'This is ridiculous,’ Hermitage whined as the dungeon door was shut in his face.
There was a small barred window in the door, just big enough for a guard to tell whether the occupants were dead yet. Hermitage pressed his face to it and called the departing Poitron. 'How can we have anything to do with your murders? We only just got here.’
Poitron turned back. He turned back with the pent up energy of a man who has endured a journey across the village and into the castle while a monk talked at him incessantly, unceasingly and irritatingly. He was a man who had restrained himself from doing something very physical to the monk but who was now in private.
'Exactly,’ Poitron snarled, 'two strangers turn up, one of them with a bloody great sword, just the thing to kill a blacksmith, and the other knows how the murder of the wheelwright was done.’
'I don't,’ Hermitage protested, immediately realising his explanation of the reassembled wheel was the best the village had.
'And a monk who has some experience of murders,’ for Poitron the facts were piling up, 'with his friend who no doubt would help him lift an anvil.’
Hermitage opened his mouth to protest but had to accept this was a very good explanation of events. He saw how all the pieces went together very well, how events could be readily explained and how it would suit the situation of the village to have these two strangers as the guilty parties. Of course he had to remind himself that he hadn't actually done it, but it was a very good argument. He considered telling this man they'd been sent by Le Pedvin but suspected that might only make things worse. He'd save it for the Bonnevilles.
'And God knows why you cleared Lallard away, he was probably your accomplice.’
‘In which case…’ Hermitage began. He had a comprehensive exploration of that proposal at his fingertips.
Poitron held up his hand to stop any explorations. He looked Hermitage in the eye and said, 'Stay there until Lord Bonneville sends for you. Then we'll chop your heads off.’
Hermitage gaped some more.
'And if I ask the lord nicely,’ Poitron added, 'he might let me do it.’
The man stomped off, gesturing that the guards should stay and do their duty by the bolted door.
Hermitage didn't really know in which order to be horrified and outraged. Such a fabrication of events, with a clear falsehood at its heart, disturbed him so much he wanted to shake the dungeon door until the truth was accepted.
The suggestion they would be executed was somehow impossible to conceive; after all, they had nothing to do with the deaths and such a great wrong could not come to pass. He knew a lot of great wrongs which had come to pass, many of them quite recently and at the hands of Normans, but still. He hadn't killed anyone so it was ridiculous to suggest he'd be executed.
He turned back to Wat, who was sitting on the floor, his back against the far wall and his knees drawn up.
'I've never been on the inside of one of your dungeons Hermitage,’ the weaver said quite brightly but with a strong hint of resigned disappointment.
'What do you mean, one of my dungeons?’ Hermitage protested.
'The ones you end up in when you're trying to solve a murder?’ Wat seemed puzzled that Hermitage couldn't remember. 'That first time? The death of Brother Ambrosius, when I found you in the dungeon waiting for execution?’
'Ah yes, well there was that one,’ Hermitage acknowledged.
'And all that business with the Garderobe?’
'I was only captured that time,’ Hermitage explained, 'there wasn't actually a dungeon.’ He thought this was an important distinction.
Wat coughed, clearly thinking the distinction was not important at all. 'Even with the tapestry business you got threatened with death by that Norman, Gilbert.’
'Ah yes,’ Hermitage recalled quite clearly, 'but that was only a threat. First a dungeon, then a capture and after that a simple threat, things have been getting better.’
'And now a dungeon again,’ Wat concluded.
'Well, yes,’ Hermitage accepted, 'but as soon as Lord Bonneville hears us, he'll let us go.’
'I don't know,’ said Wat thoughtfully, 'I thought Poitron's explanation was quite convincing.’
Hermitage was alarmed at this, 'Nobody could believe we had anything to do with it, we've come to help.’
'Nobody knows who on earth we are,’ Wat explained rather forcefully, 'in a situation like this, in a village like this?’
'Yes?’
'Always execute the strangers.’
'I must say you seem very calm about this,’ Hermitage, in between bits of his own fear and anger, was irritated that Wat wasn't similarly exercised.
'What can I do?’ Wat held out his hands to indicate their surroundings, 'I'm locked in what seems to be a fairly robust dungeon, in the bottom of a pretty impressive castle, with two guards outside who report to a thoroughly angry young man. No point in fretting about it.’
'No point in fretting about it?’ Hermitage wondered what would be worth fretting about. 'Perhaps when they come to take us to the executioner's block you'll fret a bit.’
'Oh yes,’ Wat agreed amicably, 'I'll fret then. In the meantime we needs our wits about us. Wits and fretting tend not to make the banks of a smooth flowing river.’
Hermitage appreciated the charming imagery but would appreciate it a lot more on the outside of the dungeon. And if he could get outside the castle it would cheer him enormously. Back in England would be good if wishful thinking was the order of the day.
'I think,’ said Wat slowly, 'I think when we get taken before the Bonnevilles we have to mention Le Pedvin.’
'Really?’ Hermitage could only think of the scary Norman soldier as having enemies, he had trouble with the concept the man might have any friends at all. 'Surely the Bonnevilles aren't his friends,’ he went on, 'he would hardly have sent us to prove their master is a killer if they got on well.’
'I wouldn't bank on that,’ Wat speculated, 'having seen what the Normans get up to, they're as likely to kill friends as enemies as complete strangers. No, I'm not thinking they'll be friends and the nice Bonnevilles will let us go. I'm thinking they might be as terrified of Le Pedvin as the rest of us. If they think we're his friends they might not dare kill us.’
'Or if they think we have anything to do with Le Pedvin they might kill us more quickly,’ Hermitage countered. 'Or more slowly,’ he added as a horrible afterthought.
Wat was musing. ‘I think we need something even closer to the truth now.’ He pursed his lips and looked absently around their cell.
'But not the actual truth,’ Hermitage confirmed, unhappy that he was being asked to lie yet again but reasonably content that he wasn't putting his neck even closer to the block with the real reason for their visit. This did seem to be proving the case his old grandfather had put to him, that once you started lying you opened the door to a world of lies and got sucked into them for the rest of your life. The old man concluded that the most important lesson in life was to learn how to lie really well. Hermitage suspected this had been his very first motivation towards the monastic life.
Wat sucked the air in through his teeth, 'Oh heavens no. But we do need to say Le Pedvin sent us here for something.’
‘This murder in Bayeux?’
‘Yes,’ Wat didn’t sound sure, ‘could be, although there’s a chance a noble will be a bit better informed.’
‘You mean he’ll know there’s been no murder in Bayeux.’
'Could be. In which case we’re done for.’
‘Done for what?’
‘Just done for.’
‘Ah,’ Hermitage lapsed into the silence full of worry and despair.
'Why don't we just tell them the truth?’ This was always Hermitage’s first resort. ‘Le Pedvin has heard of the murders and sent us to look into them. It would make everything so much easier instead of coming up with some new nonsense each time anyone asks us a question.’
'Because if Bonneville is the killer he’ll do us next?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Hermitage remembered now. He was already having a touch of the shaking horrors at the convolutions of their time here, never mind compounding the whole thing with yet more lies.
'We could stick to the Bayeux story, and then if he knows that we come up with something else.’
Hermitage sighed. That was the trouble with Wat, he always just dived straight in without thinking through all the details and possible outcomes. If he had an idea he just went with it to see where it would end up. Chances are he'd need another idea pretty quickly to make sure the first one didn't fall dangerously apart, and then another one after that.
Surely much better to have your idea, then spend a day or two carefully analysing all the ramifications and potential pitfalls before cautiously trying out one small part to see if it had any effect.
Granted, by the time you'd done all that the need for the idea in the first place had often vanished, or you'd forgotten what it was for, but it was far less risky. That had to be a good thing.
'Unless…' Hermitage hesitated to suggest it.
'Unless what?’
'As you say, Jean Bonneville really is a murderer. He really did kill the blacksmith and the wheelwright and Lallard and wouldn’t hesitate to do two strangers, friends of Le Pedvin or not.’
'Ah,’ said Wat, 'unlikely isn't it?’ he said hopefully.
'I suppose so.’ Hermitage now paced the small dungeon from wall to wall and door to wall. This whole business was of course appalling, and it was being compounded by this deliberate lying. Still, he really did not want to be executed and that seemed to be the alternative.
'So what do we do?’ Hermitage asked, 'just wait here until his lordship deigns to see us?’
'I don't know,’ said Wat with annoyance in his voice, 'you've been in more dungeons than me, what do you usually do?’
'That was only the once,’ Hermitage protested. Wat made it sound like the monk got locked up all the time, 'and anyway, you rescued me.’
'It's once more than me and I'm not exactly in the best position to effect a rescue.’
'So we just wait until someone comes and opens the door.’
'Could be,’ Wat shrugged, 'or Poitron decides not to tell his master about us at all?’
'And then what?’ Hermitage asked, unable to keep a slight tremor from his voice.
'Then,’ Wat held his arms out to draw Hermitage's attention to their surroundings, 'welcome home.’
It took Hermitage a few moments to take this in. He had simply assumed Wat would know some secret or other about being in dungeons and how to get out of them. He was so well informed about most areas of life where Hermitage was clueless, that this should be well within his ambit.
They lapsed into silence and Hermitage joined Wat on the floor, waiting for something to happen. His capacity for waiting was pretty remarkable but even he could see it would run out before too long in this place.
He usually used waiting time for interesting introspections into matters of import. Import to him rather than anyone else, but he found the time productive. Many knotty problems of nomenclature, definition and interpretation had fallen in the face of one of Hermitage’s patient onslaughts, but he had given up sharing his findings with anyone else. Their patience in the face of one of his explanatory onslaughts usually ran screaming from the room during the opening sentences.
His accommodation did nothing for his attention and he found his thoughts wandering into his life and future, a road seldom trod, instead of into the alphabetisation of the prohibitions of Leviticus, which was his normal entertainment.
Over their relatively short period together the weaver had educated the monk about all sorts of things, bringing new ideas from outside the monastery wall. Some were interesting, like the process involved in getting a tapestry from the sheep to the shop. Some less so, such as the labyrinthine financial complications which seemed to go with absolutely everything. And some were completely unwelcome, like where the dye came from for the flesh pink thread Wat needed so much of.
He had just imagined that being in a dungeon was something easily resolved by people who were used to being put in dungeons. He felt rather ashamed of his assumption that Wat would be one of those people. One of those people who spent some considerable time in dungeons judging from the sort of things the weaver got up to, many of which Hermitage thought deserved nothing less than being put in a dungeon.
He came to a realisation that dungeons really were nasty places in which a man could die. There was no secret catch, which those in the know would use to open the door. There was no understanding between jailor and prisoner, which would keep the experience as bearable as possible, no being brought out of your dungeon for meals or exercise. Real life was staring him in the face and it would not be blown away on winds of convenience.
This was no pretence, this was not a practice for life, a first go after which you'd be allowed to tackle the real thing. An alarming self-awareness hit Hermitage that thus far he had treated the world as if life was going on around him. He was an interested observer, and sometimes recipient of its vagaries but he wasn't actually directly connected to it. He wasn't sure what he was connected to but it certainly wasn't the inconvenient, distasteful and unpleasant things he saw going on. He had floated above and around them in some way, feeling the knocks and blows but believing that somehow they weren't real, they didn't belong to him. His world was in his head and it was well ordered, well behaved and mostly harmless.
This was awful. Hunger, thirst, death, all of them, were suddenly in the room with him, queuing up to scare him out of his habit. He had been dragged into the real world and he didn't like it, he didn't like it at all. He was just a part of something very large, a part that could be extinguished without anyone else even noticing. The dying ember of a thought that the door would just open and sort everything out wandered around Hermitage's head, wondering where its friends had gone.