At the stronghold of the wandering nuns of Wenlock, Cwen’s demand to be taken to Hild was studiously ignored until she brandished her findings from Gilder’s privy.
The nuns on guard at the door stepped smartly out of the way and sent word that Hild had visitors.
Balor was to keep an eye out for any forthcoming executions and Hendig and Eggar had said they had no desire to talk to Hild. After all, they pointed out, they lived in Shrewsbury and had to put up with her and Mildburgh every day.
‘I’m sure she hasn’t moved an inch,’ Cwen whispered to Hermitage once they were in the plain chamber where Hild still sat.
‘Ah,’ said Hild, ‘it is the impudent child again.’
‘It certainly is,’ said Cwen.
‘Why are you here? Sister Mildburgh is at the moot hall.’
‘We know.’
‘Dealing with that awful weaver.’
‘We know that too. And that’s exactly why we want to talk about your nunnery.’
Hild waved a dismissive hand. ‘That is no concern of yours.’
‘But I say it is.’ Cwen sounded confident. ‘Because it’s the reason Mildburgh is trying to deal with Wat. You were going to support Mildburgh in the rebuilding.’
Hild didn’t answer, but then it hadn’t really been a question.
‘Gilder was supposed to pay, although no one else believed that, and you were going to what? Pay for a chapel or something?’
Hild stared at Cwen as if unable to understand why this young woman had the temerity to even speak to her.
Hermitage had a moment of revelation. All of those thoughts that had lodged themselves in his head since their arrival in Shrewsbury had finally started talking to one another. One of the pieces of information from over there had bumped into a fact that was passing by and the two of them got chatting. ‘You own the land,’ he announced, as sure of it as of anything. ‘Inherited from your husband.’
Hild at least gave an almost imperceptible nod in Hermitage’s direction.
‘Aha,’ said Cwen. ‘So you provide the land and Gilder provides the money.’
Hild kept her peace.
‘Except, of course, why on earth would he do that? Why would the meanest man in town spend anything on a nunnery?’
Cwen waited for a reply, but there was none.
‘Unless, of course, Mildburgh had invented it all in her head. Or she thought she could force his hand. She convinced herself Gilder would pay, even though everyone else, Gilder included, knew that he wouldn’t.’
Again, Hild’s silence was profound.
‘And then we found this,’ Cwen held up her find.
Hild peered and squinted at the object, so Cwen took it closer until the old woman could clearly see it. Cwen was gratified to hear Hild gasp. Not the gasp of a normal person, but for Hild it was a positive outburst.
‘Where did you get that, girl?’ Hild demanded, waving in the direction of the object Cwen was holding up.
‘Gilder’s house,’ Cwen replied, ‘hidden in the privy. Explains quite a lot, wouldn’t you say?’
Hild simply held out a hand and beckoned that Cwen should hand it over.
‘Oh, no,’ Cwen retreated a step. ‘I’m not letting this out of my sight. I was just interested to see if you knew about it. It seems that you didn’t.’
‘I’ve said no such thing,’ Hild was haughty.
‘You didn’t have to,’ Cwen smiled, ‘your reaction was enough. It’s all I needed to know. I think the moot will be most interested.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ Hild challenged.
‘The same moot who are trying to execute my friend Wat the weaver? Of course I would.’
Hild gazed upon Cwen and Hermitage like a cat trying to choose between two mice.
Hermitage suddenly felt his old familiar sinking feeling come back.
Hild made a small gesture with one hand and the entrance to the room darkened.
Hermitage turned and saw two nuns had arrived and stood blocking the door. They blocked it very effectively because they were each as large as Cwen and Hermitage put together.
‘Erm,’ Hermitage began, wondering whether to ask Hild, the nuns or Cwen for an explanation.
‘These two will not be leaving,’ Hild said to the sisters in the doorway. ‘And the slip of a girl has something we need.’
The larger of the two nuns - Hermitage being surprised to notice that one of these huge women really was bigger than the other - stepped forward and towered over Cwen.
The young weaver looked perfectly ready to engage this nun-mountain but strong arms enveloped her and simply lifted her from the ground. The other stepped forward and took the article from Cwen’s helpless hand. Although she did get a hearty kick on her shins for her trouble.
‘You can’t do this,’ Cwen struggled and protested.
Hild looked around the room. ‘It seems I just have.’
‘Actually,’ Hermitage put a thoughtful finger up, ‘I don’t think that’s your property.’
‘It certainly isn’t yours, monk,’ Hild spat. ‘I have no argument with you. You may go if you wish.’
Hermitage checked his surroundings and knew that he would have no chance of rescuing Cwen from this situation on his own. He also knew that he had no chance of winning any sort of conflict with any of these women. He might be able to deal Hild a low blow in a fair fight, but that was about it.
‘I shall stay with Cwen,’ he stepped forward to demonstrate his commitment.
‘As you wish,’ said Hild, and she beckoned the nuns to take them both away.
‘I think when sister Mildburgh comes back from the execution she will take great pleasure in having this back in her possession.’ Hild waved the object in triumph.
. . .
‘Hermitage,’ Cwen’s hiss was full of anger and outrage. ‘We have been captured by nuns.’
‘So it seems.’
‘Nuns, Hermitage. No one gets captured by nuns.’
‘They are very big nuns,’ he pointed out.
‘Their size is not the point. How embarrassing is this?’ Cwen breathed deeply and paced up and down the simple room they had been put in. There was no lock on the door but there was a very large nun outside. Hermitage began to wonder where they were all coming from.
‘What happened to you? Wat will say,’ Cwen was still going. ‘Oh, you know, we got captured while we were trying to rescue you. Gosh, that sounds brave and daring. Who captured you? Who? Oh, just some nuns.’
She glared at Hermitage who thought it advisable to tut a bit.
‘Nuns do not capture people,’ she insisted.
‘We could be the first,’ said Hermitage, with enthusiasm for breaking new ground.
This did not go down well with Cwen. ‘I refuse to be captured by nuns.’ Her face screwed up in thought. ‘How long does it have to be for a capture to count?’
‘Beg pardon?’ Hermitage thought that events might have taken more of a toll on Cwen than he realised.
‘You know. How long is it before you have to say you were captured? When does a bit of a delay become a capture?’
‘Erm,’ Hermitage said, helpfully.
‘Or detained?’ Cwen added. ‘When does being detained turn into being captured?’
Hermitage thought he got it now. ‘I’m not sure there are any specific definitions.’
‘Because being detained or delayed by some nuns would be fine. Captured is another matter altogether. Anyone could be delayed by some nuns. Even one. If there was a sick or injured nun by the side of the road, there would be a delay.’
‘Of course,’ said Hermitage, nodding and hoping Cwen wasn’t going to do anything rash.
‘An hour can’t count, surely. Being here for an hour would only count as an inconvenience. ‘If we’re out after an hour, we’ve only been inconvenienced by a nun.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Hermitage. Placating Cwen seemed best just at the moment. And most other times, come to think of it.
‘And even half a day. That’d only be a delay. You could be delayed by half a day for any number of reasons. A bridge falling down could delay you by half a day. No one would say you’d been captured by the bridge, would they?’ She nodded her own agreement at this. ‘And there might even be a nun trapped under the bridge. There you are.’
This really seemed to be important to Cwen for some reason or other. Hermitage’s experiences with his fellow monks had given him no reason to think nuns would be any better. Being captured was the least of it.
‘Detained,’ Cwen came to a conclusion, ‘we’ve been detained.’
‘Have we?’
‘Absolutely. I’m sorry we couldn’t make it on time, I got detained by a broken cart.’
‘Aha,’ said Hermitage, trying to sound as if everything was fine.
‘You can even be detained overnight. Any longer than that though...’ the thought trailed off.
‘I don’t think we can afford overnight,’ said Hermitage. ‘We don’t know how quickly they’ll want to deal with Wat.’
‘And we need what came out of Gilder’s privy.’
‘Do we?’
‘Of course we do. We’ve got to take it to the moot to show what’s been going on and get them to release Wat.’
‘But the nuns have got it now. Well, Hild has.’
‘That won’t do either. We can’t have nuns capturing us or taking things.’
‘What do you suggest?’ Hermitage asked, still not clear what the specific problem with nuns was.
Cwen gave it a moment’s thought. Just the one moment. ‘Attack.’
‘Attack?’ said Hermitage, with some alarm.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Attack nuns?’ Hermitage thought that if being captured by nuns was bad, surely attacking them was even worse. Anyway, there was no question of him attacking anyone. Cwen, on the other hand.
‘Not nuns,’ said Cwen, ‘just the one.’
Cwen leaped forward, threw the door open and attacked the nun on the other side.
By the time Hermitage registered that Cwen was attacking the nun at the door, she had finished. The nun lay prostrate and Cwen, who was about two thirds the size of their guard, was standing over her in triumph. In Cwen’s hands the element of surprise became an element of utter shock.
‘Cwen!’ Hermitage managed to exclaim, far too late to help the nun.
‘There we are,’ said Cwen, ‘not captured by nuns anymore. Come on.’ She beckoned Hermitage to step over the unconscious nun, which he did with care. He couldn’t immediately bring to mind what the appropriate blessing would be for a nun in these circumstances, but he did pause to note that she was still breathing.
He added this to the list of things he was going to have to talk to Cwen about when they had the time. They were going to need quite a lot of time.
‘Now,’ said Cwen, ‘where is Hild likely to hide our property?’
Hermitage wanted to point out that it wasn’t actually their property but he had bigger things to worry about. They had just attacked a nun and were about to steal something which might prevent Wat being executed for a murder he didn’t commit.
He was going to need quite a bit of that time just to himself to try and work out how any of this had come to pass. Shrewsbury had seemed such a nice place.
‘About her person, probably,’ said Cwen.
‘What about her person?’
‘She’d probably hide our property about her person.’
‘Would she? Not a strong box or the like?’
‘Hm.’ Cwen frowned. It sounded as if she’d been looking forward to taking something from Hild’s person.
‘What about the other nuns?’ Hermitage asked. Knocking a single nun to the ground was one thing, well, it was for Cwen, but what if there was a bunch of them. He struggled for a moment to think of the collective noun for nuns. An order. Of course. It was an order of nuns. As he considered that, he knew that knocking a whole order of nuns to the ground was completely out of the question. Unless perhaps you had an order of monks at your back. No, he was getting carried away.
‘I think we need to be discreet,’ he said in a low voice.
‘Why?’ said Cwen, not in a quiet voice.
‘Because I don’t think even you will be able to deal with a whole order of nuns when they decide they want you detained again. Small nuns would be difficult, normal size ones a problem, but these?’
‘Hm.’ Cwen could obviously see the sense of that. ‘So we sneak around, find Hild’s strong box and make off.’
Hermitage really did not want to agree with that as a plan. It sounded little better than laying waste to a whole order of nuns, but perhaps it was the least-worst option.
Carefully moving away from the room of their detention, they found themselves in a short corridor. One direction felt like it was back towards Hild’s chamber, the other became lighter as it headed for the outside of the building.
Hermitage liked the thought of outside.
There were no other nuns in sight, thank goodness. Doubtless these people thought that one large nun would be enough to keep Cwen and Hermitage under control. But of course they’d never met Cwen.
‘Come on then,’ Cwen whispered as she headed off away from the light.
Hermitage tiptoed along behind her, imagining that if a nun did jump out at them, Cwen would probably be best to deal with it.
There was no sign of anyone, which puzzled him.
As they came to the end of the corridor they were indeed back at Hild’s chamber. But even this was deserted. The quiet was a commanding presence in the room.
Very faintly, from some distance, Hermitage thought he could hear voices. They were rhythmic and coordinated and it had a very familiar cadence to his ears. The nuns must be at prayer.
He laid a hand on Cwen’s arm. She turned a demanding face, ‘What is it?’
‘The nuns are at prayer,’ he explained.
‘Excellent,’ she nodded and stepped on.
Hermitage laid the arm again. ‘We can’t rob them while they’re at prayer.’ Surely that was obvious.
Not to Cwen, it seemed. ‘Are you mad?’ she whispered her shout. ‘That’s the very best time.’
‘But, but-’
‘If they’re busy praying we can get in and out without being noticed.’
‘But they are at prayer.’ What was it about this that Cwen didn’t understand?
‘I know. You said.’
‘You can’t rob anyone when they’re at prayer. Let alone nuns. It’s the most awful sin.’
‘And these nuns are not sinners at all,’ Cwen asked, ‘the ones who detained us and want to execute Wat?’
That was a good point, but was robbing a sinner any less of a sin? It was bad enough that Hermitage was not at prayer himself. It was clearly the time for one of the orders of the day and he had missed it.
‘Anyway,’ Cwen went on, ‘Hild isn’t even a nun. She doesn’t count.’
Oh dear, this was going to take a lot of thinking about.
‘And the big nun who was holding us? She wasn’t praying.’
‘She’d probably been excused.’
‘Excused to detain people, one of them a monk. Sounds pretty sinful in its own right if you ask me.’
In another place, at another time, Hermitage would have been happy to explore this proposition. Sneaking through a house while an order of giant nuns was at prayer, on a mission of theft, was not the right time at all. Cwen seemed content that the argument was won, and stepped on into Hild’s chamber.
They surveyed the room and could not immediately see any strong box or hiding place that could conceal the privy scroll, as Hermitage now thought of it. The place was as stark and cold as Hild’s face.
One chair occupied the large space, the hard, wooden prop for Hild’s discomfort. Even this was so simple it could not conceal anything.
Cwen prowled the perimeter of the room looking at floor, walls and ceiling to see if anything was tucked away.
‘Nothing,’ she hissed. ‘Maybe the nuns have got it with them.’
That was that then. There was absolutely no question of going into a chapel full of these nuns at prayer and searching them.
The look on Cwen’s face said she was just working out how to do exactly that.
They turned and headed back to the room’s entrance, only to come to an abrupt halt as the figure of Hild blocked their path.
The look on the woman’s face was a mixture of shock and alarm laid upon a foundation of disgust. Disgust probably being the foundation for all her facial expressions. And most of her life.
‘What are you doing?’ she said, slowly and deliberately.
‘Ah, good,’ said Cwen, ‘it’s you.’ Which worried Hermitage quite a lot.
‘We want the scroll,’ Cwen went on.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Hild dismissed the question. ‘I shall get some of the sisters to escort you back to your waiting room.’
‘Waiting,’ said Hermitage, ‘there we are, we were waiting for some nuns.’
‘Shut up, Hermitage,’ said Cwen, quite unreasonably. ‘We can’t leave,’ she said to Hild, with a very alarming tone in her voice and a menace in her step as she advanced. ‘Not until I’ve searched you.’
Hermitage didn’t know if it was the desired effect, but he saw that Hild had suddenly started to look very worried and was stepping slowly backwards.