The King’s Investigator was hiding under his bed.
‘Hermitage,’ Cwen called from her perch on the top of the straw mattress, ‘you’ve got to come out sometime.’
Brother Hermitage poked his head out and peered cautiously at the young woman who looked down at him kindly.
‘Have they gone?’ Hermitage asked. He was a few years older than Cwen’s teenage years but he lagged her by a county mile when it came to confidence in the face of adversity. Cwen could stare adversity straight in that pitiless face, probably just before she slapped it and sent it on its way.
Hermitage couldn’t do adversity. He’d seen a lot of it but it always gave him the shakes. He would admit he was not a courageous man but then he wasn’t supposed to be. He was a monk. A monk who would rather be on his own in a scriptorium fretting over some fine point of interpretation. Apart from the occasional parchment cut, the scriptorium was seldom adverse.
‘Yes, they’ve gone,’ Cwen assured him. ‘And they weren’t looking for you anyway. It was only some more of Wat’s old customers asking if he’d done anything new recently.’
That took Hermitage’s mind off his main concern. Being appointed King’s Investigator still felt like it was just some huge mistake. King William hadn’t know what he was doing. Hermitage had just been the wrong monk in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But still William kept sending him investigations to be done. Him and that awful Le Pedvin, the only Norman Hermitage knew who made William look quite nice.
He had decided that when people came to call he would simply not be available. That way no one could ask him to investigate some hideous murder ever again. If it meant hiding under the bed whenever there was a knock on the door, so be it.
But people asking about Wat’s disgraceful tapestries had to be dealt with. Well, it was more the case that Wat had to be dealt with. Hermitage did not want any temptations falling into Wat the weaver’s ears which might persuade him to go back to making tapestries that were, well, rude. Hermitage knew that other people had much better words to describe the sort of tapestry Wat could make, but he was a monk and wouldn’t use those words in any circumstances.
‘Has Wat sent them on their way?’ he asked, climbing out from under the bed.
‘He has,’ Cwen placated him. ‘He wouldn’t really go back to the old trade.’
‘He might when the money runs out,’ Hermitage observed, sagely.
‘We’ll all be dead before the money runs out,’ Cwen said, with confidence. ‘Do you know how much he got paid for the last in the bath-house series?’
‘No I do not. And I do not want to know.’ He brushed down his habit and ran a hand through his tonsure, flattening once more the tuft that refused to lie down. ‘I don’t know who carries the most sin. The man who made it, the man who paid, or the man who looks at it.’
‘What makes you think they’re all men?’ Cwen asked, nonchalantly, reminding Hermitage of her own history in the production of revelatory tapestry.
Hermitage had no answer to that.
He left his room and headed for the upstairs chamber where Wat usually received guests and visitors. As ever, he was conscious that his comfortable surroundings and the food and drink that made his life so much more bearable than being in an actual monastery, all sprang from Wat’s disgraceful trade. And as usual he didn’t let that stop him berating Wat.
Neither did it seem to stop Wat berating Hermitage about the fact that they weren’t making money any more. The new, decent and occasionally devout works were a lot less outrageous and a lot less popular.
He found Wat on his hands and knees in the large, open space of the upper floor of the workshop, chalk in his hand, lines and shading spreading in all directions. His mop of unkempt black hair flopped about as if he could use it to clean the boards.
‘Are you still doing that?’ Hermitage asked.
Wat looked up as Hermitage and Cwen stepped around the edge of the room.
‘Of course,’ Wat squinted at one chalk line, erased it with the palm of his hand and then drew it again. ‘Be good money in this one.’
He stood now and took a step back to take in the large image he had been drawing. He was the oldest of them, but not by much. It always puzzled Hermitage how the weaver had managed to squeeze so much into his young years. Much of it questionable if not downright sinful.
‘And you still think they’ll pay?’ Hermitage asked.
‘They ordered it,’ Wat said, as if there could be no question.
The fact that Wat and Cwen were making a commemorative tapestry of the death of Gilder of Shrewsbury brought that awful experience back to life.[ You too can have an awful experience by reading Hermitage, Wat and Some Nuns wherein the whole Gilder-Shrewsbury situation is explained in unnecessary detail.] Hermitage was not convinced that the moot of that town would ever want to hear from any of them again.
And the tapestry Wat was proposing commemorated the event in what Hermitage considered to be revolting detail. Surely something of this nature should take the best of the deceased’s life and celebrate it through a heroic representation. It certainly shouldn’t take the actual, detailed events of a very grizzly death and recreate them in wool. Hermitage thought that even the sheep would be ashamed.
‘I’m not allowed to make the old tapestries anymore,’ Wat complained. ‘Which, after all only showed men and women as they were in the Garden of Eden.’
Hermitage raised his eyebrows at this. That could hardly be used as theological support for Wat’s works, and it was unlike the weaver to refer to biblical authority at all. ‘I think you’ll find Adam and Eve at least used a fig leaf,’ he pointed out.
Wat ignored the remark. ‘So perhaps I’ll move into blood and guts,’ he held his arms out to illustrate his great work. ‘Much more wholesome.’
Hermitage frowned.
‘And still a good market I’m sure.’ Wat was full of enthusiasm at this new idea. ‘All those Normans wanting something to hang on the wall to remind them of the good old days. The cut and thrust of cutting and thrusting. Heads lopped off, limbs cracked and insides spilling. Something for the whole family to admire. You can’t complain about that.’
Hermitage felt he should, but couldn’t think how just at the moment.
‘I could do one of William’s victory battle near Hastings. He’d like that.’
Hermitage did have something to say on this. ‘I heard there’s one already being done. Some nuns in Kent making a history of the whole thing.’
Wat shrugged, ‘Mine will be shorter,’ he said. ‘Get it out first, take the money and move on.’
Hermitage tutted.
‘In fact I could get the apprentices working on a dozen copies, sell them all to leading Norman nobles.’
‘Get them all taken from under your nose,’ Cwen snorted her contempt for the new King and all his compatriots. And his family, friends and animals.
This was familiar territory. Many of their evenings were filled with discussion about how the country would be under the new ruler.
Wat saw opportunities for trade and profit, Cwen saw nothing but gloom and despair which, when pressed, sounded very much like the gloom and despair she had felt under King Harold. Hermitage always pointed out that his faith and role as a monk meant that his world was steady and predictable. He usually ended up urging them to take their duties to God and the church more seriously. Or to take them at all.
Wat usually ended up urging Hermitage to go back to the monastery at De’Ath’s Dingle if he felt that strongly about it.
Hermitage never felt that strongly about it. The more time he spent in the company of Wat and Cwen the more he came to realise what a truly awful time he had had at that monastery. And he had thought it was pretty awful when he was there.
Nobody changed their position but Hermitage felt he was at least doing his bit by arguing the case.
A knock at the downstairs door caused him no alarm at all. It was probably the last visitors coming back to have another go at Wat. Many days had passed without him being bothered by the King’s business. It was only when he was feeling particularly nervous that he took to hiding.
Wat looked at Cwen to go and answer the door. And Cwen looked at Wat.
‘Mrs Grod will get it,’ Cwen said, making it quite clear she was not Wat’s door opener.
‘Then you better get down there,’ Wat instructed. ‘Make sure Mrs Grod doesn’t think it’s a delivery for her pot and thicken up the stew with a visitor or two.’
‘I’ll go,’ Hermitage said, weary at their bickering but not entirely confident that Wat’s cook, Mrs Grod, might not do something unspeakable if the new arrival was caught unaware.
He stepped down the rude wooden stairs, careful of the third step which wobbled. And the fifth which was slippery-smooth. And the seventh which wasn’t there at all.
Approaching the main door to the weaver’s workshop, a great slab of oak planking scattered with bolts and hinges as if they’d been shot at it, he did feel a shiver of anticipation. This new encounter could be trouble. But then Hermitage thought that of all his encounters.
The door was not bolted and he pulled its weight back to reveal a slight young man, no more than Cwen’s age. Even as he stood on the step it was clear the boy had a questing and inquisitive nature. His eyes darted about and his head craned so that he could see past Hermitage into the workshop beyond.
He was dressed well enough, not wealthy but not poor either, but his clothes had a travelled look about them, as if his journey had been long and rather troublesome. A simple pack on his back and a staff in his hand completed his possessions.
The boy beamed at Hermitage, as if they were already the closest of confidantes. ‘Have I found the workshop of Wat the weaver?’ he asked, brightly.
Hermitage looked at him and shook his head in disappointment. ‘Not one so young, surely?’
The boy grinned at the question which seemed to mean absolutely nothing to him.
‘I’m Brody,’ the boy introduced himself as if Hermitage was expected to remember this for future occasions. ‘This is Wat’s workshop? They said in the village it was up here.’
‘Yes,’ Hermitage confirmed. ‘This is Wat’s workshop, they told you right.’
The workshop was away from the village for several good reasons, the main one being that the villagers preferred it that way.
‘Excellent,’ Brody clapped his hands. ‘Can I come in then?’ He peered again around Hermitage, as if the monk was hiding something very exciting.
‘Wat has no tapestries of that nature anymore,’ Hermitage explained. ‘He now does only wholesome and decorative works. There’s nothing for you to see.’ He was used to turning away idle visitors. Wat could spot them on the path, the ones who had no money who just wanted to come and gawp. The ones who had money, he dealt with personally.
‘Oh, shame,’ said Brody. ‘I’ve heard all about the bath house series.’
‘I’m sure you have,’ said Hermitage. It seemed the whole world had heard about the bath house series. And Hermitage had had the misfortune of actually seeing one of them in the flesh - as it were. He was going to do his best to make sure as few people as possible did the same. Especially one as young as this Brody.
‘It’s alright though,’ the young man went on. ‘I’ve not come to see the tapestries, I’ve got a message.’
‘A message?’ Hermitage asked, suspiciously. People had used a variety of fabrications to try and gain access to the workshop. ‘Who from?’ he narrowed his eyes.
Brody stuck his chest out and struck a pose of rigid importance, ‘From the King,’ he announced.
Cwen and Wat came running down the stairs at the sound of Hermitage’s shriek.