by Ellis Peters
He reached the place where the road forked, and the long, low roof of the hospital rose beside the highway, beyond a gentle slope of grass and wattle fence, with the squat tower of its little church peering over all. Brother Oswin came out into the porch to meet him, as large, cheerful and exuberant as ever, the wiry curls of his tonsure bristling from the low branches of the orchard trees, and a basket of the late, hard little pears on his arm, the kind that would keep until Christmas. He had learned to control his own vigorous body and lively mind since he had first come to assist Cadfael in the herb-garden, no longer broke what he handled or fell over his own feet in his haste and ardour to do good. Indeed, since coming here to the hospital he had quite exceeded all Cadfael’s hopes. His big hands and strong arms were better adapted to lifting the sick and infirm and controlling the belligerent than to fashioning little tablets and rolling pills, but he was competent enough in administering the medicines Cadfael brought for him and had proved a sensible and cheerful nurse, never out of temper even with the most difficult and ungrateful of his patients.
They filled up the shelves of the medicine cupboard together, turned the key again upon its secrets, and went through into the hall. A fire was kept burning here, with November on the doorstep, and some of the guests too infirm to move about freely. Some would never leave this place until they were carried into the churchyard for burial. The able-bodied were out in the orchard, gleaning the latest of the harvest.
“We have a new inmate,” said Oswin. “It would be well if you would take a look at him, and make sure I am using the right treatment. A foul old man, it must be said, and foul-mouthed, he came in so verminous I have him bedded in a corner of the barn, away from the rest. Even now that he’s cleaned and new-clothed, I think better he should be kept apart. His sores may infect others. His malignancy would certainly do harm, he has a grudge against the whole world.”
“The whole world has probably done enough to him to earn it,” Cadfael allowed ruefully, “but a pity to take it out on some even worse off than himself. There will always be the haters among us. Where did you get this one?”
“He came limping in four days ago. From his story, he’s been sleeping rough around the forest villages, begging his food where he could, and as like as not stealing it when charity ran short. He says he got a few bits of work to do here and there during the fair, but I doubt it was picking pockets on his own account, for by the look of him no respectable merchant would care to give him work. Come and see!”
The hospice barn was a commodious and even comfortable place, warm with the fragrance of the summer’s hay and the ripe scent of stored apples. The foul old man, undoubtedly less foul in body than when he came, had his truckle bed installed in the most draught-proof corner, and was sitting hunched upon his straw pallet like a roosting bird, shaggy grey head sunk into once massive shoulders. By the malignant scowl with which he greeted his visitors, there had been no great change in the foulness of his temper. His face was shrunken and lined into a mask of suspicion and despite, and out of the pitted scars of half-healed sores small, malevolent, knowing eyes glittered up at them. The gown they had put on him was over-large for a body diminishing with age, and had been deliberately chosen, Cadfael thought, to lie loosely and avoid friction upon the sores that continued down his wrinkled throat and shoulders. A piece of linen cloth had been laid between to ease the touch of wool.
“The infection is somewhat improved,” said Oswin softly into Cadfael’s ear. And to the old man, as they approached: “Well, uncle, how do you feel this fine morning?”
The sharp old eyes looked up at them sidelong, lingering upon Cadfael. “None the better,” said a voice unexpectedly full and robust to emerge from such a tattered shell, “for seeing two of you instead of one.” He shifted closer on the edge of his bed, peering curiously. “I know you,” he said, and grinned as though the realisation gave him, perhaps not pleasure, but an advantage over a possible opponent.
“Now you suggest it,” agreed Cadfael, viewing the raised face with equal attention, “I think I also should recall seeing you somewhere. But if so, it was in better case. Turn your face to the light here, so!” It was the outbreak of sores he was studying, but he took in perforce the lines of the face, and the man’s eyes, yellowish and bright in their nests of wrinkles, watched him steadily all the while he was examining the broken rash. Round the edges of the infection showed the faint, deformed crust of sores newly healed. “Why do you complain of us, when you are warm and fed here, and Brother Oswin has done nobly for you? Your case is getting better, and well you know it. If you have patience for two or three weeks more, you can be rid of this trouble.”
“And then you’ll throw me out of here,” grumbled the vigorous voice bitterly. “I know the way of it! That’s my lot in this world. Mend me and then cast me out to fester and rot again. Wherever I go it’s the same. If I find a bit of a roof to shelter me through the night, some wretch comes and kicks me out of it to take it for himself.”
“They can hardly do that here,” Cadfael pointed out placidly, restoring the protective linen to its place round the scrawny neck. “Brother Oswin will see to that. You let him cure you, and give no thought to where you’ll lie or what you’ll eat until you’re clean. After that it will be time to think on such matters.”
“Fine talk, but it will end the same. I never have any luck. All very well for you,” he muttered, glowering up at Cadfael, “handing out crumbs in alms at your gatehouse, when you have plenty, and a sound roof over you, and good dry beds, and then telling God how pious you are. Much you care where us poor souls lay our heads that same night.”
“So that’s where I saw you,” said Cadfael, enlightened. “On the eve of the fair.”
“And where I saw you, too. And what did I get out of it? Bread and broth and a farthing to spend.”
“And spent it on ale,” Cadfael guessed mildly, and smiled. “And where did you lay your head that night? And all the nights of the fair? We had as poor as you snug enough in one of our barns.”
“I’d as soon not lie inside your walls. Besides,” he said grudgingly, “I knew of a place, not too far, a cottage, nobody living in it. I was there the last year, until that red-baked devil of a pedlar came with his wench and kicked me out of it. And where did I end? Under a hedge in the next field. Would he let me have even a corner by the kiln? Not he, he wanted the place to himself for his own cantrips with his wench. And then they fought like wild cats most nights, for I heard them at it.” He subsided into morose mutterings, oblivious of Cadfael’s sudden intent silence. “But I got it this year. For what it was worth! Small use it will be now, falling to pieces as it is. Whatever I touch rots.”
“This cottage,” said Cadfael slowly, “that had also a kiln—where is it?”
“Across the river from here, close by Longner. There’s no one working there now. Wrack and ruin!”
“And you spent the nights of the fair there this year?”
“It rains in now,” said the old man ruefully. “Last year it was all sound and good, I thought to do well there. But that’s my lot, always shoved out like a stray dog, to shiver under a hedge.”
“Tell me,” said Cadfael, “of last year. This man who turned you out was a pedlar come to sell at the fair? He stayed there in that cottage till the fair ended?”
“He and the woman.” The old man had sharpened into the realisation that his information was here of urgent interest, and had begun to enjoy the sensation, quite apart from the hope of turning it to advantage. “A wild, black-haired creature she was, every whit as bad as her man. Every whit! She threw cold water over me to drive me away when I tried to creep back.”
“Did you see them leave? The pair together?”
“No, they were still there when I went packman, with a fellow bound for Beiston who had bought more than he could manage alone.”
“And this year? Did you see this same fellow at this year’s fair?”
“Oh yes, he was ther
e,” said the old man indifferently. “I never had any ado with him, but I saw him there.”
“And the woman still with him?”
“No, never a glimpse of her this year. Never saw him but alone or with the lads in the tavern, and who knows where he slept! The potter’s place wouldn’t be good enough for him now. I hear she was a tumbler and singer, on the road like him. I never did hear her name.”
The slight emphasis on the ‘her’ had not escaped Cadfael’s ear. He asked, with a sense of lifting the lid from a jar which might or might not let loose dangerous revelations: “But his you do know?”
“Oh, everybody about the booths and alehouses knows his name. He’s called Britric, he comes from Ruiton. He buys at the city markets, and peddles his wares round all this part of the shire and into Wales. On the move, most times, but never too far afield. Doing well, so I heard!”
“Well,” said Cadfael on a long, slow breath, “wish him no worse, and do your own soul good. You have your troubles, I doubt Britric has his, no easier or lighter. You take your food and your rest, and do what Brother Oswin bids, and your burden can soon be lightened. Let’s wish as much to all men.”
The old man, squatting there observant and curious on his bed, watched them withdraw to the doorway. Cadfael’s hand was on the latch when the voice behind them, so strangely resonant and full, called after them: “I’ll say this for him, his bitch was handsome, if she was cursed.”
Chapter 7
NOW THEY HAD IT, a veritable name, a charm with which to prime memory. Names are powerful magic. Within two days of Cadfael’s visit to Saint Giles, faithfully reported to Hugh before the end of the day, they had detail enough about the pedlar of Ruiton to fill a chronicle. Drop the name Britric into almost any ear about the market and the horse-fair ground, and mouths opened and tongues wagged freely. It seemed the only thing they had not known about him was that he had slept the nights of last year’s fair in the cottage on the Potter’s Field, then no more than a month abandoned, and in very comfortable shape still. Not even the neighbouring household at Longner had known that. The clandestine tenant would be off with his wares through the day, so would his woman if she had a living to make by entertaining the crowds, and they would have discretion enough to leave the door closed and everything orderly. If, as the old man declared, they had spent much of their time fighting, they had kept their battles withindoors. And no one from Longner had gone up the field to the deserted croft once Generys was gone. A kind of coldness and desolation had fallen upon the place, for those who had known it living, and they had shunned it, turning their faces away. Only the wretched old man hoping for a snug shelter for himself had tried his luck there, and been driven away by a prior and stronger claimant.
The smith’s widow, a trim little elderly body with bright round eyes like a robin, pricked up her ears when she heard the name of Britric. “Oh, him, yes, he used to come round with his pack some years back, when I was living with my man at the smithy in Sutton. He started in a very small way, but he was regular round the villages, and you know a body can’t be every week in the town. I got my salt from him. Doing well, he was, and not afraid to work hard, either, when he was sober, but a wild one when he was drunk. I remember seeing him at the fair last year, but I had no talk with him. I never knew he was sleeping the nights through up at the potter’s croft. Well, I’d never seen the cottage myself then. It was two months later when the prior put me in. there to take care of the place. My man was dead late that Spring, and I’d been asking Haughmond to find me some work to do. Smith had worked well for them in his time, I knew the prior wouldn’t turn me away.”
“And the woman?” said Hugh. “A strolling tumbler, so I’m told, dark, very handsome. Did you see him with her?”
“He did have a girl with him,” the widow allowed after a moment’s thought, “for I was shopping at the fishmonger’s booth close by Wat’s tavern, at the corner of the horse fair, the one day, and she came to fetch him away before, she said, he’d drunk all his day’s gain and half of hers. That I remember. They were loud, he was getting cantankerous then in his cups, but she was a match for him. Cursed each other blind, they did, but then they went off together as close and fond as you please, and her holding him about the body from stumbling, and still scolding. Handsome?” said the widow, considering, and sniffed dubiously. “Some might reckon so. A bold, striding, black-eyed piece, thin and whippy as a withy.”
“Britric was at this year’s fair, too, so they tell me,” said Hugh. “Did you see him?”
“Yes, he was here. Doing quite nicely in the world, by the look of him. They do say there’s a good living to be made in pedlary, if you’re willing to work at it. Give him a year or two more, and he’ll be renting a booth like the merchants, and paying the abbey fees.”
“And the woman? Was she with him still?”
“Not that I ever saw.” She was no fool, and there was hardly a soul within a mile of Shrewsbury who did not know by this time that there was a dead woman to be accounted for, and the obvious answer, for some reason, was not satisfactory, since enquiry was continuing, and had even acquired a sharper edge. “I was down into the Foregate only once during the three days, this year,” she said. “There’s others would be there all day and every day, they’ll know. But I saw nothing of her. God knows what he’s done with her,” said the widow, and crossed herself with matronly deliberation, standing off all evil omens from her own invulnerable virtue, “but I doubt you’ll find anyone here who set eyes on her since last year’s Saint Peter’s Fair.”
*
“Oh, yes, that fellow!” said Master William Rede, the elder of the abbey’s lay stewards, who collected their rents and the tolls due from merchants and craftsmen bringing their goods to the annual fair. “Yes, I know the man you mean. A bit of a rogue, but I’ve known plenty worse. By rights he should be paying a small toll for selling here, he brings in as full a man-load as Hercules could have hefted. But you know how it is. A man who sets up a booth for the three days, that’s simple, you know where to find him. He pays his dues, and no time wasted. But a fellow who carries his goods on him, he sets eyes on you from a distance, and he’s gone elsewhere, and you can waste more time chasing him than his small toll would be worth. Playing hoodman blind in and out of a hundred stalls, and all crowded with folk buying and selling, that’s not for me. So he gets off scot-free. No great loss, and he’ll come to it in time, his business is growing. I know no more about him than that.”
“Had he a woman with him this year?” Hugh asked. “Dark, handsome, a tumbler and acrobat?”
“Not that I saw, no. There was a woman last year I noticed ate and drank with him, she could well be the one you mean. There were times I am sure she made him the sign when I came in sight, to make himself scarce. Not this year, though. He brought more goods this year, and I think you’ll find he lay at Wat’s tavern, for he needed somewhere to store them. You may learn more of him there.”
*
Walter Renold leaned his folded arms, bared and brawny, on the large cask he had just rolled effortlessly into position in a corner of the room, and studied Hugh across it with placid professional eyes.
“Britric, is it? Yes, he put up here with me through the fair. Came heavy laden this year, I let him put his bits and pieces in the loft. Why not? I know he slips his abbey dues, but the loss of his penny won’t beggar them. The lord abbot doesn’t cast too harsh an eye on the small folk. Not that Britric is small in any other way, mind you. A big lusty fellow, red-haired, a bit of a brawler sometimes, when he’s drunk, but not a bad lad, take him all in all.”
“Last year,” said Hugh, “he had a woman with him, or so I hear. I’ve good cause to know he was not lodging with you then, but if he did his drinking here you must have seen something of them both. You remember her?”
Wat was certainly remembering her already, with some pleasure and a great deal of amusement. “Oh, her! Hard to forget, once seen. She could twist herself like a
slip of willow, dance like a March lamb, and play on the little pipe. Easy to carry, better than a rebec unless you’re a master. And she was the practical one, keeping a tight hold on the money they made between them. She talked of marriage, but I doubt she’d ever get him to the church door. Maybe she talked of it once too often, for he came alone this year round. Where he’s left her there’s no knowing, but she’ll make her way wherever she is.”
That had a very bitter ring in Hugh’s ear, considering the possibility he had in mind. Wat, it seemed, had not made the connection which had already influenced the widow’s thinking. But before he could ask anything further Wat surprised him by adding simply: “Gunnild, he called her. I never knew where she came from—I doubt if he knew it, either—but she’s a beauty.”
That, too, had its strange resonance, when Hugh recalled the naked bones. More and more, in imagination, they took on the living aspect of this wild, sinuous, hardworking-waif of the roads, darkly brilliant as the admiring gleam she could kindle in a middle-aged innkeeper’s eyes after a year and more of absence.
“You have not seen her since, here or elsewhere?”
“How often am I elsewhere?” Wat responded good-humouredly. “I did my roaming early. I’m content where I am. No, I’ve never set eyes on the girl again. Nor heard him so much as mention her name this year, now I come to think of it. For all the thought he seemed to be giving to last year’s fancy,” said Wat tolerantly, “she might as well be dead.”
*
“So there we have it,” said Hugh, summing up briskly for Cadfael in the snug privacy of the workshop in the herb garden. “Britric is the one man we know to have made himself at home there in Ruald’s croft. There may have been others, but none that we can learn of. Moreover, there was a woman with him, and their mating by all accounts tempestuous, she urging marriage on him, and he none too ready to be persuaded. More than a year ago, this. And this year not only does he come to the fair alone, but she is not seen there at all, she who gets her living at fairs and markets and weddings and such jollifications. It is not proof, but it requires answers.”
