Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns

by Howard of Warwick

  ‘I’m glad you understand.’ The conversation didn’t seem to bother Aclan in the slightest.

  ‘What if we found it was one of the monks,’ Wat offered, ‘what with them paying rent and all?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Aclan, ‘exactly the point. That would never do at all. Good sources of pilgrims, a nice monastery.’

  ‘Or the nuns?’ said Wat, thinking who else he could offer up.

  ‘Abbess Mildburgh?’

  ‘That’s it. What if she turned out to be the killer?’

  ‘Well,’ said Aclan, in deep thought, ‘I don’t suppose that would be too bad.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She is an awful nuisance. And a ghastly woman.’ Aclan leaned forward and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘To be honest, I’d be glad to see the back of her.’

  Wat could not think of a thing to say.

  ‘Do you think you could find out that it was her?’ Aclan sounded very hopeful.

  ‘We’ll try to find out who it really was,’ said Wat, with some force.

  ‘Well, obviously, yes,’ Aclan winked, ‘but if it was her, that would be really helpful.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘Come to think of it, if I ever met anyone capable of taking the back of your head off it’s our abbess. You’ve seen her. Temper like a red hot horseshoe. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. Gilder tells her he’s not paying for her nunnery and off she goes. And off goes the important bit of his head.’

  Wat shook his head in disbelief. He had met some very dubious merchants in his time. In fact most of them were dubious in one way or another. Many of them were dubious in several ways at once and would have the skin off your back if there was a penny in it. They’d cheat a starving peasant, or trick a noble out of a fortune. They’d lie, steal, rob and smile while they were doing it, but he’d never come across anyone who wanted a nun taken out of the picture.

  He really didn’t want to take this conversation any further. ‘We’d heard that Gilder was about to send a message to you, the nuns and the monks, just before he died.’

  ‘Really?’ Aclan sounded genuinely surprised at this.

  ‘What could that be about?’

  Aclan shrugged. ‘Probably another rent rise. And tell the nuns to clear off and stop bothering him. Again. That would annoy the abbess no end.’

  Wat tried to put the blatant attempts to blame the abbess out of his mind. ‘So it would be to your advantage if the message never arrived?’

  Aclan didn’t pick up on the accusation. Perhaps he was imagining Mildburgh’s execution. ‘We’re always getting messages from Gilder, one more wouldn’t make much difference.’

  ‘All messages delivered by Hendig?’ A thought was occurring to Wat.

  ‘That’s right. Old man Gilder would never come out on his own. Someone would have killed him, ha ha.’ Aclan stopped laughing when he realised what he’d said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Just a figure of speech,’ the Ealdorman added, hurriedly.

  ‘Hm.’ Wat tried to look like he didn’t believe this.

  Aclan held his arms wide and thrust his stomach out. ‘Do I look like the sort of man to run around knocking people’s heads off? It’s as much as I can do to climb Gilder’s stairs to look at his body, never mind get up there and finish him off.’

  ‘Needn’t have been you personally,’ said Wat.

  ‘And the rest of the moot are no better. Look at us.’

  Wat did look and saw a bunch of men at various stages of aged decline, more than half of them now unconscious. ‘You could have paid someone to do it.’

  ‘In Shrewsbury?’ Aclan asked with some surprise. ‘Do you know how many hired killers there are in town?’

  ‘No.’ Wat had to admit it did sound a bit far-fetched.

  ‘None at all. It’s not that sort of place.’

  ‘Apart from your leading merchant being murdered in his bed and your nunnery being destroyed by the Danes.’

  ‘That was a hundred years ago,’ Aclan dismissed the nunnery. ‘Doesn’t stop the abbess going on about it all the time though. I don’t know why she can’t take it up with the Danes and stop bothering us. Mind you, if she’d been about when the Vikings turned up, they wouldn’t have dared.’ Aclan smiled at his own thought. ‘There’s an idea. Why don’t we send a boatload of nuns to pillage the Vikings? Get some of our money back.’

  ‘But you still gain from Gilder’s death,’ Wat ignored Aclan’s ramblings and pressed on.

  ‘So does everyone. The whole town hated him and is pleased he’s dead.’ Aclan eyed Wat confidently. ‘So now you’re not actually much further forward either, master Wat. Anyone could have done it.’

  Wat had to admit it was sounding like that. He still thought that the merchants of the moot had the most to gain though. Did that make them the most likely to kill? He gave this some thought and tried to work out what Hermitage would say. He thought what Hermitage would actually say would probably be nothing to do with the issue at all. He had to make his own mind up.

  Yes, he thought. If they had a lot to gain they were the most likely killers. All he had to do was find the person in the town with the most to gain of everyone and that would be that.

  ‘And with Gilder gone we need new blood in the town.’ Aclan broke his concentration. The Ealdorman was back on his favourite subject.

  ‘New blood?’ Wat asked, thinking that was a most unfortunate phrase.

  ‘You know what I mean. A merchant of the standing of Wat the weaver would be very good for trade.’

  ‘And you’d promise not to kill me?’

  ‘We didn’t kill Gilder,’ Aclan made the point very clear. ‘Yes, we’ve got him off our backs but there is one problem with him gone.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Protection of the town. It was always Gilder himself who saw off any bands of raiders or robbers who wanted to plunder the place.’

  ‘I thought you said he never went out.’

  ‘Not in recent years. He’d taken to having meetings in his house if ever someone turned up.’

  ‘And they just went away?’ Wat asked. There was something very suspicious about this.

  ‘They did.’

  ‘A band of robbers arrives at the gates, Gilder has words with them and they walk off?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘What did he say to them?’ This was only one more thing in this strange town that was turning out hard to believe.

  ‘No one knows, that’s the problem. Next bunch who turn up, there’ll be no one to deal with them.’

  ‘Maybe one of them came back and killed him,’ Wat suggested. That sounded like the sort of thing a band of robbers with nothing to rob would do.

  Aclan shrugged this suggestion away. ‘Haven’t seen any strangers for months. Been quiet as the grave.’

  Wat tried to get this in order. These people wanted Gilder for protection but wanted him dead so they could pay him less. Perhaps the man just asked for too much one day and someone had had enough. He was sure the moot would have the contacts and influence to find a killer if they wanted one. Or persuade someone sufficiently in their own debt to do the deed for them. There was a thought.

  He hadn’t really got much out of this encounter, apart from being quite comfortable with the conclusion that the moot could well have had something to do with the death. He had none of that “evidence” that Hermitage was always insisting upon, but if killers were self-serving individuals with a lot to gain from the death, then the moot was a hall full.

  ‘Mind you,’ said Aclan, ‘the protection problem may go away soon, so I hear.’

  ‘Oh yes?’

  Aclan took Wat by the elbow and steered him away from the rest of the moot, who couldn’t hear them anyway. ‘Have you heard of the Normans?’

  Wat controlled his response, ‘Er, yes, I think I’ve come across them.’

  ‘I hear very good things.’ Aclan nodded to himself.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh, y
es. Very organised, apparently. And they got rid of that awful King Harold and his family - throwing their weight around everywhere.’

  Wat struggled not to smile at the surprise Aclan was going to get when some real live Normans turned up. ‘So, when the Normans arrive here, they’ll keep the robbers away and let you get on with trade?’

  ‘Absolutely. Their King William sounds like a very good sort. And he’ll probably exert some control over that awful Edric.’

  ‘Edric?’

  ‘Edric Silvaticus. Has estates to the south. Terrible man. Almost as bad as Harold. Completely wild.’

  ‘No problem then,’ said Wat, with a barely concealed smirk, ‘William will put Edric and Gilder completely in the shade.’

  Caput XII

  A Very Friendly abbot

  ‘Why on earth do you want to go to Bromfield?’ the man on the town gate asked Hermitage.

  Hermitage thought that really wasn’t the point. He had asked for directions to the place. Surely it was a simple matter to say turn left or turn right. Why did this man need to know the reason for Hermitage’s visit?

  In any case, he could hardly say that he was going to talk to the monks of Bromfield about Gilder’s murder. What would he think? Did it matter what a man on the gate thought? Yes, of course it did. It mattered what everyone thought.

  Hermitage thought he might be over-thinking a simple request for directions.

  ‘I just want to know where it is,’ he said.

  ‘Well, of course you do,’ the man said, ‘if you want to go there.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Hermitage was always in danger of getting lost during normal conversation, but it didn’t usually happen this soon.

  ‘I’m just asking,’ the man leant against the gate and appeared to be looking forward to a discussion that was going to last all afternoon, ‘why you want to go there.’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Not really.’

  Hermitage now thought that perhaps he would go back into the town and wait until a new gateman came on duty.

  He could tell that he looked thoroughly confused. ‘Then why are you asking?’

  ‘Just interested.’

  Hermitage considered that very commendable, but perhaps a drawback in a gateman.

  ‘Not many people want to go there,’ the gateman explained.

  ‘Ah, I see.’ At least there might be a reason for the query. ‘Is it very far then?’

  ‘Certainly is. Long way from Shrewsbury and not quite Ludlow, as they say.’

  ‘Do they?’

  ‘Well, I do. Point is, there’s nothing there. Don’t know why anyone would want to go. It’s in the middle of nowhere, no one goes there. It’s on the way to lots of places which mean all folk ever do is leave.’

  ‘You know a lot about it.’

  ‘Ah, well. I was born there, see.’

  No, Hermitage would just have to give up completely. This was making no sense at all. ‘So you do know the way then? I want to speak to the abbot.’

  ‘The abbot? Of Bromfield?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ said Hermitage, wondering why he would be going to Bromfield to speak to a different abbot.

  ‘What you going to Bromfield for then?’

  Hermitage just gaped. He had run out of responses that made any sense to him, let alone anyone else.

  ‘You won’t find the abbot in Bromfield.’

  ‘Erm.’

  ‘The monks is in Bromfield but the abbot is here, in Shrewsbury. Has to be, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Of course. Gilder’s here, or was. The moot and all the important people are here. It’s where the business of the county goes on. Abboting isn’t just about sitting around in a monastery.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ This fellow seemed remarkably well informed on monastic life for a gatekeeper, despite the fact a monk was standing in front of him - which was a bit rude considering Hermitage would know a bit about it. Granted, his had been the monastery in De’Ath’s Dingle, which shouldn’t be used as an exemplar of anything, let alone a religious community, but it did have an abbot. Of sorts.[

  The details of which are in The Heretics of De’Ath – if you have the stomach for that sort of thing.]

  ‘Nah. Got to keep his ear to the ground. Watch what’s going on carefully, make sure his interests are promoted.’

  ‘I see,’ said Hermitage, not seeing anything at all. ‘And where, exactly in Shrewsbury will I find him?’

  ‘In the abbot’s house, of course,’ the man scoffed at Hermitage’s ignorance. He waved up the road in a very non-specific and unhelpful manner.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hermitage, bowing slightly and retreating from the gate.

  The comfort he had felt at being within walls was being rapidly replaced by an urge to climb over them and get away from this place and all the people in it.

  He wandered up the street from the gate once more, this time looking for something that might be an abbot’s house. The only abbots he had known lived in their monasteries so he had not the first clue what the distinguishing features of an abbot’s house might be. He hardly thought it would have a sign. Nor an abbot loitering outside.

  The abbot loitering outside a house halfway up the street hailed Hermitage with a hand and a welcoming cry.

  ‘Ah, brother, brother,’ this fellow called, ‘I heard of your comings and goings in the town. Welcome, welcome.’

  Hermitage saw what was undoubtedly a fellow in the service of God. He had trouble believing this man was an abbot though. A number of features gave him serious doubt and prompted what little caution he was capable of.

  For a start this abbot was smiling. Hermitage had never seen an abbot smile, unless he was about to do something horrible. Usually to a monk. On those occasions the smile was usually thin and rather alarming.

  This smile was broad and genuine and the rest of the man’s face joined in. And it was a jolly face. That was very worrying. Jolly faces did not attach themselves to abbots. All that worry about the sins of the world and the fate of mortal man caused them to have the most disagreeable countenances.

  This abbot couldn’t be worrying about sin very much at all. The rotund figure and smiling, round face looked like nothing so much as a landlord. One who consumed most of his own fare and who thoroughly enjoyed himself in the process. Hermitage’s abbots had been as wizened and skeletal as an abbot should be. The whole picture was confusing Hermitage no end.

  A tonsure of grey hair circled the edges of the abbot’s head and although the man was old, he was full of life. Hermitage was having trouble keeping the word abbot in his head as he looked at this figure.

  He now reached the door of the house to find the arms of the abbot held wide. He carefully stepped forward to find himself engulfed in an embrace which lifted him from his feet. He hadn’t appreciated how big this man was as he stood in his doorway. He was a good head taller than Hermitage and at least one and a half bodies wider.

  Released from the grasp he stood back and bowed his head. ‘Do I address the abbot of Bromfield?’

  ‘You do, my dear fellow, you do indeed.’ The abbot held his arms wide to demonstrate that this was the case. ‘I am Cuthbert and you are Brother Hermitage, I gather.’

  Hermitage didn’t know where he would have gathered that and looked puzzled.

  ‘Three new arrivals, one of them the great and enormously rude Wat the weaver and one a monk? And them all asking questions about the death of Gilder? Word of such a wonder spreads quickly my friend.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Hermitage, in a non-committal way.

  ‘Brother Hermitage,’ Cuthbert repeated, looking as if he had been given a great gift.

  Despite his normal experiences of abbots, Hermitage found himself softening to this man. He was like a fire of human spirit you could warm your soul at.

  ‘I am,’ Hermitage bowed again.

  ‘The Bishop of Lincoln mentioned you once, I believe.’

  ‘Oh dear,’
said Hermitage, only imagining what that mention had been.

  ‘Indeed,’ Cuthbert confirmed Hermitage’s fears, ‘said the most terrible things about you.’

  Hermitage felt the familiar dread start to drag his insides down.

  The abbot clapped his hands and beckoned Hermitage to enter the house. ‘Which must mean you are an exemplary fellow,’ Cuthbert beamed, ‘the Bishop of Lincoln being one of the most repulsive and sinful individuals to hide in an apple tree and drop serpents on people.’

  Hermitage was shocked. He’d never heard anyone talk about a bishop that way. Certainly not an abbot.

  The inside of the abbot’s house was as comfortable as its owner. Windows were thrown wide to let the summer breeze wander the corridors, and a freshly strawed floor, scattered with herbs brought inside the smells of the field.

  Cuthbert led Hermitage into the ground floor room where a simple table and benches occupied the bulk of the space. Arranged by the window were two more comfortable chairs and it was to these Hermitage was led.

  He perched demurely on the edge of his chair while the abbot descended on his like a horse falling off the back of its own cart.

  ‘Aha, that’s better. Now then. Frida!’ Cuthbert called loudly, ‘bring wine for my honoured guest.’

  ‘No, no,’ Hermitage protested.

  ‘And food.’

  Hermitage stopped protesting.

  A woman appeared at the entrance to the room. Hermitage turned to look at her and saw a shape which at least meant the abbot and she made two normal sized people between them. It was as if the substance of the woman had been used to bulk up the abbot.

  But she had smiling eyes as well. At least as old as the abbot, she tried to look at the man disapprovingly but was not doing it very well.

  ‘Wine?’ she cried, ‘at this time of day? And you an abbot?’

  ‘Yes, by the Lord,’ Cuthbert called back, ‘me an abbot and you bring the wine.’ He laughed deeply and sincerely.

  The woman looked to Hermitage, tutted and raised her eyebrows at what was clearly a hopeless case. She left to fetch the food and wine.

  ‘So, Brother Hermitage,’ Cuthbert named his guest once more, ‘the great Brother Hermitage.’