St Peter's Fair

CHAPTER 1

Emma arose with the dawn, stole out of the wide bed she shared with Constance, and dressed herself very quietly and cautiously, but even so the sense of movement, rather than any sound, disturbed the maid’s sleep, and caused her to open eyes at once alert and intelligent.

Emma laid a finger to her lips, and cast a meaning glance towards the door beyond which Hugh and Aline were still sleeping. “Hush!” she whispered. “I’m only going to church for Prime. I don’t want to wake anyone else.”

Constance shrugged against her pillow, raised her brows a little, and nodded.

Today there would be the Mass for the dead uncle, and then the transference of his coffin to the barge that would take him home. Not surprising if the girl was disposed to turn this day into a penitential exercise, for the repose of her uncle’s soul and the merit of her own. “You won’t go out alone, will you?”

“I’m going straight to the church,” promised Emma earnestly.

Constance nodded again, and her eyelids began to close. She was asleep before Emma had drawn the door to very softly, and slipped away towards the great court.

Brother Cadfael rose for Prime like the rest, but left his cell before his companions, and went to take counsel with the only authority in whom he could repose his latest discovery. Such a violation was the province of the abbot, and only he had the right to hear of it first.

With the door of the abbot’s austere cell closed upon them, they were notably at ease together, two men who knew their own minds and spoke clearly what they had to say. The rose petal, a little shrunken and weary, but with its yellow and pink still silken-bright, lay in the abbot’s palm like a golden tear.

“You are sure this cannot have fallen when our daughter brought it as an offering? It was a gentle gift,” said Radulfus.

“Not one grain of dust fell. She carried it like a vessel of wine, in both hands. I saw every move. I have not yet seen the coffin by daylight, but I doubt not it has been dealt with competently, and looks as it looked when the master-carpenter firmed it down. Nevertheless, it has been opened and closed again.”

“I take your word,” said the abbot simply. “This is vile.”

“It is,” said Cadfael and waited.

“And you cannot put name to the man who would do this thing?”

“Not yet.”

“Nor say if he has gained by it? As God forbid!”

“No, Father! But God will forbid.”

“Give your might to it,” said Radulfus, and brooded for a while in silence. Then he said: “We have a duty to the law. Do what is best there, for I hear you have the deputy sheriff’s ear. As for the affont to the church, to our house, to our dead son and his heiress, I am left to read between rubrics. There will be a Mass this morning for the dead man. The holy rite will cleanse all foulness from his passing and his coffin. As for the child, let her be at peace, for so she may, her dead is in the hand of God, there has no violence been done to his soul.”

Brother Cadfael said, with hearty gratitude: “She will rest the better if she knows nothing. She is a good girl, her grief should have every consolation.”

“See to it, brother, as you may. It is almost time for Prime.”

Cadfael was hurrying from the abbot’s lodging towards the cloister when he saw Emma turn in there ahead of him, and slowed his steps to be unnoticed himself while he watched what she would do. On this of all days Emma was entitled to every opportunity of prayer and meditation, but she also had a very private secular preoccupation of her own, and which of these needs she was serving by this early-rising zeal there was no telling.

In at the south door went Emma, and in after her, just as discreetly, went Brother Cadfael. The monks were already in their stalls, and concentrating all upon the altar. The girl slipped silently round into the nave, as though she would find herself a retired spot there in privacy; but instead of turning aside, she continued her rapid, silent passage towards the west door, the parish door that opened on to the Foregate, outside the convent walls. Except during times of stress, such as the siege of Shrewsbury the previous year, it was never closed.

In at one door and out at another, and she was free, for a little while, to go where she would, and could return by the same way, an innocent coming back from church.

Brother Cadfael’s sandals padded soundlessly over the tiled floor after her, keeping well back in case she should look round, though here within he was reasonably sure she would not. The great parish door was unlatched, she had only to draw it open a little way, her slenderness slipped through easily, and since this was facing due west, no betraying radiance flooded in. Cadfael gave her a moment to turn right or left outside the door, though surely it would be to the right, towards the fairground. What should she have to do in the direction of the river and the town?

She was well in sight when he slid through the doorway and round the corner of the west front, and looked along the Foregate. She did not hurry now, but curbed her pace to that of the early buyers who were sauntering along the highroad, halting at stalls already busy, handling goods, arguing over prices. The last day of the fair was commonly the busiest. There were bargains to be snapped up at the close, and lowered prices. There was bustle everywhere, even at this hour, but the pace of the ambulant shoppers was leisurely. Emma matched hers to it, as though she belonged among them, but for all that, she was making her way somewhere with a purpose. Cadfael followed at a respectful distance.

Only once did she speak to anyone, and then she chose the holder of one of the larger stalls, and it seemed that she was asking him for directions, for he turned and pointed ahead along the street, and towards the abbey wall. She thanked him, and went on in the direction he had indicated, and now she quickened her pace. Small doubt that she had known all along to whom she was bound; apparently she had not known precisely where to find him. Now she knew.

By this time all the chief merchants gathered here knew where to find one another.

Emma had come to a halt, almost at the end of the Foregate, where a half-dozen booths were backed into the abbey wall. It seemed that she had arrived at her destination, yet now stood hesitant, gazing a little helplessly, as if what she confronted surprised and baffled her. Cadfael drew nearer. She was frowning doubtfully at the last of the booths, backed into a corner between buttress and wall. Cadfael recognised it; a lean, suspicious face had peered out from that hatch as the sheriff’s officers had hoisted Turstan Fowler on to a board and borne him away to an abbey cell on the eve of the fair. The booth of Euan of Shotwick. Here they came again, those imagined gloves, so feelingly described, so soon stolen!

And Emma was at a loss, for the booth was fast-closed, every panel sealed, and business all around in full swing. She turned to the nearest neighbour, clearly questioning, and the man looked, and shrugged, and shook his head. What did he know? There had been no sign of life there since last night, perhaps the glover had sold out and departed.

Cadfael drew nearer. Beneath the austere white wimple, so sharp a change from the frame of blue-black hair, Emma’s young profile looked even more tender and vulnerable. She did not know what to do. She advanced a few steps and raised a hand, as though she would knock at the closed shutter, but then she wavered and drew back. From across the street a brawny butcher left his stall, patted her amiably on the shoulder, and did the knocking for her lustily, then stood to listen. But there was no move from within.

A large hand clapped Cadfael weightily on the back, and the cavernous voice of Rhodri ap Huw boomed in his ear in Welsh: “What’s this, then? Master Euan not open for trade? That I should see the day! I never knew him to miss a sale before, or any other thing to his advantage.”

“The stall’s deserted,” said Cadfael. “The man may have left for home.”

“Not he! He was there past midnight, for I took a turn along here to breathe the cool before going to my inn, and there was a light burning inside there then.”

No gleam from within now, though the slanting sunlight might well pale it into invisibility. But no, that was not so, either. The chinks between shutter and frame were utterly dark.

It was all too like what Roger Dod had found at another booth, only one day past. But there the booth had been barred from within, and the bar hoisted clear with a dagger. Here there was a lock, to be mastered from within or without, and certainly no visible key.

“This I do not like,” said Rhodri ap Huw, and strode forward to try the door, and finding it, as was expected, locked, to peer squint-eyed through the large keyhole. “No key within,” he said shortly over his shoulder, and peered still.

“Not a movement in there.” He had Cadfael hard on his heels by then, and three or four others closing in. “Give me room!”

Rhodri clenched the fingers of both hands in the edge of the door, set a broad foot against the timber wall, and hauled mightily, square shoulders gathered in one great heave. Wood splintered about the lock, small flinders flying like motes of dust, and the door burst open. Rhodri swayed and recovered in recoil, and was first through the opening, but Cadfael was ‘ after him fast enough to ensure that the Welshman touched nothing within. They craned into the gloom together, cheek by jowl.

The glover’s stall was in chaos, shelves swept clear, goods scattered like grain over the floor. On a straw palliasse along the rear wall his cloak lay sprawled, and on an iron stand beside, a quenched candle sagged in folds of tallow. It took them a few seconds to accustom their eyes to the dimness and see clearly.

Tangled in his spilled stock of belts, baldricks, gloves, purses and saddlebags, Euan of Shotwick lay on his back, knees drawn up, a coarse sacking bag drawn half-over his lean face and greying head. Beneath the hem of the hood his thin-lipped mouth grinned open in a painful rictus, large white teeth staring, and the angle at which his head lay had the horrible suggestion of a broken wooden puppet.

Cadfael turned and flung up the shutter of the booth, letting in the morning light. He stooped to touch the contorted neck and hollow cheek. “Cold,” said Rhodri, behind him, not attempting to verify his judgment, which for all that was accurate enough. Euan’s flesh was chilling. “He’s dead,” said Rhodri flatly.

“Some hours,” said Cadfael.

In the stress of the moment he had forgotten Emma, but the shriek she gave caused him to swing round in haste and dismay. She had crept in fearfully to peer over the shoulders of the neighbours, and stood staring with eyes wide with horror, both small fists crushed against her mouth. “Oh, no!” she said in a whisper. “Not dead! Not he, too …”

Cadfael took her in his arms, and thrust her bodily before him out of the booth, elbowing the gaping onlookers out of his way. “Go back! You mustn’t stay here.

Go back before you’re missed, and leave this to me.” He wondered if she even heard his rapid murmur into her ear; she was shaking and white as milk, her blue eyes fixed and huge with shock. He looked about him urgently for someone to whom he could safely confide her, for he doubted if she should be left to return alone, and yet he did not care to leave this scene until Beringar should be here to take charge, or one of the sheriff’s sergeants at least. The sudden alarmed shout of recognition that came from the rear of the gathering crowd was a most welcome sound.

“Emma! Emma!” Ivo Corbière came cleaving an unceremonious way through the press, like a sudden vehement wind in a cornfield, bludgeoning the standing stems out of its path. She turned at the call, and a spark of returning life sprang up in her eyes. Thankfully Cadfael thrust her into the young man’s arms, which reached eagerly and anxiously to receive her.

“For God’s sake, what has happened to her? What …” His glance flashed from her stunned visage to Cadfael’s, and beyond, to the open door with its splintered panel. Over her head his lips framed silently for Cadfael: “Not again? Another?”

“Take her back,” said Cadfael shortly. “Take care of her. And tell Hugh Beringar to come. We have sheriff’s business here within.”

All the way back along the Foregate, Corbière kept a supporting arm about her, and curbed his long stride to hers, and all the way he poured soothing, caressing words into her ear, while she, until they had almost reached the west door of the church, said nothing at all, simply walked docilely beside him, distantly aware of the lulling sound and the comforting touch. Then suddenly she said: “He’s dead. I saw him, I know.”

“A bare glimpse you had,” said Ivo consolingly. “It may not be so.”

“No,” said Emma, “I know the man is dead. How could it happen? Why?”

“There are always such acts, somewhere, robberies, violence and evil. It is sad, but it is not new.” His fingers pressed her hand warmly. “It is no fault of yours, and alas, there is nothing you or I can do about it. I wish I could make you forget it. In time you will forget.”

“No,” she said. “I shall never forget this.”

She had meant to return by the church, as she had left, but now it no longer mattered. As far as he or any other was concerned, she had simply set out early to buy some gloves, or at least to view what the glover had to offer. She went in with Ivo by the gatehouse. By the time he had brought her tenderly on his arm to the guest-hall she had regained her composure. There was a little colour in her face again, and her voice was alive, even if its tone indicated that life was painful.

“I’m recovered now, Ivo,” she said. “You need not trouble for me further. I will tell Hugh Beringar that he is needed.”

“Brother Cadfael entrusted you to me,” said Ivo with gentle and confident authority, “and you did not reject me. I shall fulfil my errand exactly. As I hope,” he said smiling, “I may perform any other missions you may care to entrust to me hereafter.”

Hugh Beringar came with four of the sheriff’s men, dispersed the crowd that hung expectantly round the booth of Euan of Shotwick, and listened to the accounts rendered by the neighbouring stallholders, by the butcher from over the road, and by Rhodri ap Huw, for whom Cadfael interpreted sentence by sentence. In no haste to go, for as he said, his best lad was back with the boat from Bridgnorth and competent to take charge of what stock he still had to sell, the Welshman nonetheless showed no unbecoming desire to linger, once his witness was taken.

Imperturbable and all-beholding, he ambled away at the first indication that the law had done with him. Others, more persistent, hung about the booth in a silent, watchful circle, but were kept well away from earshot. Beringar drew the door to. The opened hatches gave light enough.

“Can I take the man’s account for fair and true?” asked Hugh, casting a glance after Rhodri’s retreating back. There was no backward glance from the Welshman, his assurance was absolute.

“To the letter, for all that happened here from the time I came on the scene.

He’s an excellent observer, there’s little he misses of what concerns him, or may concern him, and what does not. He does business, too, his trade here is no pretext. But it may be only half his business that we see.”

There were only the two of them within there now, two living and the dead man.

They stood one either side of him, drawn back to avoid disturbing either his body or the litter of leatherwork scattered about and over him.

“He says there was a light showing through the chinks here past midnight,” said Beringar. “The light is quenched now, not burned out. And if he locked his door after closing the booth for the night …”

“As he would,” said Cadfael. “Rhodri’s account of him rings true. A man complete in himself, trusting no one, able to take care of himself, until now. He would have locked his door.”

“Then he also unlocked it, to let in his murderer. The lock never was forced until now, as you saw. Why should a wary man unlock his door to anyone in the small hours?”

“Because he was expecting someone,” said Cadfael, “though not the someone who came. Because, it may be, he had been expecting someone all these three days, and was relieved when the expected message came at last.”

“So relieved that he ceased to be cautious? Given your Welshman’s estimate of him, I should doubt it.”

“So should I,” agreed Cadfael, “unless there was a private word he was waiting for, and it was known and given. A name, perhaps. For you see, Hugh, I think he was already well aware that the one he had expected to deliver the message was never going to tap at his door by night, or stop in the Foregate to pass the time with him.”

“You mean,” said Hugh, “Thomas of Bristol, who is dead.”

“Who else? How many strange chances can come together, all against what is likely, or even possible? A merchant is killed, his barge searched, his booth searched, then, dear God, his coffin! I have not yet had time, Hugh, to tell you of that.” He told it now. He had the rose-petal in the breast of his habit, wrapped in a scrap of linen; it still spoke as eloquently as before. “You may trust my eyes, I know it did not fall earlier, I know it has been in the coffin with him. Now that same man’s niece makes occasion to come by stealth to this glover’s stall, only to find the glover dead like her uncle. It is a long list of assaults upon all things connected with Thomas of Bristol. Now, since this unknown treasure was not found even in his coffin, for safe-conduct back to Bristol in default of delivery, the next point of search has been here - where Master Thomas should have delivered it.”

“They would need to have foreknowledge of that.”

“Or good reason to guess aright.”

“By your witness,” said Hugh, pondering, “the coffin was opened and closed between Compline and Matins. Before midnight. When would you say, Cadfael - your experience is longer than mine - when would you say this man died?”

“In the small hours. By the second hour after midnight, I judge, he was dead.

After the coffin, it seems, they were forced to the conclusion that somehow, for all they had a watch on Master Thomas from his arrival, and disposed of him before ever the fair started, yet somehow he, or someone else on his behalf, must have slipped through their net, and delivered the precious charge. This poor soul certainly opened his door last night to someone he believed had business with him. The mention of a privileged name … a password … He let in his murderer, but what he had expected was the thing promised.”

“Then even now,” said Hugh sharply, “with two murders on their souls, they have not what they wanted. He thought they were bringing it. They trusted to find it here. And neither of them had it. Both were deceived.” He brooded with a brown fist clamping his jaw, and his black brows down-drawn in unaccustomed solemnity.

“And Emma came here … by stealth.”

“She did. Not every man,” said Cadfael, “has your view of women, or mine. Most of your kind, most of mine, would never dream of looking in a woman’s direction to find anything of importance in hand. Especially a mere child, barely grown.

Not until every other road was closed, and they were forced to notice a woman there in the thick of the matter. Who just might be what they sought.”

“And who has now betrayed herself,” said Hugh grimly. “Well, at least she reached the guest-hall safely, thanks to Corbière. I have left her with Aline, very shaken, for all her strength of will, and she will not stir a step this day unguarded. That I can promise. Between us I think we can take care of Emma. Now let’s see if this poor wretch has anything to tell us that we don’t yet know.”

He stooped and drew back the coarse sack that covered half the glover’s narrow face, from eyebrow on one side to jaw on the other. A broken bruise in the greying hair above the left temple indicated a right-handed blow as soon as the door was opened to his visitor, meant to stun him, probably, until he could be muffled in the sack and gagged like Warin. Here it was a case of gaining entry and confronting a wide-awake man, not a timid sleeper.

“Much the same manner as the other one,” said Cadfael, “and I doubt if they ever meant to kill. But he was not so easily put out of the reckoning. He put up a fight. And his neck is broken. By the look of it, one made round behind him to secure this blindfold, and in the struggle he gave them, tried all too hard to haul him backwards by it. He was wiry and agile, but his bones were aging, and too brittle to sustain it. I don’t think it was intended. We should have found him neatly bound and still alive, like Warin, if he had not fought them. Once they knew he was dead, they made their search in haste, and left all as it fell.”

Beringar brushed aside the light tangle of girdles and straps and gloves that littered the floor and lay over the body. Euan’s right arm was covered from the elbow down by the skirts of his own gown, kicked out of the way of the searchers in their hunt. When the folds were drawn down Hugh let out a sharp whistle of surprise, for in the dead man’s hand was a long poniard, the naked blade grooved, and ornamented with gilding near the hilt. At his belt, half-hidden now under his right hip, the scabbard lay empty.

“A man of his hands! And see, he’s marked one of them for us!” There was blood on the point of the blade, and drawn up by the grooving for some three fingers’ breadth in two thin crimson lines, now drying to black.

“Rhodri ap Huw said of him,” Cadfael remembered, “that he was a solitary soul who trusted nobody - his own porter and his own watchman. He said he wore a weapon, and knew how to use it.” He went on his knees beside the body, and cleared away the debris that still lay about it, eying and handling from head to foot. “You’ll have him away to the castle, I suppose, or the abbey, and look him over more carefully, but I do believe the only blood he’s lost is this smear on his brow. This on the dagger is not his.”

“If only we could as easily say whose it is!” said Hugh dryly, sitting on his heels with the nimbleness of the young on the other side of the body. Brother Cadfael eased creaky elderly knees on the hard boards, and briefly envied him.

The young man lifted the stiffening arm, and tested the grip of the clenched fingers. “He holds fast!” It took him some effort to loosen the convulsive grasp enough to slip the hilt of the dagger free. In the slanting light from the open hatch something gleamed briefly, waving at the tip of the blade, and again vanished, as motes of dust come and go in gold in bright sunlight. There was also what seemed at first to be a thin encrustation of blood fringing the steel on one edge. Cadfael exclaimed, leaning to point. “A yellow hair - There it shows again!” The flashing gleam curled and twisted as Hugh turned the dagger in his hand.

“Not a hair, a fine, yellowish thread. Thread of flax, not bleached. This grooving has ripped out a shred of cloth, and the blood has stuck it fast. See!”

A mere wisp of brown material it was, a fringe along the groove that had held it. Narrow as a blade of grass, but when Cadfael carefully took hold of a thread at the end and drew it out straight, it stretched to the length of his hand. The colour, though fouled by dried blood, showed plain at one edge, a light russet-brown; and at the end of the sliver floated gaily the long, fine flax thread, scalloped like a curly hair.

“A sliced tear a hand long,” said Cadfael, “and ending at a hem, for surely this thread sewed the edging, and the dagger ripped out a length of the stitching.”

He narrowed his eyes, and considered, imagining Euan facing the door as he opened it, the instant blow that failed to tame him, and then his rapid drawing of his poniard and striking with it. Almost brow to brow and breast to breast, a man good with his right hand, and his attacker’s heart an open target.

“He struck for the heart,” said Cadfael with conviction. “So would I, or so would I have done once. The other man, surely, slipped behind him and spoiled the stroke, but that is where he aimed. Someone, somewhere, has a torn cotte. It might be in the left breast, or it might be in the sleeve. The man’s arms would be raised, reaching to grapple him. I should say the left sleeve, ripping from the hem halfway to the elbow. The sewing thread was caught first, and pulled out a length of stitches.”

Hugh considered that respectfully, and found no fault with it. “Much of a scratch, would you guess? He did not drip blood to the doorway. It could not have been enough to need much stanching.”

“The sleeve would hold it. Likely only a graze, but a long graze. It will be there to be seen.”

“If we knew where to look!” Hugh gave a short bark of laughter at the thought of sending sergeants about this teeming marketplace to ask every man to roll up his left sleeve and show his arm. “A simple matter! Still, no reason why you and I, and all the men I can spare and trust, should not be keeping our eyes open all the rest of this day for a torn sleeve - or a newly cobbled one.”

He rose, and turned to beckon his nearest man from the open hatch. “Well, we’ll have him away from here, and do what we can. A word with your Rhodri ap Huw wouldn’t come amiss, and I fancy you might get more out of him in his own tongue than ever I should at second hand. If he knows this man so well, prick him on to talk, and bring me what you learn.”

“That I’ll do,” said Cadfael, clambering stiffly from his knees.

“I must go first to the castle, and report what we’ve found. One thing I’ll make certain of this time,” said Hugh. “The sheriff was in no mood to listen too carefully last night, but after this he’ll have to turn young Corviser loose on his father’s warranty, like the rest of them. It would take a more pig-headed man than Prestcote to believe the lad had any part in the first death, seeing the trail of offences that have followed while he was in prison. He shall eat his dinner at home today.”

Rhodri was not merely willing to spend an hour pouring the fruits of his wisdom and experience into Brother Cadfael’s ear, he was hovering with that very thing in mind as soon as the corpse of Euan of Shotwick had been carried away, and the booth closed, with one of the sheriff’s men on guard. Though ever-present, he had the gift of being unobtrusive until he chose to obtrude, and then could appear from an unexpected direction, and as casually as if only chance had brought him there.

“No doubt you’ll have sold all you brought with you,” said Cadfael, encountering him thus between the stalls, clearly untroubled by business.

“Goods of quality are recognized everywhere,” said Rhodri, sharp eyes twinkling merrily. “My lads are clearing the last few jars of honey, and the wool’s long gone. But I’ve a half-full bottle there, if you care to share a cup at this hour? Mead, not wine, but you’ll be happy with that, being a Welshman yourself.”

They sat on heaped trestles already freed from their annual use by the removal of small tradesmen who had sold out their stock, and set the bottle between them.

“And what,” asked Cadfael, with a jerk of his head towards the guarded booth, “do you make of that affair this morning? After all that’s gone before? Have we more birds of prey this way than usual, do you think? It may be they’ve taken fright and left the shires where there’s still fighting, and we get the burden of it.”

Rhodri shook his shaggy head, and flashed his large white teeth out of the thicket in a grin. “I would say you’ve had a more than commonly peaceful and well-mannered fair, myself - apart from the misfortunes of two merchants only. Oh, tonight’s the last night, and there’ll be a few drunken squabbles and a brawl or two, I daresay, but what is there in that? But chance has played no part in what has happened to Thomas of Bristol. Chance never goes hounding one man for three days through hundreds of his fellows, yet never grazes one of the others.”

“It has more than grazed Euan of Shotwick,” remarked Cadfael dryly.

“Not chance! Consider, brother! Earl Ranulf of Chester’s eyes and ears comes to a Shropshire fair and is killed. Thomas of Bristol, from a city that holds by Earl Robert of Gloucester, comes to the same fair, and is killed the very night of his coming. And after his death, everything he brought with him is turned hither and yon, but precious little stolen, from all I hear.” And certainly he had a way of hearing most of what was said within a mile of him, but at least he had made no mention of the violation of Master Thomas’s coffin. Either that had not reached his ears, and never would, or else he had been the first to know of it, and would be the last ever to admit it. The parish door was always open, no need to set foot in the great court or pass the gatehouse. “Something Thomas brought to Shrewsbury is of burning interest to somebody, it seems to me, and the somebody failed to get hold of it from man, barge or stall. And the next thing that happens is that Euan of Shotwick is also killed in the night, and all his belongings ransacked. I would not say but things were stolen there. They may have learned enough for that, and his goods are small and portable, and why despise a little gain on the side? But for all that - No, two men from opposite ends of a divided country, meeting midway, on important private business? It could be so! Gloucester’s man and Chester’s man.”

“And whose,” wondered Cadfael aloud, “was the third man?”

“The third?”

“Who took such an interest in the other two that they died of it. Whose man would he be?”

“Why, there are other factions, and every one of them needs its intelligencers.

There’s the king’s party - they might well feel a strong interest if they noted Gloucester’s man and Chester’s man attending the same fair midway between. And not only the king - there are others who count themselves kings on their own ground, besides Chester, and they also need to know what such a one as Chester is up to, and will go far to block it if it threatens their own profit. And then there’s the church, brother, if you’ll take it no offence is meant to the Benedictines. For you’ll have heard by now that the king has dealt very hardly with some of his bishops this last few weeks, put up all manner of clerical backs, and turned his own brother and best ally, Bishop Henry of Winchester, who’s papal legate into the bargain, into a bitter enemy. Bishop Henry himself might well have a finger in this pie, though I doubt if he can have had word of things afoot here in time, being never out of the south. But Lincoln, or Worcester - all such lords need to know what’s going on, and for men of influence there are always plenty of bully-boys for hire, who’ll do the labouring work while their masters sit inviolable at home.”

And so, thought Cadfael, could wealthy men sit inviolable here in their stalls, in full view of hundreds, while their hired bully-boys do the dirty work. And this black Welshman is laying it all out for me plain to be seen, and taking delight in it, too! Cadfael knew when he was being deliberately teased! What he could not be quite sure of was whether this was the caprice of a blameless but mischievous man, or the sport of a guilty one taking pleasure in his own immunity and cleverness. The black eyes sparkled and the white teeth shone. And why grudge him his enjoyment, if something useful could yet be gleaned from it?

Besides, his mead was excellent.

“There must,” said Cadfael thoughtfully, “be others here from Cheshire, even some from close to Ranulfs court. You yourself, for instance, come from not so far away, and are knowledgeable about those parts, and the men and the mood there. If you are right, whoever has committed these acts knew where to look for the thing they wanted, once they gave up believing that it was still among the effects of Thomas of Bristol. Now how would they be able to choose, say, between Euan of Shotwick and you? As an instance, of course! No offence!”

“None in the world!” said Rhodri heartily. “Why, bless you! The only reason I know myself is because I am myself, and know I’m not in Ranulf of Chester’s employ. But you can’t know that, not certainly, and neither can any other.

There’s a small point, of course - Thomas of Bristol, I doubt, spoke no Welsh.”

“And you no English,” sighed Cadfael. “I had forgotten!”

“There was a traveller from down towards Gloucester stayed overnight at Ranulf’s court not a month ago,” mused Rhodri, twinkling happily at his own omniscience, “a jongleur who got unusual favour, for he was called in to play a stave or two to Ranulf and his lady in private, after they left the hall at night. If Earl Ranulf has an ear for music, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. It would certainly need more than a French virelai to fetch him in for his father-in-law’s cause.

He would want to know what were the prospects of success, and what his reward might be.” He slanted a radiant smile along his shoulder at Cadfael, and poured out the last of the mead. “Your health, brother! You, at least, are delivered from the greed for gain. I have often wondered, is there a passion large enough to take its place? I am still in the world myself, you understand.”

“I think there might be,” said Cadfael mildly. “For truth, perhaps? Or justice?”

CHAPTER 2

The gaoler unlocked the door of Philip’s cell somewhat before noon, and stood back to let the provost enter. Father and son eyed each other hard, and though Geoffrey Corviser continued to look grimly severe, and Philip obdurate and defiant, nevertheless the father was mollified and the son reassured. By and large, they understood each other pretty well.

“You are released to my warranty,” said the provost shortly. “The charge is not withdrawn, not yet, but you’re trusted to appear when called, and until then, let’s hope I may get some sensible work out of you.”

“I may come home with you?” Philip sounded dazed; he knew nothing of what had been going on outside, and was unprepared for this abrupt release. Hurriedly he brushed himself down, all too aware that he presented no very savoury spectacle to walk through the town at the provost’s side. “What made them change their mind? There’s no one been taken for the murder?” That would clear him utterly in Emma’s eyes, no doubts left.

“Which murder?” said his father grimly. “Never mind now, you shall hear, once we have you out of here.”

“Ay, stir yourself, lad,” advised the goodhumoured warder, jingling his keys, “before they change their minds again. The rate things are happening at this year’s fair, you might find the door slammed again before you can get through it.”

Philip followed his father wonderingly out of the castle. The noon light in the outer ward fell warm and dazzling upon him, the sky was a brilliant, deep blue, like Emma’s eyes when she widened them in anxiety or alarm. It was impossible not to feel elated, whatever reproaches might still await him at home; and hope and the resilience of youth blossomed in him as his father recounted brusquely all that had happened while his son fretted in prison without news.

“Then there have been two attacks upon Mistress Vernold’s boat and booth, her goods taken, her men assaulted?” He had quite forgotten his own bedraggled appearance, he was striding towards home with his head up and his visage roused and belligerent, looking, indeed, very much as he had looked when he led his ill-fated expedition across the bridge on the eve of the fair. “And no one seized for it? Nothing done? Why, she herself may be in danger!” Indignation quickened his steps. “For God’s sake, what’s the sheriff about?”

“He has enough to do breaking up unseemly riots by you and your like,” said his father smartly, but could not raise so much as a blush from his incensed offspring. “But since you want to know, Mistress Vernold is in the guest-hall of the abbey, safe enough, in the care of Hugh Beringar and his lady. You’d do better to be thinking about your own troubles, my lad, and mind your own step, for you’re not out of the wood yet.”

“What did I do that was so wrong? I went only one pace beyond what you did yourself the day before.” He did not even sound aggrieved about being judged hard, he made that brief defence only absently, his mind all on the girl. “Even in the guest-hall she may not be out of reach, if this is all some determined plot against her uncle and all his family.” In the death of one more tradesman at the fair he showed less interest, shocking though it was, since it seemed to have little or nothing to do with the vindictive catalogue of offences against Master Thomas and all his possessions. “She spoke so fairly,” he said. “She would not have me accused of worse than I did.”

“True enough! She was a fine, honest witness, no denying it. But no business of yours now, she’s well cared for. It’s your mother you need to be thinking of, she’s been in a fine taking over you all this while, and now they’re looking in other directions for the one who did the killing - with one eye still on you, though, mind! - she’ll likely take some sweetening. One way or another, you’ll get a warm welcome.”

Philip was far beyond minding that, though as soon as he entered the house behind the shoemaker’s shop he did indeed get a warm welcome, not one way or another, but both ways at once. Mistress Corviser, who was large, handsome and voluble, looked round from her fireside hob, uttered a muted shriek, dropped her ladle, and came billowing like a ship in full sail to embrace him, shake him, wrinkle her nose at the prison smell of him, abuse him for the damage to his best cotte and hose, box his ears for laughing at her tirade, exclaim lamentably over the dried scar at his temple, and demand that he sit down at once and let her crop the hair that adhered to the matted blood, and clean up the wound. By far the easiest thing to do was to submit to all, and let her talk herself out.

“The trouble and shame you’ve put us to, the heartaches you’ve cost me, wretch, you don’t deserve that I should feed you, or wash and mend for you. The provost’s son in prison, think of our mortification! Are you not ashamed of yourself?” She was sponging away the encrusted blood, and relieved to find so insignificant a scar remaining; but when he said blithely: “No, mother!” she pulled his hair smartly.

“Then you should be, you good-for-nothing! There, that’s not so bad. Now I hope you’re going to settle down to work, and make up for all the trouble you’ve made for us, instead of traipsing about the town egging on other people’s sons to mischief with your wild ideas …”

“They were the same ideas father and all the guild merchant had, mother, you should have scolded them. And you ask those who’re wearing my shoes whether there’s much amiss with my work.” He was a very good workman, in fact, as she would have asserted valiantly if anyone else had cast aspersions on his diligence and ability. He hugged her impulsively, and kissed her cheek, and she put him off impatiently, with what was more a slap than a caress. “Get along with you, and don’t come moguing me until you’re cleared of the worse charge, and have paid your fine for the riot. Now come and eat your dinner!”

It was an excellent dinner, such as she produced on festivals and saints’ days.

After it, instead of shedding the clothes he had worn day and night in his cell, he shaved carefully, made a bundle of his second-best suit, and left the house with it under his arm.

“Now where are you going?” she demanded inevitably.

“To the river, to swim and get clean again.” They had a garden upstream, below the town hall, as many of the burgesses had, for growing their own fruit and vegetables, and there was a small hut there, and a sward where he could dry in the sun. He had learned to swim there, shortly after he learned to walk. He did not tell her where he was going afterwards. It was a pity he would have to present himself in his second-best coat, but in this hot summer weather perhaps he need not put it on at all; in shirt and hose most men look the same, provided the shirt is good linen and well laundered.

The water was not even cold in the sandy shallow by the garden, but after his meal he did not stay in long, or swim out into deep water. But it was good to feel like himself again, cleansed even of the memory of his failure and downfall. There was a still place under the bank where the water hung almost motionless, and showed him a fair image of his face, and the thick bush of red-brown hair which he combed and straightened with his fingers. He dressed as carefully as he had shaved, and set off back to the bridge, and over it to the abbey. The town’s grievance, which he had had on his mind the last time he came this way, was quite forgotten; he had other important business now on the abbey side of Severn.

“There’s one here,” said Constance, coming in from the great court with a small, private smile on her lips, “who asks to speak with Mistress Vernold. And not a bad figure of a young fellow, either, though still a thought coltish about the legs. He asked very civilly.”

Emma had looked up quickly at the mention of a young man; now that she had gone some way towards accepting what had happened, and coming to terms with a disaster which, after all, she had not caused, she had been remembering words Ivo had used, almost disregarded then in her shocked daze, but significant and warming now.

“Messire Corbière?”

“No, not this time. This one I don’t know, but he says his name is Philip Corviser.”

“I know him,” said Aline, and smiled over her sewing. “The provost’s son, Emma, the boy you spoke for in the sheriff’s court. Hugh said he would see him set free today. If there’s one soul can say he has done no evil to you or any these last two days, he’s the man. Will you see him? It would be a kindness.”

Emma had almost forgotten him, even his name, but she recalled the plea he had made for her belief in him. So much had happened between. She remembered him now, unkempt, bruised and soiled, pallid-sick after his drunkenness, but still with a despairing dignity. “Yes, I remember him. Of course I’ll see him.”

Philip followed Constance into the room. Fresh from the river, with damp hair curling thickly about his head, shaven and glowing and in fierce earnest, but without the aggression of the manner she had first seen in him, this was a very different person from the humiliated prisoner of the court. The last look he had given her, chin on shoulder, as he was dragged out … yes, she saw the resemblance there. He made his reverence to Aline, and then to Emma.

“Madam, I am released on my father’s bail. I came to say my thanks to Mistress Emma for speaking so fairly for me, when I had no right to expect goodwill from her.”

“I’m glad to see you free, Philip,” said Aline serenely, “and looking none the worse. You will like to speak with Emma alone, I daresay, and company other than mine may be good for her, for here we talk nothing but babies.” She rose, folding her sewing carefully to keep the needle in view as she carried it.

“Constance and I will sit on the bench by the hall door, in the sun. The light is better there, and I am no such expert needlewoman as Emma. You can be undisturbed here.”

Out she went, and they saw a ray of sun from the open outer door sparkle in her piled gold hair, before Constance followed, and closed the door between. The two of them were left, gazing gravely at each other.

“The first thing I wanted to do with freedom,” said Philip, “was to see you again, and thank you for what you did for me. As I do, with all my heart. There were some who bore witness there who had known me most of my life, and surely had no grudge against me, and yet testified that I had been the first to strike, and done all manner of things I knew I had not done. But you, who had suffered through my act, though God knows I never willed it, you spoke absolute truth for me. It took a generous heart and a fair mind to do so much for an unknown whom you had no cause to love.” He had not chosen that word, it had come naturally in the commonplace phrase, but when he heard it, it raised a blush like fire in his own face, faintly reflected the next moment in hers.

“All I did was to tell the truth of what I had seen,” she said. “So should we all have done, it’s no virtue, but an obligation. It was shame that they did not. People do not think what it is they are saying, or trouble to be clear about what they have seen. But that’s all by now. I’m very glad they’ve let you go. I was glad when Hugh Beringar said they must, taking into account what has been happening, for which you certainly can bear no blame. But perhaps you have not heard …”

“Yes, I have heard. My father has told me.” Philip sat down beside her in the place Aline had vacated, and leaned towards her earnestly. “There is some very evil purpose against you and yours, surely, how else to account for so many outrages? Emma, I am afraid for you … I fear danger threatening even you.

I’m grieved for your loss, and all the distress you’ve suffered. I wish there might be some way in which I could serve you.”

“Oh, but you need not be troubled for me,” she said. “You see I am in the best and kindest hands possible, and tomorrow the fair will all be over, and Hugh Beringar and Aline will help me to find a safe way to go home.”

“Tomorrow?” he said, dismayed.

“It may not be tomorrow. Roger Dod will take the barge downriver tomorrow, but it may be that I must stay a day or two more. We have to find a party going south by Gloucester, for safe-conduct, and with some other women for company. It may take a day or two.”

Even a day or two would be gold; but after that she would be gone, and he might never see her again. And still, confronted by this cause for unhappiness on his own part, he could only think of her. He could not rid himself of the feeling that she was threatened.

“In only two days, see how many ill things have happened, and always close to you, and what may not still happen in a day or two more? I wish you were safe home this moment,” he said passionately, “though God knows I’d rather lose my right hand than the sight of you.” He was not even aware that that same right hand had taken possession of her left one, and was clasping it hard. “At least find me some way of serving you before you go. If nothing more, tell me you know that I never did harm to your uncle …”

“Oh, yes,” she said warmly, “that I can, most willingly. I never did truly believe it. You are no such person, to strike a man dead by stealth. I never thought it. But still we don’t know who did it! Oh, don’t doubt me, I’m sure of you. But I wish it could be shown clear to the world, for your sake.”

It was said very prettily and sincerely, and he took it to his heart gratefully, but it was said out of generous fellow-feeling, and nothing deeper, and he was gallingly sure of it while he hugged at least the kindness to him.

“For mine, too,” she said honestly, “and for the sake of justice. It is not right that a mean murderer should escape his due, and it does aggrieve me that my uncle’s death should go unpaid for.”

Find me some way of serving you, he had said; and perhaps she had. There was nothing he would not have undertaken for her; he would have lain over the threshold of any room in which she was, like a dog on guard, if she had needed it, but she did not, she was cared for by the sheriff’s own deputy and his lady, and they would watch over her until they saw her safely on her way home. But when she spoke of the unknown who had slipped a dagger in her uncle’s back, her great eyes flared with the angry blue of sapphires, and her face grew marble-clear and taut. Her complaint was his commission. He would achieve something for her yet.

“Emma,” he began in a whisper, and drew breath to commit himself deep as the sea.

The door opened, though neither of them had heard the knock; Constance put her head into the room.

“Messire Corbière waits to see you, when you are free,” she said, and withdrew, but left the door ajar. Evidently Messire Corbière ought not to be kept waiting long.

Philip was on his feet. Emma’s eyes had kindled at the name like distant stars, forgetting him. “You may remember him,” she said, still sparing a morsel of her attention for Philip, “the young gentleman who came to help us on the jetty, along with Brother Cadfael. He has been very kind to me.”

Philip did remember, though his bludgeoned senses at the time had seen everything distorted; a slender, elegant, assured lordling who leaped a rolling cask to catch her in his arm at the water’s edge, and further, to be just to him, had appeared in the sheriff’s court and borne out Emma’s honest story - even if he had also produced his falconer to testify to the silly threats Philip had been indulging in, drunk as he was, later that evening. Testimony Philip did not dispute, since he knew he had been incapable of clear thought or positive recollection. He recalled his disgusting self, and smarted at the thought. And the young lord with the bright gold crest and athlete’s prowess had showed so admirable by contrast.

“I’ll take my leave,” said Philip, and allowed her hand to slip out of his, though with reluctance and pain. “For the journey, and always, I wish you well.”

“So do I you,” she said, and with unconscious cruelty added: “Will you ask Messire Corbière to come in?”

Never in his life until then had Philip been required to draw himself to his full stature, body and mind. His departure was made with a dignity he had not dreamed he could achieve, and meeting Corbière face to face in the hall, he did indeed bid him within, at Mistress Emma’s invitation, very civilly and amiably, while he burned with jealousy inwardly. Ivo thanked him pleasantly, and if he looked him over, did so with interest and respect, and with no apparent recollection of ever having seen him in less acceptable circumstances.

No one would have guessed, thought Philip, marching out into the sunshine of the great court, that a working shoemaker and a landed lord rubbed shoulders there.

Well, he may have several manors in Cheshire and one in Shropshire, and be distant kin of Earl Ranulf, and welcome at his court; but I have something I can try to do for her, and I have a craft as honourable as his noble blood, and if I succeed, whether she comes my way or no, she’ll never forget me.

Brother Cadfael came in at the gatehouse after some hours of fruitless prowling about the fair and the riverside. Among hundreds of men busy about their own concerns, the quest of a gashed sleeve, or one recently and hastily mended, is much the same as hunting one straw in a completed stack. His trouble was that he knew no other way to set about it. Moreover, the hot and settled weather continued unbroken, and most of those about the streets and the stalls were in their shirt-sleeves. There was a point there, he reflected. The glover’s dagger had drawn blood, therefore it had reached the skin, but never a thread of white or unbleached linen had it brought away with the sliver of brown cloth. If the intruder had worn a shirt, he had worn it with sleeves rolled up, and it had emerged unscathed, and could now cover his graze, and if the wound had needed one, his bandage. Cadfael returned to tend the few matters needing him in his workshop, and be ready for Vespers in good time, more because he was at a loss how to proceed than for any other reason. An interlude of quiet and thought might set his wits working again.

In the great court his path towards the garden happened to cross Philip’s from the guest-hall to the gatehouse. Deep ini his own purposes, the young man almost passed by unnoticing, but then he checked sharply, and turned to look back.

“Brother Cadfael!” Cadfael swung to face him, startled out of just as deep a preoccupation. “It is you!” said Philip. “It was you who spoke for me, after Emma, in the sheriff’s court. And I knew you then for the one who came to help me to my feet and out of trouble, when the sergeants broke up the fight on the jetty. I never had the chance to thank you, brother, but I do thank you now.”

“I fear the getting you out of trouble didn’t last the night,” said Cadfael ruefully, looking this lanky youngster over with a sharp eye, and approving what he saw. Whether it was time spent in self-examination in the gaol, or time spent more salutarily still in thinking of Emma, Philip had done a great deal of growing up in a very short time. “I’m glad to see you about again among us, and none the worse.”

“I’m not clear of the load yet,” said Philip. “The charge still stands, even the charge of murder has not been withdrawn.”

“Then it stands upon one leg only,” said Cadfael heartily, “and may fall at any moment. Have you not heard there’s been another death?”

“So they told me, and other violence, also. But surely this last bears no connection with the rest? Until this, all was malice against Master Thomas. This man was a stranger, and from Chester.” He laid a hand eagerly on Cadfael’s sleeve. “Brother, spare me some minutes. I was not very clear in my wits that night, now I need to know - all that I did, all that was done to me. I want to trace every minute of an evening I can barely piece together for myself.”

“And no wonder, after that knock on the head. Come and sit in the garden, it’s quiet there.” He took the young man by the arm, and turned him towards the archway through the pleached hedge, and sat him down on the very seat, had Philip known it, where Emma and Ivo had sat together the previous day. “Now, what is it you have in mind? I don’t wonder your memory’s hazy. That’s a good solid skull you have on you, and a blessedly thick thatch of hair, or you’d have been carried away on a board.”

Philip scowled doubtfully into distance between the roses, hesitated how much to say, how much to keep painfully to himself, caught Brother Cadfael’s comfortably patient eye, and blurted: “I was coming now from Emma. I know she is in better care than I could provide her, but I have found one thing, at least, that might still be done for her. She wants and needs to see the man who killed her uncle brought to justice. And I mean to find him.”

“So does the sheriff, so do all his men,” said Cadfael, “but they’ve had little success as yet.” But he did not say it in reproof or discouragement, but very thoughtfully. “So, for that matter, do I, but I’ve done no better. One more mind probing the matter could just as well be the mind that uncovers the truth. Why not? But how will you set about it?”

“Why, if I can prove - prove! - that I did not do it, I may also rub up against something that will lead me to the man who did. At least I can make a start by trying to follow what happened to me that night. Not only for my own defence,” he said earnestly, “but because it seems to me that I gave cover to the deed by what I had begun, and whoever did it may have had me and my quarrel in mind, and been glad of the opening I made for him, knowing that when murder came of the night, the first name that would spring to mind would be mine. So whoever he may be, he must have marked my comings and goings, or I could be no use to him. If I had been with ten friends throughout, I should have been out of the reckoning, and the sheriff would have begun at once to look elsewhere. But I was drunk, and sick, and took myself off alone to the river for a long time, so much I do know.

Long enough for it to have been true. And the murderer knew it.”

“That is sound thinking,” agreed Cadfael approvingly. “What, then, do you mean to do?”

“Begin from the riverside, where I got my clout on the head, and follow my own scent until I get clear what’s very unclear now. I do remember what happened there, as far as you hauling me out of the way of the sheriff’s men, and then being hustled away between two others, but my legs were grass and my wits were muddied, and I can’t for my life recall who they were. It’s a place to start, if you knew them.”

“One of them was Edric Flesher’s journeyman,” said Cadfael. “The other I’ve seen, though I don’t know his name, a big, sturdy young fellow twice your width, with tow-coloured hair …”

“John Norreys!” Philip snapped his fingers. “I seem to recall him later in the night. It’s enough, I’ll begin with them, and find out where they left me, and how - or where I shook them off, for so I might have done, I was no fit company for Christians.” He rose, draping his coat over one shoulder. “That whole evening I’ll unravel, if I can.”

“Good lad!” said Cadfael heartily. “I wish you success with all my heart. And if you’re going to be threading your way through a few of the alehouses of the Foregate, as you seem to have done that night, keep your eyes open on my behalf, will you? If you can find your murderer, you may very well also be finding mine.” Carefully and emphatically he told him what to look for. “An arm raising a flagon, or spread over a table, may show you what I’m seeking. The left sleeve sliced open for a hand’s-length from the cuff of a russet-brown coat, that was sewn with a lighter linen thread. It would be on the underside of the arm. Or where arms are bared, look for the long scratch the knife made when it slit the sleeve, or for the binding that might cover it if it still bleeds. But if you find him, don’t challenge him or say word to him, only bring me, if you can, his name and where to find him again.”

“This was the glover’s slayer?” asked Philip, marking the details with grave nods of his brown head. “You think they may be one and the same?”

“If not the same, well known to each other, and both in the same conspiracy.

Find one, and we shall be very close to the other.”

“I’ll keep a good watch, at any rate,” said Philip, and strode away purposefully towards the gatehouse to begin his quest.

CHAPTER 3

Afterwards Brother Cadfael pondered many times over what followed, and wondered if prayer can even have a retrospective effect upon events, as well as influencing the future. What had happened had already happened, yet would he have found the same situation if he had not gone straight into the church, when Philip left him, with the passionate urge to commit to prayer the direction of his own efforts, which seemed to him so barren? It was a most delicate and complex theological problem, never as far as he knew, raised before, or if raised, no theologian had ventured to write on the subject, probably for fear of being accused of heresy.

Howbeit, the urgent need came over him, since he had lost some offices during the day, to recommit his own baffled endeavours to eyes that saw everything, and a power that could open all doors. He chose the transept chapel from which Master Thomas’s coffin had been carried that morning, resealed into sanctity by the Mass sung for him. He had time, now, to kneel and wait, having busied himself thus far in anxious efforts like a man struggling up a mountain, when he knew there was a force that could make the mountain bow. He said a prayer for patience and humility, and then laid that by, and prayed for Emma, for the soul of Master Thomas, for the child that should be born to Aline and Hugh, for young Philip and the parents who had recovered him, for all who suffered injustice and wrong, and sometimes forgot they had a resource beyond the sheriff.

Then it was high time for him to rise from his knees, and go and see to his primary duty here, whatever more violent matters clamoured for his attention. He had supervised the herbarium and the manufactory derived from it, for sixteen years, and his remedies were relied upon far beyond the abbey walls; and though Brother Mark was the most devoted and uncomplaining of helpers, it was unkind to leave him too long alone with such a responsibility. Cadfael hastened towards his workshop with a lightened heart, having shifted his worries to broader shoulders, just as Brother Mark would be happy to do on his patron’s arrival.

The heavy fragrance of the herb-garden lay over all the surrounding land, after so many hours of sunshine and heat, like a particular benediction meant for the senses, not the soul. Under the eaves of the workshop the dangling bunches of dried leafage rustled and chirped like nests of singing birds in waves of warmed air, where there was hardly any wind. The very timbers of the hut, dressed with oil against cracking, breathed out scented warmth.

“I finished making the balm for ulcers,” said Brother Mark, making dutiful report, and happily aware of work well done. “And I have harvested all the poppy-heads that were ripe, but I have not yet broken out the seed, I thought they should dry in the sun a day or two yet.”

Cadfael pressed one of the great heads between his fingers, and praised the judgment. “And the angelica water for the infirmary?”

“Brother Edmund sent for it half an hour ago. I had it ready. And I had a patient,” said Brother Mark, busy stacking away on a shelf the small clay dishes he used for sorting seeds, “earlier on, soon after dinner. A groom with a gashed arm. He said he did it on a nail in the stables, reaching down harness, though it looked like a knife-slash to me. It was none too clean, I cleansed it for him, and dressed it with some of your goose-grass unguent. They were gambling with dice up there in the loft last night, I daresay it came to a fight, and somebody drew on him. He’d hardly admit to that.” Brother Mark dusted his hands, and turned with a smile to report for the sum of his stewardship. “And that’s all. A quiet afternoon, you need not have worried.” At sight of Cadfael’s face his brows went up comically, and he asked in surprise: “Why are you staring like that? Nothing there, surely, to open your eyes so wide.”

My mouth, too, thought Cadfael, and shut it while he reflected on the strangeness of human effort, and the sudden rewards that fell undeserved. Not undeserved, perhaps, in this case, since this had fallen to Brother Mark, who modestly made no demands at all.

“Which arm was gashed?” he asked, further baffling Brother Mark, who naturally could not imagine why that should matter.

“The left. From here, the outer edge of the wrist, down the underside of the forearm. Almost to the elbow. Why?”

“Had he his coat on?”

“Not when I saw him,” said Mark, smiling at the absurdity of this catechism.

“But he had it over his sound arm. Is that important?”

“More than you know! But you shall know, later, I am not playing with you. Of what colour was it? And did you see the sleeve that should cover that arm?”

“I did. I offered to stitch it for him - I had little to do just then. But he said he’d already cobbled it up, and so he had, very roughly, and with black thread.

I could have done better for him, the original was unbleached linen thread. The colour? Reddish dun, much like most of the grooms and men-at-arms wear, but a good cloth.”

“Did you know the man? Not one of our own abbey servants?”

“No, a guest’s man,” said Brother Mark, patient in his bewilderment. “Not a word to his lord he said! It was one of Ivo Corbière’s grooms, the older one, the surly fellow with the beard.”

Gilbert Prestcote himself, unescorted and on foot, had taken an afternoon turn about the fairground to view the public peace with his own eyes, and was in the great court on his way back to the town, conferring with Hugh Beringar, when Cadfael came in haste from the garden with his news. When the blunt recital was ended, they looked at him and at each other with blank and wary faces.

“Corbière’s within at this moment,” said Hugh, “and I gather from Aline has been, more than an hour. Emma has him dazed, I doubt if he’s had any other thought, these last two days. His men have been running loose much as they pleased, provided the work was done. It could be the man.”

“His lord has the right to be told,” said Prestcote. “Households grow lax when they see the country torn, and their betters flouting law. There’s nothing been said or done to alarm this fellow, I take it? He has no reason to make any move?

And surely he values the shelter of a name like Corbière.”

“No word has been said to any but you,” said Cadfael. “And the man may be telling the truth.”

“The tatter of cloth,” said Hugh, “I have here on me. It should be possible to match or discard.”

“Ask Corbière to come,” said the sheriff.

Hugh took the errand to himself, since Ivo was a guest in his rooms. While they waited in braced silence, two of the abbey’s men-at-arms came in at the gatehouse with unstrung longbows, and Turstan Fowler between them with his arbalest, the three of them hot, happy and on excellent terms. On the last day of the fair there were normally matches of many kinds, wrestling, shooting at the butts along the river meadows, longbow against cross-bow, though the longbow here was usually the short bow of Wales, drawn to the breast, not the ear. The six-foot weapon was known, but a rarity. There were races, too, and riding at the quintain on the castle tiltyard. Trade and play made good companions, and especially good profits for the alehouses, where the winners very soon parted with all they had won, and the losers made up their losses.

These three were wreathed together in argumentative amity, passing jokes along the line; each seemed to be vaunting his own weapon. They had strolled no more than halfway across the court when Hugh emerged from the guest-hall with Ivo beside him. Ivo saw his archer crossing towards the stable-yard, and made him an imperious signal to stay.

There was no fault to be found with Turstan’s service since his disastrous fall from grace on the first evening; motioned to hold aloof but remain at call, he obeyed without question, and went on amusing himself with his rivals. He must have done well at the butts for they seemed to be discussing his arbalest, and he braced a foot in the metal stirrup and drew the string to the alert for them, demonstrating that he lost little in speed against their instant arms. No doubt the dispute between speed and range would go on as long as both arms survived.

Cadfael had handled both in his time, as well as the eastern bow, the sword, and the lance of the mounted man. Even at this grave moment he spared a long glance for the amicable wrangle going on a score of paces away.

Then Ivo was there among them, and shaken out of his easy confidence and grace.

His face was tense, his dark eyes large and wondering under the proudly raised auburn brows and golden cap of curls. “You wanted me, sir? Hugh has not been specific, but I took it this was urgent matter.”

“It is a matter of a man of yours,” said the sheriff.

“My men?” He shook a doubtful head, and gnawed his lip. “I know of nothing …

Not since Turstan drank himself stiff and stupid, and he’s been a penitent and close to home ever since, and he did no harm then to any but himself, the dolt.

But they all have leave to go forth, once their work’s done. The fair is every man’s treat. What’s amiss concerning my men?”

It was left to the sheriff to tell him. Ivo paled visibly as he listened, his ruddy sunburn sallowing. “Then my man is suspect of the killing I brushed arms with - Good God, this very morning! That you may know, his name is Ewald, he comes from a Cheshire manor, and his ancestry is northern, but he never showed ill traits before, though he is a morose man, and makes few friends. I take this hard. I brought him here.”

“You may resolve it,” said Prestcote.

“So I may.” His mouth tightened. “And will! About this hour I appointed to ride, my horse has had little exercise here, and he’ll be bearing me hence tomorrow.

Ewald is the groom who takes care of him. He should be saddling him up in the stables about this time. Shall I send for him? He’ll be expecting my summons.

No!” he interrupted his own offer, his brows contracting. “Not send for him, go for him myself. If I sent Turstan, there, you might suspect that a servant would stand by a servant, and give him due warning. Do you think he has not been watching us, this short while? And do you think this colloquy has the look of simple talk among us?”

Assuredly it had not. Turstan, dangling his braced bow, had lost interest in enlightening his rivals, and they, sensing that there was something afoot that did not concern them, were drawing off and moving away, though with discreet backward glances until they vanished into the grange court.

“I’ll go myself,” said Ivo, and strode away towards the stable-yard at a great pace. Turstan, hesitant, let him pass, since he got no word out of him in passing, but then turned and hurried on his heels, anxiously questioning. For a little way he followed, and they saw Ivo turn his head and snap some hasty orders at his man. Chastened, Turstan drew back and returned towards the gatehouse, and stood at a loss.

Some minutes passed before they heard the sharp sound of hooves on the cobbles of the stable-yard, brittle and lively. Then the tall, dusky bay, glowing like the darkest of copper and restive for want of work, danced out of the yard with the stocky, bearded groom holding his bridle, and Ivo stalking a yard or so ahead.

“Here is my man Ewald,” he said shortly, and stood back, as Cadfael noted, between them and the open gateway. Turstan Fowler drew nearer by discreet inches, and silently, sharp eyes flicking from one face to another in quest of understanding. Ewald stood holding the bridle, uneasy eyes narrowed upon Prestcote’s unrevealing countenance. When the horse, eager for action, stirred and tossed his head, the groom reached his left hand across to take the bridle, and slid the right one up to the glossy neck, caressing by rote, but without for an instant shifting his gaze.

“My lord says your honour has something to ask me,” he said in a slow and grudging voice.

Under his left forearm the cobbled mend in his sleeve showed plainly, the cloth puckered between large stitches, and the end of linen thread shivered in sun and breeze like a gnat dancing.

“Take off your coat,” ordered the sheriff. And as the man gaped in real or pretended bewilderment: “No words! Do it!”

Slowly Ewald slipped out of his coat, somewhat awkwardly because he was at pains to retain his hold on the bridle. The horse had been promised air and exercise, and was straining towards the gate, the way to what he desired. He had already shifted the whole group, except Cadfael, who stood mute and apart, a little nearer the gate.

“Turn back your sleeve. The left.”

He gave one wild glance round, then lowered his head like a bull, set his jaw, and did it, his right arm through the bridle as he turned up the coarse homespun to the elbow. Brother Mark had bound up the gash in a strip of clean linen over his dressing. The very cleanness of it glared.

“You have hurt yourself, Ewald?” said Prestcote, quietly grim.

He has his chance now, thought Cadfael, if he has quick enough wit, to change his story and say outright that he took a knife-wound in a common brawl, and told Brother Mark the lie about a nail simply to cover up the folly. But no, the man did not stop to think; he had his story, and trusted it might still cover him. Yet if Mark, on handling the wound, could tell a cut from a tear, so at the merest glance could Gilbert Prescote.

“I did it on a nail in the stables, my lord, reaching down harness.”

“And tore your sleeve through at the same time? It was a jagged nail, Ewald.

That’s stout cloth you wear.” He turned abruptly to Hugh Beringar. “You have the slip of cloth?”

Hugh drew out from his pouch a folded piece of vellum, and opened it upon the insignificant strip of fabric, that looked like nothing so much as a blade of dried grass fretted into fibres and rotting at the edge. Only the wavy tendril of linen thread showed what it really was, but that was enough. Ewald drew away a pace, so sharply that the horse backed off some yards towards the gateway, and the groom turned and took both hands to hold and soothe the beast. Ivo had to spring hurriedly backwards to avoid the dancing hooves.

“Hand here your coat,” ordered Prestcote, when the bay was appeased again, and willing to stand, though reluctantly.

The groom looked from the tiny thing he had recognised to the sheriff’s composed but unrelenting face, hesitated only a moment, and then did as he was bid, to violent effect. He swung back his arm and flung the heavy cotte into their faces, and with a leap was over the bay’s back and into the saddle. Both heels drove into the glossy sides, and a great shout above the pricked ears sent the horse surging like a flung lance for the gateway.

There was no one between but Ivo. The groom drove the bay straight at him, headlong. The young man leaped aside, but made a tigerish spring to grasp at the bridle as the horse hurtled by, and actually got a hold on it and was dragged for a moment, until the groom kicked out at him viciously, breaking the tenuous hold and hurling Ivo out of the way, to fall heavily and roll under the feet of the sheriff and Hugh as they launched themselves after the fugitive. Out at the gateway and round to the right into the Foregate went Ewald, at a frantic gallop, and there was no one mounted and ready to pursue, and for once the sheriff was without escort or archers.

But Ivo Corbière was not. Turstan Fowler had rushed to help him to his feet, but Ivo waved him past, out into the Foregate, and heaving himself breathlessly from the ground, with grazed and furious face ran limping after. The little group of them stood in the middle of the highroad, helplessly watching the bay and his rider recede into distance, and unable to follow. He had killed, and he would get clear away, and once some miles from Shrewsbury, he could disappear into forest and lie safe as a fox in its lair.

In a voice half-choked with rage, Ivo cried: “Fetch him down!”

Turstan’s arbalest was still braced and ready, and Turstan was used to jumping to his command. The quarrel was out of his belt, fitted and loosed, in an instant, the thrum and vibration of its flight made heads turn and duck and women shriek along the Foregate.

Ewald, stooped low over the horse’s neck, suddenly jerked violently and reared up with head flung high. His hands slackened from the reins and his arms swung lax on either side. He seemed to hang for a moment suspended in air, and then swung heavily sidewise, and heeled slowly out of the saddle. The bay, startled and shocked, ran on wildly, scattering the frightened vendors and buyers on both sides, but his flight was uncertain now, and confused by this sudden lightness.

He would not go far. Someone would halt and soothe him, and lead him back.

As for the groom Ewald, he was dead before ever the first of the appalled stallholders reached him, dead, probably, before ever he struck the ground.

CHAPTER 4

“He was my villein,” asserted Ivo strenuously, in the room in the gatehouse where they had brought and laid the body, “and I enjoy the power of the high justice over my own, and this one had forfeited life. I need make no defence, for myself or my archer, who did nothing more than obey my order. We have all seen, now, that this fellow’s wound is no tear from a nail, but the stroke of a dagger, and the fret you took from the glover’s blade matches this sleeve past question. Is there doubt in any mind that this was a murderer?”

There was none. Cadfael was there with them in the room, at Hugh’s instance, and he had no doubts at all. This was the man Euan of Shotwick had marked, before he himself died. Moreover, some of Euan of Shotwick’s goods and money had been found among the sparse belongings Ewald had left behind him; his saddle-roll held a pouch of fine leather full of coins, and two pairs of gloves made for the hands of girls, presents, perhaps, for wife or sister. This was certainly a murderer. Turstan, who had shot him down, obviously did not consider himself anything of the kind, any more than one of Prestcote’s archers would have done, had he been given the order to shoot. Turstan had taken the whole affair stolidly, as none of his business apart from his duty to his lord, and gone away to his evening meal with an equable appetite.

“I brought him here,” said Ivo bitterly, wiping smears of blood from his grazed cheek. “It is my honour he has offended, as well as the law of the land. I had a right to avenge myself.”

“No need to labour it,” said Prestcote shortly. “The shire has been saved a trial and a hanging, which is to the good, and I don’t know but the wretch himself might prefer this way out. It was a doughty shot, and that’s a valuable man of yours. I never thought it could be done so accurately at that distance.”

Ivo shrugged. “I knew Turstan’s quality, or I would not have said what I did, to risk either my horse or any of the hundreds about their harmless business in the Foregate. I don’t know that I expected a death …”

“There’s only one cause for regret,” said the sheriff. “If he had accomplices, he can never now be made to name them. And you say, Beringar, that there were probably two?”

“You’re satisfied, I hope,” said Ivo, “that neither Turstan nor my young groom Arald had any part with him in these thefts?”

Both had been questioned, he had insisted on that. Turstan had been a model of virtue since his one lapse, and the youngster was a fresh-faced country youth, and both had made friends among the other servants and were well liked. Ewald had been morose and taciturn, and kept himself apart, and the revelation of his villainy did not greatly surprise his fellows.

“There’s still the matter of the other offences. What do you think? Was it this man in all of them?”

“I cannot get it out of my mind,” said Hugh slowly, “that Master Thomas’s death was the work of one man only. And without reason or proof, by mere pricking of thumbs, I do not believe it was this man. For the rest - I don’t know! Two, the merchant’s watchman said, but I am not sure he may not be increasing the odds to excuse his own want of valour - or his very good sense, however you look at it.

Only one, surely, would enter the barge in full daylight, no doubt briskly, as if he had an errand there, something to fetch or something to bestow. Where there were two, this must surely be one of them. Who the other was, we are still in the dark.”

After Compline Cadfael went to report to Abbot Radulfus all that had happened.

The sheriff had already paid the necessary courtesy visit to inform the abbot, but for all that Radulfus would expect his own accredited observer to bring another viewpoint, one more concerned with the repute and the standards of a Benedictine house. In an order which held moderation in all things to be the ground of blessing, immoderate things were happening.

Radulfus listened in disciplined silence to all, and there was no telling from his face whether he deplored or approved such summary justice.

“Violence can never be anything but ugly,” he said thoughtfully, “but we live in a world as ugly and violent as it is beautiful and good. Two things above all concern me, and one of them may seem to you, brother, a trivial matter. This death, the shedding of this blood, took place outside our walls. For that I am grateful. You have lived both within and without, what must be accepted and borne is the same to you, within or without. But many here lack your knowledge, and for them, and for the peace we strive to preserve here as refuge for others beside ourselves, the sanctity of this place is better unspotted. And the second thing will matter as deeply to you as to me: Was this man guilty? Is it certain he himself had killed?”

“It is certain,” said Brother Cadfael, choosing his words with care, “that he had been concerned in murder, most likely with at least one other man.”

“Then harsh though it may be, this was justice.” He caught the heaviness of Cadfael’s silence, and looked up sharply. “You are not satisfied?”

“That the man took part in murder, yes, I am satisfied. The proofs are clear.

But what is justice? If there were two, and one bears all, and the other goes free, is that justice? I am certain in my soul that there is more, not yet known.”

“And tomorrow all these people will depart about their own affairs, to their own homes and shops, wherever they may be. The guilty and the innocent alike. That cannot be the will of God,” said the abbot, and brooded a while in silence.

“Nevertheless, it may be God’s will that it should be taken out of our hands.

Continue your vigil, brother, through the morrow. After that others, elsewhere, must take up the burden.”

Brother Mark sat on the edge of his cot, in his cell in the dortoire, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and grieved. From a child he had lived a hard life, privation, brutality and pain were all known to him as close companions until he came into this retreat, at first unwilling. But death was too monstrous and too dark for him, coming thus instant in terror, and without the possibility of grace. To live misused, ill-fed, without respite from labour, was still life, with a sky above it, and trees and flowers and birds around it, colour and season and beauty. Life, even so lived, was a friend. Death was a stranger.

“Child, it is with us always,” said Cadfael, patient beside him. “Last summer ninety-five men died here in the town, none of whom had done murder. For choosing the wrong side, they died. It falls upon blameless women in war, even in peace at the hands of evil men. It falls upon children who never did harm to any, upon old men, who in their lives have done good to many, and yet are brutally and senselessly slain. Never let it shake your faith that there is a balance hereafter. What you see is only a broken piece from a perfect whole.”

“I know,” said Brother Mark between his fingers, loyal but uncomforted. “But to be cut off without trial …”

“So were the ninety-four last year,” said Cadfael gently, “and the ninety-fifth was murdered. Such justice as we see is also but a broken shred. But it is our duty to preserve what we may, and fit together such fragments as we find, and take the rest on trust.”

“And unshriven!” cried Brother Mark.

“So went his victim also. And he had neither robbed nor killed, or if he had, only God knows of it. There has many a man gone through that gate without a safe-conduct, who will reach heaven ahead of some who were escorted through with absolution and ceremony, and had their affairs in order. Kings and princes of the church may find shepherds and serfs preferred before them, and some who claim they have done great good may have to give place to poor wretches who have done wrong and acknowledge it, and have tried to make amends.”

Brother Mark sat listening, and at least began to hear. Humbly he recognised and admitted the real heart of his grievance. “I had his arm between my hands, I saw him wince when I cleansed his wound, and I felt his pain. It was only a small pain, but I felt it. I was glad to help him, it was pleasure to anoint the cut with balm, and wrap it clean, and know he was eased. And now he’s dead, with a cross-bow bolt through him …” Briefly and angrily, Brother Mark brushed away tears, and uncovered his accusing face. “What is the use of mending a man, if he’s to be broken within a few hours, past mending?”

“We were speaking of souls,” said Cadfael mildly, “not mere bodies, and who knows but your touch with ointment and linen may have mended to better effect the one that lasts the longer? There’s no arrow cleaves the soul but there may be balm for it.”

CHAPTER 5

Head-down on his own traces, Philip had run his friend John Norreys to earth at last at the butts by the riverside, where the budding archers of the town practised, and together they hunted out Edric Flesher’s young journeyman from the yard behind his master’s shop. Philip’s odyssey on the eve of the fair had begun with these two, who had had him bundled into their arms by Brother Cadfael when the sheriff’s men descended on the Gaye.

By their own account, they had hauled him away through the orchards and the narrow lanes behind the Foregate, avoiding the highroads, and sat him down in the first booth that sold drink, to recover his addled wits. And very ungrateful they had found him, as soon as the shock of his blow on the head began to pass, and his legs were less shaky under him.

Furious with himself, he had turned his ill-temper on them, snarled at them, said John tolerantly, that he was capable of looking after himself, and they had better go and warn some of the other stalwarts who had rushed on along the Foregate overturning stalls and scattering goods, before the officers reached them. Which they had taken goodhumouredly enough, knowing his head was aching villainously by that time, and had followed him for a while at a discreet distance as he blundered away through the fairground, until he turned on them again and ordered them away. They had stood to watch him, and then shrugged and left him to his own devices, since he would have none of them.

“You had your legs again,” said John reasonably, “and since you wouldn’t let us do anything for you, we thought best to let you go your own way. Let alone, you wouldn’t go far, but if we followed, you might do who knows what, out of contrariness.”

“There was another fellow who looked after you a thought anxiously,” said the butcher’s man, thinking back, “when we left that booth with you. Came out after us, and set off the same way you took. He thought you were already helpless drunk, I fancy, and might need helping home.”

“That was kind in him,” said Philip, stiffening indignantly, and meaning that it was damned officious of whoever it was. “That would be what hour? Not yet eight?”

“Barely. I did hear the bell for Compline shortly after, over the wall. Curious how it carries over all the bustle between.” In the upper air, so it would; people in the Foregate regulated their day by the office bells.

“Who was this who followed me? Did you know him?”

They looked at each other and hoisted indifferent shoulders; among the thousands at a great fair the local people are lost. “Never seen him before. Not a Shrewsbury man. He may not have been following, to call it that, at all, just heading the same way.”

They told him exactly where he had left them, and the direction he had taken.

Philip made his way purposefully to the spot indicated, but in that busy concourse, spreading along the Foregate and filling every open space beyond, he was still without a map. All he knew was that before nine, according to the witness in the sheriff’s court, he had been very drunk and still drinking in Wat’s tavern, and blurting out hatred and grievance and the intent of vengeance against Master Thomas of Bristol. The interval it was hard to fill. Perhaps he had made his way there at once, and been well advanced in drink before the stranger noted his threats.

Philip gritted his teeth and set off along the Foregate, so intent on his own quest that he had no ears for anything else, and missed the news that was being busily conveyed back and forth through the fair, with imaginative variations and considerable embellishments before it reached the far corner of the horse-fair.

It was news more than two hours old by then, but Philip had heard no word of it, his mind was on his own problem. All round him stalls were being stripped down to trestle and board, and rented booths being locked up, and the keys delivered to abbey stewards. Business was almost put away, but the evening was not yet outworn, there would be pleasure after business.

Walter Renold’s inn lay at the far corner of the horse-fair, not on the London highroad, but on the quieter road that bore away north-eastwards. It was handy for the country people who brought goods to market, and at this hour it was full. It went against the grain with Philip even to order a pot of ale for himself while he was on this desperate quest, but alehouses live by sales, and at least he was so formidably sober now that he could afford the indulgence. The potboy who brought him his drink was hardly more than a child, and he did not remember the tow hair and pock-marked face. He waited to speak with Wat himself, when there was a brief interlude of calm.

“I heard they’d let you go free,” said Wat, spreading brawny arms along the table opposite him. “I’m glad of it. I never thought you’d do harm, and so I told them where they asked. When was it they loosed you?”

“A while before noon.” Hugh Beringar had said he should eat his dinner at home, and so he had, though at a later hour than usual.

“So nobody could point a finger at you over the latest ill-doings. Such a fair as we’ve had! Good weather and good sales, and good attendance all round, even good behaviour,” said Wat weightily, considering the whole range of his experience of fairs. “And yet two merchants murdered, the second of them a northern man found only this morning broken-necked in his stall. You’ll have heard about that? When did we ever have such happenings! It’s not the lads of Shrewsbury, I said when they asked me, that get up to such villainies, you look among the incomers from other parts. We’re decent folk herebouts!”

“Yes, I know of that,” said Philip. “But it’s not that death they pointed at me, it’s the first, the Bristol merchant …” North and south had met here, he reflected, fatally for both. Now why should that be? Both the victims strangers from far distances, where some born locally were as well worth plundering.

“This one they could hardly charge to your account,” said Wat, grinning broadly, “even if you’d been at large so early. It’s all past and gone. You hadn’t heard?

There was a grand to-do along the Foregate, a few hours ago. The murderer’s found out red-handed, and made a break for his freedom on his lord’s horse, and kicked his lord into the dust on the way. And he’s shot down dead as a storm-struck tree, at his lord’s orders. A master’s shot, they say. The glover’s soon avenged. And you’d not heard of it?”

“Not a word! The last I heard they were looking for a man who might have a slit sleeve to show, and a gash in his arm. When was this, then?” It seemed that Brother Cadfael must have found his man, unaided, after all.

“Not an hour before Vespers it must have been. All I heard was the shouting at the abbey end of the Foregate. But they tell me the sheriff himself was there.”

About five in the afternoon, perhaps less than an hour after Philip had left Brother Cadfael and gone back into the town to look for John Norreys. A short hunt that had been, no need any longer for him to cast a narrowed eye at men’s sleeves wherever he went. “And it’s certain they got the right man?”

“Certain! The merchant had marked him, and they say there were goods and money from the glover’s stall found hi his pack. Some groom called Ewald, I heard ...”

A mere sneak-thief, then, who had gone too far. Nothing there to bear on Philip’s own quest. He was free to concentrate his mind once again, and even more intently, upon his own pilgrimage. It had begun as a penitential exercise, but was gradually abandoning that aspect. Certainly he had made a fool of himself, but the original impulse on which he had acted, and roused others to act, had not been so foolish, after all, and was nothing to be ashamed of. Only when it collapsed about him in ruins had he thrown good sense to the winds, and indulged his misery like a sulking child.

“Now if only I could find out as certainly who it was did for Master Thomas! It was that night there was grave matter urged against me, and I will own I laid myself open. It’s all very well being let out on my father’s bail, but no one has yet said I’m clear of the charge. The rest I’ll pay my score for, but I want to prove I never did the merchant any violence. I know I was here that night - the eve of the fair, you’ll remember? From what hour? I’ve no recollection of times, myself. According to his men, Master Thomas was alive until a third of the hour past nine.”

“Oh, you were here, no question!” Wat could not help grinning at the memory.

“There was noise enough, we were busy, but you made yourself heard! No offence, lad, who hasn’t made a fool of himself in his cups from time to time? It can’t have been more than a quarter after eight when you came in, and I doubt you’d had much, up to then.”

Only a quarter after the hour of Compline - then he must have come straight here after shaking off his friends. Not straight, perhaps that was an inappropriate word, but weavingly and unsteadily, though at that rate not calling anywhere else on the way. It was a natural thing to do, to hurry clean through the thick of the fair, and put as much ground as possible between himself and his solicitous companions before calling a halt.

“I tell you what, boy,” said the expert kindly, “if you’d taken it slowly you’d have been sober enough. But you had to rush the matter. I doubt I’ve ever seen a fellow put so much down in the time, no wonder your belly turned against it.”

It was not cheering listening, but Philip swallowed it doggedly. Evidently he had been as foolish as he had been dreading, and the archer’s account of his behaviour had not been at all exaggerated.

“And was I yelling vengeance against the man who struck me? That’s what they said of me.”

“Well, now, I wouldn’t go so far as that, and yet it’s not too far off the mark, either. Let’s say you were not greatly loving him, and no wonder, we could all see the dunt he’d given you. Arrogant and greedy you called him, and a few other things I don’t recall, and mark your words, you kept telling us, pride like his was due for a disastrous fall, and soon. That must be what they had in mind who witnessed against you. I never heard word of any going to this hearing from my tavern, not until afterwards. Who were they that testified, then?”

“It was one man,” said Philip. “Not that I can blame him, it seems he told no lies - indeed, I never thought he had, I know I was the world’s fool that night.”

“Why, bless you, lad, with a cracked head a man’s liable to act like one cracked, he has the right. But who’s this one man? What with all the incomers at the fair, I had more strangers than known customers of these evenings.”

“It was a man attending one of the abbey guests,” said Philip. “Turstan Fowler, they said his name was. He said he was here drinking, and went from ale to wine, and then to strong liquor - it seems he ended up as drunk as I was myself, they took him up helpless later, and slung him into a cell at the abbey overnight. A well-set-up fellow, but slouching and unkempt when I saw him in the court. About thirty-five years old, at a guess, sunburned, a bush of brown hair …”

Wat shook his head, pondering the description. “I don’t know him, not by that, though I’ve got a rare memory for faces. An alehouse keeper has to have. Ah, well, if he’s a stranger he’d no call to give false witness, I suppose he was but honest, and put the worst meaning on your bletherings for want of knowing you.”

“What time was it when I left here?” Philip winced ever at the recollection of the departure, sudden and desperate, with churning stomach and swimming head, and both hands clamped hard over his grimly locked jaw. Barely time to weave a frantic way across the road and into the edge of the copse beyond, where he had heaved his heart out, and then blundered some distance further in cover towards the orchards of the Gaye, and collapsed shivering and retching into the grass, to pass into a sodden sleep. He had not dragged himself out of it until the small hours.

“Why, reckoning from Compline, I’d say an hour had passed, it would be about nine of the clock.”

Thomas of Bristol had set out from his booth to return to his barge only a quarter of an hour or so later. And someone, someone unknown, had intercepted him on the way, dagger in hand. No wonder the law had looked so narrowly at Philip Corviser, who had reason to resent and hate, and had blundered out of sight and sound of other men around that time, after venting his grievance aloud for all to hear.

Wat rose to go and cope with the custom that was overwhelming his two potboys, and Philip sat brooding with his chin on his fist. Most of the flares must be out by now along the Foregate, most of the stalls packed up and ready for departure. Another balmy summer night, heaven dropping fat blessings on the abbey receipts and the profits of trade, after a lost summer of warfare and a winter of uncertainty. And the town walls still unrepaired, and the streets still broken!

The door stood propped wide on the warm, luminous twilight, and the traffic in and out was brisk. Youngsters came with jugs and pitchers to fetch for their elders, maids tripped in for a measure of wine for their masters, labourers and abbey servants wandered in to slake their thirst between spells of work. Saint Peter’s Fair was drawing to its contented and successful close.

Through the open door came a fresh-faced youngster in a fine leather jerkin, and on his heels a sturdy, brown-faced man at least fifteen years older, in the same good livery. It took Philip a long moment of staring to recognise Turstan Fowler, sober, well-behaved, in good odour with his lord and all the world.

Still longer to cause him to reflect afresh how he himself must have looked, drunk, if the difference could stretch so far. He watched the little potboy serve them. Wat was busy with others, and the room was full. The end of the fair was always a busy time. Another day, and these same hours would hang heavy and dark.

Philip never quite knew why he turned his head away, and hoisted a wide shoulder between himself and Ivo Corbière’s men. He had nothing against either of them, but he did not want to be recognised and condoled with, or congratulated on his release, or in any way, sympathetic or not, have public attention called to him.

He kept his shoulder hunched between, and was glad to have the room so full of people, and most of them strangers.

“Fairs are good business,” remarked Wat, returning to his place and plumping down on the bench with a sigh of pleasure, “but I wish we could spread them round the rest of the year. My feet are growing no younger, and I’ve hardly been off them an hour in all, the last three days. What was it we were saying?”

“I was trying to describe for you the fellow who reported me as threatening revenge,” said Philip. “Cast a look over yonder now, and you’ll see the very man. The two in leather who came in together - the elder of the two.”

Wat let his sharp eyes rove, and surveyed Turstan Fowler with apparent disinterest, but very shrewdly. “Slouching and hangdog, was he? Smart as a new coat now.” His gaze returned to Philip’s face. “That’s the man? I remember him well enough. I seldom forget a man’s face, but his name and condition I’ve no way of knowing.”

“He can’t have looked quite so trim that evening,” said Philip, “seeing he owned to being well soused. He was lost to the world two hours later, by his own tale.”

“And he said he got it all here?” Wat’s eyes had narrowed thoughtfully.

“So he said. ‘Where I got my skinful’ is what he said.”

“Well, let me tell you something interesting, friend …” Wat leaned confidentially across the table. “Now I see him, I know how I saw him the last time, for if you’ll credit me, he looked much as he looks now. And what’s more, now I know of the connection he had with you and your affairs, I can recall small things that happened that night, things I never gave a thought to before, and neither would you have done. He was in here twice that evening, or rather, he was in the doorway once, before he came over the threshold later. In that doorway he stood, and looked round him, a matter of ten minutes or so after you came in. I made nothing of it that he gave you a measuring sort of look, for well he might, you were in full cry then. But look at you he did, and weighed you up, and went away again. And the next we saw of him, it might be half an hour later, he came in and bought a measure of ale, and a big flask of strong geneva liquor, and sat supping his ale quietly, and eyeing you from time to time - as again well he might, it was about then you were greenish and going suspicious quiet. But do you know when he drank up and left, Philip, lad? The minute after you made for the door in a hurry. And his flask under his arm, unopened. Drunk? Him? He was stone cold sober when he went out of here.”

“But he took the juniper liquor with him,” pointed out Philip, reasonably. “He was drunk enough two hours later, there were several of them to swear to that.

They had to carry him back to the abbey on a trestle-board.”

“And how much of the juniper spirit did they find remaining? Did they ever mention that? Did they find the flask at all?”

“I never heard mention of it,” owned Philip, startled and doubtful. “Brother Cadfael was there, I could ask him. But why?”

Wat laid a kindly if patronising hand on his shoulder. “Lad, it’s easy to see you never went beyond wine or ale, and if you’ll heed me you’ll leave the strong stuff to strong stomachs. I said a large flask, and large I meant. There was a quart of geneva spirits in that bottle! If any man drank that dry in two hours, it wouldn’t be dead drunk they’d be carrying him away, it would be plain dead.

Or if he did live to tell of it, it wouldn’t be the next day, nor for several after. Sober as the sheriff himself was that fellow when he went out of here on your heels, and why he should want to lie about it is more than I can say, but lie about it he did, it seems. Now you tell me why a man should go to some pains to convict himself of a debauch he never even had, and get himself slung into a cell for recompense. Unless,” added Wat, considering the problem with lively interest, “it was to get himself out of something worse.”

The elder potboy, a freckled lad born and bred in the Foregate, came by with a cluster of empties in either hand, and paused to nudge Wat in the ribs with an elbow, and lean to his ear.

“Do you know who you have there, master?” A jerk of his head indicated the two in leather jerkins. “The young one’s fellow-groom to the one that got a bolt through him along the Foregate a while ago. And the other - Will Wharton just told me, and he was close by and saw it all! - that’s the fellow who loosed the bolt!

His comrade in the same price, mark! Should he be here and in such spirits the same night? That’s a stronger stomach than mine. ‘Fetch him down!’ says the master, and down the fellow fetches him, sharp and cool. You’d have thought his hand would have shook too much to get near the target, but no! - thump between the shoulders and through to the breast, so Will says. And that’s the very man that did it, supping ale like any Christian.”

They were both of them staring at him open-mouthed, and turned away only to stare again, briefly and intently, at Turstan Fowler sitting at ease with his tankard, sturdy legs splayed under the table. It had never even occurred to Philip to ask in whose service the dead malefactor was employed, and perhaps Wat would not have known the name if he had asked. He would have mentioned it else.

“That’s the man? You’re sure?” pressed Philip.

“Will Wharton is sure, and he helped to pick up the poor devil who was killed.”

“Turstan Fowler? The falconer to Ivo Corbière? And Corbière ordered him to shoot?”

“The name I don’t know, for neither did Will. Some young lord at the abbey guest-hall. Very handsome sprig, yellow-haired, Will says. Though it’s no great blame to him for wanting a murderer and thief stopped in his tracks, granted, and any road, the man had just stolen his horse, and kicked him off into the dust when he tried to halt him. And I suppose when a lord orders, his man had better jump to obey. Still, it’s a grim thing to work side by side with a man maybe months and years, and then to be told, strike him dead! And to do it!” And the potboy rolled up his eyes and loosed a long, soft whistle, and passed on with his handful of tankards, leaving them so sunk in reconsideration that neither of them had anything to say.

But there could not be anything in it of significance for him, surely? Philip looked back briefly as he left the inn, and Turstan Fowler and the young groom were sitting tranquilly with their ale, talking cheerfully with half a dozen other sober drinkers around them. They had not noticed him, or if they had, had not recognised him, and neither of them seemed to have anything of grave moment on his mind. Strange, though, how this same man seemed to be entangled in every untoward episode, never at the centre of things yet always somewhere in view.

As for the matter of the flask of juniper spirits, what did it really signify?

The man had been picked up too drunk to talk, no one had looked round for his bottle, it might well have been left lying, still more than half-full, if the stuff was as potent as Wat said, and some scavenger by night might have picked it up and rejoiced in his luck. There were a dozen ways of accounting for the circumstances. And yet it was strange. Why should he have said he was drunk before he left Wat’s inn, if he had really left it cold sober? More to the point, why should he have left so promptly on Philip’s heels? Yet Wat was a good observer.

The tiny discrepancies stuck like barbs in Philip’s mind. It was far too late to trouble anyone else tonight, Compline was long over, the monks of Shrewsbury, their guests, their servants, would all be in their beds or preparing to go there, except for the few lay stewards who had almost completed their labours, and would be glad enough to make a modestly festive night of it. Moreover, his parents would be vexed that he had abandoned them all the day and he could expect irate demands for explanations at home. He had better make his way back.

All the same, he crossed the road and made for the copse, as on the night he was repeating, and found some faint signs of his wallow still visible, dried into the trampled grass. Then back towards the river, avoiding the streets, keeping to the cover of woodland, and there was the sheltered hollow where he had slept off the worst of his orgy, before gathering himself up stiffly and hobbling back to the town. There was enough lambent starlight to see his way, and show him the scuffled and flattened grasses.

But no, this was not the place! Here there was a faint, trodden path, and he had certainly moved much deeper into the bushes and trees, downriver, hiding even from the night. This glade looked very like the other, but it was not the same.

Yet someone or something, large as a man, had lain here, and not peacefully.

Surely more than one pair of feet had ploughed the turf. A pair of opportunist lovers, enjoying one of the traditional pleasures of the fair? Or another kind of struggle? No, hardly a struggle, though something had been dragged downhill towards the river, which was just perceptible as a gleam between the trees.

There was a patch of bare soil, dry and pale as clay, between the spreading roots of the birch tree against which he leaned, and ribbons of dropped bark littered it. The largest of them showed curiously dark instead of silvery, like the rest. He stooped and picked it up, and his fingertips recoiled from the black, encrusted stain. In the grass, if he searched by daylight, there might well be other such blots.

In looking for the place of his own humiliation, he had found something very different, the place where Master Thomas had been killed. And below, from that spur of grass standing well above the undermined bank, his body had been thrown into the river.