'Explain,’ Scarlan instructed. He didn’t know how much Hermitage loved explaining. Wat could have warned him.
'I have a companion who is still at the castle. He and I were staying at De’Ath’s Dingle.’
'Gods above,’ Scarlan interrupted, crossing himself. Even Sigurd looked a little shocked.
'It's not that bad really.’ Hermitage felt obliged to defend the place. 'Anyway, we'd dealt with the death of Brother Ambrosius, so when Mister Aethelred…'
'Traitor,’ spat Scarlan and Sigurd in unison.
Hermitage looked at them in disappointment. 'When mister Aethelred came calling, we were sent to Grosmal. You got me out, but Wat’s still there.’
'Casualty of war,’ Scarlan concluded.
'I can't leave him. He’d would be lost without me.’ Hermitage felt a little guilty at this untruth, but it served a greater good.
'And what does this Wat do? He's your servant?
'No, he's a weaver.’
'A weaver?’ Scarlan seemed very surprised. 'A weaver called Wat? Wat the weaver? The Wat the Weaver?’
'Well, I only know one weaver and he happens to be called Wat.’
'Bloody strange, Wat the Weaver hanging out with a monk,’ Sigurd seemed to think the pairing was absurd. 'If it is the Wat the Weaver.’
'He saved my life from brigands one day. We met again in Lincoln and sort of worked together ever since.’
'Have you seen any of his tapestries?’ Scarlan asked, very pointedly.
'Well, no, not actually. Although they seem to be very popular. Everywhere we go people have heard of Wat. Even mister Aethelred had heard of him.’
'I bet he had,’ Sigurd said in a very crude tone and winked at Scarlan.
'My abbot once had a tapestry that was rather shocking,’ Hermitage put in, feeling that he was being left out of something.
'If you've still got your eyes in your head, it probably wasn't one of Wat's.’
Sigurd was getting bored. 'What do we do then?’ he asked Scarlan.
The weaselly man thought for a moment, but it was only a short one.
'We can't leave Wat the Weaver to the Normans.’ He held his hand to his heart and spoke in the direction of the trees. 'They may take our land, they may take our people for slaves, they may leave our worth in the ruts of their carts, but they will never, never take our spirit. Wat the Weaver embodies that spirit, the spirit to express ourselves as Englishmen, to flick our fingers in the face of authority and to plough our own furrow. To weave tapestries of whatever we damn well like.’
'Yargh,’ Sigurd yelled, beating his chest.
Scarlan looked back from the trees to two men who were looking at him from the fireside. 'Gather the men, Sigurd. We're going on a rescue.’
Sigurd immediately strode off the camp shouting 'to arms,’ or something very similar. Hermitage looked at the encampment and waited for the rest of Scarlan's men to burst from the tents at the call. All that happened was that the two men by the fire picked up swords.
'Is that it?’ Hermitage asked, not really intending to speak out loud.
'Quality men,’ Scarlan responded, although he didn't sound too sure.
'Two?’ Hermitage's disbelief at the paucity of the band was clear. He quickly appraised the men by the fire. One was large, but looked awkward and he was not holding his sword quite properly. The other looked like he was trying not to hold his sword at all. As far as he could see, Sigurd was the only fighter among them.
'A rescue mission,’ roared Sigurd from the middle of the camp.
'Oh dear,’ mumbled Hermitage, but he smiled at Scarlan.
From his brief experience he knew that the Castle Grosmal was a disorganised, shambles of a place. He suspected that a half-decent, well planned and executed mission might well extricate Wat from Lord Robert’s clutches.
However, there were two problems. First, getting away from the Norman probably wouldn’t do much good as he would only come after them – or send some people with swords. Second, from his extremely brief experience of Scarlan’s band, he suspected they couldn’t organise the rescue of a maiden from the middle of an empty field – a field owned by the maiden who had planned the whole thing herself.
Caput XIII
Half past Eleven: Weaver to Saxon
'I hope you'll forgive me if I speak plainly,’ Wat said as he and Ethel walked back towards the retainer's chamber.
'What am I saying? I don't give a donkey's fart whether you forgive me or not. I don't know what you're up to, Aethelred, and I don't think I care. I don’t know if you really have given up completely and are happy to be this Norman no-brains’ lackey, or if you have some secret scheme going on. You could be poisoning his water for all I care. In fact if you are, I'll carry the jug. What I am not going to do is get either Hermitage or I dragged into this murder.
‘We're here to try and find out who did it. If I detect even the slightest hint that we are being sold out I will make sure the Norman believes you killed de Turold, interfered with his mother and pissed in his milk. And he seems stupid enough to believe anything.
‘For all I know you did kill de Turold. Perhaps it's part of the secret scheme. I wouldn't blame you for exacting revenge, but if you did do it we need to know. Perhaps we can work something out.’
Wat looked to the thin Saxon for some response. There was none.
'Or we will find out who did it by this evening, tell Grosmal and leave you to your fate.’
Wat stopped and folded his arms, staring hard at Ethel.
The Saxon stopped as well and looked at Wat. 'I'm sorry, did you say something?’
Wat contained the urge to slap the man in the face. Or pull a knife and stab him in the head. Both were tempting. 'You know bloody well I did. I know your sort, Ethel,’ Wat emphasised the Norman's derogatory name for his servant, 'but you're in no position to walk all over everyone around you any more. King Harold may have let you do what you want, but he's not king any more. As far as your wellbeing is concerned, I'm the king. Think on that.’
Ethel looked at Wat without an expression on his face. For a moment Wat thought he was going to walk away. Instead the Saxon gave the shrug of a man who is already dead. 'What do you suggest?’ he asked.
'That's better,’ Wat grinned. 'Come on man, we can run rings round this Norman idiot.’ He clapped Ethel hard on the shoulder.
The Saxon retainer looked at Wat as only a noble who has never been touched without invitation could look.
'Back to the garderobe,’ said Wat.
'Do we have to?’ said Ethel as if he'd been asked to go into a room that smelled of poo. 'You've already examined it at close range. From both ends.’
'That was before the Normans' crossbow turned up. We need to find Hermitage anyway – he's probably still examining the chamber.’
If Ethel could have turned his nose up any further he'd have smelt his own neck. 'Oh, very well,’ he said, 'this way.’ He walked off.
'I thought it was this way?’ Wat beckoned to the tower.
'Not if you want to go directly,’ Ethel replied in a tone that spoke highly of Wat's idiocy.
The weaver shrugged and followed Ethel. They went along a path, through a hole in a wall, down a short tunnel, out a hole in another wall and up a short flight of steps which looked more like mistakes in the stacking of the masonry. This led to another series of holes in walls, the last one of which opened outside the garderobe entrance.
Wat turned and gazed at the way they had come.
'The whole place is riddled with mistakes,’ Ethel explained, 'apart from the ones living in it, of course.’
'What is your game, Aethelred?’ Wat asked before they entered the garderobe. 'What are you up to?’
'Mister Wat.’
'Yes.’
'You say you know my type?’
'That's right.’
'The old order. The way things were?’
'Yes.’
'So there's absolutely no possibility o
f me revealing any personal details to a tradesman, is there?’
Wat couldn't stop himself grinning widely. 'I suppose not.’
'Let's just get on with whatever it is we're getting on with then, shall we?’
…
The room was occupied.
'Oh, I beg your pardon,’ Wat started, before realising the occupants were just two old hags trying to scrub the place clean.
The ghastly apparitions, wearing rags which put the function of the room to shame, had got some sort of ladder, or rather a pile of planks loosely bound together with twine. They were using this, and some sticks with even more hideous rags tied to the ends, to try and relieve the ceiling of its bowel problem.
As the explosion had forced a goodly quantity of the garderobe contents up through the seats, so the hags had to get it back down again. Not an easy task.
As the larger lumps of material fell from the roof the hags had started with shovels, which were still propped by the entrance. Now they had moved on to leather cloths, dipped every now and then into a bucket containing a liquid only slightly less revolting than the muck they were trying to clean away.
'What are you doing?’ Wat asked
'We're hollowing out this huge turd to make into a house,’ one of the hags responded, with creditable sarcasm.
Ethel stepped neatly forward and banged his knuckles on the back of the hag’s head until she lay down.
'Now,’ he said to the remaining hag.
'Cleaning the place up, sir,’ said the second hag, recognising authority when she saw it hitting someone. 'Lord Grosmal likes the place neat.’
Wat walked gingerly across the still stained floor toward the two privy seats, above the slightly larger holes in the chamber floor.
'I was right.’
‘Delighted to hear it,’ Ethel responded, without interest.
'Hermitage was feeling bad that he'd set light to all the evidence, but I said these holes weren't big enough for anyone to get through and I was right.’
'I'm sure you're very happy.’
'Which means,’ said Wat, trying to get the message across to Ethel that this was important, 'that no one went down there to shoot de Turold.’
'Ah,’ said Ethel, actually showing signs of interest. Very dim signs, but signs none the less.
'And no one went in through the bottom door. That hadn't been opened for years.’
'Very wise.’
'So how was de Turold shot?’
Ethel shrugged his shrug of resignation.
'Unless he was shot first and then put in the garderobe?’ Wat asked the very direct question of Ethel.
'In the arse? A remarkable shot.’
'Well, what do you suggest?’
'Perhaps it was a child?’
'A child?’ Wat was horrified at the suggestion. 'Someone sent a child down a garderobe with a sophisticated weapon to shoot a Norman up the back passage?’
'Sounds like a plan to me.’ Ethel seemed to think it was rather a clever one as well.
'Ridiculous.’
'Or a very thin person?’ Ethel offered.
'Like you,’ Wat observed.
'I think not,’ Ethel replied.
Wat accepted immediately that Ethel wouldn't have even contemplated going down the hole. No matter how much he hated the Normans.
'Hermitage said de Turold was sitting on this particular hole when he was shot,’ said Wat, closely examining the one closest to the door.
'He was,’ Ethel confirmed, ‘but what does that matter?’
'Don’t know, but it might be important.’
'It was definitely that one, sir,’ said the conscious hag, fawning shamelessly. But then she was mopping up a garderobe, so shame probably didn't trouble her much.
Peering into the hole, Wat could see into the chamber below again. The door below had still not been put back, partly to air out the smell and partly because no one in the castle could be persuaded to take on the job.
'Where is Hermitage?’ Wat asked as he peered all around below.
'Perhaps he's on his way up?’
'That's what I thought last time I was here, but there's still no sign of him. He wouldn't go wandering off on his own.’
Ethel sauntered over to the hole. 'I can see that it would have been easy to shoot him. All the killer would have to do would be to stand down there, wait for Henri to sit and then fire.’
'The child?’ Wat said, 'who would have to be lowered down through the hole and then wait?’ He tutted. 'I may know little about investigating and clues and evidence and such, but I do have a clue about shooting people. When was the Norman shot?’ he asked Ethel.
'We found him in the morning. Presumably it was some time during the night.’
Wat frowned in thought. 'Presumably the hags work all night?’
'Of course they do.’
'Eeeek,’ the hag squeaked, as hags do when grabbed. Wat reluctantly held on to the filthy rags and shook her a few times to make some words fall out.
'When did Henri de Turold get shot? Was it light or dark?’
'Dark,’ screeched the Hag. She followed the screech with a flutter of her eyelids at Wat. 'I was on the night clean and saw him wandering about.’ She giggled unpleasantly.
'What do you mean, “wandering about”?’
'Well he was walking to the garderobe, but his clothing was … unusual.’
'We know.’
'He didn't have any at all,’ the hag cackled. 'So I sent for Mabel here,’ she gestured at the still unconscious hag, 'and we both had a good look.’
'So – in the dark,’ said Wat, dropping the hag in her bucket of swill. 'How did they shoot him?’
'With the bow,’ said Ethel. He was losing interest again.
'If he was here at night, when it was dark, how did anyone down there see that there was anyone up here, let alone shoot him? Or do we have a child-archer-bat who can see in the dark and hit a target smaller than a dingleberry?’
'There’s the night candle which always burns here.’ The hag gestured towards the stub of stuff that lay on its side by the privy seat. 'Henri had a candle as well.’ She cut herself off quickly and instantly returning to her wiping. Then she stopped wiping as Wat had helped her to her feet by pulling her hair.
'How do you know?’ he enquired.
'We saw him carrying it,’ said the hag, 'and when we was bought in to clear up, we found it in the muck and stuff.’
'Where is it?’ said Ethel, in the tone of those who know wrongdoing when they hear it.
Delving into clothing which even the most parasitic, starving flea would avoid for fear of infection, the hag lifted her skirts, deliberately giving Wat a flash of her shapely legs. They were certainly shapely – just not leg-shaped. She retrieved the remains of the candle and presented it to Wat.
'Don’t break it,’ she said. 'We was going to give it back.’
Wat just frowned and held the candle in his hand. 'This thing weighs a ton,’ he commented. ‘What's it made of?’
'Oh, I don't think you want to know that,’ Ethel said with distaste.
Wat examined it. He could find nothing of worth in its appearance. The texture seemed a bit odd. It reminded him of something, but he felt that he didn't want to remember quite what. It seemed to have been cleaned of the poo in which it must have landed. Reluctantly, he put it to his nose.
It is said that one can never smell in a dream, but this was an age of serious smells. If you had smelt De'Ath's Dingle once, that cloying, persistent, evil and somehow impertinent odour stayed with you forever. It would follow you around everywhere, even into your sleeping hours.
The smell of the garderobe of the castle of Robert Grosmal, as has been indicated, was of a comparable presence, albeit of a somehow more natural origin. But the smell of a candle of the castle of Robert Grosmal could blunt arrows. Wat's head swam and he staggered back, dropping the candle into the outstretched hand of the hag.
'Good gods above,’ he said,
shaking his head to try and make the memory go away. It only responded to this taunting by settling in more deeply. He took a couple of deep breaths which he immediately regretted.
'Right,’ he panted, valiantly trying to get the world back in the right order. 'We know that Henri had a candle with him. If someone was in the garderobe, they would have been able to see the light of the night candle coming down through the privy seat, and when Henri arrived as well.’
'And perhaps,’ said Ethel, following the line of reasoning, as if the practice was new to him, 'as soon as Henri sat himself down the light would have gone out. Then they’d have known to shoot.’
Wat considered. He acted out standing in the garderobe with a bow pointing upwards. ‘We still need a child to do the job, but I can't see how else it was done. In any case it would have been difficult to see what you were aiming at.’
Wat turned to the hag. 'How big was Henri de Turold’s backside?’
'Ohh sir,’ said the hag. She assumed a greasy mock shyness.
'Was he a big fat Norman or a skinny weasel Norman?’ Wat asked, accurately describing the two most common types.
'Very slim was Lord Henri. Very nice cheeks…' The hag’s mind had wandered off into its own perversions.
'I think we need to try something out,’ said Wat. 'We need to go down there again.’ He gestured through the privy seats.
Wat was still rather pale from the bouquet of Robert’s candle and felt positively billious at this prospect. He was about to follow up with a very reasonable explanation for why his own suggestion should be ignored. Then Ethel intervened.
'Yes,’ he agreed, with an unlikely enthusiasm. 'If we can show that no one could have shot de Turold from below, it means he was killed first and then put there.’
'Which doesn't make finding the killer any easier,’ Wat observed.
'But it would mean we need to trace his earlier steps. Maybe we could find out that it was another Norman.’ Ethel seemed positively excited by this idea.
'That would be a good thing?’
'Of course – there have been enough Saxon deaths already.’
'But if it was a Saxon?’
The Garderobe of Death Page 12
