‘You wouldn’t believe where she was hiding it,’ said Cwen, waving the rolled up scroll with a positively distasteful smile on her face.
‘I can imagine,’ Hermitage said. He couldn’t imagine at all but he just hoped he wasn’t going to be given a description.
They were now back on the streets and heading for the moot hall, none of the nuns at prayer having noticed their departure. Poor Hild had been left in such a distressed state she hadn’t even been able to shout for help. She had whimpered a bit, but not loud enough to summon any nuns.
It crossed Hermitage’s mind to wonder what the nuns would do when they finished prayer. Perhaps they would come after them in force when they found an unconscious nun and the distraught Hild.
He was still reeling from the memory of what had just happened in the hall. And what he had been forced to witness. It had started in a fairly routine manner, much in the way a town guard searches a suspected thief. It had soon moved beyond that. Way beyond. Hermitage had had to look away as Cwen explored Hild’s person in a manner he hadn’t thought was possible.
When things really started to get out of hand, Hermitage ran for the door and could only stand on the threshold, his back turned, and listen. Even that had been shocking enough.
‘At least we’ve got this,’ Cwen brandished the scroll.
Hermitage wondered if the means justified the ends. He was really going to have to start writing down all these fundamental questions that kept cropping up. There was no way he could remember them all. He’d have a whole page just for Cwen.
‘And now we go to Mildburgh and the moot?’ Hermitage asked, hoping to move quickly on from recent events.
‘We do,’ said Cwen. ‘It’s clear that Hild hadn’t seen this before,’ she waved the scroll again. ‘So now we confront Mildburgh with it.’
‘Do you think we should?’
Cwen looked at him. ‘Why not?’ she asked, unable to understand the question.
‘Because it is rather, erm, awkward? I’m sure Mildburgh and Gilder did not intend this to come out.’
‘I’m sure they didn’t as well. We don’t all get what we want though, do we?’
‘I suppose not,’ said Hermitage, who had very seldom got what he wanted.
‘And this is the same Mildburgh who wants Wat executed.’
‘But the story of the coin will stop that.’
‘And this will stop Mildburgh,’ said Cwen stroking the scroll in a rather lascivious manner.
Hermitage now knew that he wanted to be beyond the walls of Shrewsbury more than he had wanted to come inside them in the first place. It would almost be a relief to be back in the presence of King William and Le Pedvin. Almost. At least you knew where you stood with those two. They were consistent. Consistently awful and appalling but they were honest about it. They didn’t try to tell you they were your friends and helpmates before they burned you to the ground. They would probably tell you exactly what they were going to do. And then they did it.
Was explicit sin better than deceitful sin then? That would have to go in the book.
. . .
There was activity at the moot hall when they arrived. The Sheriff of Shrewsbury was trying to get in.
‘They won’t let me in,’ the sheriff exclaimed in rather slurred outrage as he wavered in front of two of the hall’s servants.
‘I see,’ said Hermitage, perfectly understanding why the sheriff wouldn’t be let in anywhere, let alone a place that had just been cleaned up.
‘First they throw me out,’ the man complained, ‘now they won’t let me in. Do they know who I am?’
‘I think they know exactly who you are,’ said Cwen, turning her nose up at the state of the sheriff, ‘and that’s why they don’t want you.’
‘Ish not right,’ the sheriff pointed a finger at Cwen, or rather waved it in her general direction. ‘They can’t execute anyone without the sheriff. It’s my job.’
‘They’re going to execute Wat?’ Hermitage cried out in alarm. All this chasing after Hild had taken too long. He should never have listened to Cwen.
‘So they say,’ the sheriff wobbled some more. ‘They’ve sent for Oswine and everything.’ He thumped himself on the chest. ‘I’m the one who’s supposed to send for Oswine. They’ve got no authrori, othori, thothrori. They’ve got no right.’
‘I’m sure,’ said Hermitage, ‘but they haven’t actually started the execution yet?’
‘Nah.’
Hermitage breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Oswine won’t do it without my say so. You see if I’m right.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘People being executed in Shrewsbury? I’m the last thing they see.’
‘Must be very satisfying.’ Cwen brushed past the sheriff and made to enter the building.
The servants on the door, the ones who had successfully prevented the sheriff of Shrewsbury entering his own moot hall took one look at Cwen and stepped smartly aside.
‘Come on, Hermitage,’ she beckoned.
‘You tell them to let me in,’ the sheriff called after them.
Back in the hall once more, things had not changed a great deal. There did seem to be quite a gathering though. And of people who were at least awake, even if there was no guarantee they were sober.
Aclan sat at the head of the table with Cuthbert by his side and Mildburgh standing opposite. They were engaged in a heated, if quiet, discussion but it was clear that once again the two men did not agree with the nun.
‘Bring up the prisoner,’ Mildburgh called across the room. She noticed Hermitage and Cwen and gave them a very profound frown.
‘Do you mind,’ Aclan stood and tried to look like he was in charge.
Mildburgh gave him a cursory nod.
‘Bring up the prisoner,’ Aclan called, and a servant disappeared, presumably to do just that.
‘Shouldn’t we tell them?’ Hermitage asked, fretting that with every passing minute, Wat got closer to death.
‘When Wat’s here,’ Cwen replied. ‘Three things are important in a situation like this.’
Hermitage wondered how many situations like this she’d been in.
‘One, show the people in charge that they are wrong. Two, show everyone else that you’ve showed the people in the charge that they are wrong. Three, rub it in for as long as you can get away with. The more witnesses there are, the better.’
It all sounded unnecessarily rude to Hermitage. Surely better to have a quiet word and let everyone get on with their business without any fuss. Apart from the executing bit, of course.
There was a clatter at the back of the hall and the servant re-appeared being escorted by Wat.
‘Here we are then,’ the weaver called out. ‘He had a bit of a trip on the stairs. I must say he seems to be getting on a bit for someone being sent to fetch prisoners. Haven’t you got anyone younger?’
‘Wat,’ Hermitage called as Aclan and Mildburgh fumed quietly.
‘Ah, Hermitage,’ said Wat, ‘I knew you’d be here. Just in time, as usual.’ Wat gave the whole room a beaming smile.
‘I think you had better start to take this seriously, master Wat,’ said Mildburgh, the word “master” in her mind clearly being something pretty insulting. She gestured to the chair in the middle of the room which had obviously been put there especially for Wat.
He sat, got comfortable and crossed his legs as if he was about to be entertained by jesters. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said, ‘there are so many reasons to be optimistic.’
‘On the day of your execution?’ the nun growled.
‘Let’s not get carried away. First of all, you know in your hearts that I didn’t do it. Secondly, I’m not sure I’d trust this town to even execute someone properly. And thirdly, Hermitage and Cwen are here to save me.’
‘Is that right?’ Mildburgh obviously did not believe it was right.
‘Yes,’ Cwen spoke up, confidently, ‘that’s right. Come to stop the execution. Show that Gilder was not killed by Wat, and that there was a whole mountain of other stuff going on that no one knew about. All of which, I’m sorry to say, shows the great and good of the town in a very bad light.’ She sounded very assured and condescending.
Mildburgh waved her away.
Aclan looked confused and turned from Mildburgh to Cuthbert.
‘Perhaps our young monk has something to add to the matter?’ the Father invited Hermitage to speak.
‘Aha, well, yes. I do actually.’ Hermitage hadn’t expected to be called upon quite so quickly, so he hadn’t got his thoughts in order. They would just have to sort themselves out as he went along.
‘We have been to Gilder’s house,’ he announced.
‘We’ve all been to Gilder’s house,’ Aclan replied.
‘To his privy,’ Hermitage added.
A mutter of disgust rumbled round the room.
‘That doesn’t sound very good,’ said the Ealdorman. ‘I don’t think you should be going to other people’s houses and using their privies. Doesn’t sound decent at all.’
‘No, no,’ said Hermitage, ‘we didn’t use the privy. We went down it.’ Even as he said this he realised that he wasn’t getting the idea across at all.
‘And that’s better, is it?’
‘We were looking for something that was hidden there.’
‘I think we all know what’s usually hidden in a privy,’ said Aclan. ‘That's what they’re for. Hiding things.’
Just at that moment there was another commotion at the end of the hall and Balor, Hendig and Eggar burst in.
‘Oh, you’re here,’ Balor said to Hermitage, in some disappointment.
‘Yes.’
‘We were just coming to tell you they’d taken Wat from the lock-up and were bringing him to the hall.’
‘Yes, we know.’
Balor looked around. ‘Don’t know why we bothered,’ he mumbled.
Hermitage was thrown off his stride for a moment, but he did think it was probably best that they were all here. It would save an awful lot of time, and a lot of unnecessary and probably inaccurate gossip to have them all in the room at the same time while the death of Gilder was explained.
He did wonder if it this wasn’t quite the proper way to be explaining someone’s death: gathering everyone nosy enough in the one place. It was more like a show than a serious exposition. Still, he’d never been very good at asking people to leave.
‘Where was I?’ he asked himself. ‘Oh, yes. We went down Gilder’s privy and found his coin.’
That got the attention of the room.
‘Gilder’s coin,’ Aclan breathed, his breath sinking under the weight of avarice it was having to carry.
‘Not all of it,’ Hermitage added, quickly. ‘Just enough to show that there used to be more and so someone must have taken the rest.’
‘Taken it?’ Poor Aclan had gone from the heights of joy to the depths of disappointment very quickly indeed.
‘Yes,’ Hermitage confirmed. ‘It was obviously the place Gilder kept his coin. After all, who would think to look in a privy?’
‘No one,’ said Aclan, implying that Hermitage himself should not really have been exploring such a place.
‘Exactly. So when we looked we just found a handful of coins. The rest had gone.’
Mildburgh spoke up, ‘So the weaver robbed Gilder and then killed him. Or vice versa.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Hermitage, getting quite impatient at the stupidity. ‘We’ve told you before that we weren’t here at the time. Now you know that someone has stolen the coin, you know they must have run off with it. We certainly didn’t have time to come here, rob Gilder and then go off to Wales again only to come back later. Why would we? The motive for the murder was robbery. You need to find a robber.’
He smiled at his own conclusion.
‘This is still no proof that Wat the weaver is innocent,’ Mildburgh huffed. ‘He deserves to be executed anyway.’
‘Oh, really.’ Hermitage expressed his annoyance at such poor thinking, ‘Perhaps Wat has a whole chest of Gilder’s coin hidden in his jerkin? Maybe he knew that the coin was hidden in the privy, despite never having been here before and never having met the man?’ Hermitage felt himself getting positively excited. ‘Or he flew here, killed Gilder and then flew away again.’ He felt a deep shame at being so explicitly rude to a nun, but was pleased to note that Aclan and Cuthbert seemed to be frowning at Mildburgh.
‘Of course,’ he said, holding up a finger, ‘that’s it.’
‘That’s what?’ Cwen asked.
‘Flying. Birds.’
‘They killed Gilder?’
‘No,’ said Hermitage, ‘Saint Mildburgh.’
‘The birds killed Saint Mildburgh?’
‘It’s just come to me.’
‘Well, jolly good.’
‘That’s Saint Mildburgh. She commanded the birds.’
‘Saint Mildburgh commanded the birds?’ Wat joined in now. No one seemed to know where Hermitage was going with this.
‘That’s right. I’ve been trying to remember what it was Saint Mildburgh was venerated for. And it’s just come to me. She made the birds stop eating the grain.’
‘Did she?’
‘Yes, she did,’ Mildburgh spoke up, in reverential tones. ‘The birds were eating the grain after harvest and the blessed saint made them stop.’
‘What did she do,’ Cwen asked, with a nasty leer, ‘kill them all?’
‘No, she did not kill them all,’ Mildburgh shouted her offence. ‘She instructed the birds to stop eating the grain and they did.’
‘She might have instructed them to kill themselves,’ Cwen noted.
‘She didn’t kill anything. That was simply her first miracle.’
‘What was next,’ Cwen asked, ‘cats?’
‘You, girl,’ Mildburgh pointed a finger, ‘have too much to say for yourself.’ She took a calming breath. ‘Later on, Saint Mildburgh’s wimple fell from her head.’
‘Her hat fell off?’ Cwen asked.
Mildburgh spoke through teeth firmly clamped together, ‘Her wimple fell from her head and the Lord reached down and stopped it hitting the floor.’
The whole room looked at one another.
‘That’s right,’ Hermitage confirmed.
‘That’s why we wear our wimples so tight,’ Mildburgh explained, her voice heavy with the sin of pride. ‘So we do not test the Lord by asking him to repeat his miracle.’
Wat’s mouth fell open at this and he looked at Mildburgh with new eyes. Eyes that had managed to remove a wimple from the scene.
‘And this makes her a saint, does it?’ Cwen was still doing her best to annoy Mildburgh.
‘It certainly does,’ Mildburgh confirmed with grand finality.
Cwen shook her head in blatant disbelief. ‘Birds and hats. Wonderful. And what does all this have to do with the death of Gilder?’ she asked Hermitage.
Hermitage looked at her. ‘Oh, nothing.’ He smiled. ‘It’s only that I just remembered.’
‘What?’ Cwen didn’t seem very happy at all and started clenching and unclenching her fists, which was never a good sign. ‘Hermitage, I am making a list of things I need to talk to you about when this is all over. I’ve just found something new to start with.’
Well, that was nice. If they both had a list it should be a fascinating conversation.
‘Perhaps we can get back to the matter in hand?’ Cwen asked.
‘Of course.’ Hermitage smiled again.
‘The fact of the missing coin proves that Gilder was robbed,’ Cwen addressed the moot, ‘which is more proof that Wat didn’t do it. He doesn’t have the coin.’
The moot mumbled.
‘And anyway,’ she went on, ‘he’s rich enough already. He doesn’t need to rob Gilder.’
Aclan nodded at this and turned to the moot members sitting nearby, confirming that Wat probably was pretty rich.
‘He could have hidden it,’ said Mildburgh. ‘And I’ve told you about the rich. They just want more, whether they need it or not.’
‘There is something else,’ said Cwen with a very knowing smile and a look of triumph.
‘Do you think we should?’ Hermitage whispered.
‘Something else we found in the privy, which explains an awful lot.’
The moot looked at her with interest. Wat raised his eyebrows while Balor, Hendig and Eggar sniggered.
Mildburgh gave Cwen a very dismissive glance.
From under her arm, Cwen produced the scroll from the privy. She moved to one side of the hall so that everyone could see. She held it up and let it fall open so that the image on the rolled-up tapestry was clear. It was very clear indeed.
Hermitage averted his eyes.
Balor, Hendig and Eggar sniggered again.
The members of the moot took a breath, a rather furtive one, and one of their members even let out a muffled ‘phwoar.’
Mildburgh had gone very pale and quiet indeed.
Wat looked at the tapestry and smiled but even he looked embarrassed now. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that one. I wondered where it had gone. Now it all makes sense.’