'Ah yes,' the Norman spoke with pride. 'Always well turned out, neat and, erm, that.' It was clear that Gilbert didn't have any other words for neat. One was probably all he ever needed, not being involved in situations where it was applicable.
'And when was it you saw her last?' Hermitage asked.
The Norman paused in thought. 'Would have been last gutting day,' he said.
'Gutting day?' Wat tried not to snort.
'Yes, my little Aveline insisted we do the gutting on just one day instead of every day. It was day before yesterday.'
'How charming.'
'Did she have any friends?' Hermitage asked.
'Certainly not!' The protective father was outraged.
'None of the other girls?' he asked.
The Norman frowned deeply. 'What other girls?' he asked, rather confused.
Hermitage hesitated to ask the next question. Not for long though as he needed to know. 'Did she ever express any wish to, erm, leave?' He tried to sound as humble as he could.
'Leave?' Gilbert had some trouble with the concept. 'Leave her father?' He gestured to take in his magnificent surroundings.
'Hard to imagine, I know,' Hermitage said, imagining it very easily. 'Children, eh?' he said, as if he had dozens of them.
'She left her shoes behind?' Hermitage observed.
'Only the spares,' Gilbert explained. 'Never knew why she needed more than one pair anyway, but everywhere we went, another pair of shoes.'
'Really?'
'Even after battles, I had to bring her back a pair of shoes.'
'Ah.'
'None of them any good in the mud either.'
'Perhaps she's only stepped out and will be back soon?' Hermitage offered.
Even his naive and innocent eyes could see what had happened here. Wat's frank and suggestive glances helped, but he would have got there on his own. This poor Gilbert's daughter had run off from an unbearable life. A life lived in unbearable circumstances. She had shoes, nice embroidery, liked the finer, ladylike things in the world and was forced to live in a smoke-filled box with a soldier. Probably several soldiers, one of whom was her father. The question was how to get this message over to the soldier. The large soldier who was right in Hermitage's face. And Hermitage was in his line of fire. Best not to tell him at all, probably.
'Did she ever comment on her life?' Hermitage tried instead of a direct approach.
'What sort of question is that?' The soldier clearly found this concept beyond him.
'Well, what child doesn't?' Hermitage encouraged. 'You know, did she want to go out? Did she want to stay in? Did she want things? Other than shoes?' He cast his mind back to his own childhood when all his requests for a second book were dismissed out of hand by a father who noted that a book wouldn’t chop down trees for you.
Gilbert's eyes narrowed aggressively but they were narrowing from recognition. 'I mean, obviously she's not a soldier.' The man seemed to consider this a full and frank explanation.
'Obviously,' Hermitage encouraged.
'She'd have her little moans about the keep, and the men.'
Hermitage nodded his encouragement now.
'And the food, and the travelling. And the smoke, and how she never met anyone.' The man was on a roll now. On a roll down a large and long hill. 'And how she never got to do what she wanted, or have the things she needed.' The Norman paced away from Hermitage and then strode back, arms waving. 'And how I never let her go anywhere. And when I asked where she wanted to go she said anywhere. So I said, tell me somewhere and she said I was ruining her life and didn't understand.'
Hermitage tried to do sympathy now.
Gilbert was glaring, but it wasn't at Hermitage. It was a distant yet introspective glare. The glare of a soldier with nothing to hit.
He took a breath. 'You can see,' he gestured over to the cot, 'she liked nice things.'
Hermitage nodded sympathetically.
'But we'd have lots of nice things after another five years of campaigning or so.'
Hermitage nodded some more. It seemed to help.
'But she said she'd be dead by then. Who'd want her when she was twenty? She'd be an old crone.'
'So she wanted a life other than this one,' Hermitage prompted.
Gilbert's shoulders sagged as if he'd been broken somehow.
'Dull?'
'Dull?' Hermitage hadn't followed.
'I ask you. How can this life be dull? But she'd just sit there on the cot, night after night. Dull, dull, dull, she'd mumble.'
Hermitage felt his head light up. He tried to stop the light pouring from his eyes so he frowned them closed. He looked to Gilbert's rugged Norman face and more recognition flowed through his brain. He turned quickly to catch Wat's eyes. The weaver's visage looked as if all the muscles had been so surprised they had forgotten they were supposed to hold his face up. He gawped at Hermitage and then turned and gawped at Briston, who was now right by the door. Persuading his face to at least close his mouth, he sidled away from Hermitage and Gilbert and made for Briston.
Hermitage muttered sympathies and walked about a bit, examining things in what he hoped was an investigatory manner. He asked Gilbert to show him the shoes and the bottles and considered them closely, keeping the Norman's attention on him.
Over by the door, Wat, now back in control of his facial expressions, spoke quietly to Briston. He spoke reasonably, calmly and gently. But he spoke with fierce determination.
'Briston, my old friend.'
Briston looked at Wat with worry. It was clear from the tone of voice that the man had a new-found power. Briston didn't encourage any further conversation.
'Briston, Briston, Briston,' Wat patted Briston on the shoulder and used a voice that put Briston firmly in his place. That place was under Wat's foot.
'If I tell gorgeous Gilbert here,' he gestured towards the large Norman soldier, 'that his lovely daughter ran off with the very weaver who did the disgusting tapestries of Baernodebi, and that this weaver has seen more of his daughter than is right, proper, or even legal,' Wat let the thought ferment, 'and that said weaver is likely to distribute tapestries that will let the rest of the world see as much of his lovely daughter as well, he will kill you. He'll have killed lots of people he doesn't even know. The only motivation he needs is that they're on the battlefield. Or that they're on the wrong side. Or perhaps just that they're in the way. Imagine how inspired he'll be by you.'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' Briston tried.
'Oh, come on,' Wat scoffed. 'You can do better than that. A lovely young girl turns up in Bigby. Well dressed, looking for a life less dull? When just such a girl has recently gone missing from the home of the nearest professional Norman killer? I don't think this part of the country is swimming with them. Who is she then? The Queen of the May?'
'Could be anyone,' Briston shrugged.
'With that nose?' Wat gestured to Gilbert and used his hands to mime the presence of a large Norman nose, the sort which sat happily on Gilbert's face – not so happily on the face of the girl in Briston's chamber.
'So?' Briston avoided Wat's eyes.
'So off we go to Baernodebi.' Wat rubbed his hands as if they were having a trip to the seaside. 'You cause no trouble. You come nice and quiet and take what's coming to you. We get Cwen back and everyone lives happily ever after,' Wat paused for thought, 'except you obviously.'
'And Gilbert?' Briston nodded towards the Norman.
'Hermitage will work out where his daughter is and he'll be very happy. Of course, if anything goes wrong, young Hermitage will suddenly recall that he actually saw the charming Aveline. Where was it? Oh yes, with that fat man, Briston. Of course, he's the one who makes the filthy tapestries. Oh, and he’s the one sitting by the door of your fortress.'
'You do the same work.'
'Not of the daughters of Normans, I don't. It's because I'm not, what's the expression? Oh yes, bloody stupid.'
‘I haven’t made any ta
pestries of her,’ Briston growled, but had clearly given up the game. ‘Only just met her.’
‘I bet you’ve made a few preliminary sketches though,’ Wat nodded.
Briston’s scowl said that was exactly what he had done.
Wat returned to where Hermitage was examining Aveline's shoes, while regaling Gilbert with the detailed theological arguments surrounding our Lord's footwear during the forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. He hadn't even got as far as the opening references when Gilbert already looked like he would collapse on his daughter's cot muttering dull, dull, dull.
Wat caught Hermitage's eye and nodded. Hermitage inclined his head in return.
'And so,' Hermitage said, in a complete non sequitur to what he had been saying, 'we can thus estimate the location of your daughter.'
Gilbert woke up. His eyes widened, 'What?' he asked, clearly not having been listening to a word.
'Oh yes,' Hermitage smiled as if it had all been perfectly clear. 'Bigby. At the inn.'
'How, did you?' Gilbert started but then stopped.
Wat could see that the man had listened to enough of Hermitage to know that he didn't want to get the full explanation.
Gilbert turned and strode quickly from the room.
There was some yelling of instructions outside, followed by the noise of horses being quickly mounted and ridden away.
Hermitage and Wat exchanged looks of quiet satisfaction. They looked to Briston, who didn't exchange anything.
'If this is true, sir monk, you are a great man,' Gilbert beamed.
'Of course, I've no guarantee, but if my reasoning is sound, your men will find her there.'
'And if they do, I shall owe you a great favour. If there's anything I can do for you, you will only have to say the word.'
There was lots of mutual smiling and grinning at the prospect of the return of the daughter of Gilbert. The daughter of Gilbert probably wouldn't be smiling quite so much, but then she wasn't there.
'Actually,' Wat said raising a finger, 'there might be something you can help us with.'
Caput XXV
How to Disguise a Hoofhorn
'You're him, aren't you?' Eadric demanded fiercely.
He had taken Firman to one side as soon as the laughter, which flowed like a stream about Virgil being killed by a sheep, had died down. Now it was just like a bucket emptied of water – occasionally, another drip would fall out.
The company sat in silence, grinning at one another until some other hilarious pun or ribald comment occurred to one of them.
'Perhaps he was fleeced,' Cwen suggested to wide chortling.
Even Dextus found it hard to resist. 'He may have recognised his killer and said, “Oh, it's ewe”, you know, like the sheep spelling.'
Stott still seemed offended they were suggesting his house was the regular haunt of livestock. Parsimon just gave Eadric the sympathetic look reserved for all idiots. Eadric had taken it all in, ignoring them in the way people do when they know they'll be proved right. Eventually. He had suggested they leave the place as whatever Virgil's killer was could come back.
The Castigatori were still out cold. Whatever had done in their heads had done them in pretty thoroughly and Dextus refused to move without them. Stott and Parsimon weren't going anywhere and Cwen refused to walk in the woods with a man who was worried the sheep might attack. Firman said nothing, he just smiled at the comments, like a parent laughing at a three-year-old's joke. Eadric had taken his elbow and walked him away from the flock.
'Admit it, you're him. I mean, you're it!' Eadric stared hard at Firman, who looked back with as much vacancy in his face as the empty bucket.
'I'm who, what?' Firman looked around as if the room would offer some explanation.
Eadric leaned in and whispered hard, 'The Hoofhorn.'
'Beg pardon?' Firman showed no sign of recognition.
'Very clever. You can't fool me.' Eadric too looked around the room, worried that someone might hear him. 'I know.'
Firman leaned in and whispered as well, 'What's a Hoofhorn?'
'It's no good playing the innocent with me. I was in the guildhall after all. I've seen the cauldron.'
Firman's eyes flickered over to Cwen and Dextus.
'Cauldron,' Firman said in the encouraging voice applied to religious enthusiasts who approach you with a knife, offering to send you to heaven one bit at a time.
'Absolutely. I didn't believe it at first, but that stuff with the sword was quite impressive. Why did you stop following me?'
'My dear fellow, I really think you've mixed me up with someone else.'
'Oh no. It all fits.' Eadric paced up and down two or three paces and wrung his hands. 'Soon as I get away from the hall, you turn up. Apparently just off on some secret mission.'
'I am.'
'Yes, to get the tapestry. And me. It was a good idea. You probably knew I didn't have the thing myself but thought I would lead you to it. Pretend to be a harmless traveller and you might get your hands on it.'
'Master Eadric,' Firman tried to interrupt.
'Don't interrupt,' Eadric snapped, a rather wild gleam in his eye. 'For some reason, you couldn't come after me as the Hoofhorn, so you went back to the guild and came in disguise.'
'Disguise?'
'Or maybe this is you and The Hoofhorn is the disguise.' Eadric was now casting his eyes around the room as if more Hoofhorns were going to appear.
'Eadric,' Firman said in all seriousness. He caught Eadric's eyes and held them. 'I do not know what you are talking about. What guild, what Hoofhorn? What is a Hoofhorn? I really do not know what you are talking about.'
'That's exactly what you would say,' Eadric shot back. 'You got instructed by the master of the guild to recover the tapestry. It is rather unique, but I don't exactly know what's so important about it.'
Firman opened his mouth to speak.
'It'll come to me,' Eadric spoke mostly to himself. 'Of course you have to keep yourself secret. Can't let the guild ritual get out.’
'What guild?' Firman pleaded.
'The weavers' of course. Don't play the innocent with me.'
'The weavers' guild?'
'Who else?' Eadric spread his arms wide as if so much was blindingly obvious.
'You think you're being followed by the weavers' guild?'
'I know it!' Eadric was intense. Intense and slightly twitchy now.
'And that the guild sent a sheep to kill Virgil?' Firman kept a straight face.
Eadric's face dropped. 'Don't be stupid.' He looked at Firman as if the man was mad. 'That's ridiculous. How could the guild send a sheep to do anything? Do you know how stupid they are?'
'The guild?'
'No, the sheep. They need a dog just to make them go in the same direction. God above, Firman, are you some sort of loon?'
'Me?'
'Did you really think I'd fall for this idiot dressed in his finest who just happens to be walking the same road as me?' Eadric took a step back and appraised the man.
'I told you, I am on a mission for my family.' Firman sounded sincere.
'Oh, give it up,' Eadric scoffed. 'Travelling alone? Out here? Going to Baernodebi of all places? Just when I happen to have escaped the Hoofhorn?'
'Yes, this Hoofhorn, tell me about him, erm, it.' Firman smiled encouragement.
'You tell me,' Eadric hissed. 'Virgil gets battered to death. You're nowhere to be seen. A heap of sleeping Castigatori turn up and then you. It must be part of the ritual.' Eadric was thinking hard. 'What did you do to yourself?' He reached forwards and pinched Firman's arm.
'Ow, do you mind?' Firman brushed his sleeve where Eadric had creased it.
'Where's the beard?' Eadric peered closely at Firman's face. 'Did you shave it off or does it grow back in?'
'Father Dextus?' Firman murmured.
'It's no good calling him. I know all about you. Why don't you tell me? It's only us. You can tell me, you know. I know you're the Hoofhorn and you know y
ou're the Hoofhorn. The others don't need to find out.'
Firman tried a loud cough.
'Of course, you don't need me anymore.' Eadric smiled broadly. 'You've got the tapestry. You took it from Virgil when you killed him. Take it. I don't want the thing anymore.' Eadric was rubbing his hands as if washing something unpleasant from them. 'Take it and go back to your master. You don't need to kill any more of us.'
Firman smiled and nodded. 'Father Dextus,' he called louder through clenched teeth.
'Oh my God, that's it!' Eadric had reached some revelation. 'You're going to cover the tracks. Make sure that no one can talk about the tapestry. You're going to kill us all. Dextus, Dextus,' Eadric shouted as he skipped back across the room to the safety of the fire.
'What?' Dextus asked without looking up.
He then looked up, saw Eadric and jumped to his feet.
'Good Lord, what is it man?' the priest cried out when he saw the look on Eadric's face.
Cwen rose as well, while Stott and Parsimon looked on from the fire.
'It's him, it's him,' Eadric yelled and pointed at Firman who simply shrugged a sympathetic shrug.
Eadric ran back to the fireside and hid behind Dextus.
'What's him?' Dextus looked from the cowering man behind him to the useless looking Firman.
'I can't say,' Eadric whined, 'he'll kill me. He's going to kill us all. Like he killed Virgil.'
'Firman?' Cwen asked, indicating that Eadric should examine the man.
'I can't say, I can't say,' Eadric howled and buried his face in his hands.
Firman stepped forward and spoke in soft and sympathetic tones. 'Poor fellow seems to think I'm some sort of creature from the weavers' guild. A Hoofhorn, whatever one of those is.'
'You know, you know,' Eadric whimpered.
'The weavers’ guild?' Dextus was puzzled.
'So it seems,' Firman explained. 'Apparently they sent a sheep to kill Virgil.'
'Not a sheep,' Eadric snapped. 'I told you not a sheep. A sheep couldn't do it,' Eadric paused for a moment, 'unless it had the sword?' he speculated. 'No Eadric, you idiot. How could a sheep hold a sword? It was the Hoofhorn.'
'What is a Hoofhorn?' Cwen asked.
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