'Your daughter?' Hermitage looked around the smoke shrouded room as if he'd been asked to play spot-the-daughter. 'Erm,' was all he could come up with.
'Come on,' the hardened Norman demanded as if Hermitage was deliberately holding back.
Hermitage was completely lost. He looked to Wat and Briston for help. The fat weaver was scanning the room, presumably for a way out. Wat was looking as non-plussed and confused as Hermitage felt.
'I'm, erm, not sure that I know her,' Hermitage offered as a sort of humble question/excuse.
'Well, of course you don't,' Gilbert snapped back. 'You better bloody well not.'
'But then?' Hermitage was so far out of his depth he started to get panicky. It was bad enough when people confused him, let alone when they were big Normans in dark and smoky keeps.
'Why erm…' Wat spoke up as respectfully as he could. 'Why would Brother Hermitage here know where your daughter is? Sir. My Lord.'
Gilbert glared at Wat with the sort of look that could knock sparrows out of trees. 'He's the investigator, isn't he?' he said.
'Oh, erm, yes. I suppose he is.'
The lord took a deep breath and explained reluctantly, 'My man's been looking for her. He went to the wretched market in Baernodebi, checked the place over, nothing. Well, apart from some disgusting Saxon selling the most revolting tapestries.'
'Really?' Wat enquired with interest, trying not to look at Briston. Hermitage managed to keep his mouth shut, although his eyes were wide open.
'You're all sick in the mind.' Lord Gilbert took in the whole Saxon race. 'Having stuff like that passing about.'
'You're absolutely right,' Wat agreed.
'At least that's one weaver we won't be seeing around here anymore.'
'Glad to hear it.' Wat did now look at Briston with a now-I-know-what-you're-up-to look.
'Anyway, my man passed through again on his way back and the place seems to have been wrecked. Apparently some peasant with a pig said the King’s Investigator-monk was around and had gone off looking for someone. He got directed to some loon in a field who plays with meat and he told my man you'd gone to Bigby to bring back some fat man.'
'Did he?' Wat asked, clearly suspicious as Hamard hadn't even wanted to tell Hermitage where Briston had gone.
'Well, he told my man eventually,' Gilbert acknowledged.
'Ah.' Hermitage felt relief as a palpable warmth spreading through him – relief that his discovery as the investigator was simply a chain of events. His relief cooled rather as he wondered what had persuaded Hamard to tell. 'Yes, Briston the, erm, fat man,' he just stopped himself saying "weaver". We found him,' he gestured to Briston who had sidled towards the door.
'There you are then!' The Norman was pleased. 'You found him! Now you can tell me where my daughter is.'
'I'm afraid I don't know,' Hermitage held out his arms, as if showing that he wasn't hiding the Norman's daughter in his habit.
'Well, work it out then.'
'Work it out?'
'Yes!' Gilbert was losing patience. Hermitage felt a large Norman soldier with no patience inside his own keep was probably quite dangerous.
'You're the investigator. You find people. Find my daughter.'
Hermitage felt rather despondent. The first death, of Brother Ambrosius, he had investigated because he was there. Right there. At the time. The exact time.
The second, Henri de Turold, he had solved because he was made to. The supposed death of Briston was his own investigation, which was rather satisfying. Since then, Virgil had forced him to look for Briston and now this Norman was demanding he find a missing daughter.
He didn't think much of being King’s Investigator if everyone with a problem could just demand he sort it out for them. How could he manage if he was in the middle of one job when someone demanded he do another one, and demanded that the old one still be done as well, without giving him any more time to do either of them?
Bit like being back in the monastery actually.
Still, he reminded himself, this was a large Norman soldier in his own keep. Surrounded by his own men. And very willing to do horrible things to people. He probably took priority over the mad, giant lunatic who was miles away. Another piece of thinking he would have to file away. He had a feeling it might come in handy.
'If you gave me some details, I could keep my eye out for her as we go on our way. Perhaps consider the facts and see what might have happened. Get back to you in a day or so?'
Gilbert lowered his head slightly and looked at Hermitage through his eyebrows. Which were copious. 'Now,' he said.
Hermitage noted that he'd never seen angry eyebrows before. He looked once more around the smoke-filled room. This simply wasn't possible. How could he find someone who wasn't here and about whom he knew nothing? At least with Briston he had Wat to ask. And Hamard. Who would he ask here? The Norman?
Yes, of course he'd ask the Norman.
'Where did you see her last?' he asked, not immediately able to come up with anything better.
'What?' Gilbert roared, as if he'd been accused of misplacing his daughter.
Hermitage answered quickly, hoping to divert any physical manifestation of Norman rage. 'It's a standard question,' he gabbled. 'I need to know where she was last so we can work out where she is now.'
'It is the sort of question Hermitage uses,' Wat explained, 'even when he's working for King William.' Wat nodded encouragingly.
That seemed to placate Gilbert somewhat. He calmed down to a simple rumbling discontent with menaces.
'Over there,' he said, gesturing to a corner of the room.
Hermitage looked to the corner and thought it quite possible the girl was still there. It was just that no one could see her.
'May I?' Hermitage nodded towards the corner.
Gilbert grunted, which Hermitage took as consent, and he stepped cautiously over to the corner. Wat followed, all the time smiling and making conciliatory gestures towards the smoky Norman in his smoky room.
'How old is she?' Hermitage asked as he walked across the room.
'Sixteen,' the old war horse replied. 'Just turned.'
Wat raised his eyebrows and rolled his eyes at Hermitage. The monk wondered if the smoke was getting in them.
Once in the corner of the keep, the two men looked in some surprise at what they saw. This corner was an oasis of order and civilisation in a room of ruin and squalor. A cot hugged the wall, covered in a fine embroidered blanket. This was neatly laid and tucked into the corners of a feather mattress. The cover had a single charming scene of a princess in a tower looking down at a field of unicorns, each one ridden by a handsome knight in shining armour.
By the side of the bed, laid out in a neat row, were three pairs of shoes. Next to these were several bottles of perfumes or unctures of some sort. The bottles were lined in ascending order of height. The whole presented a scene in stark contrast to its surroundings. It didn't help that all of the objects in this charming corner were covered with a fine layer of soot.
Wat looked from the bed to the room in which it sat and whispered in Hermitage's ear. 'I'm not surprised she's gone.'
'She, erm, normally lives with you then?' Wat asked as if this was perfectly routine and quite proper.
'Of course,' the Norman replied in the same tone. 'Her mother passed on years ago and she's been with me ever since.'
'On campaign.'
'Always on campaign,' the Norman said as if this was right and proper too.
'Looks like she's quite the lady,' Wat commented.
'Ah yes,' the Norman spoke with pride. 'Always well turned out, neat and, erm, that.' It was clear that Gilbert didn't have any other words for neat. One was probably all he ever needed, not being involved in situations where it was applicable.
'And when was it you saw her last?' Hermitage asked.
The Norman paused in thought. 'Would have been last gutting day,' he said.
'Gutting day?' Wat tried not to snort.
'Yes, my little Aveline insisted we do the gutting on just one day instead of every day. It was day before yesterday.'
'How charming.'
'Did she have any friends?' Hermitage asked.
'Certainly not!' The protective father was outraged.
'None of the other girls?' he asked.
The Norman frowned deeply. 'What other girls?' he asked, rather confused.
Hermitage hesitated to ask the next question. Not for long though as he needed to know. 'Did she ever express any wish to, erm, leave?' He tried to sound as humble as he could.
'Leave?' Gilbert had some trouble with the concept. 'Leave her father?' He gestured to take in his magnificent surroundings.
'Hard to imagine, I know,' Hermitage said, imagining it very easily. 'Children, eh?' he said, as if he had dozens of them.
'She left her shoes behind?' Hermitage observed.
'Only the spares,' Gilbert explained. 'Never knew why she needed more than one pair anyway, but everywhere we went, another pair of shoes.'
'Really?'
'Even after battles, I had to bring her back a pair of shoes.'
'Ah.'
'None of them any good in the mud either.'
'Perhaps she's only stepped out and will be back soon?' Hermitage offered.
Even his naive and innocent eyes could see what had happened here. Wat's frank and suggestive glances helped, but he would have got there on his own. This poor Gilbert's daughter had run off from an unbearable life. A life lived in unbearable circumstances. She had shoes, nice embroidery, liked the finer, ladylike things in the world and was forced to live in a smoke-filled box with a soldier. Probably several soldiers, one of whom was her father. The question was how to get this message over to the soldier. The large soldier who was right in Hermitage's face. And Hermitage was in his line of fire. Best not to tell him at all, probably.
'Did she ever comment on her life?' Hermitage tried instead of a direct approach.
'What sort of question is that?' The soldier clearly found this concept beyond him.
'Well, what child doesn't?' Hermitage encouraged. 'You know, did she want to go out? Did she want to stay in? Did she want things? Other than shoes?' He cast his mind back to his own childhood when all his requests for a second book were dismissed out of hand by a father who noted that a book wouldn’t chop down trees for you.
Gilbert's eyes narrowed aggressively but they were narrowing from recognition. 'I mean, obviously she's not a soldier.' The man seemed to consider this a full and frank explanation.
'Obviously,' Hermitage encouraged.
'She'd have her little moans about the keep, and the men.'
Hermitage nodded his encouragement now.
'And the food, and the travelling. And the smoke, and how she never met anyone.' The man was on a roll now. On a roll down a large and long hill. 'And how she never got to do what she wanted, or have the things she needed.' The Norman paced away from Hermitage and then strode back, arms waving. 'And how I never let her go anywhere. And when I asked where she wanted to go she said anywhere. So I said, tell me somewhere and she said I was ruining her life and didn't understand.'
Hermitage tried to do sympathy now.
Gilbert was glaring, but it wasn't at Hermitage. It was a distant yet introspective glare. The glare of a soldier with nothing to hit.
He took a breath. 'You can see,' he gestured over to the cot, 'she liked nice things.'
Hermitage nodded sympathetically.
'But we'd have lots of nice things after another five years of campaigning or so.'
Hermitage nodded some more. It seemed to help.
'But she said she'd be dead by then. Who'd want her when she was twenty? She'd be an old crone.'
'So she wanted a life other than this one,' Hermitage prompted.
Gilbert's shoulders sagged as if he'd been broken somehow.
'Dull?'
'Dull?' Hermitage hadn't followed.
'I ask you. How can this life be dull? But she'd just sit there on the cot, night after night. Dull, dull, dull, she'd mumble.'
Hermitage felt his head light up. He tried to stop the light pouring from his eyes so he frowned them closed. He looked to Gilbert's rugged Norman face and more recognition flowed through his brain. He turned quickly to catch Wat's eyes. The weaver's visage looked as if all the muscles had been so surprised they had forgotten they were supposed to hold his face up. He gawped at Hermitage and then turned and gawped at Briston, who was now right by the door. Persuading his face to at least close his mouth, he sidled away from Hermitage and Gilbert and made for Briston.
Hermitage muttered sympathies and walked about a bit, examining things in what he hoped was an investigatory manner. He asked Gilbert to show him the shoes and the bottles and considered them closely, keeping the Norman's attention on him.
Over by the door, Wat, now back in control of his facial expressions, spoke quietly to Briston. He spoke reasonably, calmly and gently. But he spoke with fierce determination.
'Briston, my old friend.'
Briston looked at Wat with worry. It was clear from the tone of voice that the man had a new-found power. Briston didn't encourage any further conversation.
'Briston, Briston, Briston,' Wat patted Briston on the shoulder and used a voice that put Briston firmly in his place. That place was under Wat's foot.
'If I tell gorgeous Gilbert here,' he gestured towards the large Norman soldier, 'that his lovely daughter ran off with the very weaver who did the disgusting tapestries of Baernodebi, and that this weaver has seen more of his daughter than is right, proper, or even legal,' Wat let the thought ferment, 'and that said weaver is likely to distribute tapestries that will let the rest of the world see as much of his lovely daughter as well, he will kill you. He'll have killed lots of people he doesn't even know. The only motivation he needs is that they're on the battlefield. Or that they're on the wrong side. Or perhaps just that they're in the way. Imagine how inspired he'll be by you.'
'I don't know what you're talking about,' Briston tried.
'Oh, come on,' Wat scoffed. 'You can do better than that. A lovely young girl turns up in Bigby. Well dressed, looking for a life less dull? When just such a girl has recently gone missing from the home of the nearest professional Norman killer? I don't think this part of the country is swimming with them. Who is she then? The Queen of the May?'
'Could be anyone,' Briston shrugged.
'With that nose?' Wat gestured to Gilbert and used his hands to mime the presence of a large Norman nose, the sort which sat happily on Gilbert's face – not so happily on the face of the girl in Briston's chamber.
'So?' Briston avoided Wat's eyes.
'So off we go to Baernodebi.' Wat rubbed his hands as if they were having a trip to the seaside. 'You cause no trouble. You come nice and quiet and take what's coming to you. We get Cwen back and everyone lives happily ever after,' Wat paused for thought, 'except you obviously.'
'And Gilbert?' Briston nodded towards the Norman.
'Hermitage will work out where his daughter is and he'll be very happy. Of course, if anything goes wrong, young Hermitage will suddenly recall that he actually saw the charming Aveline. Where was it? Oh yes, with that fat man, Briston. Of course, he's the one who makes the filthy tapestries. Oh, and he’s the one sitting by the door of your fortress.'
'You do the same work.'
'Not of the daughters of Normans, I don't. It's because I'm not, what's the expression? Oh yes, bloody stupid.'
‘I haven’t made any tapestries of her,’ Briston growled, but had clearly given up the game. ‘Only just met her.’
‘I bet you’ve made a few preliminary sketches though,’ Wat nodded.
Briston’s scowl said that was exactly what he had done.
Wat returned to where Hermitage was examining Aveline's shoes, while regaling Gilbert with the detailed theological arguments surrounding our Lord's footwear during the forty days and forty nights in the wilderness. He hadn't even got as far as the opening references when Gilbert already looked like he would collapse on his daughter's cot muttering dull, dull, dull.
Wat caught Hermitage's eye and nodded. Hermitage inclined his head in return.
'And so,' Hermitage said, in a complete non sequitur to what he had been saying, 'we can thus estimate the location of your daughter.'
Gilbert woke up. His eyes widened, 'What?' he asked, clearly not having been listening to a word.
'Oh yes,' Hermitage smiled as if it had all been perfectly clear. 'Bigby. At the inn.'
'How, did you?' Gilbert started but then stopped.
Wat could see that the man had listened to enough of Hermitage to know that he didn't want to get the full explanation.
Gilbert turned and strode quickly from the room.
There was some yelling of instructions outside, followed by the noise of horses being quickly mounted and ridden away.
Hermitage and Wat exchanged looks of quiet satisfaction. They looked to Briston, who didn't exchange anything.
'If this is true, sir monk, you are a great man,' Gilbert beamed.
'Of course, I've no guarantee, but if my reasoning is sound, your men will find her there.'
'And if they do, I shall owe you a great favour. If there's anything I can do for you, you will only have to say the word.'
There was lots of mutual smiling and grinning at the prospect of the return of the daughter of Gilbert. The daughter of Gilbert probably wouldn't be smiling quite so much, but then she wasn't there.
'Actually,' Wat said raising a finger, 'there might be something you can help us with.'