St. Peter's Fair (20 page)

“They
were the same ideas father and all the guild merchant had, mother, you should
have scolded them. And you ask those who’re wearing my shoes whether there’s
much amiss with my work.” He was a very good workman, in fact, as she would
have asserted valiantly if anyone else had cast aspersions on his diligence and
ability. He hugged her impulsively, and kissed her cheek, and she put him off
impatiently, with what was more a slap than a caress. “Get along with you, and
don’t come moguing me until you’re cleared of the worse charge, and have paid
your fine for the riot. Now come and eat your dinner!”

It
was an excellent dinner, such as she produced on festivals
and
saints’ days. After it, instead of shedding the clothes he had worn day and
night in his cell, he shaved carefully, made a bundle of his second-best suit,
and left the house with it under his arm.

“Now
where are you going?” she demanded inevitably.

“To
the river, to swim and get clean again.” They had a garden upstream, below the
town hall, as many of the burgesses had, for growing their own fruit and
vegetables, and there was a small hut there, and a sward where he could dry in
the sun. He had learned to swim there, shortly after he learned to walk. He did
not tell her where he was going afterwards. It was a pity he would have to
present himself in his second-best coat, but in this hot summer weather perhaps
he need not put it on at all; in shirt and hose most men look the same,
provided the shirt is good linen and well laundered.

The
water was not even cold in the sandy shallow by the garden, but after his meal
he did not stay in long, or swim out into deep water. But it was good to feel
like himself again, cleansed even of the memory of his failure and downfall.
There was a still place under the bank where the water hung almost motionless,
and showed him a fair image of his face, and the thick bush of red-brown hair
which he combed and straightened with his fingers. He dressed as carefully as
he had shaved, and set off back to the bridge, and over it to the abbey. The
town’s grievance, which he had had on his mind the last time he came this way,
was quite forgotten; he had other important business now on the abbey side of
Severn.

“There’s
one here,” said Constance, coming in from the great court with a small, private
smile on her lips, “who asks to speak with Mistress Vernold. And not a bad
figure of a young fellow, either, though still a thought coltish about the
legs. He asked very civilly.”

Emma
had looked up quickly at the mention of a young man; now that she had gone some
way towards accepting what had happened, and coming to terms with a disaster
which, after all, she had not caused, she had been remembering words Ivo had
used, almost disregarded then in her shocked daze, but significant and warming
now.

“Messire
Corbière?”

“No, not this time. This one I don’t know, but he
says his name is Philip Corviser.”

“I
know him,” said Aline, and smiled over her sewing. “The provost’s son, Emma,
the boy you spoke for in the sheriff’s court. Hugh said he would see him set free
today. If there’s one soul can say he has done no evil to you or any these last
two days, he’s the man. Will you see him? It would be a kindness.”

Emma
had almost forgotten him, even his name, but she recalled the plea he had made
for her belief in him. So much had happened between. She remembered him now,
unkempt, bruised and soiled, pallid-sick after his drunkenness, but still with
a despairing dignity. “Yes, I remember him. Of course I’ll see him.”

Philip
followed Constance into the room. Fresh from the river, with damp hair curling
thickly about his head, shaven and glowing and in fierce earnest, but without
the aggression of the manner she had first seen in him, this was a very
different person from the humiliated prisoner of the court. The last look he
had given her, chin on shoulder, as he was dragged out… yes, she saw the
resemblance there. He made his reverence to Aline, and then to Emma.

“Madam,
I am released on my father’s bail. I came to say my thanks to Mistress Emma for
speaking so fairly for me, when I had no right to expect goodwill from her.”

“I’m
glad to see you free, Philip,” said Aline serenely, “and looking none the
worse. You will like to speak with Emma alone, I daresay, and company other
than mine may be good for her, for here we talk nothing but babies.” She rose,
folding her sewing carefully to keep the needle in view as she carried it.
“Constance and I will sit on the bench by the hall door, in the sun. The light
is better there, and I am no such expert needlewoman as Emma. You can be
undisturbed here.”

Out
she went, and they saw a ray of sun from the open outer door sparkle in her
piled gold hair, before Constance followed, and closed the door between. The
two of them were left, gazing gravely at each other.

“The
first thing I wanted to do with freedom,” said Philip, “was to see you again,
and thank you for what you did for
me. As I do, with all my
heart. There were some who bore witness there who had known me most of my life,
and surely had no grudge against me, and yet testified that I had been the
first to strike, and done all manner of things I knew I had not done. But you,
who had suffered through my act, though God knows I never willed it, you spoke
absolute truth for me. It took a generous heart and a fair mind to do so much
for an unknown whom you had no cause to love.” He had not chosen that word, it
had come naturally in the commonplace phrase, but when he heard it, it raised a
blush like fire in his own face, faintly reflected the next moment in hers.

“All
I did was to tell the truth of what I had seen,” she said. “So should we all
have done, it’s no virtue, but an obligation. It was shame that they did not.
People do not think what it is they are saying, or trouble to be clear about
what they have seen. But that’s all by now. I’m very glad they’ve let you go. I
was glad when Hugh Beringar said they must, taking into account what has been
happening, for which you certainly can bear no blame. But perhaps you have not
heard…”

“Yes,
I have heard. My father has told me.” Philip sat down beside her in the place
Aline had vacated, and leaned towards her earnestly. “There is some very evil
purpose against you and yours, surely, how else to account for so many
outrages? Emma, I am afraid for you… I fear danger threatening even you. I’m
grieved for your loss, and all the distress you’ve suffered. I wish there might
be some way in which I could serve you.”

“Oh,
but you need not be troubled for me,” she said. “You see I am in the best and
kindest hands possible, and tomorrow the fair will all be over, and Hugh
Beringar and Aline will help me to find a safe way to go home.”

“Tomorrow?”
he said, dismayed.

“It
may not be tomorrow. Roger Dod will take the barge down-river tomorrow, but it
may be that I must stay a day or two more. We have to find a party going south
by Gloucester, for safe-conduct, and with some other women for company. It may
take a day or two.”

Even
a day or two would be gold; but after that she would be gone, and he might
never see her again. And still,
confronted by this cause for
unhappiness on his own part, he could only think of her. He could not rid
himself of the feeling that she was threatened.

“In
only two days, see how many ill things have happened, and always close to you,
and what may not still happen in a day or two more? I wish you were safe home
this moment,” he said passionately, “though God knows I’d rather lose my right
hand than the sight of you.” He was not even aware that that same right hand
had taken possession of her left one, and was clasping it hard. “At least find
me some way of serving you before you go. If nothing more, tell me you know
that I never did harm to your uncle…”

“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.”