St. Peter's Fair (2 page)

“To
say outright what I suppose,” said the provost warmly, “I never supposed for a
moment that the thought of justice entered into it. I make no murmur against
what his Grace chose to do, but it’s plain he held Shrewsbury to be a hostile
town, and most like still does hold it so, because
Fitz Alan, who
is fled to France now, garrisoned the castle and kept it over a month against
him. But small say we of the town ever had in the matter, and little we could
have done about it! The castle declared for the Empress Maud, and we must put
up with the consequences, while Fitz Alan’s away, safe out of reach. My lord
abbot, is that justice?”

“Are
you making the claim that his Grace, by confirming the abbey in its rights, is
taking revenge on the town?” asked the abbot with soft and perilous gentleness.

“I
am saying that he never so much as gave the town a thought, or its injuries a
look, or he might have made some concession.”

“Ah!
Then should not this appeal of yours be addressed rather to the Lord Gilbert
Prestcote, who is the king’s sheriff, and no doubt has his ear, rather than to
us?”

“It
has been so addressed, though not with regard to the fair. It is not for the
sheriff to give away any part of what has been bestowed on the abbey. Only you,
Father, can do that,” said Geoffrey Corviser briskly. It began to be apparent
that the provost knew his way about among the pitfalls of words every bit as
well as did the abbot.

“And
what answer did you get from the sheriff?”

“He
will do nothing for us until his own walls at the castle are made good. He
promises us the loan of labour when work there is finished, but labour we could
supply, it’s money and materials we need, and it will be a year or more before
he’s ready to turn over even a handful of his men to our needs. In such a case,
Father, do you wonder that we find the fair a burden?”

“Yet
we have our needs, too, as urgent to us as yours to you,” said the abbot after
a thoughtful moment of silence. “And I would remind you, our lands and
possessions here lie outside the town walls, even outside the loop of the
river, two protections you enjoy that we do not share. Should we, men, be asked
to pay tolls for what cannot apply to us?”

“Not
all your possessions,” said the provost promptly. “There are within the town
some thirty or more messuages in your hold, and your tenants within them, and
their children have to wade in the kennels of broken streets as ours do, and
their horses break legs where the paving is shattered, as ours do.”

“Our tenants enjoy fair treatment from us, and
considerate rents, and for such matters we are responsible. But we cannot be
held responsible for the town’s dilapidations, as we can for those here on our
own lands. No,” said the abbot, raising his voice peremptorily when the provost
would have resumed his arguments, “say no more! We have heard and understood
your case, and we are not without sympathy. But Saint Peter’s Fair is a sacred
right granted to this house, on terms we did not draw up; it is a right that
inheres not to me as a man, but to this house, and I in my passing tenure have
no authority to change or mitigate those terms in the smallest degree. It would
be an offence against the king’s Grace, who has confirmed the charter, and an
offence against those my successors, for it could be taken and cited as a
precedent for future years. No, I will not set aside any part of the profits of
the fair to your use, I will not increase the fee we pay you for it, I will not
share in any proportion the tolls on goods and stalls. All belong here, and all
must be gathered here, according to the charter.” He saw half a dozen mouths
open to protest against so summary a dismissal, and rose in his place, very
tall and straight, and chill of voice and eye. “This chapter is concluded,” he
said.

There
were one or two among the delegation who would still have tried to insist, but Geoffrey
Corviser had a better notion of his own and the town’s dignity, and a shrewder
idea of what might or might not impress that self-assured and austere man. He
made the abbot a deep, abrupt reverence, turned on his heel, and strode out of
the chapter-house, and his defeated company recovered their wits and marched as
haughtily after him.

There
were booths already going up in the great triangle of the horse-fair, and all
along the Foregate from the bridge to the corner of the enclosure, where the
road veered right towards Saint Giles, and the king’s highway to London . There
was a newly-erected wooden jetty downstream from the bridge, where the long
riverside stretch of the main abbey gardens and orchards began, the rich
lowland known as the Gaye. By river, by road, afoot through the forests and
over the border from Wales, traders of all kinds began to make their way to
Shrewsbury . And into the great court of the
abbey flocked all
the gentry of the shire, and of neighbouring shires, too, lordlings, knights,
yeomen, with their wives and daughters, to take up residence in the overflowing
guest-halls for the three days of the annual fair. Subsistence goods they grew,
or bred, or brewed, or wove, or span for themselves, the year round, but once a
year they came to buy the luxury cloths, the fine wines, the rare preserved
fruits, the gold and silver work, all the treasures that appeared on the feast
of Saint Peter ad Vincula, and vanished three days later. To these great fairs
came merchants even from Flanders and Germany, shippers with French wines,
shearers with the wool-clip from Wales, and clothiers with the finished goods,
gowns, jerkins, hose, town fashions come to the country. Not many of the
vendors had yet arrived, most would appear next day, on the eve of the feast,
and set up their booths during the long summer evening, ready to begin selling
early on the morrow. But the buyers were arriving in purposeful numbers
already, bent on securing good beds for their stay.

When
Brother Cadfael came up from the Meole brook and his vegetable-fields for
Vespers, after a hard and happy afternoon’s work, the great court was seething
with visitors, servants and grooms, and the traffic in and out of the stables
flowed without cease. He stood for a few minutes to watch the pageant, and
Brother Mark at his elbow glowed as he gazed, dazzled by the play of colours
and shimmer of movement in the sunlight.

“Yes,”
said Cadfael, viewing with philosophical detachment what Brother Mark
contemplated with excitement and wonder, “the world and his wife will be here,
either to buy or sell.” And he eyed his young friend attentively, for the boy
had seen little enough of the world before entering the order, being thrust
through the gates willy-nilly at sixteen by a stingy uncle who grudged him his
keep even in exchange for hard work, and he had only recently taken his final
vows. “Do you see anything there to tempt you back into the secular world?”

“No,”
said Brother Mark, promptly and serenely. “But I may look and enjoy, just as I do
in the garden when the poppies are in flower. It’s no blame to men if they try
to put into their own artifacts all the colours and shapes God put into his.”

There were certainly a few of God’s more charming
artifacts among the throng of visitors moving about the great court and the
stable-yard, young women as bright and blooming as the poppies, and all the
prettier for being in a high state of expectation, looking forward eagerly to
their one great outing of the year. Some came riding their own ponies, some
pillion behind husbands or grooms, there was even one horse-litter bringing an
important dowager from the south of the shire.

“I
never saw it so lively before,” said Mark, gazing with pleasure.

“You’ve
not lived through a fair as yet. Last year the town was under siege all through
July and into August, small hope of getting either buyers or sellers into
Shrewsbury for any such business. I had my doubts even about this year, but it
seems trade’s well on the move again, and our gentlefolk are hungrier than ever
for what they missed a year ago. It will be a profitable fair, I fancy!”

“Then
could we not have spared a tithe to help put the town in order?” demanded Mark.

“You
have a way, child, of asking the most awkward questions. I can read very well
what was in the provost’s mind, since he spoke it out in full. But I’m by no
means so sure I know what was in the abbot’s, nor that he uttered the half of
it. A hard man to read!”

Mark
had stopped listening. His eyes were on a rider who had just entered at the
gatehouse, and was walking his horse delicately through the moving throng
towards the stables. Three retainers on rough-coated ponies followed at his
heels, one of them with a cross-bow slung at his saddle. In these perilous
times, even here in regions summarily pacified so short a time ago, no
gentleman would undertake a longer journey without provision for his own
defence, and an arbalest reaches further than a sword. This young man both wore
a sword and looked as if he could use it, but he had also brought an archer
with him for security.

It
was the master who held Mark’s eyes. He was perhaps a year or two short of
thirty, past the uncertainties of first youth—if, indeed, he had ever suffered
them—and at his resplendent best. Handsomely appointed, elegantly mounted on a
glistening dark bay, he rode with the negligent ease of
one
accustomed to horses almost from birth. In the summer heat he had shed his
short riding-cotte, and had it slung over his lap, and rode with his shirt open
over a spare, muscular chest, hung with a cross on a golden chain. The body
thus displayed to view in simple linen shirt and dark hose was long and lissome
and proud of its comeliness, and the head that crowned it was bared to the
light, a smiling, animated face nicely fashioned about large, commanding dark
eyes, and haloed in a cropped cap of dark gold hair, that would have curled had
it been allowed to grow a little longer. He came and passed, and Mark’s eyes
followed him, at once tranquil and wistful, quite without any shade of envy.

“It
must be a pleasant thing,” he said thoughtfully, “to be so made as to give
pleasure to those who behold you. Do you suppose he realises his blessings?”

Mark
was rather small himself, from undernourishment from childhood, and plain of
face, with spiky, straw-coloured hair round his tonsure. Not that he ever
viewed himself much in the glass, or realised that he had a pair of great grey
eyes of such immaculate clarity that common beauty faltered before them. Nor
was Cadfael going to remind him of any such assets.

“As
the world usually goes,” he said cheerfully, “he probably has a mind that looks
no further ahead or behind than the length of his own fine eyelashes. But I
grant you he’s a pleasure to look at. Yet the mind lasts longer. Be glad you
have one that will wear well. Come on, now, all this will keep till after
supper.”

The
word diverted Brother Mark’s thoughts very agreeably. He had been hungry all
his life until he entered this house, and still he preserved the habit of
hunger, so that food, no less than beauty, was unflawed pleasure. He went
willingly at Cadfael’s side towards Vespers, and the supper that would follow.
It was Cadfael who suddenly halted, hailed by name in a high, delighted voice
that plucked his head about towards the summons gladly.

A
lady, a slender, young, graceful lady with a heavy sheaf of gold hair and a
bright oval face, and eyes like irises in twilight, purple and clear. Her body,
as Brother Mark saw in his first startled glance, though scarcely swollen as
yet, and proudly carried, was girdled high, and rounded below the
girdle.
There was a life there within. He was not so innocent that he did not know the
signs. He should have lowered his eyes, and willed to do so, and could not; she
shone so that it was like all the pictures of the Visiting Virgin that he had
ever seen. And this vision held out both hands to Brother Cadfael, and called
him by his name. Brother Mark, though unwillingly, bent his head and went on
his way alone.

“Girl,”
said Brother Cadfael heartily, clasping the proffered hands with delight, “you
bloom like a rose! And he never told me!”

“He
has not seen you since the winter,” she said, dimpling and flushing, “and we
did not know then. It was no more than a dream, then. And I have not seen you since
we were wed.”

“And
you are happy? And he?”

“Oh,
Cadfael, can you ask it!” There had been no need, the radiance Brother Mark had
recognised was dazzling Cadfael no less. “Hugh is here, but he must go to the
sheriff first. He’ll certainly be asking for you before Compline. I have come
to buy a cradle, a beautiful carved cradle for our son. And a Welsh coverlet,
in beautiful warm wool, or perhaps a sheepskin. And fine spun wools, to weave
his gowns.”

“And
you keep well? The child gives you no distress?”

“Distress?”
she said, wide-eyed and smiling. “I have not had a moment’s sickness, only joy.
Oh, Brother Cadfael,” she said, breaking into laughter, “how does it come that
a brother of this house can ask such wise questions? Have you not somewhere a
son of your own? I could believe it! You know far too much about us women!”

“As
I suppose,” said Cadfael cautiously, “I was born of one, like the rest of us.
Even abbots and archbishops come into the world the same way.”

“But
I’m keeping you,” she said, remorseful. “It’s time for Vespers, and I’m coming,
too. I have so many thanks to pour out, there’s never enough time. Say a prayer
for our child!” She pressed him by both hands, and floated away through the
press towards the guest-hall. Born Aline Siward, now Aline Beringar, wife to
the deputy sheriff of Shropshire, Hugh Beringar of Maesbury, near Oswestry. A
year married, and Cadfael had been close friend to that marriage, and felt
himself enlarged and fulfilled by its happiness. He went on
towards
the church in high content with the evening, his own mood, and the prospects
for the coming days.