St. Peter's Fair

by Ellis Peters

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

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

  Emma flushed, but without averting her eyes; eyes which were seen to be thoughtful, resolute and intelligent, for all her milk-and-roses baby-face. “Very soon after you, brother. He was at all points correct and kind. I thought to come and ask for him, as someone on whom I could rely.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  The young man blinked in the sudden light, and opened his eyes wide upon Emma. It was a question which of them showed the more distracted. The girl rose, reaching eager hands and then half-withdrawing them. The man sprang forward solicitously to welcome the clasp.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  *

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

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

  He was a burly, well-set-up young man of about thirty, this Roger Dod, and very personable, if he had not been so curt and withdrawn in manner. No doubt he was anxious, too. He answered Hugh’s questions in the fewest possible words,
and gnawed an uncertain lip at hearing that his master’s niece was now lodged in the abbey guest-hall. He would have come with them to help in their search, but he was responsible for his master’s belongings, and would have to be answerable for their safety when his master returned. He stayed with the barge, and sent the mute and sleepily resentful Gregory to lead them straight to the booth Master Thomas had rented. Beringar’s sergeant, with three men, was left behind to work his way gradually along the Foregate after them, questioning every waking stallholder as he went, while the rest followed the porter to the fairground. The great open space was by this time half-asleep, but still winking with occasional torches and braziers, and murmuring with subdued voices. For these three days in the year it was transformed into a tight little town, busy and populous, to vanish again on the fourth day.

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

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

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

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

  Behind Cadfael’s shoulder a familiar voice, rich and full and merrily knowing, said in Welsh: “Well, well, brother, out so late? And keeping the law company! What would the deputy sheriff of the shire want with Thomas of Bristol’s watchman at this hour? Are they on the scent of all Gloucester’s familiars, after all? And I claimed commerce was above the anarchy!” Narrowed eyes twinkled at Cadfael in the light of the dispersed torches and the far-distant stars in a perfect midsummer sky. Rhodri ap Huw was chuckling softly and fatly at his own teasing wit and menacing sharpness of apprehension.

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

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

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

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

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

  “I did. It might be as much as two hours ago. And his journeyman some little while after him. A fair size of a man, to be lost between here and the river. And no word of him anywhere since then?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  *

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