St. Peter's Fair (26 page)

“Really,”
said Aline, eyeing the pair of them with a small and private smile, “I begin to
be envious!”

He
sent the young groom to fetch out her saddle-bags. Their light weight was added
to the bales of Corbière’s purchases on the spare pony, her cloak, which she
certainly would not need on so fine a day, folded and stowed away with the
bags. It was like setting out into a new world, sunlit and inviting, but
frighteningly wide. True, she had solemn duties waiting for her in Bristol, not
least the confession of a failure, but for all that, she felt as if she had
almost shed the past, and could be glad of the riddance, and was stepping into
this unknown world unburdened and unguarded, truly her own mistress.

Aline
kissed her affectionately, and wished them both a happy journey. Emma cast
frequent glances towards the gatehouse until the last moment, in case Hugh
should appear, but he did not; she had still to leave her messages to Aline for
delivery. Ivo mounted first, since the bay, as he said, was in a
skittish mood and inclined to play tricks, and then turned to give her a
steady, sustaining hand as Turstan Fowler hoisted her easily to the pillion.

“Even
with two of us up,” said Ivo over his shoulder, smiling, “this creature can be
mettlesome when he’s fresh out. For safety hold me fast about the waist, and
close your hands on my belt—so, that’s well!” He saluted Aline very gracefully
and courteously. “I’ll see she reaches Bristol safely, I promise!”

He
rode out at the gatehouse in shirt-sleeves, just as he had ridden in, his men,
now two only, at his heels, and the pack-pony trotting contentedly under his
light load. Emma’s arms easily spanned Ivo’s slenderness, and the feel of his
spare, strong body was warm and muscular and vital through the fine linen. As
they threaded the Foregate, now emptying fast, he laid his own left hand over
her clasped ones, pressing them firmly against his flat middle, and though she
knew he was simply assuring himself that her hold was secure, she could not
help feeling that it was also a caress.

She
had laughed and shaken her head over Aline’s romantic fantasies, refusing to
believe in any union between landed nobility and trade, except for mutual
profit. Now she was not so sure that wisdom was all with the sceptics.

The
hollow where the big, heavy body had lain still showed at least the approximate
bulk of Master Thomas’s person, and round about it the grass was trodden, as
though someone, or perhaps more than one, had circled all round him as he lay
dead. And so they surely had, for here he must have been stripped and searched,
the first of those fruitless searches Brother Cadfael had deduced from the
events following. Out of the hollow, down to the raised bank of the river, went
the track by which he had been dragged, the grass, growing longer as it emerged
from shade, all brushed in one direction. Nor was there any doubt about the
traces of blood, meagre though they were. The sliver of birch bark under the
tree showed a thin crust, dried black. Careful search found one or two more
spots, and a thin smear drawn downhill, where it seemed the dead man had been
turned on his back to be hauled the more easily down to the water.

“It’s deep here,” said Hugh, standing on the green
hillock above the river, “and undercuts the bank, it would take him well out
into the current. I fancy the clothes went after him at once, we may find the
rest yet. One man could have done it. Had they been two, they would have
carried him.”

“Would
you say,” wondered Cadfael, “that this is a reasonable way he might take to get
back to his barge? He’d know his boat lay somewhat down-river from the bridge,
I suppose he might try a chance cut through from the Foregate, and overcast by
a little way. You see the end of the jetty, where the barge tied up, is only a
small way upstream from us. Would you say he was alone, and unsuspecting, when
he was struck down?”

Hugh
surveyed the ground narrowly. It was not the scene of a struggle, there was the
flattened area of the body’s fall, and the trampling of feet all round its
stillness. The brushings of the grass this way and that were ordered, not the
marks of a fight.

“Yes.
There was no resistance. Someone crept behind, and pierced him without word or
scruple. He went down and lay. He was on his way back, preferring the byways,
and came out a little downstream of where he aimed. Someone had been watching
and following him.”

“The
same night,” said Philip flatly, “someone had been watching and following me.”

He
had their attention at once, both of them eyeing him with sharp interest. “The
same someone?” suggested Cadfael mildly.

“I
haven’t told you my own part,” said Philip. “It went out of my head when I
stumbled on this place, and guessed at what it meant. What I set out to do was
to find out just what I did that night, and prove I never did murder. For I’d
come to think that whoever intended this killing had his eye on me from the
start. I came from that riot on the jetty, with my head bleeding and my mood
for murder, I was a gift, if I could but be out of sight and mind when murder
was done.” He told them everything he had discovered, word for word. By the end
of it they were both regarding him with intent and frowning concentration.

“The
man Fowler?” said Hugh. “You’re sure of this?”

“Walter
Renold is sure, and I think him a good witness.
The man was
there to be seen, I pointed him out, and Wat told me what he’d seen of him that
night. Fowler looked in, saw and heard the condition I was in, and went away
again for it might be as much as half an hour, says Wat. Then he came back,
took one measure of ale to drink, and bought a big flask of geneva spirit.”

“And
left with it unopened,” Brother Cadfael recalled, “as soon as you took yourself
off with your misery into the bushes. No need to blush for it now, we’ve all
done as foolishly once or twice in our lives, many of us have bettered it. And
the next that’s known of him,” he said, meeting Hugh’s eyes across the glade,
“is two hours later, when we discover him lying sodden-drunk under a store of
trestles by the Foregate.”

“And
Wat of the tavern swears he was sober as a bishop when he quit the inn.”

“And
I would swear by Wat’s judgment,” said Philip stoutly. “If any man drank that flagon
dry in two hours, he says, it would be the death of him, or go very near. And
Fowler was testifying in court next day, and little the worse for wear.”

“Good
God!” said Hugh, shaking his head. “I stooped over him, I pulled back the cloak
from his shoulders. The fellow reeked. His breath would have felled an ox. Am I
losing my wits?”

“Or
was it rather the reek you loosed by moving the cloak? I begin to have curious
thoughts,” said Cadfael, “for I fancy that juniper liquor was bought for his
outside, not his inside.”

“A
costly freak,” mused Hugh, “the price such liquors are. Cheap enough, though,
if it bought him immunity from all suspicion of a thing that could have cost
him a deal higher. What was the first thing I said?—more fool I! By the look of
him, I said, he must have been here some hours already. And where did he go
from there? Safely into an abbey punishment cell, and lay there overnight. How
could he be guilty of anything but being a drunken sot? Children and drunken
men are the world’s only innocents! If murder was done that night, who was to
look at a man who had put himself out of the reckoning from the time Master
Thomas was last seen alive to the time when his body was brought back to
Shrewsbury?”

Cadfael’s
mind had probed even beyond that point, though
nothing beyond
was yet clear. “I have a fancy, Hugh, to look again at the place where we
picked up that sodden carcase, if it can be found. Surely an honest drunk
should have had his bottle lying beside him for all to see. But I remember none.
If we missed it, and some stray scavenger found it by night, still half-full or
more, well and good. But if by any chance it was hidden—so that no questions
need ever be asked about how much had been drunk, and what manner of head could
have borne it—would that be the act of a simple sot? He could not walk through
the fairground stinking as he did, whether from outside or in. His baptism was
there, where we found him tucked away. So should his bottle have been.”

“And
if he was neither simple nor a sot that night, Cadfael, how do you read his
comings and goings? He looked in at the tavern, took note of this lad’s state,
listened to his complaints, and went away—where?”

“As
far as Master Thomas’s booth, perhaps, to make sure the merchant was there, busy
about his wares, and likely to be busy for a while longer? And so back to the
tavern to keep watch on Philip, so handy a scapegoat, and so clearly on the way
to ending the evening blind and deaf. And afterwards, when he had followed him
far enough into the copse to know he was lost to the world, back to dog Master
Thomas’s footsteps as he made his way back to the barge. Made his way, that is,
as far as this place.”

“It
is all conjecture,” said Hugh reasonably.

“It
is. But read it so, and it makes sense.”

“Then
back with his flask of spirits ready, to slip unseen into a place withdrawn and
private, and become the wretched object we found. How long would it take, would
you say, to kill his man, search and strip him down to the river?”

“Counting
the time spent following him unseen, and returning unnoticed to the fairground
after all was done, more than an hour of those two hours lost between drunk and
sober. No,” said Cadfael sombrely, “I do not think he spent any of that time
drinking.”

“Was
it he, also, who boarded the barge? But no, that he could not, he was at the
sheriff’s court. Concerning the merchant of Shotwick, we already know his
slayer.”

“We
know one of them,” said Cadfael. “Can any of these
matters be
separated from the rest? I think not. This pursuit is all one.”

“You do grasp,”
said Hugh, after a long moment of furious thought, “what it is we are saying?
Here are these two men, one proven a murderer, the other suspect. And yesterday
the one of them fetched down the other to his death. Coldly, expertly… Before
we say more,” said Hugh abruptly, casting a final glance about the glade,
“let’s do as you suggested, look again at the place where we found him lying.”

Chapter Two

PHILIP,
WHO WAS LEARNING HOW TO LISTEN AND BE SILENT, followed at their heels all the
way back through the orchards and gardens of the Gaye. Neither of them found
fault with his persistence. He had earned his place, and had no intention of
being put off. All the larger boats were already gone from the jetty. Soon the
labourers would begin dismantling the boards and piers until the following
year, and stowing them away in the abbey storehouses. Along the Foregate stalls
were being taken down and stacked for removal, while two of the abbey carts
worked their way along from the horse-fair towards the gatehouse.

“More
than halfway along, I remember,” said Hugh, “and well back from the roadway.
There were few lights, most of the stalls here were for the country people who
come in by the day. Somewhere in this stretch.”

There
had been trestles stacked that night, and canvas awnings leaning against them
ready for use. This morning there were also piles of trestles and boards, ready
now to be put away for the next fair. They surveyed all the likely area, but to
lay a finger on the exact place was impossible. One of the collecting carts had
reached this stretch, and two lay servants were hoisting the heaped planks
aboard, and stacking the trestles one within another in high piles. Cadfael
watched as the ground was gradually cleared.

“You’ve
found some unexpected discards,” he commented, for a corner of the cart carried
a small pile of odd objects, a large shoe, a short cotte, bedraggled but by no
means old or ragged, a child’s wooden doll with one arm missing, a
green capuchon, a drinking-horn.

“There’ll
be many more such, brother,” said the carter, grinning, “before the whole
ground’s cleared. Some will be claimed. I fancy some child will want to know
where she lost her doll. And the cotte is good stuff, some young gentleman took
a drop too much, and forgot to collect that when he moved. The shoe’s as good
as new, too, and a giant’s size, somebody may sneak in, shamefaced, to ask
after that. I hope he had not far to go home with only one. But it wasn’t a
rowdy night—not like many a night I’ve seen.” He slid powerful arms under a
stack of trestles, and hoisted them bodily. “You’d hardly credit where we found
that flagon mere.”

His
nod indicated the front of the car, to which Cadfael had hitherto devoted no
attention. Slung by a thin leather thong from the shaft hung a flattened glass
bottle large enough to hold a quart. “Stuck on top of the canvas over one of
the country stalls. An old woman who sells cheeses had the stall, I know her,
she comes every year, and seeing she’s not so nimble nowadays, we put up the
stall for her the night before the fair opened. The bottle all but brained
Daniel here, when we took it down, this morning! Fancy tossing a bottle like
that away as if it had no value! He could have got a free drink at Wat’s if
he’d taken it back, whoever he was.”