St. Peter's Fair

by Ellis Peters

  Rhodri clenched the fingers of both hands in the edge of the door, set a broad foot against the timber wall, and hauled mightily, square shoulders gathered in one great heave. Wood splintered about the lock, small flinders flying like motes of dust, and the door burst open. Rhodri swayed and recovered in recoil, and was first through the opening, but Cadfael was after him fast enough to ensure that the Welshman touched nothing within. They craned into the gloom together, cheek by jowl.

  The glover’s stall was in chaos, shelves swept clear, goods scattered like grain over the floor. On a straw palliasse along the rear wall his cloak lay sprawled, and on an iron stand beside, a quenched candle sagged in folds of tallow. It took them a few seconds to accustom their eyes to the dimness and see clearly. Tangled in his spilled stock of belts, baldricks, gloves, purses and saddle-bags, Euan of Shotwick lay on his back, knees drawn up, a coarse sacking bag drawn half-over his lean face and greying head. Beneath the hem of the hood his thin-lipped mouth grinned open in a painful rictus, large white teeth staring, and the angle at which his head lay had the horrible suggestion of a broken wooden puppet.

  Cadfael turned and flung up the shutter of the booth, letting in the morning light. He stooped to touch the contorted neck and hollow cheek. “Cold,” said Rhodri, behind him, not attempting to verify his judgment, which for all that was accurate enough. Euan’s flesh was chilling. “He’s dead,” said Rhodri flatly.

  “Some hours,” said Cadfael.

  In the stress of the moment he had forgotten Emma, but the shriek she gave caused him to swing round in haste and dismay. She had crept in fearfully to peer over the shoulders of the neighbours, and stood staring with eyes wide with horror, both small fists crushed against her mouth. “Oh, no!” she said in a whisper. “Not dead! Not he, too…”

  Cadfael took her in his arms, and thrust her bodily before him out of the booth, elbowing the gaping onlookers out of his way. “Go back! You mustn’t stay here. Go back before you’re missed, and leave this to me.” He wondered if she even heard his rapid murmur into her ear; she was shaking and white as milk, her blue eyes fixed and huge with shock. He looked about him urgently for someone to whom he could safely confide her, for he doubted if she should be left to return alone, and yet he did not care to leave this scene until Beringar should be here to take charge, or one of the sheriff’s sergeants at least. The sudden alarmed shout of recognition that came from the rear of the gathering crowd was a most welcome sound.

  “Emma! Emma!” Ivo Corbière came cleaving an unceremonious way through the press, like a sudden vehement wind in a cornfield, bludgeoning the standing stems out of its path. She turned at the call, and a spark of returning life sprang up in her eyes. Thankfully Cadfael thrust her into the young man’s arms, which reached eagerly and anxiously to receive her.

  “For God’s sake, what has happened to her? What…” His glance flashed from her stunned visage to Cadfael’s, and beyond, to the open door with its splintered panel. Over her head his lips framed silently for Cadfael: “Not again? Another?”

  “Take her back,” said Cadfael shortly. “Take care of her. And tell Hugh Beringar to come. We have sheriff’s business here within.”

  *

  All the way back along the Foregate, Corbière kept a supporting arm about her, and curbed his long stride to hers, and all the way he poured soothing, caressing words into her ear, while she, until they had almost reached the west door of the church, said nothing at all, simply walked docilely beside him, distantly aware of the lulling sound and the comforting touch. Then suddenly she said: “He’s dead. I saw him, I know.”

  “A bare glimpse you had,” said Ivo consolingly. “It may not be so.”

  “No,” said Emma, “I know the man is dead. How could it happen? Why?”

  “There are always such acts, somewhere, robberies, violence and evil. It is sad, but it is not new.” His fingers pressed her hand warmly. “It is no fault of yours, and alas, there is nothing you or I can do about it. I wish I could make you forget it. In time you will forget.”

  “No,” she said. “I shall never forget this.”

  She had meant to return by the church, as she had left, but now it no longer mattered. As far as he or any other was concerned, she had simply set out early to buy some gloves, or at least to view what the glover had to offer. She went in with Ivo by the gatehouse. By the time he had brought her tenderly on his arm to the guest-hall she had regained her composure. There was a little colour in her face again, and her voice was alive, even if its tone indicated that life was painful.

  “I’m recovered now, Ivo,” she said. “You need not trouble for me further. I will tell Hugh Beringar that he is needed.”

  “Brother Cadfael entrusted you to me,” said Ivo with gentle and confident authority, “and you did not reject me. I shall fulfil my errand exactly. As I hope,” he said smiling, “I may perform any other missions you may care to entrust to me hereafter.”

  *

  Hugh Beringar came with four of the sheriff’s men, dispersed the crowd that hung expectantly round the booth of Euan of Shotwick, and listened to the accounts rendered by the neighbouring stall-holders, by the butcher from over the road, and by Rhodri ap Huw, for whom Cadfael interpreted sentence by sentence. In no haste to go, for as he said, his best lad was back with the boat from Bridgnorth and competent to take charge of what stock he still had to sell, the Welshman nonetheless showed no unbecoming desire to linger, once his witness was taken. Imperturbable and all-beholding, he ambled away at the first indication that the law had done with him. Others, more persistent, hung about the booth in a silent, watchful circle, but were kept well away from earshot. Beringar drew the door to. The opened hatches gave light enough.

  “Can I take the man’s account for fair and true?” asked Hugh, casting a glance after Rhodri’s retreating back. There was no backward glance from the Welshman, his assurance was absolute.

  “To the letter, for all that happened here from the time I came on the scene. He’s an excellent observer, there’s little he misses of what concerns him, or may concern him, and what does not. He does business, too, his trade here is no pretext. But it may be only half his business that we see.”

  There were only the two of them within there now, two living and the dead man. They stood one either side of him, drawn back to avoid disturbing either his body or the litter of leatherwork scattered about and over him.

  “He says there was a light showing through the chinks here past midnight,” said Beringar. “The light is quenched now, not burned out. And if he locked his door after closing the booth for the night…”

  “As he would,” said Cadfael. “Rhodri’s account of him rings true. A man complete in himself, trusting no one, able to take care of himself, until now. He would have locked his door.”

  “Then he also unlocked it, to let in his murderer. The lock never was forced until now, as you saw. Why should a wary man unlock his door to anyone in the small hours?”

  “Because he was expecting someone,” said Cadfael, “though not the someone who came. Because, it may be, he had been expecting someone all these three days, and was relieved when the expected message came at last.”

  “So relieved that he ceased to be cautious? Given your Welshman’s estimate of him, I should doubt it.”

  “So should I,” agreed Cadfael, “unless there was a private word he was waiting for, and it was known and given. A name, perhaps. For you see, Hugh, I think he was already well aware that the one he had expected to deliver the message was never going to tap at his door by night, or stop in the Foregate to pass the time with him.”

  “You mean,” said Hugh, “Thomas of Bristol, who is dead.”

  “Who else? How many strange chances can come together, all against what is likely, or even possible? A merchant is killed, his barge searched, his booth searched, then, dear God, his coffin! I have not yet had time, Hugh, to tell you of that.” He told it now. He had the rose-petal in the breast of his ha
bit, wrapped in a scrap of linen; it still spoke as eloquently as before. “You may trust my eyes, I know it did not fall earlier, I know it has been in the coffin with him. Now that same man’s niece makes occasion to come by stealth to this glover’s stall, only to find the glover dead like her uncle. It is a long list of assaults upon all things connected with Thomas of Bristol. Now, since this unknown treasure was not found even in his coffin, for safe-conduct back to Bristol in default of delivery, the next point of search has been here—where Master Thomas should have delivered it.”

  “They would need to have foreknowledge of that.”

  “Or good reason to guess aright.”

  “By your witness,” said Hugh, pondering, “the coffin was opened and closed between Compline and Matins. Before midnight. When would you say, Cadfael—your experience is longer than mine—when would you say this man died?”

  “In the small hours. By the second hour after midnight, I judge, he was dead. After the coffin, it seems, they were forced to the conclusion that somehow, for all they had a watch on Master Thomas from his arrival, and disposed of him before ever the fair started, yet somehow he, or someone else on his behalf, must have slipped through their net, and delivered the precious charge. This poor soul certainly opened his door last night to someone he believed had business with him. The mention of a privileged name… a password… He let in his murderer, but what he had expected was the thing promised.”

  “Then even now,” said Hugh sharply, “with two murders on their souls, they have not what they wanted. He thought they were bringing it. They trusted to find it here. And neither of them had it. Both were deceived.” He brooded with a brown fist clamping his jaw, and his black brows down-drawn in unaccustomed solemnity. “And Emma came here… by stealth.”

  “She did. Not every man,” said Cadfael, “has your view of women, or mine. Most of your kind, most of mine, would never dream of looking in a woman’s direction to find anything of importance in hand. Especially a mere child, barely grown. Not until every other road was closed, and they were forced to notice a woman there in the thick of the matter. Who just might be what they sought.”

  “And who has now betrayed herself,” said Hugh grimly. “Well, at least she reached the guest-hall safely, thanks to Corbière. I have left her with Aline, very shaken, for all her strength of will, and she will not stir a step this day unguarded. That I can promise. Between us I think we can take care of Emma. Now let’s see if this poor wretch has anything to tell us that we don’t yet know.”

  He stooped and drew back the coarse sack that covered half the glover’s narrow face, from eyebrow on one side to jaw on the other. A broken bruise in the greying hair above the left temple indicated a right-handed blow as soon as the door was opened to his visitor, meant to stun him, probably, until he could be muffled in the sack and gagged like Warin. Here it was a case of gaining entry and confronting a wide-awake man, not a timid sleeper.

  “Much the same manner as the other one,” said Cadfael, “and I doubt if they ever meant to kill. But he was not so easily put out of the reckoning. He put up a fight. And his neck is broken. By the look of it, one made round behind him to secure this blindfold, and in the struggle he gave them, tried all too hard to haul him backwards by it. He was wiry and agile, but his bones were aging, and too brittle to sustain it. I don’t think it was intended. We should have found him neatly bound and still alive, like Warin, if he had not fought them. Once they knew he was dead, they made their search in haste, and left all as it fell.”

  Beringar brushed aside the light tangle of girdles and straps and gloves that littered the floor and lay over the body. Euan’s right arm was covered from the elbow down by the skirts of his own gown, kicked out of the way of the searchers in their hunt. When the folds were drawn down Hugh let out a sharp whistle of surprise, for in the dead man’s hand was a long poniard, the naked blade grooved, and ornamented with gilding near the hilt. At his belt, half-hidden now under his right hip, the scabbard lay empty.

  “A man of his hands! And see, he’s marked one of them for us!” There was blood on the point of the blade, and drawn up by the grooving for some three fingers’ breadth in two thin crimson lines, now drying to black.

  “Rhodri ap Huw said of him,” Cadfael remembered, “that he was a solitary soul who trusted nobody—his own porter and his own watchman. He said he wore a weapon, and knew how to use it.” He went on his knees beside the body, and cleared away the debris that still lay about it, eying and handling from head to foot. “You’ll have him away to the castle, I suppose, or the abbey, and look him over more carefully, but I do believe the only blood he’s lost is this smear on his brow. This on the dagger is not his.”

  “If only we could as easily say whose it is!” said Hugh dryly, sitting on his heels with the nimbleness of the young on the other side of the body. Brother Cadfael eased creaky elderly knees on the hard boards, and briefly envied him. The young man lifted the stiffening arm, and tested the grip of the clenched fingers. “He holds fast!” It took him some effort to loosen the convulsive grasp enough to slip the hilt of the dagger free. In the slanting light from the open hatch something gleamed briefly, waving at the tip of the blade, and again vanished, as motes of dust come and go in gold in bright sunlight. There was also what seemed at first to be a thin encrustation of blood fringing the steel on one edge. Cadfael exclaimed, leaning to point. “A yellow hair—There it shows again!” The flashing gleam curled and twisted as Hugh turned the dagger in his hand.

  “Not a hair, a fine, yellowish thread. Thread of flax, not bleached. This grooving has ripped out a shred of cloth, and the blood has stuck it fast. See!”

  A mere wisp of brown material it was, a fringe along the groove that had held it. Narrow as a blade of grass, but when Cadfael carefully took hold of a thread at the end and drew it out straight, it stretched to the length of his hand. The colour, though fouled by dried blood, showed plain at one edge, a light russet-brown; and at the end of the sliver floated gaily the long, fine flax thread, scalloped like a curly hair.

  “A sliced tear a hand long,” said Cadfael, “and ending at a hem, for surely this thread sewed the edging, and the dagger ripped out a length of the stitching.” He narrowed his eyes, and considered, imagining Euan facing the door as he opened it, the instant blow that failed to tame him, and then his rapid drawing of his poniard and striking with it. Almost brow to brow and breast to breast, a man good with his right hand, and his attacker’s heart an open target.

  “He struck for the heart,” said Cadfael with conviction. “So would I, or so would I have done once. The other man, surely, slipped behind him and spoiled the stroke, but that is where he aimed. Someone, somewhere, has a torn cotte. It might be in the left breast, or it might be in the sleeve. The man’s arms would be raised, reaching to grapple him. I should say the left sleeve, ripping from the hem halfway to the elbow. The sewing thread was caught first, and pulled out a length of stitches.”

  Hugh considered that respectfully, and found no fault with it. “Much of a scratch, would you guess? He did not drip blood to the doorway. It could not have been enough to need much stanching.”

  “The sleeve would hold it. Likely only a graze, but a long graze. It will be there to be seen.”

  “If we knew where to look!” Hugh gave a short bark of laughter at the thought of sending sergeants about this teeming marketplace to ask every man to roll up his left sleeve and show his arm. “A simple matter! Still, no reason why you and I, and all the men I can spare and trust, should not be keeping our eyes open all the rest of this day for a torn sleeve—or a newly cobbled one.”

  He rose, and turned to beckon his nearest man from the open hatch. “Well, we’ll have him away from here, and do what we can. A word with your Rhodri ap Huw wouldn’t come amiss, and I fancy you might get more out of him in his own tongue than ever I should at second hand. If he knows this man so well, prick him on to talk, and bring me what you learn.”

  �
�That I’ll do,” said Cadfael, clambering stiffly from his knees.

  “I must go first to the castle, and report what we’ve found. One thing I’ll make certain of this time,” said Hugh. “The sheriff was in no mood to listen too carefully last night, but after this he’ll have to turn young Corviser loose on his father’s warranty, like the rest of them. It would take a more pig-headed man than Prestcote to believe the lad had any part in the first death, seeing the trail of offences that have followed while he was in prison. He shall eat his dinner at home today.”

  *

  Rhodri was not merely willing to spend an hour pouring the fruits of his wisdom and experience into Brother Cadfael’s ear, he was hovering with that very thing in mind as soon as the corpse of Euan of Shotwick had been carried away, and the booth closed, with one of the sheriff’s men on guard. Though ever-present, he had the gift of being unobtrusive until he chose to obtrude, and then could appear from an unexpected direction, and as casually as if only chance had brought him there.

  “No doubt you’ll have sold all you brought with you,” said Cadfael, encountering him thus between the stalls, clearly untroubled by business.

  “Goods of quality are recognized everywhere,” said Rhodri, sharp eyes twinkling merrily. “My lads are clearing the last few jars of honey, and the wool’s long gone. But I’ve a half-full bottle there, if you care to share a cup at this hour? Mead, not wine, but you’ll be happy with that, being a Welshman yourself.”

  They sat on heaped trestles already freed from their annual use by the removal of small tradesmen who had sold out their stock, and set the bottle between them.

  “And what,” asked Cadfael, with a jerk of his head towards the guarded booth, “do you make of that affair this morning? After all that’s gone before? Have we more birds of prey this way than usual, do you think? It may be they’ve taken fright and left the shires where there’s still fighting, and we get the burden of it.”