St. Peter's Fair (24 page)

“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 ale-house 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.