St. Peter's Fair Page 15

  “Oh, yes,” she said warmly, “that I can, most willingly. I never did truly believe it. You are no such person, to strike a man dead by stealth. I never thought it. But still we don’t know who did it! Oh, don’t doubt me, I’m sure of you. But I wish it could be shown clear to the world, for your sake.”

  It was said very prettily and sincerely, and he took it to his heart gratefully, but it was said out of generous fellow-feeling, and nothing deeper, and he was gallingly sure of it while he hugged at least the kindness to him.

  “For mine, too,” she said honestly, “and for the sake of justice. It is not right that a mean murderer should escape his due, and it does aggrieve me that my uncle’s death should go unpaid for.”

  Find me some way of serving you, he had said; and perhaps she had. There was nothing he would not have undertaken for her; he would have lain over the threshold of any room in which she was, like a dog on guard, if she had needed it, but she did not, she was cared for by the sheriff’s own deputy and his lady, and they would watch over her until they saw her safely on her way home. But when she spoke of the unknown who had slipped a dagger in her uncle’s back, her great eyes flared with the angry blue of sapphires, and her face grew marble-clear and taut. Her complaint was his commission. He would achieve something for her yet.

  “Emma,” he began in a whisper, and drew breath to commit himself deep as the sea.

  The door opened, though neither of them had heard the knock; Constance put her head into the room.

  “Messire Corbière waits to see you, when you are free,” she said, and withdrew, but left the door ajar. Evidently Messire Corbière ought not to be kept waiting long.

  Philip was on his feet. Emma’s eyes had kindled at the name like distant stars, forgetting him. “You may remember him,” she said, still sparing a morsel of her attention for Philip, “the young gentleman who came to help us on the jetty, along with Brother Cadfael. He has been very kind to me.”

  Philip did remember, though his bludgeoned senses at the time had seen everything distorted; a slender, elegant, assured lordling who leaped a rolling cask to catch her in his arm at the water’s edge, and further, to be just to him, had appeared in the sheriff’s court and borne out Emma’s honest story—even if he had also produced his falconer to testify to the silly threats Philip had been indulging in, drunk as he was, later that evening. Testimony Philip did not dispute, since he knew he had been incapable of clear thought or positive recollection. He recalled his disgusting self, and smarted at the thought. And the young lord with the bright gold crest and athlete’s prowess had showed so admirable by contrast.

  “I’ll take my leave,” said Philip, and allowed her hand to slip out of his, though with reluctance and pain. “For the journey, and always, I wish you well.”

  “So do I you,” she said, and with unconscious cruelty added: “Will you ask Messire Corbière to come in?”

  Never in his life until then had Philip been required to draw himself to his full stature, body and mind. His departure was made with a dignity he had not dreamed he could achieve, and meeting Corbière face to face in the hall, he did indeed bid him within, at Mistress Emma’s invitation, very civilly and amiably, while he burned with jealousy inwardly. Ivo thanked him pleasantly, and if he looked him over, did so with interest and respect, and with no apparent recollection of ever having seen him in less acceptable circumstances.

  No one would have guessed, thought Philip, marching out into the sunshine of the great court, that a working shoemaker and a landed lord rubbed shoulders there. Well, he may have several manors in Cheshire and one in Shropshire, and be distant kin of Earl Ranulf, and welcome at his court; but I have something I can try to do for her, and I have a craft as honourable as his noble blood, and if I succeed, whether she comes my way or no, she’ll never forget me.

  *

  Brother Cadfael came in at the gatehouse after some hours of fruitless prowling about the fair and the riverside. Among hundreds of men busy about their own concerns, the quest of a gashed sleeve, or one recently and hastily mended, is much the same as hunting one straw in a completed stack. His trouble was that he knew no other way to set about it. Moreover, the hot and settled weather continued unbroken, and most of those about the streets and the stalls were in their shirt-sleeves. There was a point there, he reflected. The glover’s dagger had drawn blood, therefore it had reached the skin, but never a thread of white or unbleached linen had it brought away with the sliver of brown cloth. If the intruder had worn a shirt, he had worn it with sleeves rolled up, and it had emerged unscathed, and could now cover his graze, and if the wound had needed one, his bandage. Cadfael returned to tend the few matters needing him in his workshop, and be ready for Vespers in good time, more because he was at a loss how to proceed than for any other reason. An interlude of quiet and thought might set his wits working again.

  In the great court his path towards the garden happened to cross Philip’s from the guest-hall to the gatehouse. Deep in his own purposes, the young man almost passed by unnoticing, but then he checked sharply, and turned to look back.

  “Brother Cadfael!” Cadfael swung to face him, startled out of just as deep a preoccupation. “It is you!” said Philip. “It was you who spoke for me, after Emma, in the sheriff’s court. And I knew you then for the one who came to help me to my feet and out of trouble, when the sergeants broke up the fight on the jetty. I never had the chance to thank you, brother, but I do thank you now.”

  “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 fol
low 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 3

  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 groom
s, 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.