St. Peter's Fair (22 page)

There
was no fault to be found with Turstan’s service since his disastrous fall from
grace on the first evening; motioned to hold aloof but remain at call, he
obeyed without question, and went on amusing himself with his rivals. He must
have done well at the butts for they seemed to be discussing his arbalest, and
he braced a foot in the metal stirrup and drew
the string to
the alert for them, demonstrating that he lost little in speed against their
instant arms. No doubt the dispute between speed and range would go on as long
as both arms survived. Cadfael had handled both in his time, as well as the
eastern bow, the sword, and the lance of the mounted man. Even at this grave
moment he spared a long glance for the amicable wrangle going on a score of
paces away.

Then
Ivo was there among them, and shaken out of his easy confidence and grace. His
face was tense, his dark eyes large and wondering under the proudly raised
auburn brows and golden cap of curls. “You wanted me, sir? Hugh has not been
specific, but I took it this was urgent matter.”

“It
is a matter of a man of yours,” said the sheriff.

“My
men?” He shook a doubtful head, and gnawed his lip. “I know of nothing… Not
since Turstan drank himself stiff and stupid, and he’s been a penitent and
close to home ever since, and he did no harm then to any but himself, the dolt.
But they all have leave to go forth, once their work’s done. The fair is every
man’s treat. What’s amiss concerning my men?”

It
was left to the sheriff to tell him. Ivo paled visibly as he listened, his
ruddy sunburn sallowing. “Then my man is suspect of the killing I brushed arms
with—Good God, this very morning! That you may know, his name is Ewald, he
comes from a Cheshire manor, and his ancestry is northern, but he never showed
ill traits before, though he is a morose man, and makes few friends. I take
this hard. I brought him here.”

“You
may resolve it,” said Prestcote.

“So
I may.” His mouth tightened. “And will! About this hour I appointed to ride, my
horse has had little exercise here, and he’ll be bearing me hence tomorrow.
Ewald is the groom who takes care of him. He should be saddling him up in the
stables about this time. Shall I send for him? He’ll be expecting my summons.
No!” he interrupted his own offer, his brows contracting. “Not send for him, go
for him myself. If I sent Turstan, there, you might suspect that a servant
would stand by a servant, and give him due warning. Do you think he has not
been watching us, this short while? And do you think this colloquy has the look
of simple talk among us?”

Assuredly
it had not. Turstan, dangling his braced bow,
had lost interest
in enlightening his rivals, and they, sensing that there was something afoot
that did not concern them, were drawing off and moving away, though with
discreet backward glances until they vanished into the grange court.

“I’ll
go myself,” said Ivo, and strode away towards the stable-yard at a great pace.
Turstan, hesitant, let him pass, since he got no word out of him in passing,
but then turned and hurried on his heels, anxiously questioning. For a little
way he followed, and they saw Ivo turn his head and snap some hasty orders at
his man. Chastened, Turstan drew back and returned towards the gatehouse, and
stood at a loss.

Some
minutes passed before they heard the sharp sound of hooves on the cobbles of the
stable-yard, brittle and lively. Then the tall, dusky bay, glowing like the
darkest of copper and restive for want of work, danced out of the yard with the
stocky, bearded groom holding his bridle, and Ivo stalking a yard or so ahead.

“Here
is my man Ewald,” he said shortly, and stood back, as Cadfael noted, between
them and the open gateway. Turstan Fowler drew nearer by discreet inches, and
silently, sharp eyes flicking from one face to another in quest of
understanding. Ewald stood holding the bridle, uneasy eyes narrowed upon
Prestcote’s unrevealing countenance. When the horse, eager for action, stirred
and tossed his head, the groom reached his left hand across to take the bridle,
and slid the right one up to the glossy neck, caressing by rote, but without
for an instant shifting his gaze.

“My
lord says your honour has something to ask me,” he said in a slow and grudging
voice.

Under
his left forearm the cobbled mend in his sleeve showed plainly, the cloth
puckered between large stitches, and the end of linen thread shivered in sun
and breeze like a gnat dancing.

“Take
off your coat,” ordered the sheriff. And as the man gaped in real or pretended
bewilderment: “No words! Do it!”

Slowly
Ewald slipped out of his coat, somewhat awkwardly because he was at pains to
retain his hold on the bridle. The horse had been promised air and exercise,
and was straining towards the gate, the way to what he desired. He had already
shifted the whole group, except Cadfael, who stood mute and apart, a little
nearer the gate.

“Turn back your sleeve. The left.”

He
gave one wild glance round, then lowered his head like a bull, set his jaw, and
did it, his right arm through the bridle as he turned up the coarse homespun to
the elbow. Brother Mark had bound up the gash in a strip of clean linen over
his dressing. The very cleanness of it glared.

“You
have hurt yourself, Ewald?” said Prestcote, quietly grim.

He
has his chance now, thought Cadfael, if he has quick enough wit, to change his
story and say outright that he took a knife-wound in a common brawl, and told
Brother Mark the lie about a nail simply to cover up the folly. But no, the man
did not stop to think; he had his story, and trusted it might still cover him.
Yet if Mark, on handling the wound, could tell a cut from a tear, so at the
merest glance could Gilbert Prescote.

“I
did it on a nail in the stables, my lord, reaching down harness.”

“And
tore your sleeve through at the same time? It was a jagged nail, Ewald. That’s
stout cloth you wear.” He turned abruptly to Hugh Beringar. “You have the slip
of cloth?”

Hugh
drew out from his pouch a folded piece of vellum, and opened it upon the
insignificant strip of fabric, that looked like nothing so much as a blade of
dried grass fretted into fibres and rotting at the edge. Only the wavy tendril
of linen thread showed what it really was, but that was enough. Ewald drew away
a pace, so sharply that the horse backed off some yards towards the gateway,
and the groom turned and took both hands to hold and soothe the beast. Ivo had
to spring hurriedly backwards to avoid the dancing hooves.

“Hand
here your coat,” ordered Prestcote, when the bay was appeased again, and
willing to stand, though reluctantly.

The
groom looked from the tiny thing he had recognised to the sheriff’s composed
but unrelenting face, hesitated only a moment, and then did as he was bid, to
violent effect. He swung back his arm and flung the heavy cotte into their
faces, and with a leap was over the bay’s back and into the saddle. Both heels
drove into the glossy sides, and a great shout above the pricked ears sent the
horse surging like a flung lance for the gateway.

There
was no one between but Ivo. The groom drove the
bay straight at
him, headlong. The young man leaped aside, but made a tigerish spring to grasp
at the bridle as the horse hurtled by, and actually got a hold on it and was
dragged for a moment, until the groom kicked out at him viciously, breaking the
tenuous hold and hurling Ivo out of the way, to fall heavily and roll under the
feet of the sheriff and Hugh as they launched themselves after the fugitive.
Out at the gateway and round to the right into the Foregate went Ewald, at a
frantic gallop, and there was no one mounted and ready to pursue, and for once
the sheriff was without escort or archers.

But
Ivo Corbière was not. Turstan Fowler had rushed to help him to his feet, but
Ivo waved him past, out into the Foregate, and heaving himself breathlessly
from the ground, with grazed and furious face ran limping after. The little
group of them stood in the middle of the highroad, helplessly watching the bay
and his rider recede into distance, and unable to follow. He had killed, and he
would get clear away, and once some miles from Shrewsbury, he could disappear
into forest and lie safe as a fox in its lair.

In
a voice half-choked with rage, Ivo cried: “Fetch him down!”

Turstan’s
arbalest was still braced and ready, and Turstan was used to jumping to his
command. The quarrel was out of his belt, fitted and loosed, in an instant, the
thrum and vibration of its flight made heads turn and duck and women shriek
along the Foregate.

Ewald,
stooped low over the horse’s neck, suddenly jerked violently and reared up with
head flung high. His hands slackened from the reins and his arms swung lax on
either side. He seemed to hang for a moment suspended in air, and then swung
heavily sidewise, and heeled slowly out of the saddle. The bay, startled and
shocked, ran on wildly, scattering the frightened vendors and buyers on both
sides, but his flight was uncertain now, and confused by this sudden lightness.
He would not go far. Someone would halt and soothe him, and lead him back.

As for the groom
Ewald, he was dead before ever the first of the appalled stallholders reached
him, dead, probably, before ever he struck the ground.

Chapter Four

“HE WAS MY
VILLEIN,” asserted Ivo strenuously, in the room in the gatehouse where they had
brought and laid the body, “and I enjoy the power of the high justice over my
own, and this one had forfeited life. I need make no defence, for myself or my
archer, who did nothing more than obey my order. We have all seen, now, that
this fellow’s wound is no tear from a nail, but the stroke of a dagger, and the
fret you took from the glover’s blade matches this sleeve past question. Is
there doubt in any mind that this was a murderer?”

There
was none. Cadfael was there with them in the room, at Hugh’s instance, and he
had no doubts at all. This was the man Euan of Shotwick had marked, before he himself
died. Moreover, some of Euan of Shotwick’s goods and money had been found among
the sparse belongings Ewald had left behind him; his saddle-roll held a pouch
of fine leather full of coins, and two pairs of gloves made for the hands of
girls, presents, perhaps, for wife or sister. This was certainly a murderer.
Turstan, who had shot him down, obviously did not consider himself anything of
the kind, any more than one of Prestcote’s archers would have done, had he been
given the order to shoot. Turstan had taken the whole affair stolidly, as none
of his business apart from his duty to his lord, and gone away to his evening
meal with an equable appetite.

“I
brought him here,” said Ivo bitterly, wiping smears of blood from his grazed
cheek. “It is my honour he has
offended, as well as the law of
the land. I had a right to avenge myself.”

“No
need to labour it,” said Prestcote shortly. “The shire has been saved a trial
and a hanging, which is to the good, and I don’t know but the wretch himself
might prefer this way out. It was a doughty shot, and that’s a valuable man of
yours. I never thought it could be done so accurately at that distance.”

Ivo
shrugged. “I knew Turstan’s quality, or I would not have said what I did, to
risk either my horse or any of the hundreds about their harmless business in
the Foregate. I don’t know that I expected a death…”

“There’s
only one cause for regret,” said the sheriff. “If he had accomplices, he can
never now be made to name them. And you say, Beringar, that there were probably
two?”

“You’re
satisfied, I hope,” said Ivo, “that neither Turstan nor my young groom Arald
had any part with him in these thefts?”

Both
had been questioned, he had insisted on that. Turstan had been a model of
virtue since his one lapse, and the youngster was a fresh-faced country youth,
and both had made friends among the other servants and were well liked. Ewald
had been morose and taciturn, and kept himself apart, and the revelation of his
villainy did not greatly surprise his fellows.

“There’s
still the matter of the other offences. What do you think? Was it this man in
all of them?”

“I
cannot get it out of my mind,” said Hugh slowly, “that Master Thomas’s death
was the work of one man only. And without reason or proof, by mere pricking of
thumbs, I do not believe it was this man. For the rest—I don’t know! Two, the
merchant’s watchman said, but I am not sure he may not be increasing the odds
to excuse his own want of valour—or his very good sense, however you look at
it. Only one, surely, would enter the barge in full daylight, no doubt briskly,
as if he had an errand there, something to fetch or something to bestow. Where
there were two, this must surely be one of them. Who the other was, we are
still in the dark.”

After
Compline Cadfael went to report to Abbot Radulfus all that had happened. The
sheriff had already paid the necessary
courtesy visit to inform
the abbot, but for all that Radulfus would expect his own accredited observer
to bring another viewpoint, one more concerned with the repute and the
standards of a Benedictine house. In an order which held moderation in all
things to be the ground of blessing, immoderate things were happening.