Hermitage, Wat and Some Murder or Other

by Howard of Warwick

  ‘No!’ Cwen took some unhealthy pleasure at this.

  ‘Yup,’ said Tancard, who didn’t seem upset by this outcome either, ‘I saw it.’

  ‘You saw him get his head chopped off?’ This did make Cwen’s stomach turn a bit.

  ‘No, but I saw the head afterwards, and it was definitely him.’

  ‘So who’s the new Bonneville?’

  ‘Oldest nephew, been brought up amongst the Bretons. Funny people, Bretons. Seem to spend most of their time eating and drinking and dancing and enjoying themselves. Not natural.’

  ‘So when he became lord he brought Breton ways with him.’

  ‘That’s it. If Poitron wasn’t about I reckon the whole place would fall apart. Apparently half the guard have been retrained as bakers,’ Tancard snorted at this.

  ‘Still,’ Cwen tried to see some reason in this, ‘I suppose with William as Duke there’s not much danger of attack.’

  ‘Ha,’ Tancard laughed at this stupid idea, ‘attack William? I’ve seen it tried, and I wouldn’t recommend it.’

  There was still no movement in the castle so they made their way across the courtyard towards the entrance of the log store. Cwen could see the grill against the wall, which led down to Hermitage and Wat, she just hoped they didn’t call out if they heard her voice.

  ‘Here we are then,’ said Cwen quietly, as they came to the door of the store.

  ‘Yes we are,’ Tancard agreed.

  ‘In we go,’ Cwen suggested, without going in.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Tancard, also not going in.

  ‘If you want to see the body,’ Cwen prompted the blacksmith to take the first step.

  ‘Which I do.’

  ‘Perhaps if we grab the door together?’ Cwen suggested.

  Tancard nodded and they got their hands behind the basic wooden door, which moved quite easily.

  The darkness inside the store seeped out over their feet and made it perfectly clear it was the sort of darkness that had dead bodies in it. Cautiously pointing their heads in the rough direction of the interior, they checked that nothing was going to jump out on them before venturing a forward toe. This was not bitten off and so they risked a foot.

  As cautiously as Duke William’s tooth surgeon, they ventured inside and peered about. Eyes adjusted to the darkness and there were exhalations of relief that ragged bodies weren’t hanging from the rafters, or strewn across the floor.

  More steps were taken and Cwen started to feel disappointed that the dead weren’t immediately obvious. It wasn’t that she wanted to see them, but after all the build-up she’d thought they might stand out a bit.

  ‘There’s no one here,’ she said, now half way down the store and looking to left at right at nothing but piles of wood.

  Tancard had not followed her from the safety of the daylight, but was at least looking a bit more relaxed.

  ‘Everyone said they was here,’ he said, ‘been going about nothing else.’

  ‘How do you know if you were under the bed?’ Cwen asked, immediately feeling bad about the comment.

  ‘Cos I listen to what’s going on,’ Tancard retorted, ‘I haven’t spent the whole time under the bed, only when someone comes near.’

  ‘Well,’ Cwen held her arms out to take in the whole log store, ‘if there are dead craftsmen in here, they’re doing a good job of hiding.’ She had an over-whelming urge to suggest they look for a bed to see if the deceased were hiding under that. Harboth’s accusation came back to her and she kept her peace.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Tancard said, his voice breaking slightly. He obviously had a weight of expectation they would find the dead blacksmith and everything would be explained. Then he could get back to simple smithying.

  ‘Maybe they’ve been moved?’ Cwen suggested. ‘Bodies lying around for a few days? I think I’d want them moved out of my log store.’

  Tancard was now wringing his hands and his face was drawn and pale. Cwen headed back to him and thought about laying a comforting hand on his shoulder. A genuine one this time, not the precursor to a solid stamp on the man’s foot. She realised she had no idea how that sort of thing was supposed to work and so simply smiled instead.

  ‘Come on, they’re bound to be here somewhere. You don’t get a whole village talking about dead blacksmiths if there aren’t any.’

  This seemed to cheer Tancard slightly but he gave a wistful look around the store, as if holding it responsible for letting him down.

  ‘What’s under the cover?’ Cwen asked, as she noticed the blanket to their left, which was covering something quite substantial.

  Tancard looked over and grunted, ‘It’ll be the axes and splitters. I made most of ‘em.’

  Cwen accepted this but then some comments the villagers had made, came back to her. ‘I thought the woodsmen were off chopping trees in some forest or other?’

  ‘In summer? Why would anyone chop trees in summer?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Everyone was saying it was mad, but Bonneville wanted it done apparently.’

  Tancard dismissed this with a snort. ‘I’ll show you.’ He stepped over, grabbed the edge of the cover and pulled it back smartly.

  ‘Ah,’ he said brightly, all spirits recovered, ‘here they are.’

  Cwen was not filled with such happy relief. There were so many reactions buzzing inside her that she froze. She wanted to scream again, but that was out of the question. She wanted to faint, be sick and run away all at the same time. Underneath it all she wished Wat was there. Her mouth opened but no words came out.

  ‘It’s a bit odd isn’t it,’ said Tancard, going up close and examining the bizarre structure of wheelwright and wheel, obviously without his stomach turning inside out.

  He squatted down next to the wheel and grabbed the hair of the body impaled inside it.

  Cwen’s stomach made its feelings about this quite clear.

  Tancard pulled the head up and examined the face. Letting the head loll back down, he moved over to the prostrate body next to it.

  He stood up quickly and put his hand to his mouth. ‘This is awful.’

  ‘What is?’ Cwen was grateful for Tancard’s exclamation as it jarred her back to her senses. Most of them still wanted her to get rid of her stomach contents, but she kept them in order. She was glad he was finding this as awful as she, and was glad the man’s time with Le Pedvin hadn’t hardened him too much. She risked a glance over to the body that wasn’t stuck in the middle of a wheel.

  ‘Do you know him then?’

  ‘No,’ said Tancard, dismissing the corpse, ‘but that’s my anvil.’

  ‘That’s your…?’ Cwen couldn’t follow why the anvil was more important than the two bodies.

  ‘I wondered where it had gone. I don’t like people mucking about with my tools,’ Tancard said fiercely.

  Cwen shook this foolishness from her head. ‘Do you know him?’ she repeated, ‘is he a blacksmith?’

  Tancard dragged his eyes away from the anvil and examined the body. ‘Hard to tell. Either he’s got no head or it’s under my anvil, but by the look of him he could be a smith. He’s got the burns of a not-very-good one.’

  ‘And the wheelwright?’

  ‘No idea,’ Tancard shrugged, ‘no way of telling if someone’s a wheelwright. All that fiddling about with wood, not real craft. Iron. Now there’s a material that needs a man of skill.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure that’s all very nice, but if we could argue about the relative merits of different trades another time? Perhaps when two of their representatives aren’t dead in a woodshed?’

  ‘Eh?’ Tancard came back to the matter in hand.

  ‘Is that the wheelwright?’ Cwen pressed.

  Tancard cast a glance at the wheel with the body in it, as if he saw them every day. ‘Might be a wheelwright but he’s not Cabourg’s.’

  Cwen looked from dead blacksmith to live one, from wheelwright to dead blacksmith and then round again. She had no idea how to get her t
houghts about this into any sensible order, let alone express them coherently.

  ‘What the hell is going on here?’ Was the best she could come up with, but it made her feel better. Her voice sounded a bit over excited, even to her, but she thought it was entitled in the circumstances.

  ‘Well, they’re dead,’ Tancard seemed to think it was pretty easy.

  ‘I know they’re dead, I can see they’re dead, but look at how they’re dead. Never mind who the hell they are.’ She shook her head in bewilderment, and tried to think of something that might take things forward. ‘Presumably, if you’ve been away for a while, another blacksmith might have moved in,’ she was happy with that as it made some real sense, ‘but what about the wheelwright? Where did he come from?’

  Tancard shrugged, ‘Could have replaced our own?’

  ‘Who went where?’ she held out her arms at the hopelessness of the situation.

  ‘Well, he was with me, wasn’t he?’

  Cwen’s face froze along with her voice. ‘He was where?’ she asked in the tone that usually made Hermitage and Wat take a step back.

  ‘With me,’ said Tancard as if it was obvious, ‘in England, doing wheelwrighting.’

  ‘With Le Pedvin.’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘And you didn’t think to mention this? The fact that you and the wheelwright from Cabourg were in England when you got news that the blacksmith and the wheelwright from Cabourg had been murdered?’

  ‘I didn’t hear ‘till I got back over the sea.’

  ‘No,’ Cwen said calmly and clearly, ‘you didn’t mention it to me when we were talking about the deaths. Was the wheelwright under the bed with you perhaps?’

  ‘No he wasn’t,’ Tancard picked up on Cwen’s accusation, ‘and I don’t know nothing about wheelwrights, they might get murdered all the time. Wouldn’t surprise me.’

  ‘Like this?’ Cwen nodded to the wheel and wheelwright assembly.

  Tancard’s shrug admitted that this was a bit out of the ordinary.

  ‘We need to talk to Hermitage,’ Cwen concluded.

  ‘Talk to a what?’

  ‘Not a what, a who, he’s a monk.’

  ‘Odd name for a monk.’

  ‘Never mind his name. He’s good with murders.’

  ‘I don’t think a monk will be able to help with this, a bit too late for a monk if you ask me.’

  ‘Ah but this is a special monk, he can work out who did things.’

  ‘Well best of luck to him. Where is this Hermitage?’

  ‘He’s erm, in a hole in the ground.’

  This didn’t seem to bother Tancard at all. ‘One of them eh? And where exactly is this hole? Back in England I suppose.’

  ‘Funny thing that,’ Cwen tried a smile, ‘it’s just outside here actually.’

  ‘Outside Cabourg, how come you know a monk just outside Cabourg if you’re from England?’ he paused for a moment. ‘Hang on, there aren’t any monks in holes outside Cabourg. I’d know if there were.’

  ‘No, erm, not just outside Cabourg, just outside the log store, in the castle courtyard.’

  ‘You brought him with you?’

  ‘Like I said, it’s all a bit complicated. If you just come with me, we can tell Hermitage what we’ve found and he can work things out.’

  ‘Why do I need to come?’ Tancard looked more wary about talking to monks in holes, than being in a log store with the dead.

  ‘Because he may need to ask you questions. Him or Wat.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, Wat, he’s a weaver.’

  ‘And he’s in the hole with the monk is he?’ Tancard’s attitude was now the one for people who thought the geese were talking to them, or who went round shouting at vegetables. ‘You’ve got a monk called Hermitage and a weaver called Wat who live in a hole you carry round with you?’

  ‘Very complicated. Just come with me.’

  Tancard looked at Cwen and seemed to acknowledge that he was stuck in a log store with someone who wanted to talk to the ground, but at least that person was a lot smaller than him.

  He threw the blanket back over the collected corpses of Cabourg, ‘Come on then.’ He gestured Cwen towards the door, anxious to get out of the enclosed space and its morbid contents.

  Giving him one of her standard looks, the one that made it quite clear he would be required to apologise when she was proved right, she left the logs.

  They closed the doors behind them and Cwen led over to the grill on the floor. Squatting on her haunches, and indicating that Tancard should do the same, she gave a cautious look round the courtyard to make sure they were not being observed.

  ‘Hermitage,’ she hissed towards the floor.

  Tancard gave a polite but pointed cough and looked at the hole in the ground with arms folded and a knowing look.

  ‘Wat?’ she called a bit louder. She realised they might have been taken away while she was exploring the world of the smithy. She smiled encouragingly at Tancard. He smiled back, but it was more sympathy than encouragement.

  ‘Cwen?’ Wat’s voice came loud and clear from the grill.

  Cwen smirked at Tancard, who gaped at the grill and turned worried eyes to Cwen.

  ‘Is Hermitage there?’ she asked.

  ‘Do you know I’m not sure,’ Wat replied in heavy tones, ‘I can check but I think he might have popped off to the tavern for the afternoon.’

  ‘Oh right,’ said Cwen, quite brightly, ‘we’ll come back tomorrow then shall we?’

  ‘Oh wait a minute,’ Wat responded, ‘silly me. He’s over by the stagnant pool having a bit of a worry. Shall I get him for you?’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  Cwen looked to Tancard and raised her eyebrows, acknowledging Wat’s poor attempt at levity.

  Tancard was looking at her, but it was the look of someone who was about to run away. She held up a calming hand, indicating it would all be all right if he could just wait for a moment. He didn’t look the waiting type.

  ‘Cwen?’ It was Hermitage’s voice now, she momentarily thought of making some clever reply about it not being Cwen at all, but she knew Hermitage would believe her. ‘Yes, it’s Cwen. And I’ve got the blacksmith with me.’

  ‘The dead one?’ Hermitage asked with some surprise.

  ‘No,’ she piled enthusiastic discovery into her voice and gabbled her news, ‘I’ve found a living one. The living one of Cabourg. He’s been away and has just come back to find some dead blacksmith in his place. Not only that, but the wheelwright, the dead one, isn’t the wheelwright of Cabourg either. We’ve just been to the log store to look at the nice neat gathering of ex-craftsmen, and the blacksmith, the alive one, doesn’t know him, the wheelwright that is. He and the blacksmith have been off together and you’ll never guess where. With Le Pedvin in England. Le Pedvin. The wretched man who sent us here in the first place and who knew there had been murders. Well, he said he didn’t but obviously he did. It all fits.’ She paused. ‘I’m not sure how it fits but I reckon you’ll figure it out.’

  There was no response from the grill.

  ‘Hermitage?’ she called, ‘are you still there.’

  ‘Hm?’ said the thoughtful voice of Hermitage.

  Cwen knew what he would be doing now; staring into the distance, oblivious of everything going on around him. People could talk to him, offer him food, jump up and down or tear their hair out and he wouldn’t notice. He’d eventually emerge from wherever it was he went and look with surprise at the people gathered round him, wondering where they’d come from.

  ‘Is he off?’ she asked Wat.

  ‘Yup,’ Wat replied, ‘he’s gone inside his own head again.’

  ‘We just have to wait,’ Cwen said to Tancard with a smile.

  Tancard’s look said if he had to wait, he would rather do it somewhere else altogether. Far away from Cwen being the preferred choice.

  They squatted together in silence for a while, exchanging the looks people do when they
have nothing to say and nowhere to go, but their eyes unavoidably meet every now and again. The wait was starting to get uncomfortable, physically and personally.

  ‘He’s back,’ Wat called from the grill.

  ‘Hermitage?’ Cwen asked.

  The monk’s voice floated from dungeon to courtyard, full of more contentment than a monk in dungeon is normally entitled to.

  ‘I know who did it.’

  Caput XXIV

  The Boy’s a Girl

  ‘We have to speak to Lord Bonneville,’ Hermitage instructed Wat, as if this was only a matter of making an appointment.

  ‘Bit tricky that. If I banged your head against the door until you died, no one would come. In fact I think our host would be grateful if I did.’

  Hermitage thought this an unnecessary way of explaining a simple problem, but he supposed the circumstances were unusual. ‘But if we call out that we know the murderer?’ He couldn’t understand why people didn’t want to know the truth. All people, everywhere, all the time. Surely dungeon keepers would be no different?

  ‘There’s probably a good chance of someone coming in and making us the next victims.’

  ‘No,’ said Hermitage in shock, ‘surely not.’

  ‘Hermitage, how long have you been around murderers and liars?’

  ‘Too long I think.’

  ‘And you still think they’re going to behave decently?’

  Hermitage gave this some thought. ‘I just think that if they understood more, they’d see the error of their ways.’

  ‘Understood more? You think if they have everything explained to them they’ll say “Oh yes, you’re quite right, I see it now, I shouldn’t have been a murderer at all, thank you very much and I’m very sorry.”’

  ‘Well,’ Hermitage had to admit that even when killers were exposed and everything was explained, the wretched people weren’t inclined to improve their behaviour.

  ‘We have been put in this dungeon to die,’ Wat explained, ‘by people who would kill us by any other means, given half a chance. What we do not do is call out that we know the killer.’

  ‘Well what then?’ Hermitage asked, reluctantly accepting that Wat was probably right in this regard. He had to trust his friend when it came to dealing with normal people.