St. Peter's Fair (21 page)

“I
fear the getting you out of trouble didn’t last the night,” said Cadfael
ruefully, looking this lanky youngster over with a sharp eye, and approving
what he saw. Whether it was time spent in self-examination in the gaol, or time
spent more salutarily still in thinking of Emma, Philip had done a great deal
of growing up in a very short time. “I’m glad to see you about again among us,
and none the worse.”

“I’m
not clear of the load yet,” said Philip. “The charge
still
stands, even the charge of murder has not been withdrawn.”

“Then
it stands upon one leg only,” said Cadfael heartily, “and may fall at any
moment. Have you not heard there’s been another death?”

“So
they told me, and other violence, also. But surely this last bears no
connection with the rest? Until this, all was malice against Master Thomas.
This man was a stranger, and from Chester.” He laid a hand eagerly on Cadfael’s
sleeve. “Brother, spare me some minutes. I was not very clear in my wits that
night, now I need to know—all that I did, all that was done to me. I want to
trace every minute of an evening I can barely piece together for myself.”

“And
no wonder, after that knock on the head. Come and sit in the garden, it’s quiet
there.” He took the young man by the arm, and turned him towards the archway
through the pleached hedge, and sat him down on the very seat, had Philip known
it, where Emma and Ivo had sat together the previous day. “Now, what is it you
have in mind? I don’t wonder your memory’s hazy. That’s a good solid skull you
have on you, and a blessedly thick thatch of hair, or you’d have been carried
away on a board.”

Philip
scowled doubtfully into distance between the roses, hesitated how much to say,
how much to keep painfully to himself, caught Brother Cadfael’s comfortably
patient eye, and blurted: “I was coming now from Emma. I know she is in better
care than I could provide her, but I have found one thing, at least, that might
still be done for her. She wants and needs to see the man who killed her uncle
brought to justice. And I mean to find him.”

“So
does the sheriff, so do all his men,” said Cadfael, “but they’ve had little
success as yet.” But he did not say it in reproof or discouragement, but very
thoughtfully. “So, for that matter, do I, but I’ve done no better. One more
mind probing the matter could just as well be the mind that uncovers the truth.
Why not? But how will you set about it?”

“Why,
if I can prove—prove!—that I did not do it, I may also rub up against something
that will lead me to the man who did. At least I can make a start by trying to
follow what happened to me that night. Not only for my own defence,” he said
earnestly, “but because it seems to me that I gave
cover to the
deed by what I had begun, and whoever did it may have had me and my quarrel in
mind, and been glad of the opening I made for him, knowing that when murder
came of the night, the first name that would spring to mind would be mine. So
whoever he may be, he must have marked my comings and goings, or I could be no
use to him. If I had been with ten friends throughout, I should have been out
of the reckoning, and the sheriff would have begun at once to look elsewhere.
But I was drunk, and sick, and took myself off alone to the river for a long
time, so much I do know. Long enough for it to have been true. And the murderer
knew it.”

“That
is sound thinking,” agreed Cadfael approvingly. “What, then, do you mean to
do?”

“Begin
from the riverside, where I got my clout on the head, and follow my own scent
until I get clear what’s very unclear now. I do remember what happened there,
as far as you hauling me out of the way of the sheriff’s men, and then being
hustled away between two others, but my legs were grass and my wits were
muddied, and I can’t for my life recall who they were. It’s a place to start,
if you knew them.”

“One
of them was Edric Flesher’s journeyman,” said Cadfael. “The other I’ve seen,
though I don’t know his name, a big, sturdy young fellow twice your width, with
tow-coloured hair…”

“John
Norreys!” Philip snapped his fingers. “I seem to recall him later in the night.
It’s enough, I’ll begin with them, and find out where they left me, and how—or
where I shook them off, for so I might have done, I was no fit company for
Christians.” He rose, draping his coat over one shoulder. “That whole evening
I’ll unravel, if I can.”

“Good
lad!” said Cadfael heartily. “I wish you success with all my heart. And if
you’re going to be threading your way through a few of the ale-houses of the
Foregate, as you seem to have done that night, keep your eyes open on my
behalf, will you? If you can find your murderer, you may very well also be
finding mine.” Carefully and emphatically he told him what to look for. “An arm
raising a flagon, or spread over a table, may show you what I’m seeking. The
left sleeve sliced open for a hand’s-length from the cuff of a russet-brown
coat, that was sewn with a lighter linen thread.
It would be on
the underside of the arm. Or where arms are bared, look for the long scratch
the knife made when it slit the sleeve, or for the binding that might cover it
if it still bleeds. But if you find him, don’t challenge him or say word to
him, only bring me, if you can, his name and where to find him again.”

“This
was the glover’s slayer?” asked Philip, marking the details with grave nods of
his brown head. “You think they may be one and the same?”

“If
not the same, well known to each other, and both in the same conspiracy. Find
one, and we shall be very close to the other.”

“I’ll
keep a good watch, at any rate,” said Philip, and strode away purposefully
towards the gatehouse to begin his quest.

Chapter Three

AFTERWARDS
BROTHER CADFAEL PONDERED many times over what followed, and wondered if prayer
can even have a retrospective effect upon events, as well as influencing the
future. What had happened had already happened, yet would he have found the
same situation if he had not gone straight into the church, when Philip left
him, with the passionate urge to commit to prayer the direction of his own
efforts, which seemed to him so barren? It was a most delicate and complex
theological problem, never as far as he knew, raised before, or if raised, no
theologian had ventured to write on the subject, probably for fear of being
accused of heresy.

Howbeit,
the urgent need came over him, since he had lost some offices during the day,
to recommit his own baffled endeavours to eyes that saw everything, and a power
that could open all doors. He chose the transept chapel from which Master
Thomas’s coffin had been carried that morning, resealed into sanctity by the
Mass sung for him. He had time, now, to kneel and wait, having busied himself
thus far in anxious efforts like a man struggling up a mountain, when he knew
there was a force that could make the mountain bow. He said a prayer for
patience and humility, and then laid that by, and prayed for Emma, for the soul
of Master Thomas, for the child that should be born to Aline and Hugh, for
young Philip and the parents who had recovered him, for all who suffered
injustice and wrong, and sometimes forgot they had a resource beyond the
sheriff.

Then
it was high time for him to rise from his knees, and
go and see
to his primary duty here, whatever more violent matters clamoured for his
attention. He had supervised the herbarium and the manufactory derived from it,
for sixteen years, and his remedies were relied upon far beyond the abbey
walls; and though Brother Mark was the most devoted and uncomplaining of
helpers, it was unkind to leave him too long alone with such a responsibility.
Cadfael hastened towards his workshop with a lightened heart, having shifted
his worries to broader shoulders, just as Brother Mark would be happy to do on
his patron’s arrival.

The
heavy fragrance of the herb-garden lay over all the surrounding land, after so
many hours of sunshine and heat, like a particular benediction meant for the
senses, not the soul. Under the eaves of the workshop the dangling bunches of
dried leafage rustled and chirped like nests of singing birds in waves of
warmed air, where there was hardly any wind. The very timbers of the hut,
dressed with oil against cracking, breathed out scented warmth.

“I
finished making the balm for ulcers,” said Brother Mark, making dutiful report,
and happily aware of work well done. “And I have harvested all the poppy-heads
that were ripe, but I have not yet broken out the seed, I thought they should
dry in the sun a day or two yet.”

Cadfael
pressed one of the great heads between his fingers, and praised the judgment. “And
the angelica water for the infirmary?”

“Brother
Edmund sent for it half an hour ago. I had it ready. And I had a patient,” said
Brother Mark, busy stacking away on a shelf the small clay dishes he used for
sorting seeds, “earlier on, soon after dinner. A groom with a gashed arm. He
said he did it on a nail in the stables, reaching down harness, though it
looked like a knife-slash to me. It was none too clean, I cleansed it for him,
and dressed it with some of your goose-grass unguent. They were gambling with
dice up there in the loft last night, I daresay it came to a fight, and
somebody drew on him. He’d hardly admit to that.” Brother Mark dusted his
hands, and turned with a smile to report for the sum of his stewardship. “And
that’s all. A quiet afternoon, you need not have worried.” At sight of
Cadfael’s face his brows went up comically, and he asked in surprise: “Why
are you staring like that? Nothing there, surely, to open your
eyes so wide.”

My
mouth, too, thought Cadfael, and shut it while he reflected on the strangeness
of human effort, and the sudden rewards that fell undeserved. Not undeserved,
perhaps, in this case, since this had fallen to Brother Mark, who modestly made
no demands at all.

“Which
arm was gashed?” he asked, further baffling Brother Mark, who naturally could
not imagine why that should matter.

“The
left. From here, the outer edge of the wrist, down the underside of the
forearm. Almost to the elbow. Why?”

“Had
he his coat on?”

“Not
when I saw him,” said Mark, smiling at the absurdity of this catechism. “But he
had it over his sound arm. Is that important?”

“More
than you know! But you shall know, later, I am not playing with you. Of what
colour was it? And did you see the sleeve that should cover that arm?”

“I
did. I offered to stitch it for him—I had little to do just then. But he said
he’d already cobbled it up, and so he had, very roughly, and with black thread.
I could have done better for him, the original was unbleached linen thread. The
colour? Reddish dun, much like most of the grooms and men-at-arms wear, but a
good cloth.”

“Did
you know the man? Not one of our own abbey servants?”

“No,
a guest’s man,” said Brother Mark, patient in his bewilderment. “Not a word to
his lord he said! It was one of Ivo Corbière’s grooms, the older one, the surly
fellow with the beard.”

Gilbert
Prestcote himself, unescorted and on foot, had taken an afternoon turn about
the fairground to view the public peace with his own eyes, and was in the great
court on his way back to the town, conferring with Hugh Beringar, when Cadfael
came in haste from the garden with his news. When the blunt recital was ended,
they looked at him and at each other with blank and wary faces.

“Corbière’s
within at this moment,” said Hugh, “and I
gather from Aline has
been, more than an hour. Emma has him dazed, I doubt if he’s had any other
thought, these last two days. His men have been running loose much as they
pleased, provided the work was done. It could be the man.”

“His
lord has the right to be told,” said Prestcote. “Households grow lax when they
see the country torn, and their betters flouting law. There’s nothing been said
or done to alarm this fellow, I take it? He has no reason to make any move? And
surely he values the shelter of a name like Corbière.”

“No
word has been said to any but you,” said Cadfael. “And the man may be telling
the truth.”

“The
tatter of cloth,” said Hugh, “I have here on me. It should be possible to match
or discard.”

“Ask
Corbière to come,” said the sheriff.

Hugh
took the errand to himself, since Ivo was a guest in his rooms. While they
waited in braced silence, two of the abbey’s men-at-arms came in at the
gatehouse with unstrung longbows, and Turstan Fowler between them with his arbalest,
the three of them hot, happy and on excellent terms. On the last day of the
fair there were normally matches of many kinds, wrestling, shooting at the
butts along the river meadows, long-bow against cross-bow, though the long-bow
here was usually the short bow of Wales, drawn to the breast, not the ear. The
six-foot weapon was known, but a rarity. There were races, too, and riding at
the quintain on the castle tiltyard. Trade and play made good companions, and
especially good profits for the ale-houses, where the winners very soon parted
with all they had won, and the losers made up their losses.

These
three were wreathed together in argumentative amity, passing jokes along the
line; each seemed to be vaunting his own weapon. They had strolled no more than
halfway across the court when Hugh emerged from the guest-hall with Ivo beside
him. Ivo saw his archer crossing towards the stable-yard, and made him an
imperious signal to stay.