Ellis Peters St Peter's Fair

The Eve of the Fair

CHAPTER 1

It began at the normal daily chapter in the Benedictine monastery of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, of Shrewsbury, on the thirtieth day of July, in the year of Our Lord 1139. That day being the eve of Saint Peter ad Vincula, a festival of solemn and profitable importance to the house that bore his name, the routine business of the morning meeting had been devoted wholly to the measures necessary to its proper celebration, and lesser matters had to wait.

The house, given its full dedication, had two saints, but Saint Paul tended to be neglected, sometimes even omitted from official documents, or so abbreviated that he almost vanished. Time is money, and clerks find it tedious to inscribe the entire title, perhaps as many as twenty times in one charter. They had had to amend their ways, however, since Abbot Radulfus had taken over the rudder of this cloistral vessel, for he was a man who brooked no slipshod dealings, and would have all his crew as meticulous as himself.

Brother Cadfael had been out before Prime in his enclosed herb-garden, observing with approval the blooming of his oriental poppies, and assessing the time when the seed would be due for gathering. The summer season was at its height, and promising rich harvest, for the spring had been mild and moist after plenteous early snows, and June and July hot and sunny, with a few compensatory showers to keep the leafage fresh and the buds fruitful. The hay harvest was in, and lavish, the corn looked ripe for the sickle. As soon as the annual fair was over, the reaping would begin. Cadfael’s fragrant domain, dewy from the dawn and already warming into drunken sweetness in the rising sun, filled his senses with the kind of pleasure on which an ascetic church sometimes frowns, finding something uneasily sinful in pure delight. There were times when young Brother Mark, who worked with him this delectable field, felt that he ought to confess his joy among his sins, and meekly accept some appropriate penance. He was still very young, there were excuses to be found for him. Brother Cadfael had more sense, and no such scruples. The manifold gifts of God are there to be delighted in, to fall short of joy would be ingratitude.

Having put in two hours of work before Prime, and having no office in connection with the abbey fair, which was engaging all attention, Cadfael was nodding, as was his habit, behind his protective pillar in the dimmest corner of the chapter-house, perfectly ready to snap into wakefulness if some unexpected query should be aimed in his direction, and perfectly capable of answering coherently what he had only partially heard. He had been sixteen years a monk, by his own considered choice, which he had never regretted, after a very adventurous life which he had never regretted, either, and he was virtually out of reach of surprise. He was fifty-nine years old, with a world of experience stored away within him, and still as tough as a badger - according to Brother Mark almost as bandy-legged, into the bargain, but Brother Mark was a privileged being. Cadfael dozed as silently as a closed flower at night, and hardly ever snored; within the Benedictine rule, and in genial companionship with it, he had perfected a daily discipline of his own that suited his needs admirably.

It is probable that he was fast asleep when the steward of the grange court, with an appropriate apology, ventured into the chapter-house and stood waiting the abbot’s permission to speak. He was certainly awake when the steward reported: “My lord, here in the great court is the provost of the town, with a delegation from the Guild Merchant, asking leave to speak with you. They say the matter is important.”

Abbot Radulfus allowed his steely, level brows to rise a little, and indicated graciously that the fathers of the borough should be admitted at once. Relations between the town of Shrewsbury on one side of the river and the abbey on the other, if never exactly cordial - that was too much to expect, where their interests so often collided - were always correct, and their skirmishes conducted with wary courtesy. If the abbot scented battle, he gave no sign. But for all that, thought Cadfael, watching the shrewd, lean hatchet-face, he has a pretty accurate idea of what they’re here for.

The worthies of the guild entered the chapter-house in a solid phalanx, no less than ten of them, from half the crafts in the town, and led by the provost.

Master Geoffrey Corviser, named for his trade, was a big, portly, vigorous man not yet fifty, clean-shaven, brisk and dignified. He made some of the finest shoes and riding-boots in England, and was well aware of their excellence and his own worth. For this occasion he had put on his best, and even without the long gown that would have been purgatory in this summer weather, he made an impressive figure, as clearly he meant to do. Several of those grouped at his back were well known to Cadfael: Edric Flesher, chief of the butchers of Shrewsbury, Martin Bellecote, master-carpenter, Reginald of Aston, the silversmith - men of substance every one. Abbot Radulfus did not know them, not yet. He had been only half a year in office, sent from London to trim an easy-going provincial house into more zealous shape, and he had much to learn about the men of the borders, as he himself, being no man’s fool, was well aware.

“You are welcome, gentlemen,” said the abbot mildly. “Speak freely, you shall have attentive hearing.”

The ten made their reverences gravely, spread sturdy feet, and stood planted like a battle-square, all eyes alert, all judgments held in reserve. The abbot was concentrating courteous attention upon them with much the same effect. In his interludes of duty as shepherd, Cadfael had once watched two rams level just such looks before they clashed foreheads.

“My lord abbot,” said the provost, “as you know, Saint Peter’s Fair opens on the day after tomorrow, and lasts for three days. It’s of the fair we come to speak.

You know the conditions. For all that time all shops in the town must be shut, and nothing sold but ale and wine. And ale and wine are sold freely here at the fairground and the Foregate, too, so that no man can make his living in the town from that merchandise. For three days, the three busiest of the year, when we might do well out of tolls on carts and pack-horses and man-loads passing through the town to reach the fair, we must levy no charges, neither murage nor pavage. All tolls belong only to the abbey. Goods coming up the Severn by boat tie up at your jetty, and pay their dues to you. We get nothing. And for this privilege you pay no more than thirty-eight shillings, and even that we must go to the trouble to distrain from the rents of your tenants in the town.”

“No more than thirty-eight shillings!” repeated Abbot Radulfus, and elevated the iron-grey brows a shade higher, but still with an urbane countenance and a gentle voice. “The sum was appointed as fair. And not by us. The terms of the charter have been known to you many years, I believe.”

“They have, and often before now have been found burdensome enough, but bargains must be kept, and we have never complained. But bad years or good, the sum has never been raised. And it falls very hard on a town so pressed as we are now, to lose three days of trade, and the best tolls of the year. Last summer, as you must know, though you were not then among us, Shrewsbury was under siege above a month, and stormed at last with great damage to the town walls, and great neglect of the streets, and for all our efforts there’s still great need of work on them, and it’s costly labour, after all last summer’s losses. Not the half of the dilapidations are yet put right, and in these troublous times, who knows when we may again be under attack? The very traffic of your fair will be passing through our streets and adding to the wear, while we get nothing to help make good the damage.”

“Come to the point, Master Provost,” said the abbot in the same tranquil tone.

“You are come to make some demand of us. Speak it out plainly.”

“Father Abbot, so I will! We think - and I speak for the whole guild merchant and borough gathering of Shrewsbury - that in such a year we have the best possible case for asking that the abbey should either pay a higher fee for the fair, or, better by far, set aside a proportion of the fair tolls on goods, whether by horse-load or cart or boat, to be handed over to the town, and spent on restoring the walls. You benefit by the protection the town affords you; you ought, we think, to bear a part with us in maintaining its defences. A tenth share of the profits would be welcomed, and we should thank you heartily for it.

It is not a demand, with respect, it is an appeal. But we believe the grant of a tenth would be nothing more than justice.”

Abbot Radulfus sat, very erect and lean and lofty, gravely considering the phalanx of stout burgesses before him. “That is the view of you all?”

Edric Flesher spoke up bluntly: “It is. And of all our townsmen, too. There are many who would voice the matter more forcibly than Master Corviser has done. But we trust in your fellow-feeling, and wait your answer.”

The faint stir that went round the chapter-house was like a great, cautious sigh. Most of the brothers looked on wide-eyed and anxious; the younger ones shifted and whispered, but very warily. Prior Robert Pennant, who had looked to be abbot by this time, and been sorely disappointed at having a stranger promoted over his head, maintained a silvery, ascetic calm, appeared to move his lips in prayer, and shot sidelong looks at his superior between narrowed ivory lids, wishing him irredeemable error while appearing to compassionate and bless.

Old Brother Heribert, recently abbot of this house and now degraded to its ranks, dozed in a quiet corner, smiling gently, thankful to be at rest.

“We are considering, are we not,” said Radulfus at length, gently and without haste, “what you pose as a dispute between the rights of the town and the rights of this house. In such a balance, should the judgment rest with you, or with me?

Surely not! Some disinterested judge is needed. But, gentlemen, I would remind you, there has been such a decision, now, within the past half-year, since the siege of which you complain. At the beginning of this year his Grace King Stephen confirmed to us our ancient charter, with all its grants in lands, rights and privileges, just as we held them aforetime. He confirmed also our right to this three-day fair on the feast of our patron Saint Peter, at the same fee we have paid before, and on the same conditions. Do you suppose he would have countenanced such a grant, if he had not held it to be just?”

“To say outright what I suppose,” said the provost warmly, “I never supposed for a moment that the thought of justice entered into it. I make no murmur against what his Grace chose to do, but it’s plain he held Shrewsbury to be a hostile town, and most like still does hold it so, because FitzAlan, who is fled to France now, garrisoned the castle and kept it over a month against him. But small say we of the town ever had in the matter, and little we could have done about it! The castle declared for the Empress Maud, and we must put up with the consequences, while FitzAlan’s away, safe out of reach. My lord abbot, is that justice?”

“Are you making the claim that his Grace, by confirming the abbey in its rights, is taking revenge on the town?” asked the abbot with soft and perilous gentleness.

“I am saying that he never so much as gave the town a thought, or its injuries a look, or he might have made some concession.”

“Ah! Then should not this appeal of yours be addressed rather to the Lord Gilbert Prestcote, who is the king’s sheriff, and no doubt has his ear, rather than to us?”

“It has been so addressed, though not with regard to the fair. It is not for the sheriff to give away any part of what has been bestowed on the abbey. Only you, Father, can do that,” said Geoffrey Corviser briskly. It began to be apparent that the provost knew his way about among the pitfalls of words every bit as well as did the abbot.

“And what answer did you get from the sheriff?”

“He will do nothing for us until his own walls at the castle are made good. He promises us the loan of labour when work there is finished, but labour we could supply, it’s money and materials we need, and it will be a year or more before he’s ready to turn over even a handful of his men to our needs. In such a case, Father, do you wonder that we find the fair a burden?”

“Yet we have our needs, too, as urgent to us as yours to you,” said the abbot after a thoughtful moment of silence. “And I would remind you, our lands and possessions here lie outside the town walls, even outside the loop of the river, two protections you enjoy that we do not share. Should we, men, be asked to pay tolls for what cannot apply to us?”

“Not all your possessions,” said the provost promptly. “There are within the town some thirty or more messuages in your hold, and your tenants within them, and their children have to wade in the kennels of broken streets as ours do, and their horses break legs where the paving is shattered, as ours do.”

“Our tenants enjoy fair treatment from us, and considerate rents, and for such matters we are responsible. But we cannot be held responsible for the town’s dilapidations, as we can for those here on our own lands. No,” said the abbot, raising his voice peremptorily when the provost would have resumed his arguments, “say no more! We have heard and understood your case, and we are not without sympathy. But Saint Peter’s Fair is a sacred right granted to this house, on terms we did not draw up; it is a right that inheres not to me as a man, but to this house, and I in my passing tenure have no authority to change or mitigate those terms in the smallest degree. It would be an offence against the king’s Grace, who has confirmed the charter, and an offence against those my successors, for it could be taken and cited as a precedent for future years. No, I will not set aside any part of the profits of the fair to your use, I will not increase the fee we pay you for it, I will not share in any proportion the tolls on goods and stalls. All belong here, and all must be gathered here, according to the charter.” He saw half a dozen mouths open to protest against so summary a dismissal, and rose in his place, very tall and straight, and chill of voice and eye. “This chapter is concluded,” he said.

There were one or two among the delegation who would still have tried to insist, but Geoffrey Corviser had a better notion of his own and the town’s dignity, and a shrewder idea of what might or might not impress that self-assured and austere man. He made the abbot a deep, abrupt reverence, turned on his heel, and strode out of the chapter-house, and his defeated company recovered their wits and marched as haughtily after him.


There were booths already going up in the great triangle of the horse-fair, and all along the Foregate from the bridge to the corner of the enclosure, where the road veered right towards Saint Giles, and the king’s highway to London. There was a newly-erected wooden jetty downstream from the bridge, where the long riverside stretch of the main abbey gardens and orchards began, the rich lowland known as the Gaye. By river, by road, afoot through the forests and over the border from Wales, traders of all kinds began to make their way to Shrewsbury.

And into the great court of the abbey flocked all the gentry of the shire, and of neighbouring shires, too, lordlings, knights, yeomen, with their wives and daughters, to take up residence in the overflowing guest-halls for the three days of the annual fair. Subsistence goods they grew, or bred, or brewed, or wove, or span for themselves, the year round, but once a year they came to buy the luxury cloths, the fine wines, the rare preserved fruits, the gold and silver work, all the treasures that appeared on the feast of Saint Peter ad Vincula, and vanished three days later. To these great fairs came merchants even from Flanders and Germany, shippers with French wines, shearers with the wool-clip from Wales, and clothiers with the finished goods, gowns, jerkins, hose, town fashions come to the country. Not many of the vendors had yet arrived, most would appear next day, on the eve of the feast, and set up their booths during the long summer evening, ready to begin selling early on the morrow. But the buyers were arriving in purposeful numbers already, bent on securing good beds for their stay.

When Brother Cadfael came up from the Meole brook and his vegetable-fields for Vespers, after a hard and happy afternoon’s work, the great court was seething with visitors, servants and grooms, and the traffic in and out of the stables flowed without cease. He stood for a few minutes to watch the pageant, and Brother Mark at his elbow glowed as he gazed, dazzled by the play of colours and shimmer of movement in the sunlight.

“Yes,” said Cadfael, viewing with philosophical detachment what Brother Mark contemplated with excitement and wonder, “the world and his wife will be here, either to buy or sell.” And he eyed his young friend attentively, for the boy had seen little enough of the world before entering the order, being thrust through the gates willy-nilly at sixteen by a stingy uncle who grudged him his keep even in exchange for hard work, and he had only recently taken his final vows. “Do you see anything there to tempt you back into the secular world?”

“No,” said Brother Mark, promptly and serenely. “But I may look and enjoy, just as I do in the garden when the poppies are in flower. It’s no blame to men if they try to put into their own artifacts all the colours and shapes God put into his.”

There were certainly a few of God’s more charming artifacts among the throng of visitors moving about the great court and the stable-yard, young women as bright and blooming as the poppies, and all the prettier for being in a high state of expectation, looking forward eagerly to their one great outing of the year. Some came riding their own ponies, some pillion behind husbands or grooms, there was even one horse-litter bringing an important dowager from the south of the shire.

“I never saw it so lively before,” said Mark, gazing with pleasure.

“You’ve not lived through a fair as yet. Last year the town was under siege all through July and into August, small hope of getting either buyers or sellers into Shrewsbury for any such business. I had my doubts even about this year, but it seems trade’s well on the move again, and our gentlefolk are hungrier than ever for what they missed a year ago. It will be a profitable fair, I fancy!”

“Then could we not have spared a tithe to help put the town in order?” demanded Mark.

“You have a way, child, of asking the most awkward questions. I can read very well what was in the provost’s mind, since he spoke it out in full. But I’m by no means so sure I know what was in the abbot’s, nor that he uttered the half of it. A hard man to read!”

Mark had stopped listening. His eyes were on a rider who had just entered at the gatehouse, and was walking his horse delicately through the moving throng towards the stables. Three retainers on rough-coated ponies followed at his heels, one of them with a cross-bow slung at his saddle. In these perilous times, even here in regions summarily pacified so short a time ago, no gentleman would undertake a longer journey without provision for his own defence, and an arbalest reaches further than a sword. This young man both wore a sword and looked as if he could use it, but he had also brought an archer with him for security.

It was the master who held Mark’s eyes. He was perhaps a year or two short of thirty, past the uncertainties of first youth - if, indeed, he had ever suffered them - and at his resplendent best. Handsomely appointed, elegantly mounted on a glistening dark bay, he rode with the negligent ease of one accustomed to horses almost from birth. In the summer heat he had shed his short riding-cotte, and had it slung over his lap, and rode with his shirt open over a spare, muscular chest, hung with a cross on a golden chain. The body thus displayed to view in simple linen shirt and dark hose was long and lissome and proud of its comeliness, and the head that crowned it was bared to the light, a smiling, animated face nicely fashioned about large, commanding dark eyes, and haloed in a cropped cap of dark gold hair, that would have curled had it been allowed to grow a little longer. He came and passed, and Mark’s eyes followed him, at once tranquil and wistful, quite without any shade of envy.

“It must be a pleasant thing,” he said thoughtfully, “to be so made as to give pleasure to those who behold you. Do you suppose he realises his blessings?”

Mark was rather small himself, from undernourishment from childhood, and plain of face, with spiky, straw-coloured hair round his tonsure. Not that he ever viewed himself much in the glass, or realised that he had a pair of great grey eyes of such immaculate clarity that common beauty faltered before them. Nor was Cadfael going to remind him of any such assets.

“As the world usually goes,” he said cheerfully, “he probably has a mind that looks no further ahead or behind than the length of his own fine eyelashes. But I grant you he’s a pleasure to look at. Yet the mind lasts longer. Be glad you have one that will wear well. Come on, now, all this will keep till after supper.”

The word diverted Brother Mark’s thoughts very agreeably. He had been hungry all his life until he entered this house, and still he preserved the habit of hunger, so that food, no less than beauty, was unflawed pleasure. He went willingly at Cadfael’s side towards Vespers, and the supper that would follow.

It was Cadfael who suddenly halted, hailed by name in a high, delighted voice that plucked his head about towards the summons gladly.

A lady, a slender, young, graceful lady with a heavy sheaf of gold hair and a bright oval face, and eyes like irises in twilight, purple and clear. Her body, as Brother Mark saw in his first startled glance, though scarcely swollen as yet, and proudly carried, was girdled high, and rounded below the girdle. There was a life there within. He was not so innocent that he did not know the signs.

He should have lowered his eyes, and willed to do so, and could not; she shone so that it was like all the pictures of the Visiting Virgin that he had ever seen. And this vision held out both hands to Brother Cadfael, and called him by his name. Brother Mark, though unwillingly, bent his head and went on his way alone.

“Girl,” said Brother Cadfael heartily, clasping the proffered hands with delight, “you bloom like a rose! And he never told me!”

“He has not seen you since the winter,” she said, dimpling and flushing, “and we did not know then. It was no more than a dream, then. And I have not seen you since we were wed.”

“And you are happy? And he?”

“Oh, Cadfael, can you ask it!” There had been no need, the radiance Brother Mark had recognised was dazzling Cadfael no less. “Hugh is here, but he must go to the sheriff first. He’ll certainly be asking for you before Compline. I have come to buy a cradle, a beautiful carved cradle for our son. And a Welsh coverlet, in beautiful warm wool, or perhaps a sheepskin. And fine spun wools, to weave his gowns.”

“And you keep well? The child gives you no distress?”

“Distress?” she said, wide-eyed and smiling. “I have not had a moment’s sickness, only joy. Oh, Brother Cadfael,” she said, breaking into laughter, “how does it come that a brother of this house can ask such wise questions? Have you not somewhere a son of your own? I could believe it! You know far too much about us women!”

“As I suppose,” said Cadfael cautiously, “I was born of one, like the rest of us. Even abbots and archbishops come into the world the same way.”

“But I’m keeping you,” she said, remorseful. “It’s time for Vespers, and I’m coming, too. I have so many thanks to pour out, there’s never enough time. Say a prayer for our child!” She pressed him by both hands, and floated away through the press towards the guest-hall. Born Aline Siward, now Aline Beringar, wife to the deputy sheriff of Shropshire, Hugh Beringar of Maesbury, near Oswestry. A year married, and Cadfael had been close friend to that marriage, and felt himself enlarged and fulfilled by its happiness. He went on towards the church in high content with the evening, his own mood, and the prospects for the coming days.

When he emerged from the refectory after supper, into an evening still all rose and amber light, the court was as animated as at noon, and new arrivals still entering at the gatehouse. In the cloister Hugh Beringar sat sprawled at ease, waiting for him; a lightweight, limber, dark young man, lean of feature and quizzical of eyebrow. A formidable face, impossible to read unless a man knew the language. Happily, Cadfael did, and read with confidence.

“If you have not lost your cunning,” said the young man, lazily rising, “or met your overmatch in this new abbot of yours, you can surely find a sound excuse for missing Collations - and a drop of good wine to share with a friend.”

“Better than an excuse,” said Cadfael readily, “I have an acknowledged reason.

They’re having trouble in the grange court with scour among the calves, and want a brewing of my cure in a hurry. And I daresay I can find you a draught of something better than small ale. We can sit outside the workshop, such a warm evening. But are you not a neglectful husband,” he reproved, as they fell companionably into step on their way into the gardens, “to abandon your lady for an old drinking crony?”

“My lady,” said Hugh ruefully, “has altogether abandoned me! A breeding girl has only to show her nose in the guest-hall, and she’s instantly swept away by a swarm of older dames, all cooing like doves, and loading her with advice on everything from diet to midwives’ magic. Aline is holding conference with all of them, hearing details of all their confinements, and taking note of all their recommendations. And since I can neither spin, nor weave, nor sew, I’m banished.” He sounded remarkably complacent about it, and being well aware of it himself, laughed aloud. “But she told me she had seen you, and you needed no telling. How do you think she is looking?”

“Radiant!” said Cadfael. “In full bloom, and prettier than ever.”

In the herb-garden, shaded along one side by its high hedge from the declining sun, the heavy fragrances of the day hung like a spell. They settled on a bench under the eaves of Cadfael’s workshop, with a jug of wine between them.

“But I must start my draught brewing,” said Cadfael. “You may talk to me while I do it. I shall hear you within, and I’ll be with you as soon as I have it stirring. What’s the news from the great world? Is King Stephen secure on his throne now, do you think?”

Beringar considered that in silence for a few moments, listening contentedly to the soft sounds of Cadfael’s movements within the hut. “With all the west still holding out for the empress, however warily, I doubt it. Nothing is moving now, but it’s an ominous stillness. You know that Earl Robert of Gloucester is in Normandy with the empress?”

“So we’d heard. It’s not to be wondered at, he is her half-brother, and fond of her, so they say, and not an envious man.”

“A good man,” agreed Hugh, doing an opponent generous justice, “one of the few on either side not grasping for what he himself can get. The west, however quiet now, will do what Robert says. I can’t believe he’ll hold off for ever. And even out of the west, he has kinsmen and influence. The word runs that he and Maud, from their refuge in France, are working away quietly to enlist powerful allies, wherever they see a hope. If that’s true, this civil war is by no means over.

Promised enough support, there’ll be a bid for the lady’s cause, soon or late.”

“Robert has daughters married about the land,” said Cadfael thoughtfully, “and all of them to men of might. One of them to the earl of Chester, I recall. If a few of that measure declared for the empress, you might well have a war on your hands to some purpose.”

Beringar drew a long face, and then shrugged off the thought. Earl Ranulf of Chester was certainly one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, virtually king himself of an immense palatine where his writ ran, and no other. But for that very reason he was less likely to feel the need to declare for either side in the contention for the throne. Himself supreme, and unlikely ever to be threatened in his own possessions by either Maud or Stephen, he could afford to sit back and watch his own borders, not merely with a view to preserving them intact, rather to extending them. A land at odds with itself offers opportunities, as well as threats.

“Ranulf will need a lot of persuading, kinsman or no. He’s very well as he is, and if he does move it will be because he sees profit and power in it for himself, and the empress will come a poor second. He’s not the man to risk anything for any cause but his own.”

Cadfael came out from the hut to sit beside him, drawing grateful breath in the evening coolness, for he had his small brazier burning within, beneath his simmering brew. “That’s better! Now fill me a cup, Hugh, I’m more than ready for it.” And after a long and satisfying draught he said thoughtfully: “There were some fears this disturbed state of things could ruin the fair even this year, but it seems trade keeps on the move while barons skulk in their castles. The prospects are excellent, after all.”

“For the abbey, perhaps,” agreed Hugh. “The town is less happy about the outlook, from all we heard as we passed through. This new abbot of yours has set the burgesses properly by the ears.”

“Ah, you’ve heard about that?” Cadfael recounted the course of the argument, in case his friend had caught but one side of it. “They have a case for seeking relief, no question. But so has he for refusing it, and he’s standing firm on his rights. No way round it in law, he’s taking no more than is granted to him.

And no less!” he added, and sighed.

“Feelings are running high in the town,” warned Beringar seriously. “I would not be sure you may not have trouble yet. I doubt if the provost made any too much of their needs. The word in the town is that this may be law, but it is not justice. But what’s the word with you? How are you faring in the new dispensation?”

“You’ll hear murmurs even within our walls,” admitted Cadfael, “if you keep your ears open. But for my part, I have no complaint. He’s a hard man, but fair, and at least as hard on himself as on others. We’ve been spoiled and easy with Heribert, and the new curb pulled us up pretty sharply, but that’s the sum of it. I have much confidence in the man. He’ll chasten where he sees fault, but he’ll stand by his own against any power where they are threatened blameless.

He’s a man I’d be glad to have beside me in any battle.”

“But his loyalty’s limited to his own?” said Beringar slyly, and cocked a slender black brow.

“We live in a contentious world,” said Brother Cadfael, who had lived more than half his life in the thick of the battles. “Who says peace would be good for us?

I don’t know the man well enough yet to know what’s in his mind. I have not found him limited, but his vows are to his vocation and this house. Give him room and time, Hugh, and we shall see what follows. Time was when I was in two minds, or more, about you!” His voice marvelled and smiled at the thought. “Not very long, however! I shall soon get the measure of Radulfus, too. Hand me the jug, lad, and then I must go and stir this brew for the calves. How long have we yet to Compline?”

CHAPTER 2


On the thirty-first of July the vendors came flooding in, by road and by river.

From noon onward the horse-fair was marked out in lots for stalls and booths, and the abbey stewards were standing by to guide pedlars and merchants to their places, and levy the tolls due on the amount of merchandise they brought. A halfpenny for a modest man-load, a penny for a horse-load, from twopence to fourpence for a cart-load, depending on the size and capacity, and higher fees in proportion for the goods unloaded from the river barges that tied up at the temporary landing-stage along the Gaye. The entire length of the Foregate hummed and sparkled with movement and colour and chatter, the abbey barn and stable outside the wall was full, children and dogs ran among the booths and between the wheels of the carts, excited and shrill.

The discipline of the day’s devotions within the walls was not relaxed, but between offices a certain air of holiday gaiety had entered with the guests, and novices and pupils were allowed to wander and gaze without penalty. Abbot Radulfus held himself aloof, as was due to his dignity, and left the superintendence of the occasion and the collection of tolls to his lay stewards, but for all that he knew everything that was going on, and had measures in mind to deal with any emergency. As soon as the arrival of the first Flemish merchant was reported to him, together with the news that the man had little French, he dispatched Brother Matthew, who had lived for some years in Flanders in his earlier days, and could speak fluent Flemish, to deal with any problems that might arise. If the fine-cloth merchants were coming, there was good reason to afford them every facility, for they were profitable visitors. It was a mark of the significance of the Shrewsbury fair that they should undertake so long a journey from the East Anglian ports where they put in, and find it worth their while to hire carts or horses for the overland pilgrimage.

The Welsh, of course, would certainly be present in some numbers, but for the most part they would be the local people who had a foot on either side the border, and knew enough English to need no interpreters. It came as a surprise to Brother Cadfael to be intercepted once again as he left the refectory after supper, this time by the steward of the grange court, preoccupied and breathless with business, and told that he was needed at the jetty, to take care of one who spoke nothing but Welsh, and a man of consequence, indeed of self-importance, who would not be fobbed off with the suspect aid of a local Welshman who might well be in competition with him on the morrow.

“Prior Robert gives you leave, for as long as you’re needed. It’s a fellow by the name of Rhodri ap Huw, from Mold. He’s brought a great load up the Dee, and ported it over to Vrnwy and Severn, which must have cost him plenty.”

“What manner of goods?” asked Cadfael, as they made for the gatehouse together.

His interest was immediate and hearty. Nothing could have suited him better than a sound excuse to be out among the noise and bustle along the Foregate.

“What looks like a very fine wool-clip, mainly. And also honey and mead. And I thought I saw some bundles of hides - maybe from Ireland, if he trades out of the Dee. And there’s the man himself.”

Rhodri ap Huw stood solid as a rock on the wooden planking of the jetty beside his moored barge, and let the tides of human activity flow round him. The river ran green and still, at a good level for high summer; even boats of deeper draught than usual had made the passage without mishap, and were unloading and unbaling on all sides. The Welshman watched, measuring other men’s bales with shrewd, narrowed dark eyes, and pricing what he saw. He looked about fifty years old, and so assured and experienced that it seemed strange he had never picked up English. Not a tall man, but square-built and powerful, fierce Welsh bones islanded in a thick growth of thorny black hair and beard. His dress, though plain and workmanlike, was of excellent material and well-fitted. He saw the steward hurrying towards him, evidently having carried out his wishes to the letter, and large, white teeth gleamed contentedly from the thicket of the black beard.

“Here am I, Master Rhodri,” said Cadfael cheerfully, “to keep you company in your own tongue. And my name is Cadfael, at your service for all your present needs.”

“And very welcome, Brother Cadfael,” said Rhodri ap Huw heartily. “I hope you’ll pardon my fetching you away from your devotions …”

“I’ll do better. I’ll thank you! A pity to have to miss all this bustle, I can do with a glimpse of the world now and again.”

Sharp, twinkling eyes surveyed him from head to toe in one swift glance. “You’ll be from the north yourself, I fancy. Mold is where I come from.”

“Close by Trefriw I was born.”

“A Gwynedd man. But one who’s been a sight further through the world than Trefriw, by the look of you, brother. As I have. Well, here are my two fellows, ready to unload and porter for me before I send on part of my cargo downriver to Bridgnorth, where I have a sale for mead. Shall we have the goods ashore first?”

The steward bade them choose a stand at whatever point Master Rhodri thought fit when he had viewed the ground, and left them to supervise the unloading.

Rhodri’s two nimble little Welsh boatmen went to work briskly, hefting the heavy bales of hides and the wool-sacks with expert ease, and piling them on the jetty, and Rhodri and Cadfael addressed themselves pleasurably to watching the lively scene around them; Its many of the townsfolk and the abbey guests were also doing. On a fine summer evening it was the best of entertainments to lean over the parapet of the bridge, or stroll along the green path to the Gaye, and stare at an annual commotion which was one of the year’s highlights. If some of the townspeople looked on with dour faces, and muttered to one another in sullen undertones, that was no great wonder, either. Yesterday’s confrontation had been reported throughout the town, they knew they had been turned away empty-handed.

“A thing worth noting,” said Rhodri, spreading his thick legs on the springy boards, “how both halves of England can meet in commerce, while they fall out in every other field. Show a man where there’s money to be made, and he’ll be there. If barons and kings had the same good sense, a country could be at peace, and handsomely the gainer by it.”

“Yet I fancy,” said Cadfael dryly, “that there’ll be some hot contention here even between traders, before the three days are up. More ways than one of cutting throats.”

“Well, every wise man keeps a weapon about him, whatever suits his skill, that’s only good sense, too. But we live together, we live together, better than princes manage it. Though I grant you,” he said weightily, “princes make good use of these occasions, for that matter. No place like one of your greater fairs for exchanging news and views without being noticed, or laying plots and stratagems, or meeting someone you’d liefer not be seen meeting. Nowhere so solitary as in the middle of a marketplace!”

“In a divided land,” said Cadfael thoughtfully, “you may very well be right.”

“For instance - look to your left a ways, but don’t turn. You see the meagre fellow in the fine clothes, the smooth-shaven one with the mincing walk? Come to watch who’s arriving by water! You may be sure if he’s here at all, he’s come early, and has his stall already up and stocked, to be free to view the rest of us. That’s Euan of Shotwick, the glover, and an important man about Earl Ranulfs court at Chester, I can tell you.”

“For his skill at his trade?” asked Cadfael dryly, observing the lean, fastidious, high-nosed figure with interest.

“That and other fields, brother. Euan of Shotwick is one of the sharpest of all of Earl Ranulfs intelligencers, and much relied on, and if he’s setting up a booth here as far as Shrewsbury, it may well be for more purposes than trade.

And then on the other side, look, that great barge standing off ready to come alongside - downstream of us. See the cut of her? Bristol-built, for a thousand marks! Straight out of the west country, and the city the king failed to take last year, and has let well alone ever since.”

Above the softly-flowing surface of Severn, its green silvered now with slanting evening sunlight, the barge sidled along the grassy shore towards the end of the jetty. She loomed impressively opulent and graceful, cunningly built to draw hardly more water than boats half her capacity, and yet steer well and ride steadily. She had a single mast, and what seemed to be a neat, closed cabin aft, and three crewmen were poling her inshore with easy, light touches, and waiting to moor her alongside as soon as there was room. Twenty pence, as like as not, thought Cadfael, before she gets her load ashore and cleared!

“Made to carry wine, and carry it steady,” said Rhodri ap Huw, narrowing his sharply-calculating eyes on the boat. “Some of the best wines of France come into Bristol, they should have a ready sale as far north as this. I should know that rig!”

A considerable number of onlookers, whether they recognised her port and rig or not, were curious enough to come down from the bridge and the highroad to see the Bristol boat come in. She was remarkable enough among her fellow craft to draw all eyes. Cadfael caught sight of a number of known faces craning among the crowd: Edric Flesher’s wife Petronilla, Aline Beringar’s maid Constance leaning over the bridge, one of the abbey stewards forgetting his duties to stare; and suddenly sunlight on a head of dark gold hair, cropped short, and a young man came running lightly down from the highway, to halt on the grass slope above the jetty, and watched admiringly as the Bristol boat slid alongside, ready to be made fast. The lordling whose assured beauty had aroused Mark’s wistful admiration was evidently just as inquisitive as the raggedest barefoot urchin from the Foregate.

The two Welshmen had completed their unloading by this time, and were waiting for orders, and Rhodri ap Huw was not the man to let his interest in other men’s business interfere with his own.

“They’ll be a fair while unloading,” he said briskly. “Shall we go and choose a good place for my stall, while the field’s open?”

Cadfael led the way along the Foregate, where several booths had already been set up. “You’ll prefer a site on the horse-fair itself, I fancy, where all the roads meet.”

“Ah, my customers will find me, wherever I am,” said Rhodri smugly; but for all that, he kept a shrewd eye on all the possibilities, and took his time about selecting his place, even when they had walked the length of the Foregate and come to the great open triangle of the horse-fair. The abbey servants had set up a number of more elaborate booths, that could be closed and locked, and supply living shelter for their holders, and these were let out for rents. Other traders brought their own serviceable trestles and light roofs, while the small country vendors would come in early each morning and display their wares on the dry ground, or on a woven brychan, filling all the spaces between. For Rhodri nothing was good enough but the best. He fixed upon a stout booth near the abbey barn and stable, where all customers coming in for the day could stable their beasts, and in the act could not fail to notice the goods on the neighbouring stalls.

“This will serve very well. One of my lads will sleep the nights here.” The elder of the two had followed them, balancing the first load easily in a sling over his shoulders, while the other remained to guard the merchandise stacked on the jetty. Now he began to stow what he had brought, while Rhodri and Cadfael set off back to the river to dispatch his fellow after him. On the way they intercepted one of the stewards, notified him of the site chosen, and came to terms for the rental. Brother Cadfael’s immediate duty was done, but he was as interested in the growing bustle along the road and by the Severn as any other man who saw the like but once a year, and there was time to spare yet before Compline. It was good, too, to be speaking Welsh, there was seldom need within the walls.

They reached the point where the track turned aside from the highway to go down to the waterside, and looked down upon a lively scene. The Bristol boat was moored, and her three crewmen beginning to hoist casks of wine on to the jetty, while a big, portly, red-faced elderly gentleman in a long gown of fashionable cut, his capuchon twisted up into an elaborate hat, swung wide sleeves as he pointed and beckoned, giving orders at large. A fleshy but powerful face,round and choleric, with bristly brows like furze, and bluish jowls. He moved with surprising agility and speed, and plainly he considered himself a man of importance, and expected others to recognise him as such on sight.

“I thought it might well be!” said Rhodri ap Huw, pleased with his own acuteness and knowledge of widespread affairs. “Thomas of Bristol, they call him, one of the biggest importers of wine into the port there, and deals in a small way in fancy wares from the east, sweetmeats and spices and candies. The Venetians bring them in from Cyprus and Syria. Costly and profitable! The ladies will pay high for something their neighbours have not! What did I say? Money will bring men together. Whether they hold for Stephen or the empress, they’ll come and rub shoulders at your fair, brother.”

“By the look of him,” said Cadfael, “a man of consequence in the city of Bristol.”

“So he is, and I’d have said in very good odour with Robert of Gloucester, but business is business, and it would take more than the simple fear of venturing into enemy territory to keep him at home, when there’s good money to be made.”

They had turned to begin the descent to the riverside when they were aware of a growing murmur of excitement among the people watching from the bridge, and of heads turning to look towards the town gates on the other side of the river. The evening light, slanting from the west, cast deep shadows under one parapet and half across the bridge, but above floated a faint, moving cloud of fine dust, glittering in the sunset rays, and advancing towards the abbey shore. A tight knot of young men came into sight, shearing through the strolling onlookers at a smart pace, like a determined little army on the march. All the rest were idling the tune pleasurably away on a fine evening, these were bound somewhere, in resolution and haste, the haste, perhaps, all the more aggressive lest the resolution be lost. There might have been as many as five and twenty of them, all male and all young. Some of them Cadfael knew. Martin Bellecote’s boy Edwy was there, and Edric Flesher’s journeyman, and scions of half a dozen respected trades within the town; and at their head strode the provost’s own son, young Philip Corviser, jutting a belligerent chin and swinging clenched hands to the rhythm of his long-striding walk. They looked very grave and very dour, and people gazed at them in wonder and speculation, and drew in at a more cautious pace after their passing, to watch what would happen.

“If this is not the face of battle,” said Rhodri ap Huw alertly, viewing the grim young faces while they were still safely distant, “I have never seen it. I did hear that your house has a difference of opinion with the town. I’ll away and see all those goods of mine safely stacked away under lock and key, before the trumpets blow.” And he tucked up his sleeves and was off down the path to the jetty as nimbly as a squirrel, and hoisting his precious jars of honey out of harm’s way, leaving Cadfael still thoughtfully gazing by the roadside. The merchant’s instincts, he thought, were sound enough. The elders of the town had made their plea and been sent away empty-handed. To judge by their faces, the younger and hotter-headed worthies of the town of Shrewsbury had resolved upon stronger measures. A rapid survey reassured him that they were unarmed, as far as he could see not even a staff among them. But the face, no question, was the face of battle, and the trumpets were about to blow.

CHAPTER 3

The advancing phalanx reached the end of the bridge, and checked for no more than a moment, while their leader cast calculating glances forward along the Foregate, now populous with smaller stalls, and down at the jetty, and gave some brisk order. Then he, with perhaps ten of his stalwarts on his heels, turned and plunged down the path to the river, while the rest marched vehemently ahead. The interested townspeople, equally mutely and promptly, split into partisan groups, and pursued both contingents. Not one of them would willingly miss what was to come. Cadfael, more soberly, eyed the passing ranks, and was confirmed in believing that they came with the most austere intentions; there was not a bludgeon among them, and he doubted if any of them ever carried knives. Nothing about them was warlike, except their faces. Besides, he knew most of them, there was no wilful harm in any. All the same, he turned down the path after them, not quite easy in his mind. The Corviser sprig was known for a wild one, clever, bursting with hot and suspect ideas, locked in combat with his elders half his time, and occasionally liable to drink rather more than at this stage he could carry. Though this evening he had certainly not been drinking; he had far more urgent matters on his mind.

Brother Cadfael sighed, descending the path to the waterside half-reluctantly.

The earnest young are so dangerously given to venturing beyond the point where experience turns back. And the sharper they are, the more likely to come by wounds.

He was not at all surprised to find that Rhodri ap Huw, that most experienced of travellers, had vanished from the jetty, together with his second porter and all his goods. Rhodri himself would not be far, once he had seen all his merchandise well on its way to being locked in the booth on the horse-fair. He would want to watch all that passed, and make his own dispositions accordingly, but he would be out of sight, and somewhere where he could make his departure freely whenever he deemed it wise. But there were half a dozen boats of various sizes busy unloading, dominated by Thomas of Bristol’s noble barge. Its owner heard the sudden surge of urgent feet on the downhill track, and turned to level an imperious glance that way, before returning to his business of supervising the landing of his goods. The array of casks and bales on the boards was impressive.

The young men surging down to the river could not fail to make an accurate estimate of the powers they faced.

“Gentlemen … !” Philip Corviser hailed them all loudly, coming to a halt with feet spread, confronting Thomas of Bristol. He had a good, ringing voice; it carried, and lesser dealers dropped what they were doing to listen.

“Gentlemen, I beg a hearing, as you are citizens all, of whatever town, as I am of Shrewsbury, and as you care for your own town as I do for mine! You are here paying rents and tolls to the abbey, while the abbey denies any aid to the town.

And we have greater need than ever the abbey has, of some part of what you bring.”

He drew breath hard, having spent his first wind. He was a gangling lad, not yet quite in command of his long limbs, being barely twenty and only just at the end of his growing. Spruce in his dress, but down at the heel, Cadfael noticed -

proof of the old saying that the shoemaker’s son is always the one who goes barefoot! He had a thick thatch of reddish dark hair, and a decent, homely face now pale with passion under his summer tan. A good, deft workman, they said, when he could be stopped from flying off after some angry cause or other.

Certainly he had a cause now, bless the lad, he was pouring out to these hard-headed business men all the arguments his father had used to the abbot at chapter, in dead earnest, and - heaven teach him better sense! - even with hopes of convincing them!

“If the abbey turns a cold eye on the town’s troubles, should you side with them? We are here to tell you our side of the story, and appeal to you as men who also have to bear the burdens of your own boroughs, and may well have seen at home what war and siege can do to your own walls and pavings. Is it unreasonable that we should ask for a share in the profits of the fair? The abbey came by no damage last year, as the town did. If they will not bear their part for the common good, we address ourselves to you, who have no such protection from the hardships of the world, and will have fellow-feeling with those who share the like burdens.”

They were beginning to lose interest in him, to shrug, and turn back to their unloading. He raised his voice sharply in appeal.

“All we ask is that you will hold back a tithe of the dues you pay to the abbey, and pay them instead to the town for murage and pavage. If all hold together, what can the abbey stewards do against you? There need be no cost to you above what you would be paying in any event, and we should have something nearer to justice. What do you say? Will you help us?”

They would not! The growl of indifference and derision hardly needed words.

What, set up a challenge to what was laid down by charter, when they had nothing to gain by it? Why should they take the risk? They turned to their work, shrugging him off. The young men grouped at his back set up among themselves a counter murmur, still controlled but growing angry. And Thomas of Bristol, massive and contemptuous, waved a fist in their spokesman’s face, and said impatiently: “Stand out of the way, boy, you are hindering your betters! Pay a tithe to the town indeed! Are not the abbey rights set down according to law?

And can you, dare you tell me they do not pay the fee demanded of them by charter? If you have a complaint that they are failing to keep the law, take it to the sheriff, where it belongs, but don’t come here with your nonsense. Now be off, and let honest men get on with their work.”

The young man took fire. “The men of Shrewsbury are as honest as you, sir, though something less boastful about it. We take honesty for granted here! And it is not nonsense that our town goes with broken walls and broken streets, while abbey and Foregate have escaped all such damage. No, but listen …”

The merchant turned a broad, hunched back, with disdainful effect, and stalked away to pick up the staff he had laid against his piled barrels, and motion his men to continue their labours. Philip started indignantly after him, for the act was stingingly deliberate, as though a gnat, a mere persistent nuisance, had been brushed aside.

“Master merchant,” he called hotly, “one word more!” And he laid an arresting hand to Thomas’s fine, draped sleeve.

They were two choleric people, and it might have come to it even at the best, sooner or later, but Cadfael’s impression was that Thomas had been genuinely startled by the grasp at his arm, and believed he was about to be attacked.

Whatever the cause, he swung round and struck out blindly with the staff he held. The boy flung up his arm, but too late thoroughly to protect his head. The blow fell heavily on his forearms and temple, and laid him flat on the planking of the jetty, with blood oozing from a cut above his ear.

That was the end of all peaceful and dignified protest, and the declaration of war. Many things happened on the instant. Philip had fallen without a cry, and lay half-stunned; but someone had certainly cried out, a small, protesting shriek, instantly swallowed up in the roar of anger from the young men of the town. Two of them rushed to their fallen leader, but the rest, bellowing for vengeance, lunged to confront the equally roused traders, and closed with them merrily. In a moment the goods newly disembarked were being hoisted and flung into the river, and one of the raiders soon followed them, with a bigger splash.

Fortunately those who lived all their lives by Severn usually learned to swim even before they learned to walk, and the youngster was in no danger of drowning. By the time he had hauled himself out and returned to the fray, there was a fully-fledged riot in progress all along the riverside.

Several of the cooler-headed citizens had moved in, though cautiously, to try to separate the combatants, and talk a little sense into the furious young; and one or two, not cautious enough, had come in for blows meant for the foe, the common fate of those who try to make peace where no one is inclined for it.

Cadfael among the rest had rushed down to the jetty, intent on preventing what might well be a second and fatal blow, to judge by the merchant’s congested countenance and brandished staff. But someone else was before him. A girl had clambered frantically up out of the tiny cabin of the barge, kilted her skirts and leaped ashore, in time to cling with all her weight to the quivering arm, and plead in agitated tones:

“Uncle, don’t please don’t! He did no violence! You’ve hurt him badly!”

Philip Corviser’s brown eyes, all this time open but unseeing, blinked furiously at the sound of so unexpected a voice. He heaved himself shakily to his knees, remembered his injury and his grievance, and gathered sprawled limbs and faculties to surge to his feet and do battle. Not that his efforts would have been very effective; his legs gave under him as he tried to rise, and he gripped his head between steadying hands as though it might fall off if he shook it. But it was the sight of the girl that stopped him short. There she stood, clinging, to the merchant’s arm and pleading angelically into his ear, in tones that could have cooled a dragon, her eyes all the time dilated and anxious and pitying on Philip. And calling the old demon “uncle”! Philip’s revenge was put clean out of his reach in an instant, but he scarcely felt a pang at the deprivation, to judge by the transformation that came over his bruised and furious face. Swaying on one knee, still dazed, he stared at the girl as pilgrims might stare at miraculous visions, or lost wanderers at the Pole star.

She was well worth looking at, a young thing of about eighteen or nineteen years, bare-armed and bare-headed, with two great braids of blue-black hair swinging to her waist, and framed between them a round, childish face all roses and snow, lit by two long-lashed dark blue eyes, at this moment huge with alarm and concern. No wonder the mere sound of her voice could tame her formidable uncle, as surely as the sight of her had checked and held at gaze the two young men who had rushed to salvage and avenge their leader, and who now stood abashed, gaping and harmless.

It was at that moment that the fight on the jetty, which had become a melee hopelessly tangled, reeled their way, thudding along the planks, knocked over the stack of small barrels, and sent them rolling thunderously in all directions. Cadfael grasped young Corviser under the arms, hoisted him to his feet and hauled him out of harm’s way, thrusting him bodily into the arms of his friends for safe-keeping, since he was still in a daze. A rolling cask swept Thomas’s feet from under him, and the girl, flung aside in his fall, swayed perilously on the edge of the jetty.

An agile figure darted past Cadfael with a flash of gold hair, leaped another rolling cask as nimbly as a deer, and plucked her back to safety in a long arm.

The almost insolent grace and assurance was as familiar as the yellow hair.

Cadfael contented himself with helping Thomas to his feet, and drawing him aside out of danger, and was not particularly surprised, when that was done, to see that the long arm was still gallantly clasped round the girl’s waist. Nor was she in any hurry to extricate herself. Indeed, she was gazing at the smiling, comely, reassuring face of her rescuer wide-eyed, much as Philip Corviser had gazed at her.

“There, you’re quite safe! But let me help you back aboard, you’d do best to stay there a while, your uncle, too. I advise it, sir,” he said earnestly. “No one will offer you further offence. With this lady beside you, no one could be so ungallant,” he said, his eyes wide in candid admiration. The cream of the girl’s fair skin turned all to rose.

Thomas of Bristol dusted himself down with slightly shaky hands, for he was a big man, and had fallen heavily. “I thank you, sir, warmly, for your help. You, too, brother. But my wines - my goods - ”

“Leave them to us, sir. What can be salvaged, shall be. You stay safe aboard, and wait. This cannot continue, the law will be out after these turbulent young fools any moment. Half of them are off along the Foregate, overturning stalls and hounding the abbey stewards. Before long they’ll be in the town gaol with sore heads, wishing they’d had better sense than pick a fight with the abbot of a Benedictine house.”

His eye was on Cadfael, who was busy righting and retrieving the fugitive casks, and still within earshot. He felt himself being drawn companionably into this masterful young man’s planning, perhaps as reassurance and guarantee of respectability. The eyes were slightly mischievous, though the face retained its decent gravity. The nearest Benedictine was being gently teased as representative of his order.

“My name,” said the rescuer blithely, “is Ivo Corbière, of the manor of Stanton Cobbold in this shire, though the main part of my honour lies in Cheshire. If you’ll allow me, I’m happy to offer my help …” He had taken his arm from about the girl’s waist by then, decorously if reluctantly, but his gaze continued to embrace and flatter her; she was well aware of it, and it did not displease her. “There!” cried Corbière triumphantly, as a shrill whistle resounded from a youth hanging over the parapet of the bridge above them. “Now watch them dive to cover! Their look-out sees the sheriff’s men turning out to quell the riot.”

His judgment was accurate enough. Half a dozen heads snapped up sharply at the sound, noted the urgently waving arm, and half a dozen dishevelled youths extricated themselves hastily from the fight, dropped whatever they were holding, and made off at speed in several directions, some along the Gaye, towards the coverts by the riverside, some up the slope into the tangle of narrow lanes behind the Foregate, one under the arch of the bridge, to emerge on the upstream side with no worse harm than wet feet. In a few moments the sharp clatter of hooves drummed over the bridge, and half a dozen of the sheriff’s men came trotting down to the jetty, while the rest of the company swept on towards the horse-fair.

“As good as over!” said Ivo Corbière gaily. “Brother, will you lend an oar? I fancy you know this river better than I, and there’s many a man’s hard-won living afloat out there, and much of it may yet be saved.”

He asked no leave; he had selected already the smallest and most manageable boat that swung beside the jetty, and he was across the boards and down into it almost before the sheriff’s men had driven their mounts in among the still-locked combatants, and begun to pluck the known natives out by the hair.

Brother Cadfael followed. With Compline but ten minutes away, by his mental clock, he should have made his escape and left the salvage to this confident and commanding young man, but he had been sent out here to aid a client of the abbey fair, and could he not argue that he was still about the very same business? He was in the borrowed boat, an oar in his hand and his eye upon the nearest cask bobbing on the bright sunset waters, before he had found an answer; which was answer enough.


The noise receded soon. Everyone left here was busily hooking bales and bundles out of the river, pursuing some downstream to coves where they had lodged, abandoning one or two small items too sodden and too vulnerable to be saved, writing off minor losses, thankfully calculating profits still to be made after fees and rentals and tolls were paid. The damage was not so great, after all, it could be carried. Along the Foregate stalls were being righted, goods laid out afresh. Doubtful if the pandemonium had ever reached the horse-fair, where the great merchants unrolled their bales. In the stony confines of the castle and the town gaol, no doubt, some dozen or so youngsters of the town were nursing their bruises and grudges, and wondering how their noble and dignified protest had disintegrated into such a shambles. As for Philip Corviser, nobody knew where he had fetched up, once he shook off the devotees who had helped him away from the jetty in a daze. The brief venture was over, the cost not too great.

Not even the sheriff, Gilbert Prestcote, was going to bear down too hard on those well-meaning but ill-advised young men of Shrewsbury.

“Gentlemen,” said Thomas of Bristol, eased and expansive, “I cannot thank you enough for such generous help. No, the casks will have taken no hurt. Those who buy my wines should and do store them properly a good while before tapping, their condition will not be impaired. The sugar confections, thanks be, were not yet unloaded. No, I have suffered no real hurt. And my child here is much in your debt. Come, my dear, don’t hide there within, make your respects to such good friends! Let me present my niece Emma, my sister’s daughter, Emma Vernold, heiress to her father, who was a master-mason in our city, and also to me, for I have no other kin. Emma, my dear, you may pour the wine!”

The girl had made good use of the interval. She came forth now with her braids of hair coiled in a gilded net on her neck, and a fine tunic of embroidered linen over her plain gown. Not, thought Cadfael, for my benefit! It was high time for him to take his leave and return to his proper duties. He had missed Compline in favour of retrieving goods from the waters, and he would have to put in an hour or so in his workshop yet before he could seek his bed. No one would be early to bed on this night, however. Thomas of Bristol was not the man to leave the supervision of his booth and the disposition of his goods to others, however trustworthy his three servants might be; he would soon be off to the horse-fair to see everything safely stowed to his own satisfaction, ready for the morrow. And if he thought fit to leave those two handsome young people together here until his return, that was his affair. Mention of the manor of Stanton Cobbold, and as the least part of Corbière’s honour, at that, had made its impression. There had been no real need for that careful mention of Mistress Emma’s prospective wealth; but dutiful uncles and guardians must be ever on the alert for good matches for their girls, and this young man was already taken with her face before ever he heard of her fortune. Small wonder, she was a beautiful child by any standards.

Brother Cadfael excused himself from lingering, wished the company goodnight, and walked back at leisure to the gatehouse. The Foregate stretched busy and populous, but at peace. Order had been restored, and Saint Peter’s Fair could open on the morrow without further disruption.

CHAPTER 4

Hugh Beringar came back from a final patrol along the Foregate well past ten o’clock, an hour when all dutiful brothers should have been fast asleep in the dortoir. He was by no means surprised to find that Cadfael was not. They met in the great court, as Cadfael came back from closing his workshop in the herb-garden. It was still a clear twilight, and the west had a brilliant afterglow.

“I hear you’ve been in the thick of it,” said Hugh, stretching and yawning. “Did ever I know you when you were not? Mad young fools, what did they hope to do, that their elders could not! And then to run wild as they did, and ruin their case even with those who had sympathy for them! Now their sires will have fines to pay, and the town lose more for the night’s work than ever it stood to gain.

Cadfael, I take no joy in heaving decent, silly lads into prison, I have a foul taste in my mouth from it. Come into the gatehouse for a while, and share a cup with me. You may as well stay awake until Matins now.”

“Aline will be waiting for you,” objected Cadfael.

“Aline, bless her good sense, will be fast asleep, for I’m bound to the castle yet to report on this disturbance. I doubt I shall be there over the night. Come and tell me how all this went wrong, for they tell me it began down at the jetty, where you were.”

Cadfael went with him willingly. They sat together in the anteroom of the gatehouse, and the porter, used to such nocturnal activities when the deputy sheriff of the shire was lodged within, brought them wine, made tolerant enquiry of progress, and left them to their colloquy.

“How many have you taken up?” asked Cadfael, when he had given an account of what had happened by the river.

“Seventeen. And it should have been eighteen,” owned Hugh grimly, “if I had not hauled Bellecote’s boy Edwy aside without witnesses, put the fear of God into him, and sent him home with a flea in his ear. Not sixteen yet! But sharp enough to know very well what he was about, the imp! I should not have done it.”

“His father was one of yesterday’s delegates,” said Cadfael, “and he’s a loyal child, as well as a bold one. I’m glad you let him away home. And young Corviser?”

“No, we’ve not laid hand on him, though a dozen witnesses say he was the ringleader, and captained the whole enterprise. But he has to go home some time, and he’ll not get in at the gate a free man. Not a hope of it!”

“He came lecturing like a doctor,” said Cadfael seriously, “and never a threatening move. It was when he was struck down that the wild lads took the bit between their teeth and laid about them. I saw it! The man who struck him lashed out in alarm, I grant you, but without cause.”

“I take your word for that, and I’ll stand by it. But he led the attack, and he’ll end with the rest, as he should, seeing he loosed this on us all. They’ll be bailed by their fathers, the lot of them,” said Hugh wearily, and passed long fingers over tired eyelids. “Do I seem to you, Cadfael, to be turning horribly into a crown official? That I should not like!”

“No,” said Cadfael judicially, “you’re not too far gone. Still a glint in the eye and a quirk in the mind. You’ll do yet!”

“Gracious in you! And you say this Bristol merchant struck the silly wretch down without provocation?”

“He imagined provocation. The boy laid a detaining hand on his arm from behind, meaning no ill, but the man took fright. He had a staff in his hand, he turned on him and hit out. Felled him like an ox! I doubt if he had the strength to knock the trestle from under a stall, after that. For all I know, he may be fallen out of his senses, somewhere, unless his friends have kept their hands on him.”

Hugh looked at him across the trestle on which their own elbows were spread, and smiled. “If ever I want for an advocate, I’ll come running to you. Well, I do know the lad, he has a well-hung tongue, and lets it wag far too freely, and he has a hot temper and a warm heart, and lets the pair of them run away with his own sense - if you claim he has any!”

The lay porter put his bald brown crown and round red face into the room. “My lord, there’s a lady here at the gate has a trouble on her mind, and asks a word. One Mistress Emma Vernold, niece to the merchant Thomas of Bristol. Will you have her come in?”

They looked at each other across the board with raised brows and startled eyes.

“The same man?” said Beringar, marvelling.

“The same man, surely! And the same girl! But the uproar was all over. What can she be wanting here at this hour, and what’s her uncle about, letting her venture loose into the night?”

“We’d best be finding out,” said Hugh, resigned. “Let the lady come in, if I’m the man she wants.”

“She asked first for a guest here, Ivo Corbière, but I know he’s still out viewing the preparations along the Foregate. And when I mentioned that you were here, she begged a word with you. Glad to find the law here and awake, seemingly.”

“Ask her to step in, then. And Cadfael, stay, if you’ll be so good, she’s had speech with you already, she may be glad of a known face.”

Emma Vernold came in hurriedly yet hesitantly, unsure of herself in this unfamiliar place, and made a hasty reverence. “My lord, I pray your pardon for troubling you so late …” She saw Brother Cadfael, and half-smiled, relieved but distracted. “I am Emma Vernold, I came with my uncle, Thomas of Bristol, we have our own living-space on his barge by the bridge. And this is my uncle’s man Gregory.” It was the youngest of the three who attended her, a gawky, lean but powerful fellow of about twenty.

Beringar took her by the hand and put her into a seat by the table. “I’m here to serve you, as best I can. What’s your trouble?”

“Sir, my uncle went to see to the stocking of his booth at the horse-fair, it was not long after the good brother here left us. You’ll have heard all that happened, below there? My uncle went to join his other two men, who were busy there before him, and left only Gregory with me. But that’s nearly two hours ago, and he has not come back.”

“He will have brought a great deal of merchandise with him,” suggested Hugh reasonably. “It takes time to arrange things to the best vantage, and I imagine your uncle will have things done well.”

“Oh, yes, indeed he will. But it isn’t just that he is so long. The two men with him were his journeyman, Roger Dod, and the porter Warin, and Warin sleeps in the booth to mind the goods. Roger came back to the barge an hour ago, and was surprised not to find my uncle back, for he said he left the booth well before him. We thought perhaps he had met some acquaintance on the way, and stopped to exchange the news with him, so we waited some while, but still he did not come.

And now I have been back to the booth with Gregory, to see if by some chance he had turned back there for something, something forgotten, perhaps. But he has not, and Warin says, as Roger does, that my uncle left first, intending to come straight home to me, it being so late. He never liked - he does not like,” she amended, paling, “for me to be alone with the men, without his company.” Her eyes were steady and clear, but her lip quivered, and there was the faint suggestion of disquiet even in the unflinching firmness of her regard.

She knows she is fair, Cadfael thought, and she’s right to take account of it.

It may even be that one of them - Roger Dod, the most privileged of the three, perhaps? - has a fancy for her, and she knows that, too, and has no fancy for him, and whether justly or not, is uneasy about being close to him without her guardian by.

“And you are sure he has not made his way home by some other way,” asked Hugh, “while you’ve been seeking him at his booth?”

“We went back. Roger waited there, for that very case, but no, he has not come.

I asked those still working in the Foregate if they had seen such a man, but I could get no news. And then I thought that perhaps - ” She turned in appeal to Cadfael. “The young gentleman who was so kind, this evening - he is staying here in the guest-hall, so he told us. I wondered if perhaps my uncle had met him again on his way home, and lingered … And he, at least, knows his looks, and could tell me if he has seen him. But he is not yet back, they tell me.”

“He left the jetty earlier than your uncle, then?” asked Cadfael. The young man had looked very well settled to spend a pleasant hour or two in the lady’s company, but perhaps her formidable uncle had ways of conveying, even to lords of respectable honours, that his niece was to be approached only when he was present to watch over her.

Emma flushed, but without averting her eyes; eyes which were seen to be thoughtful, resolute and intelligent, for all her milk-and-roses baby-face.

“Very soon after you, brother. He was at all points correct and kind. I thought to come and ask for him, as someone on whom I could rely.”

“I’ll ask the porter to keep a watch for him,” offered Cadfael, “and have him step in here when he returns. Even the horse-fair should be on its way to bed by now, and he’ll be needing his own sleep if he’s to hunt the best bargains tomorrow, which is what I take it he’s here for. What do you say, Hugh?”

“A good thought,” said Hugh. “Do it, and we’ll make provision to look for Master Thomas, though I trust all’s well with him, for all this delay. The eve of a fair,” he said, smiling reassurance at the girl, “and there are contacts to be made, customers already looking over the ground … A man can forget about his sleep with his mind on business.”

Brother Cadfael heard her sigh: “Oh, yes!” with genuine hope and gratitude, as he went to bid the porter intercept Ivo Corbière when he came in. His errand could hardly have been better timed, for the man himself appeared in the gateway. The main gate was already closed, only the wicket stood open, and the dip of the gold head stepping through caught the light from the torch overhead, and burned like a minor sun. Bare-headed, with his cotte slung on one shoulder in the warm last night of July, Ivo Corbière strolled towards his bed almost rebelliously, with a reserve of energy still unspent. The snowy linen shirt glowed in the lambent dark with a ghostly whiteness. He was whistling a street tune, more likely Parisian than out of London, by the cadence of it. He had certainly drunk reasonably deep, but not beyond his measure, nor even up to it.

He was alert at a word.

“What, you, brother? Out of bed before Matins?” Amiable though his soft laughter was, he checked it quickly, sensing something demanding gravity of him. “You were looking for me? Something worse fell out? Good God, the old man never killed the fool boy, did he?”

“Nothing so dire,” said Cadfael. “But there’s one within here at the gatehouse came looking for you, with a question. You’ve been about the Foregate and the fairground all this time?”

“The whole round,” said Ivo, his attention sharpening. “I have a new and draughty manor to furnish in Cheshire. I’m looking for woollens and Flemish tapestries. Why?”

“Have you seen, in your wanderings, Master Thomas of Bristol? At any time since you left his barge earlier this evening?”

“I have not,” said Ivo, wondering, and peered closely “in the strange, soft light of midsummer, an hour short of midnight.

“What is this? The man made it clear - he has practice, which is no marvel! - that his girl is to be seen only in his presence and with his sanction, and small blame to him, for she’s gold, with or without his gold. I respected him for it, and I left. Why? What follows?”

“Come and see,” said Cadfael simply, and led the way within.

The young man blinked in the sudden light, and opened his eyes wide upon Emma.

It was a question which of them showed the more distracted. The girl rose, reaching eager hands and then half-withdrawing them. The man sprang forward solicitously to welcome the clasp.

“Mistress Vernold! At this hour? Should you …” He had a grasp of the company and the urgency by then. “What has happened?” he asked, and looked at Beringar.

Briskly, Beringar told him. Cadfael was not greatly surprised to see that Corbière was relieved rather than dismayed. Here was a young, inexperienced girl, growing nervous all too easily when she was left alone an hour or so too long, while no doubt her uncle, very travelled and experienced indeed, and well able to take care of himself, was in no sort of trouble at all, but merely engaged in a little social indulgence with a colleague, or busy assessing the goods and worldly state of some of his rivals.

“Nothing ill will have happened to him,” said Corbière cheerfully, smiling reassurance at Emma, who remained, for all that, grave and anxious of eye. And she was no fool, Cadfael reflected, watching, and knew her uncle better than anyone else here could claim to know him. “You’ll see, he’ll come home in his own good time, and be astonished to find you so troubled for him.”

She wanted to believe it, but her eyes said she could not be sure. “I hoped he might have met you again,” she said, “or that at least you might have seen him.”

“I wish it were so,” he said. “It would have been my pleasure to set your mind at rest. But I have not seen him.”

“I think,” said Beringar, “this lies now with me. I have still half a dozen men here within the walls, we’ll make a search for Master Thomas. In the meantime, the hour is late, and you should not be wandering in the night. It will be best if your man here returns to the barge, while you, madam, if you consent, can very well join my wife, here in the guest-hall. Her maid Constance will make room for you, and find you whatever you need over the night.” There was no knowing whether he had noted her uneasiness about returning to the barge, just as acutely as Cadfael had, or was simply placing her in the nearest safe charge, and the best; but she brightened so eagerly, and thanked him so fervently, that there was no mistaking the relief she felt.

“Come, then,” he said gently, “I’ll see you safely into Constance’s care, and then you may leave the searching to us.”

“And I,” said Corbière, shrugging enthusiastically into the sleeves of his cotte, “will bear a hand with you in the hunt, if you’ll have me.”


They combed the whole length of the Foregate, Beringar, with his six men-at-arms, Ivo Corbière, as energetic and wide-awake as at noon, and Brother Cadfael, who had no legitimate reason to go with them at all, beyond the pricking of his thumbs, and the manifest absurdity of going to his bed at such an hour, when he would in any case have to rise again at midnight for Matins. If that was excuse enough for sharing a drink with Beringar, it was excuse enough for taking part in the hunt for Thomas of Bristol. For truly, thought Cadfael, shaking his head over the drastic events of the evening, I shall not be easy until I see that meaty blue-jowled face again, and hear that loud, self-confident voice. Corbière might shrug off the merchant’s non-return as a mere trivial departure from custom, such as every man makes now and again, and on any other day Cadfael would have agreed with him; but too much had happened since noon today, too many people had been trapped into outrageous and uncharacteristic actions, too many passions had been let loose, for this to be an ordinary day. It was even possible that someone had stepped so far aside from his usual self as to commit deliberate violence by stealth in the night, to avenge what had been done openly and impulsively in the day. Though God forbid!

They had begun by making certain that there was still no word or sign at the jetty. No, Thomas had neither appeared nor sent word, and Roger Dod’s forays among the other traders along the riverside, as far as he dared go from the property he guarded, had elicited no news of his master.

He was a burly, well-set-up young man of about thirty, this Roger Dod, and very personable, if he had not been so curt and withdrawn in manner. No doubt he was anxious, too. He answered Hugh’s questions in the fewest possible words, and gnawed an uncertain lip at hearing that his master’s niece was now lodged in the abbey guest-hall. He would have come with them to help in their search, but he was responsible for his master’s belongings, and would have to be answerable for their safety when his master returned. He stayed with the barge, and sent the mute and sleepily resentful Gregory to lead them straight to the booth Master Thomas had rented. Beringar’s sergeant, with three men, was left behind to work his way gradually along the Foregate after them, questioning every waking stallholder as he went, while the rest followed the porter to the fairground.

The great open space was by this time half-asleep, but still winking with occasional torches and braziers, and murmuring with subdued voices. For these three days in the year it was transformed into a tight little town, busy and populous, to vanish again on the fourth day.

Thomas had chosen a large booth almost in the centre of the triangular ground.

His goods were neatly stacked within, and his watchman was awake and prowling the ground uneasily, to welcome the arrival of authority with relief. Warin was a leathery, middle-aged man, who had clearly been in his present service many years, and was probably completely trusted within his limits, but had not the ability ever to rise to the position Roger Dod now held.

“No, my lord,” he said anxiously, “never a word since, and I’ve been on watch every moment. He set off for his barge a good quarter of an hour before Roger left. We had everything stowed to his liking, he was well content. And he’d had a fall not so long before - you’d know of that? - and was glad enough, I’d say, to be off home to his bed. For after all, he’s none so young, no more than I am, and he carried more weight.”

“And he set off from here, which way?”

“Why, straight to the highroad, close by here. I suppose he’d keep along the Foregate.”

Behind Cadfael’s shoulder a familiar voice, rich and full and merrily knowing, said in Welsh: “Well, well, brother, out so late? And keeping the law company!

What would the deputy sheriff of the shire want with Thomas of Bristol’s watchman at this hour? Are they on the scent of all Gloucester’s familiars, after all? And I claimed commerce was above the anarchy!” Narrowed eyes twinkled at Cadfael in the light of the dispersed torches and the far-distant stars in a perfect midsummer sky. Rhodri ap Huw was chuckling softly and fatly at his own teasing wit and menacing sharpness of apprehension.

“You keep a friendly eye out for your neighbours?” said Cadfael, innocently approving. “I see you brought off all your own goods without scathe.”

“I have a nose for trouble, and the good sense to step out of its way,” said Rhodri ap Huw smugly. “What’s come to Thomas of Bristol? He was not so quick on the scent, it seems. He could have loosed his mooring and poled out into the river till the flurry was over, and been as safe as in the west country.”

“Did you see him struck down?” asked Cadfael deceitfully; but Rhodri was not to be caught.

“I saw him strike down the other young fool,” he said, and grinned. “Why, did he come to grief after I left? And which of them is it you’re looking for, Thomas or the lad?” And he stared with marked interest to see the sheriff’s men probing at the backs of stalls, and under the trestles, and followed inquisitively on their heels as they worked their way back along the highroad. Evidently nothing of moment was to be allowed to happen at this fair without Rhodri ap Huw being present at it, or very quickly and minutely informed of it. And why not make use of, his perspicacity?

“Thomas’s niece is in a taking because he has not come back to his barge. That might mean anything or nothing, but now it’s gone on so long, his men are getting uneasy, too. Did you see him leave his booth?”

“I did. It might be as much as two hours ago. And his journeyman some little while after him. A fair size of a man, to be lost between here and the river.

And no word of him anywhere since then?”

“Not that we’ve found, or likely to find, without questioning every trader and every idler in all this array. And the wiser half of them getting their sleep in ready for the morning.”

They had reached the Foregate and turned towards the town, and still Rhodri strode companionably beside Cadfael, and had taken to peering into the dark spaces between stalls just as the sheriff’s men were doing. Lights and braziers were fewer here, and the stalls more modest, and the quiet of the night closed in drowsily. On their left, under the abbey wall, a few compact but secure booths were arrayed. The first of them, though completely closed in and barred for the night, showed through a chink the light of a candle within. Rhodri dug a weighty elbow into Cadfael’s ribs.

“Euan of Shotwick! No one is ever going to get at him from the rear, he likes a corner backed into two walls if he can get it. Travels alone with a pack-pony, and wears a weapon, and can use it, too. A solitary soul because he trusts nobody. His own porter - luckily his wares weigh light for their value - and his own watchman.”

Ivo Corbière had loitered to go aside between the stalls, some of which in this stretch were still unoccupied, waiting for the local traders who would come with the dawn. The consequent darkness slowed their search, and the young man, not at all averse to spending the night without sleep, and probably encouraged by the memory of Emma’s bright eyes, was tireless and thorough. Even Cadfael and Rhodri ap Huw were some yards ahead of him when they heard him cry after them, high and urgently:

“Good God, what’s here? Beringar, come back here!”

The tone was enough to bring them running. Corbière had left the highway, probing between stacked trestles and leaning canvas awnings into darkness, but when they peered close there was lambent light enough from the stars for accustomed eyes to see what he had seen. From beneath a light wooden frame and stretched canvas jutted two booted feet, motionless, toes pointed skywards. For a moment they all stared in silence, dumbstruck, for truth to tell, not one of them had believed that the merchant could have come to any harm, as they all agreed afterwards. Then Beringar took hold of the frame and hoisted it away from the trestles against which it leaned, and dim and large in the darkness they saw a man’s long shape, from the knees up rolled in a cloak that hid the face. There was no movement, and no noticeable sound.

The sergeant leaned in with the one torch they had brought with them, and Beringar reached a hand to the folds of the cloak, and began to draw them back from the shrouded head and shoulders. The movement of the cloth released a powerful wave of an odour that made him halt and draw suspicious breath. It also disturbed the body, which emitted an enormous snore, and a further gust of spirituous breath.

“Dead drunk and helpless,” said Beringar, relieved. “And not, I fancy, the man we’re looking for. The state he’s in, this fellow must have been here some hours already, and if he comes round in time to crawl away before dawn it will be a miracle. Let’s have a look at him.” He was less gingerly now in dragging the cloak away, but the drunken man let himself be hauled about and dragged forth by the feet with only a few disturbed grunts, and subsided into stertorous sleep again as soon as he was released. The torch shone its yellow, resinous light upon a shock-head of coarse auburn hair, a pair of wide shoulders in a leather jerkin, and a face that might have been sharp, lively and even comely when he was awake and sober, but now looked bloated and idiotic, with open, slobbering mouth and reddened eyes.

Corbière took one close look at him, and let out a gasp and an oath. “Fowler!

Devil take the sot! Is this how he obeys me? By God, I’ll make him sweat for it!” And he filled a fist with the thick brown hair and shook the fellow furiously, but got no more out of him than a louder snort, the partial opening of one glazed eye, and a wordless mumble that subsided again as soon as he was dropped, disgustedly and ungently, back into the turf.

“This drunken rogue is mine … my falconer and archer, Turstan Fowler,” said Ivo bitterly, and kicked the sleeper in the ribs but not savagely. What was the use? The man would not be conscious for hours yet, and what he suffered afterwards would pay him all his dues. “I’ve a mind to put him to cool in the river! I never gave him leave to quit the abbey precinct, and by the look of him he’s been out and drinking - Good God, the reek of it, what raw spirit can it be? - since ever I turned my back.”

“One thing’s certain,” said Hugh, amused, “he’s in no case to walk back to his bed. Since he’s yours, what will you have done with him? I would not advise leaving him here. If he has anything of value on him, even his hose, he might be without it by morning. There’ll be scavengers abroad in the dark hours - no fair escapes them.”

Ivo stood back and stared down disgustedly at the oblivious culprit. “If you’ll lend me two of your men, and let us borrow a board here, we’ll haul him back and toss him into one of the abbey’s punishment cells, to sleep off his swinishness on the stones, and serve him right. If we leave him there unfed all the morrow, it may frighten him into better sense. Next time, I’ll have his hide!”

They hoisted the sleeper on to a board, where he sprawled aggravatingly into ease again, and snored his way along the Foregate so blissfully that his bearers were tempted to tip him off at intervals, by way of recompensing themselves for their own labour. Cadfael, Beringar and the remainder of the party were left looking after them somewhat ruefully, their own errand still unfulfilled.

“Well, well!” said Rhodri ap Huw softly into Cadfael’s ear, “Euan of Shotwick is taking a modest interest in the evening’s happenings, after all!”

Cadfael turned to look, and in the shuttered booth tucked under the wall a hatch had certainly opened, and against the pale light of a candle a head leaned out in sharp outline, staring towards where they stood. He recognised the high-bridged, haughty nose, the deceptively meagre slant of the lean shoulders, before the hatch was drawn silently to again, and the glover vanished.


They worked their way doggedly, yard by yard, all the way back to the riverside, where Roger Dod was waiting in a fume of anxiety, but they found no trace of Thomas of Bristol.


A late boat coming up the Severn from Buildwas next day, and tying up at the bridge about nine in the morning, delayed its unloading of a cargo of pottery to ask first that a message be sent to the sheriff, for they had other cargo aboard, taken up out of a cove near Atcham, which would be very much the sheriff’s business. Gilbert Prestcote, busy with other matters, sent from the castle his own sergeant, with orders to report first to Hugh Beringar at the abbey.

The particular cargo the potter had to deliver lay rolled in a length of coarse sail-cloth in the bottom of the boat, and oozed water in a dark stain over the boards. The boatman unfolded the covering, and displayed to Beringar’s view the body of a heavily-built man of some fifty to fifty-five years, fleshy, with thinning, grizzled hair and bristly, bluish jowls, his pouchy features sagging doughily in death. Master Thomas of Bristol, stripped of his elaborate capuchon, his handsome gown, his rings and his dignity, as naked as the day he was born.

“We saw his whiteness bobbing under the bank,” said the potter, looking down upon his salvaged man, “and poled in to pick him up, the poor soul. I can show you the place, this side of the shallows and the island at Atcham. We thought best to bring him here, as we would a drowned man. But this one,” he said very soberly, “did not drown.”

No, Thomas of Bristol had not drowned. That was already evident from the very fact that he had been stripped of everything he had on, and hardly by his own hands or will. But also, even more certainly, from the incredibly narrow wound under his left shoulder-blade, washed white and closed by the river, where a very fine, slender dagger had transfixed him and penetrated to his heart.

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