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  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 mêlée 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.

  “G
entlemen,” 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.

  Brother Cadfael excused himself from lingering, wished the company goodnight, and walked back at leisure to the gatehouse. The Foregate stretched busy and populous, but at peace. Order had been restored, and Saint Peter’s Fair could open on the morrow without further disruption.

  Chapter 4

  HUGH BERINGAR CAME BACK from a final patrol along the Foregate well past ten o’clock, an hour when all dutiful brothers should have been fast asleep in the dortoir. He was by no means surprised to find that Cadfael was not. They met in the great court, as Cadfael came back from closing his workshop in the herb-garden. It was still a clear twilight, and the west had a brilliant afterglow.

  “I hear you’ve been in the thick of it,” said Hugh, stretching and yawning. “Did ever I know you when you were not? Mad young fools, what did they hope to do, that their elders could not! And then to run wild as they did, and ruin their case even with those who had sympathy for them! Now their sires will have fines to pay, and the town lose more for the night’s work than ever it stood to gain. Cadfael, I take no joy in heaving decent, silly lads into prison, I have a foul taste in my mouth from it. Come into the gatehouse for a while, and share a cup with me. You may as well stay awake until Matins now.”

  “Aline will be waiting for you,” objected Cadfael.

  “Aline, bless her good sense, will be fast asleep, for I’m bound to the castle yet to report on this disturbance. I doubt I shall be there over the night. Come and tell me how all this went wrong, for they tell me it began down at the jetty, where you were.”

  Cadfael went with him willingly. They sat together in the anteroom of the gatehouse, and the porter, used to such nocturnal activities when the deputy sheriff of the shire was lodged within, brought them wine, made tolerant enquiry of progress, and left them to their colloquy.

  “How many have you taken up?” asked Cadfael, when he had given an account of what had happened by the river.

  “Seventeen. And it should have been eighteen,” owned Hugh grimly, “if I had not hauled Bellecote’s boy Edwy aside without witnesses, put the fear of God into him, and sent him home with a flea in his ear. Not sixteen yet! But sharp enough to know very well what he was about, the imp! I should not have done it.”

  “His father was one of yesterday’s delegates,” said Cadfael, “and he’s a loyal child, as well as a bold one. I’m glad you let him away home. And young Corviser?”

  “No, we’ve not laid hand on him, though a dozen witnesses say he was the ringleader, and captained the whole enterprise. But he has to go home some time, and he’ll not get in at the gate a free man. Not a hope of it!”

  “He came lecturing like a doctor,” said Cadfael seriously, “and never a threatening move. It was when he was struck down that the wild lads took the bit between their teeth and laid about them. I saw it! The man who struck him lashed out in alarm, I grant you, but without cause.”

  “I take your word for that, and I’ll stand by it. But he led the attack, and he’ll end with the rest, as he should, seeing he loosed this on us all. They’ll be bailed by their fathers, the lot of them,” said Hugh wearily, and passed long fingers over tired eyelids. “Do I seem to you, Cadfael, to be turning horribly into a crown official? That I should not like!”

  “No,” said Cadfael judicially, “you’re not too far gone. Still a glint in the eye and a quirk in the mind. You’ll do yet!”

  “Gracious in you! And you say this Bristol merchant struck the silly wretch down without provocation?”

  “He imagined provocation. The boy laid a detaining hand on his arm from behind, meaning no ill, but the man took fright. He had a staff in his hand, he turned on him and hit out. Felled him like an ox! I doubt if he had the strength to knock the trestle from under a stall, after that. For all I know, he may be fallen out of his senses, somewhere, unless his friends have kept their hands on him.”

  Hugh looked at him across the trestle on which their own elbows were spread, and smiled. “If ever I want for an advocate, I’ll come running to you. Well, I do know the lad, he has a well-hung tongue, and lets it wag far too freely, and he has a hot temper and a warm heart, and lets the pair of them run away with his own sense—if you claim he has any!”

  The lay porter put his bald brown crown and round red face into the room. “My lord, there’s a lady here at the gate has a trouble on her mind, and asks a word. One Mistress Emma Vernold, niece to the merchant Thomas of Bristol. Will you have her come in?”

  They looked at each other across the board with raised brows and startled eyes. “The same man?” said Beringar, marvelling.

  “The same man, surely! And the same girl! But the uproar was all over. What can she be wanting here at this hour, and what’s her uncle about, letting her venture loose into the night?”

  “We’d best be finding out,” said Hugh, resigned. “Let the lady come in, if I’m the man she wants.”

  “She asked first for a guest here, Ivo Corbière, but I know he’s still out viewing the preparations along the Foregate. And when I mentioned that you were here, she begged a word with you. Glad to find the law here and awake, seemingly.”

  “Ask her to step in, then. And Cadfael, stay, if you’ll be so good, she’s had speech with you already, she may be glad of a known face.”

  Emma Vernold came in hurriedly yet hesitantly, unsure of herself in this unfamiliar place, and made a hasty reverence. “My lord, I pray your pardon for troubling you so late…” She saw Brother Cadfael, and half-smiled, relieved but distracted. “I am Emma Vernold, I came with my uncle, Thomas of Bristol, we have our own living-space on his barge by the bridge. And this is my uncle’s man Gregory.” It was the youngest of the three who attended her, a gawky, lean but powerful fellow of about twenty.

  Beringar took her by the hand and put her into a seat by the table. “I’m here to serve you, as best I can. What’s your trouble?”

  “Sir, my uncle went to see to the stocking of his booth at the horse-fair, it was not long after the good brother here left us. You’ll have heard all that happened, below there? My uncle went to join his other two men, who were busy there before him, and left only Gregor
y with me. But that’s nearly two hours ago, and he has not come back.”

  “He will have brought a great deal of merchandise with him,” suggested Hugh reasonably. “It takes time to arrange things to the best vantage, and I imagine your uncle will have things done well.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed he will. But it isn’t just that he is so long. The two men with him were his journeyman, Roger Dod, and the porter Warin, and Warin sleeps in the booth to mind the goods. Roger came back to the barge an hour ago, and was surprised not to find my uncle back, for he said he left the booth well before him. We thought perhaps he had met some acquaintance on the way, and stopped to exchange the news with him, so we waited some while, but still he did not come. And now I have been back to the booth with Gregory, to see if by some chance he had turned back there for something, something forgotten, perhaps. But he has not, and Warin says, as Roger does, that my uncle left first, intending to come straight home to me, it being so late. He never liked—he does not like,” she amended, paling, “for me to be alone with the men, without his company.” Her eyes were steady and clear, but her lip quivered, and there was the faint suggestion of disquiet even in the unflinching firmness of her regard.

  She knows she is fair, Cadfael thought, and she’s right to take account of it. It may even be that one of them—Roger Dod, the most privileged of the three, perhaps?—has a fancy for her, and she knows that, too, and has no fancy for him, and whether justly or not, is uneasy about being close to him without her guardian by.

  “And you are sure he has not made his way home by some other way,” asked Hugh, “while you’ve been seeking him at his booth?”