St. Peter's Fair (29 page)

She
set her hand to the latch of the door, and trustingly lifted it. The door did
not give. She tried it again, more strongly, but the barrier remained
immovable. No doubt of it, the door was locked.

What
she felt first was sheer incredulity, even amusement,
as if
some foolish accident had dropped a latch and shut her in by mistake. Then came
the instinctive wish of every creature locked in, to get out; and only after
that the flare of alarm and the startled and furious reappraisal, in search of
understanding. No mistake, no! Ivo’s own hand had turned the key on her.

She
was not the girl to fall into a frenzy and batter on the door. What good would
that do? She stood quite still with the latch in her hand, while her wits ran
after truth as fiercely as the hound in the tapestry after the hart. She was
here in an upstairs room, with no other door, and windows not only narrow for
even her slender body to pass through, but high above ground, by reason of the
slope. There was no way out until someone unlocked the door.

She
had come with him guilelessly, in good faith, and he turned into her gaoler.
What did he want of her? She knew she had beauty, but suddenly was certain he
would not go to such trouble on that account. Not her person, then, and there
was only one thing in her possession for which someone had been willing to go
to extremes. Deaths had followed it wherever it passed. One of those deaths a
servant of his had helped to bring about, and he had dealt out summary justice.
A sordid attack for gain, a theft that accidentally ended in murder, and the
stolen property found to prove it! She had accepted that as everyone had
accepted it. To doubt it was to see beyond into a pit too black to be credited,
but she was peering into that darkness now. It was Ivo, and no other, who had
caged her.

If
she could not pass through the windows, the letter she carried could, though
that would be to risk others finding it. Its weight was light, it would not
carry far. All the same, she crossed to the windows and peered out through the
slits at the slope of grass and the fringe of trees below; and there, sprawled
at ease against the bole of a beech with his arbalest beside him, was Turstan
Fowler, looking up idly at these very windows. When he caught sight of her face
between the timbers of the frame, he grinned broadly. No help there.

She
withdrew from the window, trembling. Quickly she drew up, from its
resting-place between her breasts, the small, tightly-rolled vellum bag she had
carried ever since Master Thomas had hung it about her neck, before they
reached Shrewsbury. It measured almost the length of her hand, but
was
thin as two fingers of that same hand, and the thread on which it hung was of
silk, cobweb-fine. It did not need a very large hiding-place. She coiled the
silk thread about it, and rolled it carefully into the great swathe of
blue-black tresses coiled within her coif of silken net, until its shape was
utterly shrouded and lost. When she had adjusted the net to hold it secure, and
every strand of hair lay to all appearances undisturbed, she stood with hands
clasped tightly to steady them, and drew in long breaths until the racing of
her heart was calmed. Then she put the brazier between herself and the door,
and looking up across the room, felt the heart she had just steeled to
composure leap frantically in her breast.

Once
again she had failed to hear the key turn in the lock. He kept his defences
well oiled and silent. He was there in the doorway, smiling with easy
confidence, closing the door behind him without taking his eyes from her. She
knew by the motion of his arm and shoulder that he had transferred the key to
the inner side, and again turned it. Even in his own manor, with his household
about him, he took no risks. Even with no more formidable opponent than Emma
Vernold! It was, in its way, a compliment, but one she could have done without.

Since
he could not know whether she had or had not tried the door, she chose to
behave as if nothing had happened to disturb her. She acknowledged his entrance
with an expectant smile, and opened her lips to force out some harmless
enquiry, but he was before her.

“Where
is it? Give it to me freely, and come to no harm. I would advise it.”

He
was in no hurry, and he was still smiling. She saw now that his smile was a
deliberate gloss, as cold, smooth and decorative as a coat of gilt. She gazed at
him wide-eyed, the blank, bewildered stare of one suddenly addressed in an
unknown tongue. “I don’t understand you! What is it I’m to give you?”

“Dear
girl, you know only too well. I want the letter your uncle was carrying to Earl
Ranulf of Chester, the same he should have delivered at the fair, by prior
agreement, to Euan of Shotwick, my noble kinsman’s eyes and ears.” He was
willing to go softly with her, since time was now no object, he even found the
prospect amusing, and was prepared to admire her playing of the game, provided
he got his own way
in the end. “Never tell me, sweet, that you
have not even heard of any such letter. I doubt if you make as good a liar as I
do.”

“Truly,”
she said, shaking her head helplessly, “I understand you not at all. There is
nothing else I could say to you, for I know nothing of a letter. If my uncle
carried one, as you claim, he never confided in me. Do you suppose a man of
business takes his womenfolk into his confidence over important matters? You’re
mistaken in him if you believe that.”

Corbière
came forward an idle pace or two into the room, and she saw that no trace of
his limp remained. The brazier had burned into a steady, scarlet glow, the
light from it reflected like the burnish of sunset along the waving gold of his
hair. “So I thought,” he agreed, and laughed at the memory. “It took me a long
time, too long, to arrive at you, my lady. I would not have trusted a woman,
no… But Master Thomas, it seems, had other ideas. And I grant you, he had an
unusual young woman to deal with. For what it’s worth, I admire you. But I
shall not let that stand in my way, believe me. What you hold is too precious
to leave me any scruples, even if I were given to such weaknesses.”

“But
I don’t hold it! I can’t give you what I have not in my possession. How can I
convince you?” she demanded, with the first spurt of impatience and
indignation, though she knew in advance that she was wasting all pretences. He
knew.

He
shook his head at her, smiling. “It is not in your baggage. We’ve taken apart
even the seams of your saddlebags. Therefore it is here, on your person. There
is no other possibility. It was not on your uncle, it was neither in his barge
nor in his booth. Who was left but you? You, and Euan of Shotwick, if I had
somehow let a messenger slip through my guard. You, I knew, would keep, and
come tamed to my hand—but for a sudden qualm I had, that you might have sent it
back in Thomas’s coffin for safe-keeping, but that was to overrate you, my
dear, clever as you are. And Euan never received it. Who was then left, but
you? Not his crew—all of them far too simple, even if he had not had orders to
keep strict secrecy, as I know he had. I doubt if he told even you what was in
the letter.”

It
was true, she had no idea of its contents. She had simply been given it to wear
and guard, as the obvious innocent who
would never come under
suspicion of being anyone’s courier, but its importance had been impressed upon
her most powerfully. Lives, her uncle had said, hung upon its safe delivery,
or, failing that, its safe return to the sender. Or, in the last resort, its
total destruction.

“I
am tired of telling you,” she said forcefully, “that you are wrong in supposing
that I know anything about it, or believe it ever existed but in your
imagination. You brought me here, my lord, on the pretext of providing me the
companionship of your sister, and conducting us both to Bristol. Do you intend
to do as you promised?”

He
threw his head back and laughed aloud, the red glow dancing on his fine
cheekbones. “You would not have come with me if there had not been a woman in
the story. If you behave sensibly now you may yet meet, some day, the only
sister I have. She’s married to one of Ranulf’s knights, and keeps me informed
of what goes on in Ranulf’s court. But devil a nun she’d ever have made, even
if she were not already a wife. But send you safe home to Bristol—yes, that
I’ll do, when you’ve given me what I want from you. And what I will have!” he
added with a snap, and his shapely, smiling lips thinned and tightened into a
sword-blade.

There
was a moment, then, when she almost considered obeying him, and giving up what
she had kept so obstinately through so many shocks. Fear was a reality by this
time, but so was anger, all the more fierce because she was so resolutely
suppressing it. He came a step towards her, his smile as narrow as a cat’s
bearing down on a bird, and she moved just as steadily to keep the brazier
between them; that also amused him, but he had ample patience.

“I
don’t understand,” she said, frowning as if she had begun to feel genuine
curiosity, “why you should set such store on a letter. If I had it, do you
think I should refuse it to you, when I’m in your power? But why does it matter
to you so much? What can there be in a mere letter?”

“Fool
girl, there can be life and death in a letter,” he said condescending to her
simplicity, “wealth, power, even land to be won or lost. Do you know what that
single packet could be worth? To King Stephen, his kingdom entire! To me, maybe
an earldom. And to a number of others, their necks! For I think you must know,
for all your innocence, that Robert
of Gloucester has his plans
made to bring the Empress Maud to England, and make a fight of it for her claim
to the throne, and has been touting through his agents here to get Earl
Ranulf’s support for her cause when they do land. My noble kinsman has a hard
heart, and has demanded proof of the strength of that cause before he lifts a
hand or stirs a foot to commit himself. Names, numbers, every detail, if I know
my Ranulf, they’ve been forced to set down in writing for him. All the tale of
the king’s enemies, the names of all those who pay him lip service now but are
preparing to betray him. There could be as many as fifty names on the list, and
it will serve, believe me, for Ranulf s ruin no less, since if his name is not
there, he had reached the point of considering adding it. What will not King
Stephen give, to have that delivered into his hand? All committed to writing,
it may be even the date they plan to sail, and the port where they hope to
land. All his enemies cut off before they can forgather, a prison prepared for
Maud before ever she gets foot ashore. That, my child, is what I propose to
offer to the king, and never doubt but I shall get my price for it.”

She
stood staring at him with drawn brows and shocked eyes across the brazier, and
felt her blood chill in her veins and all her body grow cold. And he was not
even a partisan! He had killed, or procured others to kill for him, three times
already, not for a cause, but coldly and methodically for his own gain and
advancement. He cared nothing at all for which of them wore the crown, Stephen
or Maud. If he could have got his hands rather on information of value to Maud,
and felt that she was likely to prevail and reward him well, he would have
betrayed Stephen and all his supporters just as blithely.

For
the first time she was terrified, the weight of all those imperilled lives lay
upon her heart like a great stone. She had no doubt that this estimate of what
would be in the letter must be very close to the truth, close enough to destroy
a great many men who adhered to the same side her uncle had served with
devotion. He had been a passionate partisan, and it had cost him his life. Now,
unless she could bring about a miracle, the message he had carried would cost
many more lives, bloodshed, bereavement, ruin. And all for the enrichment and
advancement of Ivo Corbière! She had followed and supported Master Thomas as a
matter of family loyalty. Now
that meant nothing any longer,
and all she felt was a desperate desire to avoid more killing, not to betray
any man on either side of the quarrel to his enemies on the other. To help
every fugitive, to hide every hunted man, to keep the wives unwidowed and the
children still fathered, was better by far than to fight and kill either for
Stephen or for Maud.

And
she would not let him have them! Whatever the cost, he should not tread his way
unscathed to his earldom over other men’s faces.

“I
have nothing against you,” Corbière was saying, confident and at ease. “Give me
the letter, and you shall reach Bristol in safety, and not be the loser. But
don’t think I’ll scruple to pay you in full, either, if you thwart me.”

She
stood fixed and still, her hands cupping her face, as though pressing hard to
contain fear. The tips of her fingers worked unseen under the edge of her
tissue net into the coils of her hair, feeling for the little cylinder of
vellum, but face to face with her he saw no movement at all.

“Come,
you are not so attractive to me that you need fear rape,” he said, disdainfully
smiling, “provided you are sensible, but for all that, it would be no hardship
to me to strip you with my own hands, if you are obstinate. It might even give
me pleasure, if the act proves stimulating. Give, or have it taken from you by
force. You should know by now that I let no man stand in my way, much less a
little shopkeeper’s girl of no account.”

Of
no account! No, she had never been of any account to him, never for a moment,
only of use in his ruthless pursuit of his own ambitious interests. Still she
stood as if frozen, except that when he advanced upon her at leisure, his smile
now wolfish and hungry, she circled inch by inch to keep the brazier between
them. Its heart was a red glow. She stood close, as if only that core of warmth
gave her some comfort and protection; and suddenly she tore down the coil of
her hair and clawed out the letter, tearing off her silken net with it in her
haste. She dared not simply cast it into the fire, it might roll clear or be
too easily retrieved. She made a desperate lunge, and thrusting it deep into
the heart of the glow, held it there for an agonised moment, snatching back
burned fingers with a faint cry that sounded half of pain and half of triumph.