St Peter's Fair

CHAPTER 1

The second day of the fair dawned brilliantly, a golden sun climbing, faint mist hanging like a floating veil over the river. Roger Dod rose with the dawn, shook Gregory awake, rolled up his brychan, washed in the river, and made a quick meal of bread and small ale before setting off along the Foregate to his master’s booth. All along the highroad traders were clambering out of their cloaks, yawning and stretching, and setting out their goods ready for the day’s business. Roger exchanged greetings with several of them as he passed. Where so many were gathered at close quarters, even a dour and silent man could not help picking up acquaintance with a few of his fellows.

The first glimpse of Master Thomas’s booth, between the busy stirrings of its neighbours, brought a scowl to Roger’s brow and a muttered oath to his tongue, for the wooden walls were still fast closed. Every hatch still sealed, and the sun already climbing! Warin must be fast asleep, inside there. Roger hammered on the front boards, which should by this hour have been lowered trimly on to their trestles, and set out with goods for sale. He got no response from within.

“Warin!” he bellowed. “Devil take you, get up and let me in!”

No reply, except that several of the neighbours had turned curiously to listen and watch, abandoning their own activities to attend to this unexpected clamour.

“Warin!” bawled Roger, and thumped again vigorously. “You idle swine, what’s come to you?”

“I did wonder,” said the cloth-merchant next door, pausing with a bolt of flannel in his arms. “There’s been no sign of him. A sound sleeper, your watchman!”

“Hold hard!” The armourer from the other side leaned excitedly over Roger’s shoulder, and fingered the edge of the wooden door. “Splinters, see?” Beside the latch the boards showed a few pale threads, hardly enough to be seen, and at the thrust of his hand the door gave upon a sliver of darkness. “No need to hammer, the way in is open. A knife has been used on this!” said the armourer, and there fell a momentary silence.

“Pray God that’s all it’s been used on!” said Roger in an appalled whisper, and thrust the door wide. He had a dozen of them at his back by then; even the Welshman Rhodri ap Huw had come rolling massively between the stalls to join them, sharp black eyes twinkling out of the thicket of his hair and beard, though what he made of the affair, seeing he spoke no English, no one stopped to consider.

From the darkness within welled the warm scent of timber, wine and sweetmeats, and a faint, strange sound like the breathy grunting of a dumb man. Roger was propelled forward into the dimness by the eager helpers crowding at his back, all agape with curiosity. The stacked bales and small casks of wine took shape gradually, after the brief blindness of entering this dark place from sunlight.

Everything stood orderly and handy, just as it had been left overnight, and of Warin there was no sign, until Rhodri ap Huw, ever practical, unbolted the front hatch and let it down, and the brightness of the morning came flooding in.

Stretched along the foot of the same front wall, where Rhodri must almost have set foot on him, Warin lay rolled in his own cloak and tied at elbows, knees and ankles with cords, so tightly that he could barely wriggle enough to make the folds of cloth rustle. There was a sack drawn over his head, and a length of linen dragged the coarse fibres into his mouth and was secured behind his neck.

He was doing his best to answer to his name, and at least his limited jerkings and muted grunts made it plain that he was alive.

Roger uttered a wordless yell of alarm and indignation, and fell on his knees, plucking first at the linen band that held the sack fast. The coarse cloth was wet before with spittle, and the mouth within must be clogged and stung with ropey fibres, but at least the poor wretch could breathe, his strangled grunts were trying to form words long before the linen parted, and let him spit out his gag. Still beneath his sack, his hoarse croak demanded aggrievedly: “Where were you so long, and me half-killed?”

A couple of pairs of willing hands were at work on the other bonds by that time, all the more zealously now they had heard him speak, and indeed complain, in such reassuringly robust tones. Warin emerged gradually from his swaddlings, unrolled unceremoniously out of the cloak so that he ended face-down on the ground, and still incoherently voluble. He righted himself indignantly, but so spryly that it was plain he had no broken bones, no painful injuries, and had not even suffered overmuch from the cramps of his bonds. He looked up from under his wild grey thatch of hair, half defensive and half accusing, glaring round the circle of his rescuers as though they had been responsible for his hours of discomfort.

“Late’s better than never!” he said sourly, and hawked, and spat out fibres of sacking. “What took you so long? Is everybody deaf? I’ve been kicking here half the night!”

Half a dozen hands reached pleasurably to hoist him to his feet and sit him down gently on a cask of wine. Roger stood off and let them indulge their curiosity, scowling blackly at his colleague meantime. There was no damage done, not a scratch on the old fool! The first threat, and he had crumpled into a pliable rag.

“For God’s sake, what happened to you? You had the booth sealed. How could any man break in here, and you not know? There are other merchants sleep here with their wares, you had only to call.”

“Not all,” said the cloth-merchant fairly. “I myself lie at a tavern, so do many. If your man was sound asleep, as he well might be with all closed for the night …”

“It was long past midnight,” said Warin, scrubbing aggrievedly at his chafed ankles. “I know because I heard the little bell for Matins, over the wall, before I slept. Not a sound after, until I awoke as that hood came over my head.

They rammed the stuff into my mouth. I never saw face or form, they rolled me up like a bale of wool, and left me tied.”

“And you never raised a cry!” said Roger bitterly. “How many were they? One or more?”

Warin was disconcerted, and wavered, swaying either way. “I think two. I’m not sure …”

“You were hooded, but you could hear. Did they talk together?”

“Yes, now I recall there was some whispering. Not that I could catch any words.

Yes, they were two. There was moving about of casks and bales here, that I know …”

“For how long? They durst not hurry, and have things fall and rouse the fairground,” said the armourer reasonably. “How long did they stay?”

Warin was vague, and indeed to a man blindfolded and tied by night, time might stretch out like unravelled thread. “An hour, it might be.”

“Time enough to find whatever was of most value here,” said the armourer, and looked at Roger Dod, with a shrug of broad shoulders. “You’d better look about you, lad, and see what’s missing. No need to trouble for anything so weighty as casks of wine, they’d have needed a cart for those, and a cart in the small hours would surely have roused someone. The small and precious is what they came for.”

But Roger had already turned his back on his rescued fellow, and was burrowing frantically among the bales and boxes stacked along the wall. “My master’s strongbox! I built it in behind here, out of sight … Thank God I took the most of yesterday’s gains back to the barge with me last night, and have them safe under lock and key, but for all that, there was a good sum left in it. And all his accounts, and parchments …”

He was thrusting boxes and bags of spices aside in his haste, scenting the air, pushing out of his way wooden caskets of sugar confections from the east, come by way of Venice and Gascony, and worth high prices in any market. “Here, against the wall …”

His hands sank helplessly, he stood staring in dismay. He had bared the boards of the booth; goods stood piled on either side, and between them, nothing.

Master Thomas’s strongbox was gone.

Brother Cadfael had taken advantage of the early hours to put in an hour or two of work with Brother Mark in the herb-gardens, while he had no reason to anticipate any threat to Emma, for she was surely still asleep in the guest-hall with Constance, and out of reach of harm. The morning was clear and sunny, the mist just lifting from the river, shot through with oblique gold, and Mark sang cheerfully about his weeding, and listened attentively and serenely as Cadfael instructed him in all particulars of the day’s work.

“For I may have to leave all things in your hands. And so I can, safely enough, I know, if I should chance to be called away.”

“I’m well taught,” said Brother Mark, with his grave smile, behind which the small spark of mischief was visible only to Cadfael, who had first discovered and nurtured it. “I know what to stir and what to let well alone in the workshop.”

“I wish I could be as sure of my part outside it,” said Cadfael ruefully. “There are brews among us that need just as sure a touch, boy, and where to stir and where to let be is puzzling me more than a little. I’m walking a knife-edge, with disastrous falls on either side. I know my herbs. They have fixed properties, and follow sacred rules. Human creatures do not so. And I cannot even wish they did. I would not have one scruple of their complexity done away, it would be lamentable loss.”

It was time to go to Prime. Brother Mark stooped to rinse his hands in the butt of water they kept warming through the day, to be tempered for the herbs at the evening watering. “It was being with you made me know that I want to be a priest,” he said, speaking his mind as openly as always in Cadfael’s company.

“I had never the urge for it,” said Cadfael absently, his mind on other matters.

“I know. That was the one thing wanting. Shall we go?”

They were coming out from Prime, and the lay servants already mustering for their early Mass, when Roger Dod came trudging in at the gatehouse, out of breath, and with trouble plain to be read in his face.

“What, again something new?” sighed Cadfael, and set off to intercept him before he reached the guest-hall. Suddenly aware of this square, sturdy figure bearing down on him with obvious purpose, Roger checked, and turned an anxious face. His frown cleared a little when he recognised the same monk who had accompanied the deputy sheriff in the vain search for Master Thomas, on the eve of Saint Peter.

“Oh, it’s you, brother, that’s well! Is Hugh Beringar within? I must speak to him. We’re beset! Yesterday the barge, and now the booth, and God knows what’s yet to come, and what will become of us before ever we get away from this deadly place. My master’s books gone - money and box and all! What will Mistress Emma think? I’d rather have had my own head broke, if need be, than fail her so!”

“What’s this talk of broken heads?” asked Cadfael, alarmed. “Whose? Are you telling me there’ve been thieves ransacking your booth now?”

“In the night! And the strongbox gone, and Warin tied up hand and foot with a throatful of sacking, and nobody heard sound while they did it. We found him not half an hour ago …”

“Come!” said Cadfael, grasping him by the sleeve and setting off for the guest-hall at a furious pace. “We’ll find Hugh Beringar. Tell your tale once, and save breath!”

In Aline’s apartments the women were only just out of bed, and Hugh was sitting over an early meal in shirt and hose, shoeless, when Cadfael rapped at the door, and cautiously put his head in.

“Your pardon, Hugh, but there’s news. May we come in?”

Hugh took one look at him, recognised the end of his ease, and bade them in resignedly.

“Here’s one has a tale to tell,” said Cadfael. “He’s new come from the horse-fair.”

At sight of Roger, Emma came to her feet in astonishment and alarm, the soft, bemused bloom of sleep gone from her eyes, and the morning flush from her cheeks. Her black hair, not yet braided, swung in a glossy curtain about her shoulders, and her loose undergown was ungirdled, her feet bare. “Roger, what is it? What has happened now?”

“More theft and roguery, mistress, and God knows I can see no reason why all the rascals in the shire should pick on us for prey.” Roger heaved in deep breath, and launched headlong into his complaint. “This morning I go to the stall as usual, and find it all closed, and not a sound or a word from within for all my shouting and knocking, and then come some of the neighbours, wondering, and one sees that the inside bar has been hoisted with a knife - and a marvellous thin knife it must have been. And we go in and find Warin rolled up like baggage in his own cloak, and fast tied, and his mouth stuffed with sacking - a bag over his head, fit to choke him …”

“Oh, no!” breathed Emma in a horrified whisper, and pressed a fist hard against trembling lips. “Oh, poor Warin! He’s not … oh, not dead … ?”

Roger gave vent to a snort of contempt. “Not he! alive and fit as a flea, barring being stiff from the cords. How he could sleep so sound as not to hear the fumbling with the latch, nor even notice when the door was opened, there’s no guessing. But if he did hear, he took good care not to give the robbers any trouble. You know Warin’s no hero. He says he was only shook awake when the sack went over his head, and never saw face nor form, though he thinks there were two of them, for there was some whispering. But as like as not he heard them come, but chose not to, for fear they’d slip the knife in his ribs.”

Emma’s colour had warmed into rose again. She drew a deep breath of thankfulness. “But he’s safe? He’s taken no harm at all?” She caught Aline’s sympathetic eye, and laughed shakily with relief. “I know he is not brave. I’m glad he is not! Nor very clever nor very industrious, either, but I’ve known him since I was a little girl, he used to make toys for me, and willow whistles.

Thank God he is not harmed!”

“Not a graze! I wish,” said Roger, his eyes burning jealously upon her childish morning beauty, not yet adorned and needing no adornment, “I wish to God I’d stayed there to be watchman myself, they’d not have broken in there unscathed, and found everything handed over on a platter.”

“But then you might have been killed, Roger. I’m glad you were not there, you’d surely have put up a fight and come to harm. What, against two, and you unarmed?

Oh, no, I want no man hurt to protect my possessions.”

“What followed?” asked Hugh shortly, stamping his feet into his shoes and reaching for his coat. “You’ve left him there to mind the stall? Is he fit?”

“As you or me, my lord. I’ll send him to you to tell his own tale when I get back.”

“No need, I’m coming with you to view the place and the damage. Finish your tale. They’ll scarcely have left empty-handed. What’s gone with them?”

Roger turned devoted, humble, apologetic eyes upon Emma. “Sorrow the day, mistress, my master’s strongbox is gone with them!”

Brother Cadfael was watching Emma’s face just as intently as was her hopeless admirer, and it seemed to him that in the pleasure of knowing that her old servant had survived unharmed, she was proof against all other blows. The loss of the strongbox she received with unshaken serenity. In these surroundings, safe from any too pressing manifestation of his passion, she was even moved to comfort Roger. A kind-hearted girl, who did not like to see any of her own people out of sorts with his competence and his self-respect.

“You must not feel it so sharply,” she said warmly. “How could you have prevented? There is no fault attaches to you.”

“I took most of the money back to the barge with me last night,” pleaded Roger earnestly. “It’s safe locked away, there’s been no more tampering there. But Master Thomas’s account books, and some parchments of value, and charters …”

“Then there will be copies,” said Emma firmly. “And what is more, if they took the box, supposing it to be full of money, they’ll keep what money was left there, and most likely discard the box and the parchments, for what use can they make of those? We may get most of it back, you will see.”

Not merely a kind girl, but a girl of sense and fortitude, who bore up nobly under her losses. Cadfael looked at Hugh, and found Hugh looking at him, just as woodenly, but with one lively eyebrow signalling slightly sceptical admiration.

“Nothing is lost,” said Emma firmly, “of any value to compare with a life. Since Warin is safe, I cannot be sad.”

“Nevertheless,” said Hugh with deliberation, “it might be well if one abbey sergeant stood guard on your booth until the fair is over. For it does seem that all the misfortunes that should be rights be shared among all the abbey’s clients are falling solely upon you. Shall I ask Prior Robert to see to it?”

She looked down, wary and thoughtful, for a moment, and then lifted deep blue eyes wide and clear as the sky, and a degree more innocent than if they had but newly opened on the world. “It’s kind of you,” she said, “but surely everything has now been done to us. I don’t think it will be necessary to set a guard upon us now.”

Hugh came to Cadfael’s workshop after the midday meal, leaving Emma in Aline’s charge, helped himself to a horn of wine from Cadfael’s private store, and settled down on the bench under the eaves, on the shady side. The fragrance of the herbs lay like a sleepy load on the air within the pleached hedges, and set him yawning against his will and his mood, which was for serious discussion.

They were well away from the outer world here, the busy hum of the marketplace drifted to them only distantly and pleasantly, like the working music of Brother Bernard’s bees. And Brother Mark, weeding the herb-beds with delicate, loving hands, habit kilted to his knees, was no hindrance at all to their solitude.

“A separate creature,” said Brother Cadfael, eyeing him with detached affection “My priest, my proxy. I had to find some way of evading the fate that closed on me. There goes my sacrificial lamb, the best of the flock.”

“Some day he will take your confession,” said Hugh, watching Mark pluck out weeds as gently as though he pitied them, “and you’ll be a lost man, for he’ll know every evasion.” He sipped wine, drew it about his mouth thoughtfully, swallowed it and sat savouring the after-taste for a moment. “This fellow Warin had little to add,” he said then. “What do you say now? This cannot be chance.”

“No,” agreed Cadfael, propping the door of his workshop wide to let in the air, and coming to sit beside his friend, “it cannot be chance. The man is killed, stripped, his barge searched, his booth searched. Not a soul besides, at this fair where there are several as wealthy, has suffered any attack or any loss.

No, there is nothing done at hazard here.”

“What, then? Expound! The girl claimed there were things stolen from the barge.

Now something positive, a strongbox, the single portable thing in the booth that might confidently be supposed to hold valuables, is demonstrably stolen from this last assault. If these are not simple thefts, what are they? Tell me!”

“Stages in a quest,” said Cadfael. “It seems to me there’s a hunt afoot for something. I do not know what, but some quite single, small thing, and precious, which was, or was thought to be, in the possession of Master Thomas. On the night he came here he was murdered, and his body stripped. The first search. And it was fruitless, for the next day his barge was visited and ransacked. The second search.”

“Not altogether fruitless this time,” said Beringar dryly, “for we know on the best authority, do we not, that whoever paid that visit left the richer by three things, a silver chain, a girdle with a gold clasp, and a pair of embroidered gloves.”

“Hmmm!” Cadfael twitched his brown nose doubtfully between finger and thumb, and eyed the young man sidewise.

“Oh, come!” said Hugh indulgently, and flashed his sudden smile. “I may not stumble on these subtleties as quickly as you, but since knowing you I’ve had to keep my wits about me. The lady has a bold mind and an excellent memory, and I have no hope in the world of getting her to make a mistake in one detail of the embroidery on those lost gloves, but for all that, I doubt if they ever existed.”

“You might,” Cadfael suggested, though without much hope, “try asking her outright what it is she’s hiding.”

“I did!” owned Hugh, ruefully grinning. “She opened great, hurt eyes at me, and could not understand me! She knows nothing, she’s hiding nothing, she has nothing to tell more than she’s already told, and every word of that is truth.

But for all that, and however angelically, the girl’s lying. What was it stuck in your craw, and brought you up against the same shock before ever it dawned upon me?”

“I should be sorry,” said Cadfael slowly, “if anything I have done or said made you think any evil of the girl, for I think none.”

“Neither do I, you need not fear it. But I do think she may be meddling in something she would do better to let well alone, and I would rather, as you would, as Abbot Radulfus would, that no harm should come to her under our care.

Or ever, for that matter. I like her well.”

“When we went together to the barge,” said Cadfael,” and she took no more than a minute within to cry out that someone had been there, pawing through all their belongings, I never doubted she was telling truth. Women know how they leave things, it needs only a wrong fold to betray an alien hand, and certainly it shocked and startled her, that was no feigning. Nor was it the next moment, when I asked if anything had been taken, and without pause for thought, she said: ‘No!’ An absolute no, I would say even triumphant. I thought little of it, then, but urged her to look thoroughly and make sure. When I said she must report the matter, she thought again, and took pains to discover that indeed a few things had been stolen. I think she regretted that ever she had cried out in the first place, but if the law must know of it, she would ensure that it was accepted as a trivial theft by some common pick-purse. Truth is what she told unguardedly, with that scornful ‘no’ of hers. Afterwards she made to undo the effect by lying, and for one not by nature a liar she did it well. But for all that, I think, like you, those pretty things of hers never existed, or never were aboard the barge.”

“Still remains the question,” said Hugh, considering, “of why she was so sure in the first place that nothing had been taken.”

“Because,” said Cadfael simply, “she knew what the thief must have come looking for, and she knew he had not found it, because she knew it was not there to be found. The second search was also vain. Whatever it may be, it was not on Master Thomas’s person, which was clearly the most likely place, nor was it on his barge.”

“Hence this third search! So now divine for me, Cadfael, whether this third attempt has succeeded or no. The merchant’s strongbox is vanished - again a logical place to keep something so precious. Will this be the end of it?”

Cadfael shook his head emphatically. “This attempt has fared no better than the others,” he said positively. “You may take that as certain.”

“How can you be so sure of it?” demanded Hugh curiously.

“You saw all that I saw. She does not care a farthing for the loss of the strongbox! As soon as she knew that the man Warin was unhurt, she took everything else calmly enough. Whatever it is the unknown is seeking, she knew it was not in the barge, and she knew it was not in the booth. And I can think of only one reason why she should know so well where it is not, and that is that she knows equally well where it is.”

“Then the next possibility the enemy will be considering,” said Hugh with conviction, “is where she is - on her person or in some hiding-place only she knows of. Well, we’ll keep a vigilant eye on Emma, between us. No,” said Hugh reflectively, “I cannot imagine any evil of her, but neither can I imagine how she can be tangled in something grim enough to bring about murder, violence and theft, nor why, if she knows herself to be in danger and in need of help, she won’t speak out and ask for it. Aline has tried her best to get her to confide, and the girl remains all sweetness and gratitude, but lets no word drop of any burden she may be carrying. And you know Aline, she draws out confidences without ever asking a probing question, and whoever can resist her is beyond the reach of the rest of us …”

“I’m glad to see you so fond a husband,” said Cadfael approvingly.

“So you should be, it was you tossed the girl into my arms in the first place.

You’d best be worrying now about what manner of father I shall make! And you might put in a prayer for me on the issue, some time when you’re on your knees.

No, truly, Cadfael … I wonder about this girl. Aline likes her, and that’s recommendation enough. And she seems to like Aline - no, more than like! Yet she never lets down her veils. When she seems most to cherish my most cherishable lady, she is also more careful not to let slip one unguarded word about her own situation.”

Brother Cadfael saw no paradox there. “So she would be, Hugh,” he said gravely.

“If she feels herself to be in danger, the last thing she will do is to draw in beside her someone she values and likes. By every means in her power - and I think she is a clever and resourceful girl - she will stand off her friends from any share in what she is about.”

Beringar considered that long and sombrely, nursing his empty horn. “Well, all we can do is hedge her about thick enough to stand off, likewise, whatever move may be made against her.”

It had not occurred to him, it was only now insinuating itself into Cadfael’s thoughts, that the next decisive move might come from Emma herself, rather than being made against her. A piece of this mystery, apparently the vital piece, she had in her hands; if any use was to be made of it, it might well be at her decree.

Hugh set aside his drinking-horn and rose, brushing the summer dust from his cotte. “Meantime, the sheriff is left with a murder on his hands, and I tell you, Cadfael, that affair now looks less than ever like a drunken revenge by an aggrieved youth of the town - though to tell truth, it never did look too convincing, even if we could not discard it out of hand.”

“Surely there’s good ground now for letting the provost bail his lad out and take him home?” said Cadfael, encouraged. “Of all the young men around this town, Philip must be the clearest from any suspicion of this last outrage, or the raid on the barge, either. The gaoler who turns the key on him can witness where he’s been all this while, and swear he never left it.”

“I’m off to the castle now,” said Hugh. “I can’t vouch for the sheriff, but I’ll certainly speak a word in his ear, and in the provost’s, too. It’s well worth making the approach.”

He looked down, flashing out of his preoccupation with a sudden mischievous smile, combed the fingers of one hand through the hedge of bushy greying hair that rimmed Cadfael’s sunburned tonsure, leaving it bristling like thorn-bushes, snapped a finger painfully against the nut-brown dome between, and took his departure with his usual light stride and insouciant bearing, which the unwary mistook for the mark of a frivolous man. Such small indulgences he was more likely to permit himself, strictly with friends, when he was engaged on something more than usually grave.

Cadfael watched him go, absently smoothing down the warlike crest Hugh had erected. He supposed he had better be stirring, too, and hand over charge here to Brother Mark until evening. It would not do to take his eyes off Emma for any length of time, and Aline, to please a solicitous husband, consented to doze for an hour or two in the afternoon, for the sake of the child. Grandchildren by proxy, Cadfael reflected, might be a rare and pleasurable recompense for a celibate prime. As for old age, he had not yet begun to think about it; no doubt it had its own alleviations.

CHAPTER 2

“For all I said,” Emma mused aloud, putting fine stitches into a linen band for an infant’s cap, in the lofty midday light in the window of Aline’s bedchamber, “I do grieve for those gloves of mine. Such fine leather, supple and black, and a wealth of gold in the embroidery. I never bought such expensive ones before.”

She reached the end of her seam, and snipped off the thread neatly. “They say there’s a very good glover has a stall in the fair,” she said, smoothing her work. “I thought I might take a look at his wares, and see if he has anything as fine as those I’ve lost. They tell me he’s well known in Chester, and the countess buys from him. I think perhaps I’ll walk along the Foregate this afternoon, and see what he has. What with all these upsets, I’ve hardly seen anything of the fair.”

“A good idea,” said Aline. “Such a fine day, we should not be spending it here within doors. I’ll come with you.”

“Oh, no, you should not,” protested Emma solicitously. “You nave not had your sleep this afternoon. No need to keep me company that short way. I should be distressed if you tired yourself on my account.”

“Oh, folly!” said Aline cheerfully. “I am so healthy I shall burst if I have too little to do. It’s Constance and Hugh who want to make an invalid of me, just because I’m in a woman’s best and happiest estate. And Hugh is gone to the sheriff, and Constance is visiting with a cousin of hers in the Wyle, so who’s to fret? I’ll slip on my shoes, and we’ll go. I should like to buy a box of those sugared fruits your uncle brought from the east. We’ll do that, too.”

It seemed that Emma had, after all, lost her taste for the expedition. She sat stroking the embroidered band she had just finished, and eyed the shape of linen cut for the crown. “I don’t know - I should finish this, perhaps. After tomorrow there may be no choice, and I should be sorry to leave it for someone else to finish. As for the candied fruits, I’ll ask Roger to bring you a box, when he comes again this evening to tell me how the day has gone. Tomorrow it will be here.”

“That’s kind,” said Aline, slipping on her shoes none the less, “but he could hardly try on a pair of gloves for you, or choose with your eye. So let’s go and see for ourselves. It won’t take long.”

Emma sat hesitating, but whether in a genuine endeavour to make up her mind, or in search of a way of extricating herself from an unsatisfactory situation, Aline could not be sure. “Oh, no, I should not! How can I give my mind to such vanity, at a time like this! I’m ashamed that I ever thought of it. My uncle dead, and here am I yearning after trumpery bits of finery. No, I won’t be so shallow. Let me at least go on with my work for the child, instead of thinking only of my own adornment.” And she picked up the cut linen. Aline noted that the hand holding it trembled a little, and wondered whether to persist. Plainly the girl wanted to go forth for some purpose of her own, but would not go unless it could be alone. And alone, said Aline firmly to herself, she certainly shall not go, if I can prevent.

“Well,” she said doubtfully, “if you’re determined to be so penitential, I won’t play the devil and tempt you. And I’m the gainer, your sewing is so fine, I could never match it. Who taught you so well?” She slipped off her soft leather shoes, and sat down again. Something, at least, she had learned, better to let well alone now. Emma welcomed the change of subject eagerly. Of her childhood she would talk freely.

“My mother was a famous embroidress. She began to teach me as soon as I could manage a needle, but she died when I was only eight, and Uncle Thomas took me in. We had a housekeeper, a Flemish lady who had married a Bristol seaman, and been widowed when his ship was lost, and she taught me everything she knew, though I could never equal her work. She used to make altar cloths and vestments for the church, such beautiful things …”

So a plain pair of good black gloves, thought Aline, would have done well enough for you at any time, since you could have adorned them to your own fancy. And those who can do such things exquisitely, seldom prefer the work of others.

It was not difficult to keep Emma talking, but for all that, Aline could not help wondering what was going through the girl’s mind, and how soon, and how cunningly, she would make the next bid to slip away solitary about her mysterious business. But as it fell out, she need not have troubled, for late in the afternoon came a lay brother from the gatehouse, to announce that Martin Bellecote had brought down Master Thomas’s coffin, and desired permission to proceed with his business. Emma rose instantly, laying down her sewing, her face pale and intent. If there was one thing certain, it was that no other matter, however urgent, would take her away from the church until her uncle was decently coffined and sealed down for his journey home, and prayers said for his repose, as later she would attend the first Mass for him. Whatever he had been to others, he had been uncle and father and friend to his orphaned kinswoman, and no reverence, no tribute, would be omitted from his obsequies.

“I will come myself,” said Emma. “I must say farewell to him.” She had not yet seen him, dead, but the brothers, long expert in the gentle arts that reconcile life to death, would have made sure that she would be able to remember him without distress.

“Shall I come with you?” offered Aline.

“You are very good, but I would rather go alone.”

Aline followed as far as the great court, and watched the little procession cross to the cloister, Emma walking beside the handcart on which Martin and his son wheeled the coffin. When they had lifted the heavy box and carried it in by the south door of the church, with Emma following, Aline stood for some minutes looking about her. At this hour most of the guests and many of the lay servants were out at the fair, only the brothers went about their business as usual.

Through the wide gate of the distant stable-yard she could see Ivo Corbière’s young groom rubbing down a pony, and the archer Turstan Fowler sitting on a mounting block, whistling as he burnished a saddle. Sober and recovered from his debauch, he was a well-set-up and comely fellow, with the open face of one who has not a care in the world. Evidently he was long since forgiven, and back in favour.

Brother Cadfael, coming from the gardens, saw her still gazing pensively towards the church. She smiled at sight of him.

“Martin has brought the coffin. They are within there, she’ll think of nothing else now. But, Cadfael, she intends to give us all the slip when she can. She has tried. She would see, she said, if the glover at the fair has something to take the place of the ones she lost. But when I said I would go with her, no, that would not do, she gave up the idea.”

“Gloves!” murmured Brother Cadfael, scrubbing thoughtfully at his chin.

“Strange, when you think of it, that it should be gloves she has on her mind, in the middle of summer.”

Aline was in no position to follow that thought, she took it at its surface meaning. “Why strange? We know there were some stolen from her, and here we are at one of the few fairs where rare goods are to be bought, it follows naturally enough. But of course the glover is only a handy excuse.”

Cadfael said no more then, but he went away very thoughtfully towards the cloister. The strange thing was not that a girl should want to replace, while chance offered, a lost piece of finery. It was rather that when she was suddenly confronted by the need to pass off as simple robbery a raid she knew to be something very different, one of the articles she claimed to have lost should be a thing so inappropriate to the season that she felt obliged to account for it by saying she had newly bought it in Gloucester on the journey. Why gloves, unless she had gloves running in her mind already for another reason? Gloves? Or glovers?

In the transept chapel Martin Bellecote and his young son set up the heavy coffin on a draped trestle, and reverently laid the body of Master Thomas of Bristol within it. Emma stood looking down at her uncle’s dead face for a long time, without tears or words. It would not be painful, she found, to remember him thus, dignified and remote in death, the bones of his cheeks and brow and jaw more strongly outlined than in life, his florid flesh contracted and paled into waxen austerity. Now at the last moment she wanted to give him something to take with him into his grave, and realised that in the buffeting of these two days she had not been able to think clearly enough to be ready for the parting.

Not the fact of death, but the absolute need of some ceremonial tenderness, separate from the public rites, suddenly seemed to her overwhelmingly important.

“Shall I cover him?” asked Martin Bellecote gently.

Even so soft a sound startled her. She looked round almost wonderingly. The man, large, comely and calm, waited her orders without impatience. The boy, grave and silent, watched her with huge hazel eyes. From her four years’ superiority over him she pondered whether so young a creature should be doing this office, and then she understood that those eyes were preoccupied rather with her living self than with the dead, and the vigorous, flowing sap in him reached up towards light and life as to the sun, and recognised shadow only by virtue of its neighbouring brightness. That was right and good.

“No, wait just a moment,” she said. “I’ll come back!”

She went quickly out into the sunlight, and looked about her for the path that led into the gardens. The green lines of a hedge and the crowns of trees within drew her, she came into a walk where flowers had been planted. The brothers were great gardeners, and valued food crops for good reason, but they had time also for roses. She chose the one bush that bore a bloom like no other, pale yellow petals shading into rose at the tips, and plucked one flower only. Not the buds, not even the one perfect globe, but a wide-open bloom just beyond its prime but still unflawed. She took it back, hurrying, into the church with her. He was not young, not even at his zenith, but settling into his autumn, and this was the rose for him.

Brother Cadfael had watched her go, he watched her come again, and followed her into the chapel, but held aloof in the shadows. She brought her single flower and laid it in the coffin, beside the dead man’s heart.

“Cover him now,” she said, and stood well back to let them work in peace. When it was done, she thanked them, and they withdrew and left her there, as clearly was her wish. So, just as silently, did Brother Cadfael.

Emma remained kneeling on the stones of the transept, unaware of discomfort, a great while, her eyes wide open all that time upon the closed coffin, on its draped stand before the altar. To lie thus in the church of a great abbey, to have a special Mass sung for him, and then to be taken home in a grand coffin for burial with still further rites, surely that was glory, and he would have liked it. All was to be done as he would have liked. All! He would be pleased with her.

She knew her duty; she said prayers for him, a great many prayers, because the form was blessedly laid down, and her mind could range while her lips formed the proper words. She would do what he had wanted done, what he had half-confided to her, as he had to no other. She would see his task completed, and he would rest, pleased with her. And then … she had hardly looked beyond, but there was a great, summer-scented breeze blowing through her spirit, telling her she was young and fair, and wealthy into the bargain, and that boys like the coffin-maker’s young son looked upon her with interest and pleasure. Other young men, too, of less green years …

She rose from her knees at last, shook out her crumpled skirts, and walked briskly out of the chapel into the nave of the church, and founding the clustered stone pillars at the corner of the crossing, came face to face with Ivo Corbière.

He had been waiting, silent and motionless, in his shadowy corner, refraining even from setting foot in the chapel until her vigil was over, and the resolution with which she had suddenly ended it flung her almost’ into his arms.

She uttered a startled gasp, and he put out reassuring hands to steady her, and was in no haste to let go. In this dim place his gold head showed darkened to bronze, and his face, stooped over her solicitously, was so gilded by the summer that it had almost the same fine-metal burnishing.

“Did I alarm you? I’m sorry! I didn’t want to disturb you. They told me at the gatehouse that the master-carpenter had come and gone, and you were here. I hoped if I waited patiently I might be able to talk with you. If I have not pressed my attentions on you until now,” he said earnestly, “it is not because I haven’t thought of you. Constantly!”

Her eyes were raised to his face with a fascinated admiration she would never have indulged in full light, and she quite forgot to make any move to withdraw herself from his hold. His hands slid down her forearms, but halted at her hands, and the touch, by mutual consent, became a clasp.

“Almost two days since I’ve spoken with you!” he said. “It’s an age, and I’ve grudged it, but you were well-friended, and I had no right … But now that I have you, let me keep you for an hour! Come out and walk in the gardens. I doubt if you’ve even seen them yet.”

They went out together into the sunlight, through the cloister garth and out into the bustle and traffic of the great court. It was almost time for Vespers, the quietest hours of the afternoon now spent, the brothers gathering gradually from their dispersed labours, guests returning from the fairground and the riverside. It was a gratifying thing to walk through this populous place on the arm of a nobleman, lord of a modest honour scattered through Cheshire and Shropshire. For the daughter of craftsmen and merchants, a very gratifying thing! They sat down on a stone bench in the flower-garden, on the sunny side of the pleached hedge, with the heady fragrance of Brother Cadfael’s herbarium wafted to them in drunken eddies on a soft breeze.

“You will have troublesome dispositions to make,” said Corbière seriously. “If there is anything I can arrange for you, let me know of it. It will be my pleasure to serve you. You are taking him back to Bristol for burial?”

“It’s what he would have wished. There will be a Mass for him in the morning, and then we shall carry him back to his barge for the journey home. The brothers have been kindness itself to me.”

“And you? Will you also return with the barge?”

She hesitated, but why not confide in him? He was considerate and kind, and quick to understand. “No, it would be - unwise. While my uncle lived it was very well, but without him it would not do. There is one of our men - I must say no evil of him, for he has done none, but … He is too fond. Better we should not travel together. But neither do I want to offer him insult, by letting him know he is not quite trusted. I’ve told him that I must remain here a few days, that I may be needed if the sheriff has more questions to ask, or more is found out about my uncle’s death.”

“But then,” said Ivo with warm concern, “what of your own journey home? How will you manage?”

“I shall stay with Lady Beringar until we can find some safe party riding south, with women among them. Hugh Beringar will advise me. I have money, and I can pay my way. I shall manage.”

He looked at her long and earnestly, until his gravity melted into a smile.

“Between all your well-wishers, you will certainly reach your home without mishap. I’ll be giving my mind to it, among the rest. But now let’s forget, for my sake, that there must be a departure, and make the most of the hours while you are still here.” He rose, and took her by the hand to draw her up with him.

“Forget Vespers, forget we’re guests of an abbey, forget the fair and the business of the fair, and all that such things may demand of you in future.

Think only that it’s summer, and a glorious evening, and you’re young, and have friends … Come down with me past the fish-ponds, as far as the brook. That is all abbey land, I wouldn’t take you beyond.”

She went with him gratefully, his hand cool and vital in hers. By the brook below the abbey fields it was cool and fresh and bright, full of scintillating light along the water, and birds dabbling and singing, and in the pleasure of the moment she almost forgot all that lay upon her, so sacred and so burdensome.

Ivo was reverent and gentle, and did not press her too close, but when she said regretfully that it was time for her to go back, for fear Aline might be anxious about her, he went with her all the way, her hand still firmly retained in his, and presented himself punctiliously before Aline, so that Emma’s present guardian might study, accept and approve him. As indeed she did.

It was charmingly and delicately done. He made himself excellent company for as long as was becoming on a first visit, invited and deferred to all Aline’s graceful questions, and withdrew well before he had even drawn near the end of his welcome.

“So that’s the young man who was so helpful and gallant when the riot began,” said Aline, when he was gone. “Do you know, Emma, I do believe you have a serious admirer there.” A wooer gained, she thought, might come as a blessed counter-interest to a guardian lost. “He comes of good blood and family,” said the Aline Siward who had brought two manors to her husband in her own right, but saw no difference between her guest and herself, and innocently ignored the equally proud and honourable standards of those born to craft and commerce instead of land. “The Corbières are distant kin of Earl Ranulf of Chester himself. And he does seem a most estimable young man.”

“But not of my kind,” said Emma, as shrewd and wary as she sounded regretful. “I am a stone-mason’s daughter, and niece to a merchant. No landed lord is likely to become a suitor for someone like me.”

“But it’s not someone like you in question,” said Aline reasonably. “It is you!”

Brother Cadfael looked about him, late in the evening after Compline, saw all things in cautious balance, Emma securely settled in the guest-hall, Beringar already home. He went thankfully to bed with his brothers, for once at the proper time, and slept blissfully until the bell rang to wake him for Matins.

Down the night stairs and into the church the brothers filed in the midnight silence, to begin the new day’s worship. In the faint light of the altar candles they took their places, and the third day of Saint Peter’s Fair had begun. The third and last.

Cadfael always rose for Matins and Lauds not sleepy and unwilling, but a degree more awake than at any other time, as though his senses quickened to the sense of separateness of the community gathered here, to a degree impossible by daylight. The dimness of the light, the solidity of the enclosing shadows, the muted voices, the absence of lay worshippers, all contributed to his sense of being enfolded in a sealed haven, where all those who shared in it were his own flesh and blood and spirit, responsible for him as he for them, even some for whom, in the active and arduous day, he could feel no love, and pretended none.

The burden of his vows became also his privilege, and the night’s first worship was the fuel of the next day’s energy.

So the shadows had sharp edges for him, the shapes of pillar and capital and arch clamoured like vibrant notes of music, both vision and hearing observed with heightened sensitivity, details had a quivering insistence. Brother Mark’s profile against the candle-light was piercingly clear. A note sung off-key by a sleepy elder stung like a bee. And the single pale speck lying under the trestle that supported Master Thomas’s coffin was like a hole in reality, something that could not be there. Yet it persisted. It was at the beginning of Lauds that it first caught his eye, and after that he could not get free of it. Wherever he looked, however he fastened upon the altar, he could still see it out of the corner of his eye.

When Lauds ended, and the silent procession began to file back towards the night stairs and the dortoir, Cadfael stepped aside, stooped, and picked up the mote that had been troubling him. It was a single petal from a rose, its colour indistinguishable by this light, but pale, deepening round the tip. He knew at once what it was, and with this midnight clarity in him he knew how it had come there.

Fortunate, indeed, that he had seen Emma bring her chosen rose and lay it in the coffin. If he had not, this petal would have told him nothing. Since he had, it told him all. With hieratic care and ceremony, after the manner of the young when moved, she had brought her offering cupped in both hands, and not one leaf, not one grain of yellow pollen from its open heart, had fallen to the floor.

Whoever was hunting so persistently for something believed to be in Master Thomas’s possession, after searching his person, his barge and his booth, had not stopped short of the sacrilege of searching his coffin. Between Compline and Matins it had been opened and closed again; and a single petal from the wilting rose within had shaken loose and been wafted unnoticed over the side, to bear witness to the blasphemy.