St. Peter's Fair (28 page)

“Now
I come to think,” mused Cadfael, “it would be excellent cover for Owain’s
intelligencers to ask the help of an interpreter in these parts, and be seen to
need him. Tongues wag more freely before the deaf man.”

“A good thought,” approved Rhodri. “Someone should
suggest it to Owain.” Though there was every indication that the prince of
Gwynedd needed no other man’s wits to fortify his own, but had been lavishly
endowed by God in the first place. Cadfael wondered how many other tongues this
simple merchant knew. French, almost certainly enough for his purposes.
Flemish, possibly a little, he had undoubtedly travelled in Flanders. It would
be no surprise if he knew some Latin, too.

“You’ll
be coming to Saint Peter’s Fair next year?”

“I
may, brother, I may, who knows! Will you come forth again and speak for me, if
I do?”

“Gladly.
I’m a Gwynedd man myself. Take my greetings back with you to the mountains. And
good speed on the way!”

“God
keep you!” said Rhodri, still beaming, and clapped him buoyantly on the shoulder,
and set off towards the riverside.

Hugh
had no sooner set foot in the hall when Aline flew into his arms, with a cry of
relief and desperation mingled, and began to pour into his ears all her
bewilderment and anxiety.

“Oh,
Hugh, I think I must have done something terrible! Either that, or Philip
Corviser has gone mad. He was here asking after Emma, and when I told him she
was gone he rushed away like a madman, and there’s a merchant from Worcester in
the stables accusing him of stealing his horse and making off with it, and what
it all means I daren’t guess, but I’m afraid…”

Hugh
held her tenderly, dismayed and solicitous. “Emma’s gone? But she was coming
home with us. What happened to change it?”

“You
know he’s been paying attentions to her… He came this morning asking for you—he
said he has a sister who is entering the nunnery at Minchinbarrow, and since he
must escort her there, and it’s barely five miles from Bristol, he could as
well take Emma home in his sister’s company. He said they’d sleep overnight at
his manor, and set off tomorrow. Emma said yes, and I thought no wrong, why
should I? But the very name has sent Philip off like a man demented…”

“Corbière?” demanded Hugh, holding her off by the
shoulders to peer anxiously into her face.

“Yes!
Yes, Ivo, of course—but what’s so wrong in that? He takes her to his sister at
Stanton Cobbold—I thought it ideal, so did she, and you were not here to say
yes or no. Besides, she is her own mistress…”

True,
the girl had a will of her own, and liked the man who had made the offer, and
was flattered at being singled out for his favours. Even for the sake of her
own independence she would have chosen to go, and Hugh, had he been present,
would not then have known or suspected enough to prevent. He tightened his arms
comfortingly round his trembling wife, his cheek pressed against her hair. “My
love, my heart, you could not have done anything but what you did, and I should
have done the same. But I must go after. No questions now, you shall know everything
later. We’ll bring her back— there’ll be no harm done…”

“It’s
true, then!” whispered Aline, her breath fluttering against his throat.
“There’s reason to fear harm? I’ve let her go into danger?”

“You
could not stop her. She chose to go. Think no more of your part, you played
none—how could you know? Where’s Constance? Love, I hate to leave you like
this…”

He
was thinking, of course, like all men, she thought, that any grievous upset to
his wife in this condition was a potential upset to his son. That roused her.
She was not the girl to keep a man dancing anxious attention on her, even if
she had a wife’s claim on him, when he was needed more urgently elsewhere. She
drew herself resolutely out of his arms.

“Of
course you must leave me. I’ve taken no harm, and shall take none. Go, quickly!
They have a good three hours start of you, and besides, if you delay, Philip
may run his head into trouble alone. Send quickly for what men you can muster,
and I’ll go see what I can do to placate the merchant whose horse has been
borrowed…” He was loath, all the same, to let go of her. She took his head
between her hands, kissed him hard, and turned him about just as Cadfael came
in at the hall door.

“She’s
gone with Corbière,” said Hugh, conveying news in the fewest words possible.
“Bound for his one Shropshire manor. The boy’s off after them, and so must I.
I’ll send
word to Prestcote to have a guard follow as fast as
may be. You’ll be here to take care of Aline…”

Aline
doubted that, seeing the spark flare up in Brother Cadfael’s bright and
militant eye. Hastily she said: “I need no one to nurse me. Only go—both of
you!”

“I have
licence,” said Cadfael, clutching at virtue to cover his ardour. “Abbot
Radulfus gave me the charge of seeing that his guest came to no harm under his
roof, and I’ll stretch that to extend beyond his roof, and make it good, too.
You have a horse to spare, Hugh, besides that raw-boned dapple of yours. Come
on! It’s a year since you and I rode together.”

Chapter Three

THE
MANOR OF STANTON COBBOLD lay a good seventeen miles from Shrewsbury, in the
south of the shire, and cheek by jowl with the large property of the bishops of
Hereford in those parts, which covered some nine or ten manors. The road lay
through the more open and sunlit stretches of the Long Forest, and at its
southernmost fringe plunged in among the hump-backed hills at the western side
of a long, bare ridge that ran for some miles. Here and there a wooded valley
backed into its bare flank, and into one of these Corbière turned, along a firm
cart-track. It was the height of the early afternoon then, the sun at its
highest, but even so the crowding trees cast sudden chill and shadow. The bay
horse had worked off his high spirits, and went placidly under his double
burden. Once in the forest they had halted briefly, and Ivo had produced wine
and oat-cakes as refreshment on the journey, and paid Emma every possible
delicate attention. The day was fair, the countryside strange to her and
beautiful, and she was embarked on an agreeable adventure. She approached
Stanton Cobbold with only the happiest anticipation, flattered by Ivo’s
deference, and eager to meet his sister.

A
rivulet ran alongside the track, coming down from the ridge. The path narrowed,
and the trees closed in.

“We
are all but home,” said Ivo over his shoulder; and in a few minutes more the
rising ground opened before them into a narrow, level plot enclosed before with
a wooden stockade. Within, the manor house backed solidly into the hillside,
trees at the back, trees shutting it in darkly at either
end. A
boy came running to open the gate for them, and they rode into the enclosure.
Barns and byres lined the stockade within. The manor itself showed a long
undercroft of stone, buttressed, and pierced with two doors wide enough for
carts, and a living floor above, also of stone for most of its length, where
the great hall and the kitchens and pantries lay, but at the right, stone gave
place to timber, and stone mullions to wooden window-frames and stout shutters;
and this wooden living apartment was taller than the stone portion, and seemed
to have an additional floor above the solar. A tall stone stair led up to the
hall door.

“Modest
enough,” said Ivo, turning his head to smile at her, “but it has room and a
welcome for you.”

He
was well served. Grooms came running before the horse had halted, a maid
appeared in the hall doorway, and began to flutter down to meet them.

Ivo
kicked his feet free of the stirrups, swung a leg nimbly over the horse’s
bowing head, and leaped down, waving Turstan Fowler aside, to stretch up his
arms to Emma and lift her down herself. Her slight weight gave him no trouble,
he held her aloft for a long moment to prove it, laughing, before he set her
down.

“Come,
I’ll take you up to the solar.” He put off the maid with a flick of his hand,
and she stood aside and followed them demurely up the steps, but let them go on
without her when they reached the hall. The thick stone walls struck inward
with a palpable chill. The hall was large and lofty, the high ceiling
smoke-stained, but now, in the summer, the huge fireplace was empty and cold.
The mullioned windows let in air far more genial than that within, and a
comforting light, but they were narrow, and could do little to temper the
oppression of the room. “Not my most amiable home,” said Ivo with a grimace,
“but in these Welsh borders we built for defence, not for comfort. Come up to
the solar. The timber end was built on later, but even there this is a chill,
dark house. Even on summer evenings we need some firing.”

A
short staircase at the end of the hall led up to a broad gallery and a pair of
doors. “The chapel,” he said, indicating that on the left. “There are two small
bedchambers above, dark, since they look into the hillside and the trees at
close quarters. And in here, if you’ll forgive me while I attend to
your baggage and mine, and see the horses stabled, I’ll rejoin you
shortly.”

The
solar into which he led her contained a massive table, a carved bench,
cushioned chairs, tapestries draping the walls, and rugs on the floor, and was
a place of some comfort and elegance, if also somewhat dim and cold, chiefly by
reason of the looming hillside and the shrouding trees, and the narrow windows
that let in so little of the day, and so filtered through heavy branches. Here
there was no fireplace, the only chimney serving the hall and the kitchens; but
the centre of the floor was set with large paving stones to make a hearth proof
against cinders, and on this square a brazier burned, even on this summer day. Charcoal
and wood glowed, discreetly massed, to give a central spark of comfort without
smoke. Summer sunlight failed to warm through the arm’s-length thickness of the
stone walls below, and here the sun, though confronted only with friendly
timber, hardly ever reached.

Emma
went forward into the room and stood looking about her curiously. She heard Ivo
close the door between them, but it was only a very small sound in a large
silence.

She
had expected his sister to appear immediately on his return, and felt a pang of
disappointment, though she knew it was unreasonable. He had sent no word ahead,
how could the girl have known? She might, with good reason, be out walking on
the open hill in the full summer warmth, or she might have duties elsewhere.
When she did come, it would be to the pleasure of having her brother home, and
with a visitor of her own sex and approximate age, into the bargain, and to
hear that she was to have her will without further delay. Yet her absence was a
disappointment, and his failure to remark on it or apologise for it was a check
to her eagerness.

She
began to explore the room, interested in everything. Her own city home was
cushioned and comfortable by comparison, though no less dark and shut in, if
not among trees, among the buildings the trees provided. She was aware that she
had been born to comparative wealth, but wealth concentrated into one
commodious and well-furbished dwelling, whereas this border manor represented
only perhaps a tenth of what Ivo possessed, without regard to the land attached
to all those manors. He had said himself that this was not the
most
genial of his homes, yet it held sway over she could not guess how many miles
of land, and how many free tenants and unfree villeins. It was another world.
She had looked at it from a distance, and been dazzled, but never to blindness.

She
felt a conviction suddenly that it was not for her, though whether she was glad
or sorry remained a mystery.

All
the same, there was knowledge and taste here beyond her experience. The brazier
was a beautiful thing, a credit to the smith who made it; on three braced legs
like saplings, the fire-basket a trellis of vine-leaves. If it had a fault, it
was that it was raised rather too high, she thought, to be completely stable.
The cushions of the chairs were of fine embroidery of hunting scenes, though
dulled by use and friction and the touch of slightly greasy fingers. On a shelf
built under the table there were books, a psalter, a vellum folder of music,
and a faded treatise with strange diagrams. The carving of chairs and table and
bench-ends was like live plants growing. The tapestries that covered all the
walls between windows and door were surely old, rich, wonderfully worked, and
once had had glorious colours that showed still, here and there, in the
protected folds; but they were smoke-blackened almost beyond recognition,
rotted here and there into tinder. She parted a fold, and the hound, plunging
with snarling jaws and stretched paws between her fingers, disintegrated into powdery
dust, and floated on the air in slow dissolution. She let fall the threads she
held, and retreated in dismay. The very dust on her palms felt like ash.

She
waited, but nobody came. Probably the time she waited was not as long as she
supposed, by no means as long as it felt to her, but it seemed an age, a year
of her life.

In
the end, she thought she might not be offending by wandering along the gallery
into the chapel. She might at least hear if there was any activity below. Ivo
had bought Flemish tapestries for his new Cheshire manor, he might well be
unbaling them and delighting in their fresh colours. She could forgive a degree
of neglect in such circumstances.