Copyright © 2008 Howard Matthews. All rights reserved. 

Brother Hermitage was in a quandary. He liked being in a quandary, it was one of his favourite places as long as it didn’t involve the sort of physicality the other brothers seemed to relish. Being dangled over the monastery parapet was certainly a quandary but not the sort he favoured even though it seemed to happen most often. No, this quandary was right up his habit. Brother Prembard was dead and no one was quite sure why. Part of the puzzlement which set Hermitage’s brain scurrying to the quiet and lonely places it liked to frequent was the fact that no one else in the monastery seemed remotely bothered about this event. Prembard, a notoriously slothful and absent brother who had been known to fritter the day away with as many as three hours sleep, had been missed at Nones and so an acolyte had been sent to his cell to wake him. The acolyte had returned reporting that Prembard was in fact dead. Having been roundly castigated for his presumption in leaping to such a conclusion without consulting the Abbot, who gave him a light beating to emphasise the point, the acolyte responded in a most impudent manner that if the Abbot had had his head cut off he would be dead as well. This earned the young man a more conscientious visitation from the Abbot and he soon retired to the apothecary. As Hermitage pondered his quandary further, he realised that it had many fascinating aspects. It wasn’t strictly true to say no one knew why Prembard was dead, it was obvious that why he was dead as opposed to still alive was that his head was no longer joined onto his body. Hermitage had had no experience of this sort of event but he reasoned that as he had never seen a living person without a head and that common parlance had it that death was the almost certain conclusion of head removal, then this was indeed the cause of death. The questions though, gathered like magpies to a rotting badger; how had Prembard’s head parted company with the rest of him and why had it happened? Heads did not generally become removed of their own volition, Hermitage thought that accidents during sleep which led to the loss of the head must be very rare and that the application of some tool or other would probably be required for the process. This would indicate the presence of another person or persons to carry out the task and this ‘why’ arose and buzzed inside Hermitage’s head. Why would anyone want to remove the head of Prembard? The conclusion that there had been others involved was supported by the further fact that the removed head was apparently nowhere to be found. Hermitage knew that he could be pretty naive at times but even he didn’t believe that a head could make off with itself. The third why was the why which consumed Hermitage even more than the others. Why was no one interested in the facts of this case and seemed intent on simply burying Prembard without further ado and getting on with their lives?

Hermitage hesitated to approach the Abbot as a man would hesitate to coat his eyeballs in honey before thrusting his face into a bee’s nest. As was often the case though Hermitage let his head rule his heart, a practice which had led to many of the visits to the parapet, and he skipped up to the Abbot during that man’s morning perambulation of the monastery garden in his usual annoyingly enthusiastic manner.

"Father" he gushed

"What is it Hermitage?" The Abbot responded in the tone he kept for those occasions when he wanted to make it perfectly clear that further conversation was unwelcome and would almost certainly be physically terminated.

"Brother Prembard" Hermitage went on, as like all enthusiasts, he was tone deaf.

"What about him?"

"Well he’s dead"

"Yes. Well done, now if I could get on."

"But someone removed his head." Hermitage was, as usual, incredulous that others did not share his childlike fervour for detail.

"Probably a prank" was the Abbot’s startling conclusion.

"A prank?" Hermitage was dumbfounded, "Someone removed his head as a prank?"

"Most likely." The Abbot shrugged, "Was there any blood?" he asked.

"Blood?" Hermitage said, "Erm I don’t know, I haven’t actually seen the body"

"Well you seem to be drawing an awful lot of conclusions on very scant evidence then."

This was truly remarkable, it was the longest conversation Hermitage had ever had with the Abbot.

"You see" said the Abbot taking Hermitage by the arm and steering him for a second circuit of the garden while he gestured to his assistant Alud to follow, "If there was lots of blood that would indicate that Prembard had been alive at the time his head was removed, if there was very little blood it would show that he had been dead already and someone removed his head after that event."

"I do see" said Hermitage as Alud, who had been listening intently suddenly scurried off on some urgent business, gesturing rather imperiously that other monks should attend him.

"Which would constitute a prank."

Hermitage hadn’t considered the possibility that someone might have removed the head after death. He thought that this probably constituted less of a sin than doing it while the owner was still using it but it still seemed extreme behaviour for a monastery.

"But to remove a head and then hide it." Hermitage made his feelings clear.

"We are a small community Hermitage, who have lived closely with one another for many years. There are those among us who sometimes need to burst out in the occasional harmless prank so that they may concentrate all the harder on their duties thereafter."

Hermitage saw the reasoning of this but it didn’t ring true. That young brother who had set a pig loose on Saint Finjan’s day had been dealt with by the Abbot and he still hadn’t recovered the power of speech even though he could now walk without wincing. To dismiss the removal of a brother’s head as harmless was out of keeping. And the Abbot was still keeping one young monk, who had tied a thistle to his habit as a prank, in a small pit under his study.

"Perhaps I should go and examine Prembard’s cell for blood" Hermitage said starting to step away from the Abbot only to find that he was dragged back. The Abbot must really be in a good mood to engage in so long a conversation with Hermitage without hitting him once.

"And what will you conclude if there is no blood eh Hermitage?"

"Well father" Hermitage reasoned, his enthusiasm once more asserting itself, "As you say I would conclude that the head had been removed after death."

"In which case?"

This was marvellous. Perhaps once this puzzle was sorted out Hermitage could engage the Abbot in a fascinating internal debate he was having on the nature of miracles.

"I suppose in that case we might have someone who had removed the head of a corpse, rather than one who had created the corpse in the first place."

"A prank" the Abbot concluded

"A rather generous conclusion father" Hermitage commented, noting that generosity was one quality the Abbot had hitherto managed to hide completely from his flock, buried as it was beneath a façade of vindictive violence.

As if the Abbot had suddenly lost interest in the topic he thrust Hermitage away from him and said,

"Right, go and check your cell then."

As the Abbot walked away it was clear to Hermitage that the conversation was at an end and so he made his way to Prembard’s cell.

Once there he found brother Alud brushing a group of monks from the room, all of whom carried mops and leathern buckets slopping with some dark liquid or other.

"Clearing up brother?" Hermitage asked.

"Of course" Alud answered in his usual peremptory manner, "We can hardly leave a dead brother lying around can we?"

"We did when old brother Bavum passed on."

"That was different"

"We only noticed that he had died when the smell became intolerable."

Alud made no answer.

"And then you gave me his cell without so much as changing the straw."

"Times change Hermitage" Alud said as he hurried the last of the monks from the room. "Here you are then anyway, corpse, no head, no blood, prank. Just like the Abbot said."

"Hum" Hermitage hummed, wondering for a moment whether there might have been some blood before Alud’s cleaning squad arrived. That would be too much of a coincidence though.

Hermitage looked around the cell, apparently hopeful that the missing head would turn up in some rafter or other, or in the slop bucket. Finding nothing he retreated and returned to stroll around the grounds of the monastery letting his mind run free as he often did when he had a particularly tricky theological point to interrogate. To wander the grounds of this monastery was not a happy experience as the place had been constructed to focus thoughts inwards and so the outward appearance was pretty ghastly. Hermitage was not interested in his surroundings though, he wanted to think through events and circumstances, knowing, somewhere in the back of his head that there was an explanation and that it wasn’t happy either. As he approached the main door of the establishment, which always remained firmly barred to prevent the temptations of the outer world getting in, or as some brothers had it to prevent the horrors of the place getting out and scaring the locals, there was a loud rap.

"King’s messenger" a voice from outside heralded itself and was answered, almost before Hermitage could react, by Alud running across to open the gate. As he did so a magnificent, uniformed messenger atop an almost completely healthy horse entered with a disdainful look.

"I’ve come for" he began

"The message" Alud said rather hurriedly and remarkably he was then joined by the Abbot who never came out for so humble a task as gate opening.

"The what?" the messenger asked, obviously in some puzzlement.

"The message" the Abbot said, gesturing his head in a very odd way toward Hermitage "I expect you’ve come to collect the message which the King wishes to send to the Duke of Normandy?"

"Oh, er yes." said the messenger, winking for some unknown reason, "The message."

"Go and get the message Alud" the Abbot instructed and his assistant scurried off again.

"What message?" Hermitage asked.

"None of your business Hermitage" the Abbot responded. "Perhaps we’ve been asked to prepare a confidential message for the King. You aren’t the only one who can scribe here you know."

Hermitage was about to say that yes he was actually when some buried instinct for self preservation convinced him that this would be a bad thing to say.

"That’s a rather large message" he couldn’t help but comment when Alud returned with a bulky bag which clearly contained something considerably more substantial than a parchment.

"Er yes" said Alud holding the bag as if he had just been caught with his hands full of something disreputable, "We er." He hesitated and seemed to think as he spoke very slowly, "We know that the er King is erm very fond of erm."

"Turnips" the Abbot offered.

"Yes turnips" said Alud gratefully " And so we’re sending him some turnips from the monastery garden." He smiled in satisfaction.

"But I thought the message was going to the Duke of Normandy."

"That’s right" said Alud in some irritation it seemed, "He hates turnips, so there you are."

This didn’t make much sense to Hermitage but it seemed to have little to do with events.

"Wasn’t Prembard a Norman?" He asked in real innocence.

"You know I think you’re right." The Abbot said and turned to Alud, "Alud, do you think Prembard was a Norman?"

"Now you come to mention it he could well have been."

"What a coincidence eh?" The Abbot shrugged and sent the messenger on his way.

"But in that case" Hermitage said slowly as the wheels of his mind turned slowly and ground facts to flour before baking something solid with them.

"Oh my what’s that?" The Abbot called in a rather odd voice as he pointed to the gate tower of the monastery.

Hermitage and Alud looked up to see a monk on top of the tower apparently looking down at the ground outside the monastery. The light was dim now and so it was hard to make out who it was but there was something familiar about the shape to Hermitage.

"What’s he saying?" Alud asked very loudly although Hermitage couldn’t hear anything.

Words now drifted through the gathering gloom.

"Oh Prembard, what have I done?" a very calm and rational voice called out before it rose into a rather half hearted scream as the figure hurled itself, with a leap so prodigious that almost it looked as if it had been thrown rather than had jumped using its own muscles onto the ground below. Hermitage was further puzzled by the fact that the weak scream continued for some moments after the body had landed.

They all rushed out of the monastery gate to find the remains lying on the ground outside. Rather mangled and damaged remains as the man had managed to reach the rocks which were several feet away from the wall. A truly amazing jump, Hermitage thought, for someone whose main aim would have been to reach the ground which he could have done with very little effort at all.

"Oh dear" said Alud, the first to reach the scene.

"What is it?" the Abbot asked.

"His head seems to have come off as a result of the fall. We’ll never find it in the dark and then animals will probably take it during the night."

"Oh well" said the Abbot, "Never mind" he added.

"That could be brother Prembard’s body" Hermitage suggested.

"Don’t be ridiculous" the Abbot sounded quite cross, "How could a headless corpse climb a tower? No, what’s happened here is that Prembard’s killer has in turn killed himself in a fit of remorse. It is only justice that the killer lost his head just as his victim did."

"But if Prembard’s body has gone?" Hermitage suggested

"Well of course it’s gone, we buried it" Alud said.

"That was quick" Hermitage blurted in surprise, "Where?"

"Dunno" Alud shrugged, "in the graveyard somewhere."

Hermitage’s jaw went up and down as he tried in vain to reason this latest event into his world view.

"Look Hermitage" the Abbot took his arm once more and led him firmly away from the site, "I can see that your powers of reasoning are exceptional, you have shown great concern for your brothers and their welfare and have done so with an open heart and spirit."

"Thank you father"

"So I think you’d better leave."

"What?" Hermitage was shocked by this development.

"But of course. We are a humble and remote community, far distant from the circles of thought to which you are obviously suited. You would be wasted serving here. I know of a number of other communities which would make far better use of your skills than we can."

Hermitage remained startled and in denial.

"You are a treasure to the monastic community Hermitage, you need to be in a place where there is thought and discussion and erudition and learning."

Hermitage was coming round.

"The monastery of De’Ath’s Dingle isn’t far away" the Abbot said as he led Hermitage back to the gate. Alud was there, the body had gone and the assistant thrust Hermitage’s meagre belongings into the monk’s hand. When had they packed those?

"Have a good journey" The Abbot called as the gate was firmly closed behind the fundamentally puzzled Hermitage whose latest quandary was where on earth De’Ath’s Dingle was and how you got there.ermiatHermiaHHer