This place was warm, it appeared comfortable, the people ate well and took life at such a leisurely pace they put the man who had trouble telling one end of a sheep from the other on guard. None of them had turned out to be the monstrous Normans she encountered at home, but then maybe all the monsters had gone to England.
Perhaps she should stay here. Wat could move his workshop and set up business, Hermitage could come and continue his work on Wat, and Cwen would make sure they were all organised properly. After all, neither of the men was safe to be left on their own, they’d proved that admirably by ending up in a dungeon when they were supposed to be solving a murder. If only they’d brought her with them in the first place.
She basked in the pleasure of the walk and contemplated how to progress things once monk and weaver were released from captivity. She had no doubt at all that she would get them out one way or another, but then she seldom had much doubt about anything.
Back at the field, the sheep were largely where they had been left. A couple had strayed towards some shaded grass up by the trees, but as soon as they turned their heads and saw Cwen returning, they ran to join their companions. The whole flock huddled in a corner as if they’d heard the howl of a wolf in the night.
If a pack of wolves arrived to devour the sheep, they would probably wait until Cwen said it was all right.
She glared at the sheep individually but did wonder if it was really right to leave them while she went off trying to save Hermitage and Wat. If any of the villagers came along and found that she wasn’t at her post they’d probably cause trouble, and she realised she needed to keep her head down.
She could always take them with her of course, they would almost certainly do what they were told, but that would raise questions as well. Why weren’t the sheep in the pasture? What were they doing at the smithy? Why did they all look so worried?
She appraised her flock with irritation. The animals seemed to sense this and huddled even closer together. There was nothing for it, they had to go.
‘But I can’t,’ Harboth wailed when Cwen put the proposition to him.
‘Of course you can,’ Cwen explained for what felt like the tenth time, ‘your service will still get done, the sheep will be shepherded, what’s the problem?’
‘The problem will be when Norbert comes on his rounds. He always has a go at me, not doing this right, not doing that properly, this isn’t straight, that’s not clean and the other’s hanging out all over the place.’
‘Let me worry about Norbert,’ Cwen tried to sound reassuring, but knew it didn’t come naturally.
‘I don’t know,’ Harboth was still reluctant but clearly wanted to put the plan into action. He just needed an excuse.
‘It must happen all the time,’ Cwen persisted, ‘what do you do when someone’s sick or injured?’
‘We have to have permission.’
‘To be sick?’
‘No, to rearrange things.’
‘Look,’ said Cwen and she approached Harboth and put a comforting hand on his shoulder, ‘don’t take this the wrong way and it’s nothing personal believe me.’
‘What is?’
Cwen smiled as charmingly as she could and held his eyes while she used a trick she had found useful on a number of occasions, more usually when dealing with drunks or over attentive soldiers. She used the heel of her right boot to stamp down very hard on his toes.
‘Oh, ow, argh,’ Harboth hopped about, and while Cwen felt bad about it, the look on the poor boy’s face reminded her of Hermitage in one of those moments when the reality of the world jumped out on him.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ she said as she stepped to hold his arm and stop him falling.
‘What did you do that for?’ Harboth asked, as if a loving parent had invited him for a hug and then punched him on the nose.
‘I am so sorry,’ she repeated, feeling she’d just drowned a kitten.
‘You stamped on me,’ Harboth said, as if Cwen needed the fact pointing out.
‘I know, but now you’re injured see. Not much use being a guard with an injured foot, you wouldn’t be able to chase anyone. When Norbert comes along he won’t be able to say anything.’
After a few looks of puzzlement and pain, accompanied by rubbing of toes, Harboth reluctantly accepted the arrangement. He tried walking his rounds across the gate but all he could do was limp. He looked very unhappy as Cwen donned the tabard of a castle guard.
Harboth carefully trod his one-footed way back down the track towards the sheep, which would be very relieved to see him.
Before he disappeared completely he turned and looked at Cwen. She expected some threat of retaliation or promise of retribution either by him or in company with an older brother or two.
‘You’re mean,’ he said.
Of all the comments, insults, threats and accusations Cwen had faced through the short years of her difficult life, of all the challenges she had overcome as a woman treading her own path and kicking others off it as the need arose, this sliced her in half and let the world in. An idiot boy, more sheep than shepherd, had put two words in her head that went all the way down to her toes.
She was mean? No she wasn’t. How dare he? She considered going after the hobbling Harboth to put him right, but told herself there were more important matters to be dealt with. Only this morning she had been a shepherd, now she was a guard. She probably didn’t have the authority to go and release Hermitage and Wat straight away but the least she could do was find out about these dead tradesmen. She was sure people would have to answer questions if they were put by a guard. A mean guard, a voice in her head whispered, but she told it to shut up.
Following Harboth’s directions, she wandered along the lane, trying to look as if she was behaving in a perfectly guard-like manner. She was sure she didn’t look mean. There was that word again.
The smithy was obvious; a large low building, more like a grand shed than a home, with all the usual accoutrements of the blacksmith’s trade laid out in front. A lean-to canopy yawned out from the front with a small furnace and anvil underneath, ready for any passing repairs, or horse work. Doubtless the inside of the place had the main body of equipment for the heavier jobs, dungeon doors for example.
What there was not, was any sign of activity at all. The place was locked up, cold and deserted, no fires bubbled and no hammers clanged. Cwen thought this only reasonable if the blacksmith was dead, but she thought there might have been something going on. Even a few wailing relatives to break the silence, but no. Perhaps they’d run away when their man was taken from them. After all, anyone who could kill a blacksmith against his will was probably a force to be reckoned with, blacksmiths generally being big, strong and with a large selection of dangerous weapons close at hand, many of them red hot.
She looked up and down the sun-baked lane and could see no other activity anywhere, it was as if the place had been cursed and left to its own devices. There was another building just a few paces away and she could see that this was the wheel shop. It was just as quiet and deserted as the smithy but it had a large cartwheel on display outside. Either that or someone had started dumping old cartwheels.
She approached the door of the smithy and gave it a good shake, just as a watchman might do, and found it securely shut. Strolling on to the home of the ex-wheelwright, she did the same, and that too was closed tight. Peering inside, through cracks in the planking of the building, she could see no sign of life and decided to go round the back of both buildings to find a way in. If there was no one to talk to she might find something that would be of interest to Hermitage and Wat.
Before embarking on this, Cwen went back up the lane to where she could see the castle gate. There was no Norbert demanding to know where his guard had gone so she returned to her explorations.
The rough ground to the rear of the workshops shed no more light than the front had done. Both were as quiet as their owners and there were certainly no murderers lurking in the
bushes. The wall of the wheel shop was as solid as befits a building occupied by a man who worked with wood.
The smithy was not so well maintained, and by the look of the planking Cwen thought she would be able to prise her way in. With a cautious glance all around she got her slim fingers between two poorly fitted slats of wood and heaved. One of them came off completely in her hand and the other fell onto the ground. Tutting at the poor workmanship, she levered more wood out of the way until there was a space big enough to get through.
Looking at the hole, she had second thoughts about climbing through. The inside was dark and the unnatural tang of metal work still hung in the air. At least if anyone followed her she’d hear them coming. They’d have to make a much bigger hole than the one Cwen could squeeze through.
Not really having any better ideas, and having come this far, she lifted one leg and placed it inside the smithy. The rest of her followed easily and she stood in the empty space of the blacksmith’s shop. It was pleasantly cooler in the shade than in the heat of the sun, but a lot cooler than a smithy ought to be. Floats of dust wandered in the air, illuminated by the sun as it shattered itself through various gaps in the walls.
‘Hello?’
It was clear there was no one here as the place was only one open space, but it didn’t seem polite to just start poking about.
The main forge sat off to her right in the middle of the floor, its tools and equipment stacked about it in good order. There was a large indentation in the ground where an anvil had plainly sat, and the fact it was missing would surely be of interest.
The smith’s accommodation was to the back of the room, behind a single large animal skin, hung from the ceiling.
Apart from the missing anvil there didn’t seem to be anything here to shout about at all. The place was perfectly normal, as normal as any other blacksmith’s shop she’d ever seen. The artisan lived at the back and the forge was in the middle of the room to reduce the risk of it burning the whole place down.
There was no movement, no life, not even any sign of a struggle, which she thought was bit odd. Anyone trying to murder a blacksmith would have a job on their hands and she thought it ought to leave a bit of a mess. Unless they sneaked in and stabbed the man in the back of course. But then Harboth had been quite excited when he talked about blood and death and everything. Surely something as straightforward as stab in the back in the dark wouldn’t generate so much interest.
She was getting nowhere; perhaps the wheelwright’s would have a bit more to show.
Before she climbed back out of the wall she thought she ought to look at the smith’s private space, just in case. Just in case of what, she had no idea. There was hardly likely to be a book lying about which went into all the details of a murder and worked out who did it. Hermitage was the one who knew all about books, but even she realised a book about murder was ridiculous. Who’d want to read a load of rubbish like that?
She half-heartedly threw the animal skin aside and saw nothing but the smith’s cot, raised above the floor to stop the mice joining the sleeper in the middle of the night, and a wooden chest, probably containing a few, meagre possessions.
There was a pair of boots at the end of the bed, thick smith’s boots which would protect against flying sparks and spots of hot metal. Strange that the man should have been murdered without his boots on. Perhaps he had second pair. Strange too that they weren’t standing on the floor as people usually left their shoes when they took them off, they were lying on their back, the soles pointing away from the cot.
She nodded her head down, just out of interest to see what sort of quality the boots were. Was this a well-to-do smith or a poor man?
She stopped breathing when she noticed that the boots had legs coming out of them. Legs that went up under the bed to join a body, which was stretched out on its back. Not another dead blacksmith surely? How many did one village need?
Very carefully, Cwen bent double until her head came low enough to see under the cot. If this was a dead blacksmith it might be in a pretty poor condition, which was never pleasant, although she realised there was no sign of the rich, penetrating smell that usually accompanied the dead.
From what she could see in the gloom, the figure was a large one, barely fitting under the cot at all. Feet stuck out the bottom and the bulk of the body was almost lifting the cot. This corpse might be stuck and the bed would have be taken away to get it out.
There was no sign of anything too gruesome so she risked getting down onto her knees to get a better look. Eyes adjusting to the darkness under the bed, she could see that the body was laid out flat on its back, the face was looking straight up, with the nose almost pressed on the underside of the cot.
She couldn’t see any cause of death, no knife sticking up but this really was getting bizarre. She began to see how Hermitage and Wat could get dragged into this sort of thing, particularly if there was a king nearby who wanted things cleared up. Mind you, if everywhere they went, dead bodies started turning up, wouldn’t someone start to get suspicious? Perhaps they weren’t solving the murders, but were going round causing them?
She brushed the ridiculous thought from her head, Le Pedvin had come to Derby, she was sure even monks couldn’t kill people from that far away.
She would have to go back to Hermitage and Wat and tell them what she’d found. At least this body seemed fresh so there was little chance they could be accused of the killing.
Before she got up and left, she risked giving the cadaver a poke, to make sure it was solid and not some trick of the light, or a pile of spare clothes stuffed under the bed in an odd way.
The body was solid enough and the stomach moved and rebounded at the pressure of her finger.
‘Don’t kill me,’ said the body under the bed, which was clearly not a dead blacksmith.
Caput XXII
Under the Bed
Cwen screamed. She didn’t do screams. She didn’t do giggles or flutter her eyelashes, but most definitely she did not do screams. Never. Not when boys tried to frighten her with spiders or frogs, not when the soldiers who ended up with broken toes grabbed hold of her. Not even when Wat had surprised her by jumping out from behind a door. He’d screamed soon afterwards, but she never did.
As she panted her breath back into her frame and the talking corpse extricated itself from the cot, she did think this was an occasion that warranted a scream if ever there was one. A scream was quite reasonable when a body under the bed in the dark smithy of a murdered blacksmith started talking. However, she could always make it clear that if the person under the bed ever told anyone she had screamed, she would arrange for him to become a real corpse.
‘And don’t you kill me,’ she said when the figure finally stood, although her words were more of an instruction than a plea.
‘I ain’t going to kill you, it’s you going to kill me.’ The large man sat down on the cot, which creaked under his weight, and Cwen appraised him quickly.
He had a harmless look about him, despite the fact he must be less than thirty years old, was pretty huge and looked strong with it. There was worry in his eyes, which big, strong young men who weren’t harmless seldom had. If this chap felt threatened by Cwen, who was probably less than half his size, he wasn’t likely to be any threat to her.
He also looked like he had been under the cot for about a week. His face was unshaven in the way of someone who usually shaved, and although he was large, he looked hungry. This gave Cwen even more confidence. Big, strong young men who hid under the bed for any reason were probably fairly safe. Cwen was pretty confident she could drive him back under there if the need arose.
‘Do I look like I could kill you, even if I wanted to?’ Cwen asked. Although the man was now sitting on the cot and she was standing, their eyes were on the same level.
‘You’re from the castle,’ the man pointed out, nodding at her tabard.
‘This thing?’ Cwen held out the ragged cloth, ‘just standing in for someo
ne. Anyway why would anyone from the castle want to kill you?’
‘Well it’s hardly likely to be someone who isn’t from the castle is it?’
‘Why would anyone at all want to kill you then?’
‘I don’t know, do I? And I don’t want to find out.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ said Cwen, ‘who are you exactly?’
‘Who are you?’ the man retorted, clearly in a very nervous state.
This gave Cwen a problem. She didn’t know whether to say who she was, or who she was supposed to be. This poor chap looked in no state to take in the complexities of Hermitage and Wat and Le Pedvin and Derby, although for some reason she felt he would be on their side, whichever one that was.
‘Caradoc,’ she said, ‘I’m just doing a bit of shepherding while I’m here. Come over from England looking for work.’
‘Oh yes?’ said the man, ‘come over from England is it?’ The way he expressed this made it sound as if “coming over from England” meant something else entirely, something not altogether very nice.
‘Yes,’ she replied, using the story she’d given the rest of the village, ‘to say the least, things in England are bit difficult now you lot are over there, so I thought why not come over here? There must be lots of space in Normandy now that England’s full of Normans.’
This camaraderie of the working man had gone down very well. It was only nobles who went round conquering one another, the plain working man just had to put up with it and make the best they could of whatever bad situation was thrust upon them. Or in them. A lot of tutting and coughing about bloody nobles, and how inconvenient their wars were had been key to getting Cwen accepted.
The man on the cot seemed to respond favourably to this as well. His face lightened slightly and his scowl at Cwen was a little less dark.
‘I was standing in for Harboth in the pasture but then we swapped jobs,’ Cwen went on, hoping that a local name might have some impact.
Hermitage, Wat and Some Murder or Other Page 21
