.'

  'Oh.' Hermitage didn't like the sound of that at all. He noticed Wat's fists were tightly clenched. Another alarming sign. Investigating he could do. Well, he could do it now. Well, he'd done it twice and neither time had actually resulted in his own execution. Although both came close. Avenging sounded much more dangerous.

  'Avenge by bringing to justice, perhaps?' he offered in place of the image of avenging that had sprung into his mind. This involved running around with swords and getting in fights, all of which he lost.

  'No,' Wat snarled, 'avenging by hunting down the men who did this. The guild master who invoked the ritual and ordered Briston's death and the paid killer who did it. I'll get them if it takes the last of my breath, and I will dispense the only justice possible.'

  'Ah,' Hermitage said, 'hunting down a professional killer then. Marvellous.

  Caput II

  Guild Goings-on

  Ritual. Darkness. Fire.

  There wasn't a move the figures in the stone chamber could make that was not governed by arcane ritual. This was beyond important. It was life itself. It was written, it was controlled, and it was a spiritual necessity. It was also a practical one, as the darkness meant that if you didn't follow the ritual, you would probably bump into something sharp. The fire was mostly for effect as it illuminated virtually nothing. Its effect was very good. It cast shadows that could scare the colour off a cockerel.

  The chamber of the weaver's guild in Scunthorpe was vast. Or so it seemed to those standing in the darkness, frightened by the fire. The head of the long room was flanked by six sentinel stone columns. Aligned with a huge door was a dais that seemed born aloft by strategically placed torches. Upon the dais was a chair. Upon the chair upon the dais was a figure, dark and cowled. Its forearms dangled over the sides of the chair, which was more like a throne. They rested the way kings rest their arms on thrones. Like the chair should be grateful.

  'Approach,' the figure growled.

  The man at the end of the room took his first ritual steps in the darkness and assailed by fire and voice. There was a count of three between each pace. When he came parallel with the first column, he stopped.

  'The column of the sheep,' he intoned and bowed.

  'Approach,' the figure on the dais growled again, this time it concluded with a short cough as some of the ritual smoke from the ritual fires got up its nose.

  The man took more steps.

  'The column of the shearing,' he intoned.

  The ritual was repeated and he advanced three steps at a time.

  The columns of the carding, the spinning, and the dyeing were passed. He dare not pass the column of weaving. He knew his place.

  After a silence just long enough to make the man wonder if the figure had nodded off, it spoke.

  'The ritual of weaving,' it rasped.

  'The weaving is woven.'

  The man bowed as he spoke the proscribed words. He made the necessary gestures with his arms, a loose interpretation of weaving, and cast a short length of pink thread between himself and the dais.

  He almost jumped back as a shape detached itself from the back of the chair and came forward t
o whisper in the ear of the seated figure. Even in the dark it was clear this new arrival was ancient. It was bent double and shuffled across the floor, clearly unable to take actual steps. Whether it was man or woman was impossible to tell, and not very pleasant to speculate about. It wore only rags, but an awful lot of them, piled one layer on top of another. The whole ensemble melded with the long grey hair that hung from the head and almost made it to the floor.

  'The Hoofhorn,' the man breathed to himself. 'What the hell is the keeper of ritual doing in this God-forsaken outpost?'

  The man's muttering was alarmed, as if carefully prepared plans had been disturbed. Everyone knew what The Hoofhorn could do to you.

  'Too far,' the cowl on the dais snapped, having listened to the definitively ragged whispering shape.

  The man abandoned ritual for a moment and hopping forward, moved the thread a couple of feet back from where it had landed. Much closer to the required distance.

  The figure took more advice. 'Better,' it snapped.

  'Beg pardon, I'm sure,' the man grumbled under his breath as he stepped back, fear of the ritual being elbowed aside by a natural rebelliousness at apparently pointless instructions.

  After a brief exchange between the occupier of the chair and the mysterious Hoofhorn, the coagulation of rags and hair skipped down from the dais with remarkable agility.

  'The ritual calls for release,' The Hoofhorn announced in a voice sounding alarmingly like a bleat. It made releasing sorts of movements with its arms, raising its hands to the sky. The sleeves of the rags fell from the wrists, revealing the arms of The Hoofhorn in the flickering firelight.

  The man gasped. The arms were woven. He shook his head in the gloom as he realised it was tattoos. Good tattoos, and coloured to look exactly like a woven arm. They must have been pretty impressive when The Hoofhorn was young, if The Hoofhorn ever was young. Impressive, and very painful to get done. Now though, the sagging flesh of the arms gave the tattoos a wrinkled and distorted appearance, which detracted rather from their effect.

  'The ritual of release

  From the cauldron of the boiling fleece,'

  The Hoofhorn bleated a slightly sing-song rhyme. It was the sort of not-quite singing tone used by all bards when they're trying to convince an audience their awful rhymes are masterpieces.

  'As one who was of the guild

  Has been released from this world

  By the ritual of weaving,

  So a release of doves

  From the copper cauldron

  Of the boiling fleece must be proceeding.'

  Even The Hoofhorn seemed to have doubts about this atrocious verse.

  'Open the cauldron,' The Hoofhorn's command rang out.

  The man looked confused.

  'Well, do it then,' the voice from the dais was tetchy.

  The man took the ritual step forward, shrugging at the order. The shrug was not part of the ritual. The Hoofhorn noticed this sacrilege and hopped over to smack the man on the head with the ritual sheep's bladder on a stick. The victim raised his eyebrows to the ceiling in a most disrespectful manner. He did flinch at having The Hoofhorn so close though. Fear of the ritual was ingrained in him. Fear of fleas was just natural.

  The great copper cauldron of the boiling fleece was off to the right between the columns of dyeing and weaving. It stood on a three-legged iron stand and was big enough for the man to climb in and close the lid behind him. The edge of the cauldron was at head height and getting the lid off really needed a ladder. The whole thing was polished to a fearsome shine. Polished by someone who knew their ritual and did it properly.

  The cauldron distorted and reflected the scene in the room. Rounded flames flickered back from its surface and dark shadows of the man and The Hoofhorn stuttered across the columns.

  The man leaned forwards, stretched up over the sides of the cauldron, and grasped the lid.

  'Not like that, not like that,' The Hoofhorn snapped. 'Like this,' the ragged creature demonstrated by skipping around the cauldron. He held one hand over the lid until he had circled it three times. He then mimed leaning forward, bowing, and lifting the lid, skipping smartly backwards once he had done so.

  'You are joking,' the man of rapidly diminishing awe responded.

  'The ritual,' The Hoofhorn screamed into the room with outrage.

  'The ritual,' the figure on the dais repeated, insistent, but with less genuine enthusiasm.

  The man sighed the sigh of all men who have been told that the perfectly satisfactory job they've just done wasn't quite good enough and will have to be done again. He held his hand over the lid and walked ploddingly round the cauldron.

  'Skip, skip,' The Hoofhorn insisted, smacking the man's knees with the sheep bladder.

  The man skipped, just the once. It was a skip of little commitment.

  'We will have to consider your place in the guild once our night's ritual is complete,' The Hoofhorn threatened.

  'Please,' the man muttered, 'see if you can find anyone else who'll do the sort of things you want done.'

  The Hoofhorn did not seem to hear. He gestured with his bladder stick that the revolutions were complete and the man could remove the lid. The man did so. More in the manner of taking the lid off a pot of rancid stew than the ritual cauldron of the boiling fleece.

  'Where are the doves?' the figure on the dais called out when nothing emerged from the open cauldron.

  The Hoofhorn was dumbstruck. But not so dumbstruck that he couldn't make bleating noises. They were incoherent though. Unless perhaps you were a sheep. Or another Hoofhorn. It waved its bladder round and round in the air, as if trying to conjure the doves from the cauldron through mystical movement alone.

  The un-awed man stepped forward, stood on tiptoe, and peered over the edge of the cauldron.

  'Ah,' he said.

  'What?' the figure on the dais asked.

  'Erm, how long have these birds been in 'ere?' he asked with a wrinkling of his nose.

  'The ritual period,' The Hoofhorn replied.

  'I think you might want to check the ritual,' the man responded, reverently putting the lid back in place with a grimace.

  'The ritual is complete,' the voice from the dais stated.

  'But the doves,' The Hoofhorn complained.

  'Let's take the doves as dead,' the dais instructed.

  The Hoofhorn's head bowed in thought. 'We should invoke the thirty nights of naked cleansing.'

  'Let's not.' The dais was very clear on this.

  The Hoofhorn shrugged and wandered into the darkness mumbling about heretics and tradition.

  'Now that's out of the way,' the dais was matter of fact, 'you were not disturbed in your task?'

  'Nah.'

  'And, the work in question?' A hand emerged from the sleeve that dangled over the arm of the throne upon the dais. It wanted something.

  The man sucked his breath through his teeth in the confident manner of a tradesman who has his customer exactly where he wants them.

  'Where is the work?' Each word was growled clearly. It was also illuminated with individual tones of threat.

  'Safe,' the man assured.

  'I think not. Safe would be in my hand in the next minute. Safe for the tapestry, safe for me, safe for you.' The threat stopped being illuminated; it was now in the room and ready for action.

  'You wanted the work out of circulation and it is. That's safe for me. If I handed it to you, I might find I was suddenly in harm’s way. You know, all trace of the tapestry and anyone who's seen it?' The man made a slicing movement across his throat, and accompanied it with a noise imitating someone having a slicing movement made across their throat with something sharp that made all the blood come out.

  'My dear fellow,' the dais wheedled.

  'Yes, I am, aren't I?' The fellow now held out his hand.

  'I see we are at an impasse.'

  'A what?'

  'I have the rest of your money and you have my entire tapestry. I feel no
urge to complete our trade when the goods have not been delivered.'

  'Perhaps I could just complete the half of the transaction that results in me getting the money, in return for keeping the tapestry safe,' the man proposed as he drew a significant dagger from his belt. He took a profoundly un-ritualistic step towards the dais.

  'Hoofhorn,' the dais called.

  'Oh please,' the man scoffed.

  He stopped scoffing when The Hoofhorn appeared.

  'The ritual of the piercing,' The Hoofhorn bleated with glee as it emerged from the darkness hefting a pretty mighty looking sword. Hefting it with considerable alacrity and skill for an apparently ancient and decrepit loon. He whooped the thing around his head and stepped down from the dais.

  The man turned to check his escape route.

  'Right,' he said, pointing the finger people point at their enemy when they’re about to run away, 'keep your money. I'll keep the tapestry.'

  'No, you won't,' the cowl on the dais said with disturbing confidence. 'Hoofhorn, get the tapestry and kill the man.'

  'Oh, by the way,' the man said as he backed quickly towards the door.

  'What?'

  'I lied. I wasn't disturbed, but a message got out. Help was sent for.'

  'Who could help?' The dais laughed the traditional laugh of the evil doer in total control.

  'Wat the Weaver,' the man announced as he turned and ran.

  'Noooo.' The scream of anguish from the dais followed the man as he turned and ran from the room. Even the bleats of The Hoofhorn seemed raised to a new and unearthly pitch.

  Caput III

  Tapestries Revealed and Revealing

  'I don't see anything here that would justify execution.'

  Hermitage gestured to the three sides of Briston's tent supporting some tapestries. It was a fairly large affair – well maintained and well assembled. It was tall enough for a large man to enter and stand without bending much at all and wide enough for Briston to entertain at least two full-size customers at the same time. It was furnished with two high-quality camp chairs, totally inappropriate for a place like Baernodebi.

  Briston's final resting place was against the back wall. At his feet, leather cases and tubes were stacked, doubtless storage for the products of his craft. Most incongruously of all, the sides of the tent were hung with fine tapestry, as if they were the walls of a great manor. Except when Hermitage looked closely, they weren't really that fine. Some of the thread had pulled from the scenes and the colours were faded and bland. The edges were ragged, and two or three of them had started to curl up. Hermitage's nose wrinkled as he leaned close to one scene, overpowered by the reek of mildew.