St. Peter's Fair (5 page)

“If the abbey turns a cold eye on the town’s
troubles, should you side with them? We are here to tell you our side of the
story, and appeal to you as men who also have to bear the burdens of your own
boroughs, and may well have seen at home what war and siege can do to your own
walls and pavings. Is it unreasonable that we should ask for a share in the
profits of the fair? The abbey came by no damage last year, as the town did. If
they will not bear their part for the common good, we address ourselves to you,
who have no such protection from the hardships of the world, and will have
fellow-feeling with those who share the like burdens.”

They
were beginning to lose interest in him, to shrug, and turn back to their
unloading. He raised his voice sharply in appeal.

“All
we ask is that you will hold back a tithe of the dues you pay to the abbey, and
pay them instead to the town for murage and pavage. If all hold together, what
can the abbey stewards do against you? There need be no cost to you above what
you would be paying in any event, and we should have something nearer to justice.
What do you say? Will you help us?”

They
would not! The growl of indifference and derision hardly needed words. What,
set up a challenge to what was laid down by charter, when they had nothing to
gain by it? Why should they take the risk? They turned to their work, shrugging
him off. The young men grouped at his back set up among themselves a counter
murmur, still controlled but growing angry. And Thomas of Bristol, massive and
contemptuous, waved a fist in their spokesman’s face, and said impatiently:
“Stand out of the way, boy, you are hindering your betters! Pay a tithe to the
town indeed! Are not the abbey rights set down according to law? And can you,
dare you tell me they do not pay the fee demanded of them by charter? If you
have a complaint that they are failing to keep the law, take it to the sheriff,
where it belongs, but don’t come here with your nonsense. Now be off, and let
honest men get on with their work.”

The
young man took fire. “The men of Shrewsbury are as honest as you, sir, though something
less boastful about it. We take honesty for granted here! And it is not
nonsense that our town goes with broken walls and broken streets, while
abbey and Foregate have escaped all such damage. No, but listen…”

The
merchant turned a broad, hunched back, with disdainful effect, and stalked away
to pick up the staff he had laid against his piled barrels, and motion his men
to continue their labours. Philip started indignantly after him, for the act
was stingingly deliberate, as though a gnat, a mere persistent nuisance, had
been brushed aside.

“Master
merchant,” he called hotly, “one word more!” And he laid an arresting hand to
Thomas’s fine, draped sleeve.

They
were two choleric people, and it might have come to it even at the best, sooner
or later, but Cadfael’s impression was that Thomas had been genuinely startled
by the grasp at his arm, and believed he was about to be attacked. Whatever the
cause, he swung round and struck out blindly with the staff he held. The boy
flung up his arm, but too late thoroughly to protect his head. The blow fell
heavily on his forearms and temple, and laid him flat on the planking of the
jetty, with blood oozing from a cut above his ear.

That
was the end of all peaceful and dignified protest, and the declaration of war.
Many things happened on the instant. Philip had fallen without a cry, and lay
half-stunned; but someone had certainly cried out, a small, protesting shriek,
instantly swallowed up in the roar of anger from the young men of the town. Two
of them rushed to their fallen leader, but the rest, bellowing for vengeance,
lunged to confront the equally roused traders, and closed with them merrily. In
a moment the goods newly disembarked were being hoisted and flung into the
river, and one of the raiders soon followed them, with a bigger splash.
Fortunately those who lived all their lives by Severn usually learned to swim
even before they learned to walk, and the youngster was in no danger of
drowning. By the time he had hauled himself out and returned to the fray, there
was a fully-fledged riot in progress all along the riverside.

Several
of the cooler-headed citizens had moved in, though cautiously, to try to
separate the combatants, and talk a little sense into the furious young; and
one or two, not cautious enough, had come in for blows meant for the foe, the
common fate of those who try to make peace where no one is inclined for it.

Cadfael among the rest had rushed down to the jetty,
intent on preventing what might well be a second and fatal blow, to judge by
the merchant’s congested countenance and brandished staff. But someone else was
before him. A girl had clambered frantically up out of the tiny cabin of the
barge, kilted her skirts and leaped ashore, in time to cling with all her
weight to the quivering arm, and plead in agitated tones:

“Uncle,
don’t please don’t! He did no violence! You’ve hurt him badly!”

Philip
Corviser’s brown eyes, all this time open but unseeing, blinked furiously at
the sound of so unexpected a voice. He heaved himself shakily to his knees,
remembered his injury and his grievance, and gathered sprawled limbs and
faculties to surge to his feet and do battle. Not that his efforts would have
been very effective; his legs gave under him as he tried to rise, and he
gripped his head between steadying hands as though it might fall off if he
shook it. But it was the sight of the girl that stopped him short. There she
stood, clinging, to the merchant’s arm and pleading angelically into his ear,
in tones that could have cooled a dragon, her eyes all the time dilated and
anxious and pitying on Philip. And calling the old demon “uncle”! Philip’s
revenge was put clean out of his reach in an instant, but he scarcely felt a
pang at the deprivation, to judge by the transformation that came over his
bruised and furious face. Swaying on one knee, still dazed, he stared at the
girl as pilgrims might stare at miraculous visions, or lost wanderers at the
Pole star.

She
was well worth looking at, a young thing of about eighteen or nineteen years,
bare-armed and bare-headed, with two great braids of blue-black hair swinging
to her waist, and framed between them a round, childish face all roses and
snow, lit by two long-lashed dark blue eyes, at this moment huge with alarm and
concern. No wonder the mere sound of her voice could tame her formidable uncle,
as surely as the sight of her had checked and held at gaze the two young men
who had rushed to salvage and avenge their leader, and who now stood abashed,
gaping and harmless.

It
was at that moment that the fight on the jetty, which had become a melee
hopelessly tangled, reeled their way, thudding along the planks, knocked over
the stack of small barrels, and sent them rolling thunderously in all
directions.
Cadfael grasped young Corviser under the arms,
hoisted him to his feet and hauled him out of harm’s way, thrusting him bodily
into the arms of his friends for safe-keeping, since he was still in a daze. A
rolling cask swept Thomas’s feet from under him, and the girl, flung aside in
his fall, swayed perilously on the edge of the jetty.

An
agile figure darted past Cadfael with a flash of gold hair, leaped another
rolling cask as nimbly as a deer, and plucked her back to safety in a long arm.
The almost insolent grace and assurance was as familiar as the yellow hair.
Cadfael contented himself with helping Thomas to his feet, and drawing him
aside out of danger, and was not particularly surprised, when that was done, to
see that the long arm was still gallantly clasped round the girl’s waist. Nor
was she in any hurry to extricate herself. Indeed, she was gazing at the
smiling, comely, reassuring face of her rescuer wide-eyed, much as Philip
Corviser had gazed at her.

“There,
you’re quite safe! But let me help you back aboard, you’d do best to stay there
a while, your uncle, too. I advise it, sir,” he said earnestly. “No one will
offer you further offence. With this lady beside you, no one could be so
ungallant,” he said, his eyes wide in candid admiration. The cream of the
girl’s fair skin turned all to rose.

Thomas
of Bristol dusted himself down with slightly shaky hands, for he was a big man,
and had fallen heavily. “I thank you, sir, warmly, for your help. You, too,
brother. But my wines—my goods—“

“Leave
them to us, sir. What can be salvaged, shall be. You stay safe aboard, and
wait. This cannot continue, the law will be out after these turbulent young
fools any moment. Half of them are off along the Foregate, overturning stalls
and hounding the abbey stewards. Before long they’ll be in the town gaol with
sore heads, wishing they’d had better sense than pick a fight with the abbot of
a Benedictine house.”

His
eye was on Cadfael, who was busy righting and retrieving the fugitive casks,
and still within earshot. He felt himself being drawn companionably into this
masterful young man’s planning, perhaps as reassurance and guarantee of
respectability. The eyes were slightly mischievous, though the face retained
its decent gravity. The nearest Benedictine was being gently teased as
representative of his order.

“My name,” said the rescuer blithely, “is Ivo
Corbière, of the manor of Stanton Cobbold in this shire, though the main part
of my honour lies in Cheshire . If you’ll allow me, I’m happy to offer my
help…” He had taken his arm from about the girl’s waist by then, decorously if
reluctantly, but his gaze continued to embrace and flatter her; she was well
aware of it, and it did not displease her. “There!” cried Corbière
triumphantly, as a shrill whistle resounded from a youth hanging over the
parapet of the bridge above them. “Now watch them dive to cover! Their look-out
sees the sheriff’s men turning out to quell the riot.”

His
judgment was accurate enough. Half a dozen heads snapped up sharply at the
sound, noted the urgently waving arm, and half a dozen dishevelled youths
extricated themselves hastily from the fight, dropped whatever they were
holding, and made off at speed in several directions, some along the Gaye,
towards the coverts by the riverside, some up the slope into the tangle of
narrow lanes behind the Foregate, one under the arch of the bridge, to emerge
on the upstream side with no worse harm than wet feet. In a few moments the
sharp clatter of hooves drummed over the bridge, and half a dozen of the
sheriff’s men came trotting down to the jetty, while the rest of the company
swept on towards the horse-fair.

“As
good as over!” said Ivo Corbière gaily. “Brother, will you lend an oar? I fancy
you know this river better than I, and there’s many a man’s hard-won living
afloat out there, and much of it may yet be saved.”

He
asked no leave; he had selected already the smallest and most manageable boat
that swung beside the jetty, and he was across the boards and down into it
almost before the sheriff’s men had driven their mounts in among the
still-locked combatants, and begun to pluck the known natives out by the hair.
Brother Cadfael followed. With Compline but ten minutes away, by his mental
clock, he should have made his escape and left the salvage to this confident
and commanding young man, but he had been sent out here to aid a client of the
abbey fair, and could he not argue that he was still about the very same
business? He was in the borrowed boat, an oar in his hand and his eye upon the
nearest cask bobbing
on the bright sunset waters, before he had
found an answer; which was answer enough.

The
noise receded soon. Everyone left here was busily hooking bales and bundles out
of the river, pursuing some downstream to coves where they had lodged, abandoning
one or two small items too sodden and too vulnerable to be saved, writing off
minor losses, thankfully calculating profits still to be made after fees and
rentals and tolls were paid. The damage was not so great, after all, it could
be carried. Along the Foregate stalls were being righted, goods laid out
afresh. Doubtful if the pandemonium had ever reached the horse-fair, where the
great merchants unrolled their bales. In the stony confines of the castle and
the town gaol, no doubt, some dozen or so youngsters of the town were nursing
their bruises and grudges, and wondering how their noble and dignified protest
had disintegrated into such a shambles. As for Philip Corviser, nobody knew
where he had fetched up, once he shook off the devotees who had helped him away
from the jetty in a daze. The brief venture was over, the cost not too great.
Not even the sheriff, Gilbert Prestcote, was going to bear down too hard on
those well-meaning but ill-advised young men of Shrewsbury .

“Gentlemen,”
said Thomas of Bristol, eased and expansive, “I cannot thank you enough for
such generous help. No, the casks will have taken no hurt. Those who buy my
wines should and do store them properly a good while before tapping, their
condition will not be impaired. The sugar confections, thanks be, were not yet
unloaded. No, I have suffered no real hurt. And my child here is much in your
debt. Come, my dear, don’t hide there within, make your respects to such good
friends! Let me present my niece Emma, my sister’s daughter, Emma Vernold,
heiress to her father, who was a master-mason in our city, and also to me, for
I have no other kin. Emma, my dear, you may pour the wine!”

The
girl had made good use of the interval. She came forth now with her braids of
hair coiled in a gilded net on her neck, and a fine tunic of embroidered linen
over her plain gown. Not, thought Cadfael, for my benefit! It was high time for
him to take his leave and return to his proper duties. He
had
missed Compline in favour of retrieving goods from the waters, and he would
have to put in an hour or so in his workshop yet before he could seek his bed.
No one would be early to bed on this night, however. Thomas of Bristol was not
the man to leave the supervision of his booth and the disposition of his goods
to others, however trustworthy his three servants might be; he would soon be
off to the horse-fair to see everything safely stowed to his own satisfaction,
ready for the morrow. And if he thought fit to leave those two handsome young
people together here until his return, that was his affair. Mention of the
manor of Stanton Cobbold, and as the least part of Corbière’s honour, at that,
had made its impression. There had been no real need for that careful mention
of Mistress Emma’s prospective wealth; but dutiful uncles and guardians must be
ever on the alert for good matches for their girls, and this young man was
already taken with her face before ever he heard of her fortune. Small wonder,
she was a beautiful child by any standards.