St Peter's Fair bc-4

by Ellis Peters

  But for all that, and however angelically, the girl’s lying. What was it stuck in your craw, and brought you up against the same shock before ever it dawned upon me?”

  “I should be sorry,” said Cadfael slowly, “if anything I have done or said made you think any evil of the girl, for I think none.”

  “Neither do I, you need not fear it. But I do think she may be meddling in something she would do better to let well alone, and I would rather, as you would, as Abbot Radulfus would, that no harm should come to her under our care.

  Or ever, for that matter. I like her well.”

  “When we went together to the barge,” said Cadfael,” and she took no more than a minute within to cry out that someone had been there, pawing through all their belongings, I never doubted she was telling truth. Women know how they leave things, it needs only a wrong fold to betray an alien hand, and certainly it shocked and startled her, that was no feigning. Nor was it the next moment, when I asked if anything had been taken, and without pause for thought, she said: ‘No!’ An absolute no, I would say even triumphant. I thought little of it, then, but urged her to look thoroughly and make sure. When I said she must report the matter, she thought again, and took pains to discover that indeed a few things had been stolen. I think she regretted that ever she had cried out in the first place, but if the law must know of it, she would ensure that it was accepted as a trivial theft by some common pick-purse. Truth is what she told unguardedly, with that scornful ‘no’ of hers. Afterwards she made to undo the effect by lying, and for one not by nature a liar she did it well. But for all that, I think, like you, those pretty things of hers never existed, or never were aboard the barge.”

  “Still remains the question,” said Hugh, considering, “of why she was so sure in the first place that nothing had been taken.”

  “Because,” said Cadfael simply, “she knew what the thief must have come looking for, and she knew he had not found it, because she knew it was not there to be found. The second search was also vain. Whatever it may be, it was not on Master Thomas’s person, which was clearly the most likely place, nor was it on his barge.”

  “Hence this third search! So now divine for me, Cadfael, whether this third attempt has succeeded or no. The merchant’s strongbox is vanished—again a logical place to keep something so precious. Will this be the end of it?”

  Cadfael shook his head emphatically. “This attempt has fared no better than the others,” he said positively. “You may take that as certain.”

  “How can you be so sure of it?” demanded Hugh curiously.

  “You saw all that I saw. She does not care a farthing for the loss of the strongbox! As soon as she knew that the man Warm was unhurt, she took everything else calmly enough. Whatever it is the unknown is seeking, she knew it was not in the barge, and she knew it was not in the booth. And I can think of only one reason why she should know so well where it is not, and that is that she knows equally well where it is.”

  “Then the next possibility the enemy will be considering,” said Hugh with conviction, “is where she is—on her person or in some hiding-place only she knows of. Well, we’ll keep a vigilant eye on Emma, between us. No,” said Hugh reflectively, “I cannot imagine any evil of her, but neither can I imagine how she can be tangled in something grim enough to bring about murder, violence and theft, nor why, if she knows herself to be in danger and in need of help, she won’t speak out and ask for it. Aline has tried her best to get her to confide, and the girl remains all sweetness and gratitude, but lets no word drop of any burden she may be carrying. And you know Aline, she draws out confidences without ever asking a probing question, and whoever can resist her is beyond the reach of the rest of us …”

  “I’m glad to see you so fond a husband,” said Cadfael approvingly.

  “So you should be, it was you tossed the girl into my arms in the first place.

  You’d best be worrying now about what manner of father I shall make! And you might put in a prayer for me on the issue, some time when you’re on your knees.

  No, truly, Cadfael … I wonder about this girl. Aline likes her, and that’s recommendation enough. And she seems to like Aline—no, more than like! Yet she never lets down her veils. When she seems most to cherish my most cherishable lady, she is also more careful not to let slip one unguarded word about her own situation.”

  Brother Cadfael saw no paradox there. “So she would be, Hugh,” he said gravely.

  “If she feels herself to be in danger, the last thing she will do is to draw in beside her someone she values and likes. By every means in her power—and I think she is a clever and resourceful girl—she will stand off her friends from any share in what she is about.”

  Beringar considered that long and sombrely, nursing his empty horn. “Well, all we can do is hedge her about thick enough to stand off, likewise, whatever move may be made against her.”

  It had not occurred to him, it was only now insinuating itself into Cadfael’s thoughts, that the next decisive move might come from Emma herself, rather than being made against her. A piece of this mystery, apparently the vital piece, she had in her hands; if any use was to be made of it, it might well be at her decree.

  Hugh set aside his drinking-horn and rose, brushing the summer dust from his cotte. “Meantime, the sheriff is left with a murder on his hands, and I tell you, Cadfael, that affair now looks less than ever like a drunken revenge by an aggrieved youth of the town—though to tell truth, it never did look too convincing, even if we could not discard it out of hand.”

  “Surely there’s good ground now for letting the provost bail his lad out and take him home?” said Cadfael, encouraged. “Of all the young men around this town, Philip must be the clearest from any suspicion of this last outrage, or the raid on the barge, either. The gaoler who turns the key on him can witness where he’s been all this while, and swear he never left it.”

  “I’m off to the castle now,” said Hugh. “I can’t vouch for the sheriff, but I’ll certainly speak a word in his ear, and in the provost’s, too. It’s well worth making the approach.”

  He looked down, flashing out of his preoccupation with a sudden mischievous smile, combed the fingers of one hand through the hedge of bushy greying hair that rimmed Cadfael’s sunburned tonsure, leaving it bristling like thorn-bushes, snapped a finger painfully against the nut-brown dome between, and took his departure with his usual light stride and insouciant bearing, which the unwary mistook for the mark of a frivolous man. Such small indulgences he was more likely to permit himself, strictly with friends, when he was engaged on something more than usually grave.

  Cadfael watched him go, absently smoothing down the warlike crest Hugh had erected. He supposed he had better be stirring, too, and hand over charge here to Brother Mark until evening. It would not do to take his eyes off Emma for any length of time, and Aline, to please a solicitous husband, consented to doze for an hour or two in the afternoon, for the sake of the child. Grandchildren by proxy, Cadfael reflected, might be a rare and pleasurable recompense for a celibate prime. As for old age, he had not yet begun to think about it; no doubt it had its own alleviations.

  CHAPTER 2

  For all I said,” Emma mused aloud, putting fine stitches into a linen band for an infant’s cap, in the lofty midday light in the window of Aline’s bedchamber, “I do grieve for those gloves of mine. Such fine leather, supple and black, and a wealth of gold in the embroidery. I never bought such expensive ones before.”

  She reached the end of her seam, and snipped off the thread neatly. “They say there’s a very good glover has a stall in the fair,” she said, smoothing her work. “I thought I might take a look at his wares, and see if he has anything as fine as those I’ve lost. They tell me he’s well known in Chester, and the countess buys from him. I think perhaps I’ll walk along the Foregate this afternoon, and see what he has. What with all these upsets, I’ve hardly seen anything of the fair.”

  “A good idea,” said Ali
ne. “Such a fine day, we should not be spending it here within doors. I’ll come with you.” “Oh, no, you should not,” protested Emma solicitously. “You nave not had your sleep this afternoon. No need to keep me company that short way. I should be distressed if you tired yourself on my account.”

  “Oh, folly!” said Aline cheerfully. “I am so healthy I shall burst if I have too little to do. It’s Constance and Hugh who want to make an invalid of me, just because I’m in a woman’s best and happiest estate. And Hugh is gone to the sheriff, and Constance is visiting with a cousin of hers in the Wyle, so who’s to fret? I’ll slip on my shoes, and we’ll go. I should like to buy a box of those sugared fruits your uncle brought from the east. We’ll do that, too.”

  It seemed that Emma had, after all, lost her taste for the expedition. She sat stroking the embroidered band she had just finished, and eyed the shape of linen cut for the crown. “I don’t know—I should finish this, perhaps. After tomorrow there may be no choice, and I should be sorry to leave it for someone else to finish. As for the candied fruits, I’ll ask Roger to bring you a box, when he comes again this evening to tell me how the day has gone. Tomorrow it will be here.”

  “That’s kind,” said Aline, slipping on her shoes none the less, “but he could hardly try on a pair of gloves for you, or choose with your eye. So let’s go and see for ourselves. It won’t take long.”

  Emma sat hesitating, but whether in a genuine endeavour to make up her mind, or in search of a way of extricating herself from an unsatisfactory situation, Aline could not be sure. “Oh, no, I should not! How can I give my mind to such vanity, at a time like this! I’m ashamed that I ever thought of it. My uncle dead, and here am I yearning after trumpery bits of finery. No, I won’t be so shallow. Let me at least go on with my work for the child, instead of thinking only of my own adornment.” And she picked up the cut linen. Aline noted that the hand holding it trembled a little, and wondered whether to persist. Plainly the girl wanted to go forth for some purpose of her own, but would not go unless it could be alone. And alone, said Aline firmly to herself, she certainly shall not go, if I can prevent.

  “Well,” she said doubtfully, “if you’re determined to be so penitential, I won’t play the devil and tempt you. And I’m the gainer, your sewing is so fine, I could never match it. Who taught you so well?” She slipped off her soft leather shoes, and sat down again. Something, at least, she had learned, better to let well alone now. Emma welcomed the change of subject eagerly. Of her childhood she would talk freely.

  “My mother was a famous embroidress. She began to teach me as soon as I could manage a needle, but she died when I was only eight, and Uncle Thomas took me in. We had a housekeeper, a Flemish lady who had married a Bristol seaman, and been widowed when his ship was lost, and she taught me everything she knew, though I could never equal her work. She used to make altar cloths and vestments for the church, such beautiful things …”

  So a plain pair of good black gloves, thought Aline, would have done well enough for you at any time, since you could have adorned them to your own fancy. And those who can do such things exquisitely, seldom prefer the work of others.

  It was not difficult to keep Emma talking, but for all that, Aline could not help wondering what was going through the girl’s mind, and how soon, and how cunningly, she would make the next bid to slip away solitary about her mysterious business. But as it fell out, she need not have troubled, for late in the afternoon came a lay brother from the gatehouse, to announce that Martin Bellecote had brought down Master Thomas’s coffin, and desired permission to proceed with his business. Emma rose instantly, laying down her sewing, her face pale and intent. If there was one thing certain, it was that no other matter, however urgent, would take her away from the church until her uncle was decently coffined and sealed down for his journey home, and prayers said for his repose, as later she would attend the first Mass for him. Whatever he had been to others, he had been uncle and father and friend to his orphaned kinswoman, and no reverence, no tribute, would be omitted from his obsequies.

  “I will come myself,” said Emma. “I must say farewell to him.” She had not yet seen him, dead, but the brothers, long expert in the gentle arts that reconcile life to death, would have made sure that she would be able to remember him without distress.

  “Shall I come with you?” offered Aline.

  “You are very good, but I would rather go alone.”

  Aline followed as far as the great court, and watched the little procession cross to the cloister, Emma walking beside the handcart on which Martin and his son wheeled the coffin. When they had lifted the heavy box and carried it in by the south door of the church, with Emma following, Aline stood for some minutes looking about her. At this hour most of the guests and many of the lay servants were out at the fair, only the brothers went about their business as usual.

  Through the wide gate of the distant stable-yard she could see Ivo Corbičre’s young groom rubbing down a pony, and the archer Turstan Fowler sitting on a mountingblock, whistling as he burnished a saddle. Sober and recovered from his debauch, he was a well-set-up and comely fellow, with the open face of one who has not a care in the world. Evidently he was long since forgiven, and back in favour.

  Brother Cadfael, coming from the gardens, saw her still gazing pensively towards the church. She smiled at sight of him.

  “Martin has brought the coffin. They are within there, she’ll think of nothing else now. But, Cadfael, she intends to give us all the slip when she can. She has tried. She would see, she said, if the glover at the fair has something to take the place of the ones she lost. But when I said I would go with her, no, that would not do, she gave up the idea.”

  “Gloves!” murmured Brother Cadfael, scrubbing thoughtfully at his chin.

  “Strange, when you think of it, that it should be gloves she has on her mind, in the middle of summer.”

  Aline was in no position to follow that thought, she took it at its surface meaning. “Why strange? We know there were some stolen from her, and here we are at one of the few fairs where rare goods are to be bought, it follows naturally enough. But of course the glover is only a handy excuse.”

  Cadfael said no more then, but he went away very thoughtfully towards the cloister. The strange thing was not that a girl should want to replace, while chance offered, a lost piece of finery. It was rather that when she was suddenly confronted by the need to pass off as simple robbery a raid she knew to be something very different, one of the articles she claimed to have lost should be a thing so inappropriate to the season that she felt obliged to account for it by saying she had newly bought it in Gloucester on the journey. Why gloves, unless she had gloves running in her mind already for another reason? Gloves? Or glovers?

  In the transept chapel Martin Bellecote and his young son set up the heavy coffin on a draped trestle, and reverently laid the body of Master Thomas of Bristol within it. Emma stood looking down at her uncle’s dead face for a long time, without tears or words. It would not be painful, she found, to remember him thus, dignified and remote in death, the bones of his cheeks and brow and jaw more strongly outlined than in life, his florid flesh contracted and paled into waxen austerity. Now at the last moment she wanted to give him something to take with him into his grave, and realised that in the buffeting of these two days she had not been able to think clearly enough to be ready for the parting.

  Not the fact of death, but the absolute need of some ceremonial tenderness, separate from the public rites, suddenly seemed to her overwhelmingly important.

  “Shall I cover him?” asked Martin Bellecote gently.

  Even so soft a sound startled her. She looked round almost wonderingly. The man, large, comely and calm, waited her orders without impatience. The boy, grave and silent, watched her with huge hazel eyes. From her four years’ superiority over him she pondered whether so young a creature should be doing this office, and then she understood that those eyes were preoccupied rather with
her living self than with the dead, and the vigorous, flowing sap in him reached up towards light and life as to the sun, and recognised shadow only by virtue of its neighbouring brightness. That was right and good.

  “No, wait just a moment,” she said. “I’ll come back!”

  She went quickly out into the sunlight, and looked about her for the path that led into the gardens. The green lines of a hedge and the crowns of trees within drew her, she came into a walk where flowers had been planted. The brothers were great gardeners, and valued food crops for good reason, but they had time also for roses. She chose the one bush that bore a bloom like no other, pale yellow petals shading into rose at the tips, and plucked one flower only. Not the buds, not even the one perfect globe, but a wide-open bloom just beyond its prime but still unflawed. She took it back, hurrying, into the church with her. He was not young, not even at his zenith, but settling into his autumn, and this was the rose for him.

  Brother Cadfael had watched her go, he watched her come again, and followed her into the chapel, but held aloof in the shadows. She brought her single flower and laid it in the coffin, beside the dead man’s heart.

  “Cover him now,” she said, and stood well back to let them work in peace. When it was done, she thanked them, and they withdrew and left her there, as clearly was her wish. So, just as silently, did Brother Cadfael.

  Emma remained kneeling on the stones of the transept, unaware of discomfort, a great while, her eyes wide open all that time upon the closed coffin, on its draped stand before the altar. To lie thus in the church of a great abbey, to have a special Mass sung for him, and then to be taken home in a grand coffin for burial with still further rites, surely that was glory, and he would have liked it. All was to be done as he would have liked. All! He would be pleased with her.