Caves of Myrddin Friday update

Seven went into the dungeons below Castle Dundagel today: four Frenchmen (the fighters Hugo le Bâtard and Beaumont, the magic-user Philip the Black and Beaumant's servant Benoit), the Welsh cleric Cadfael and two Flemish mercenaries. All but the unnamed mercs made it out alive. No one caroused (we ran out of play time) and Benoit is not the kind of henchman who runs his fool mouth, so information is sketchy. Here's what you manage to learn about the expedition:

Cadfael is sporting a puncture wound on his neck. The party maintains it was stirges and not a vampire that left this wound. They insist that no vampires were spotted, but Benoit is covered in blood and filth upon the party's return. Way more blood than the henchman himself could have spilled and lived.

When they arrive back at the Abbey the party is lugging a large rolled-up tapestry. Hugo installs this tapestry in the hall of a manor house a couple miles away, which he recently purchased from an absentee Norman lord. The tapestry depicts a woman dressed in white, albeit not very much white, and wearing a crown. Imagine Emma Frost from Marvel comics but with a big red tiara with a giant ruby set in it. This lady stands between Castle Dundagel (in its glory days before it fell to ruins) and an army of vaguely humanoid monsters, her hands raised as if throwing a spell at the badguys.

In local news unrelated to today's expedition, an old magic-user named James of Dillington has been seen in the vicinity. Gossip suggests he's currently the guest of the castellan of Castle Bouttreaux, the nearest Norman stronghold. James of Dillington sometimes associates himself with a band of mercenaries, drunkards and leches known as the Brotherhood of the Golden Scabbard.