St. Peter's Fair (31 page)

“Her
eyes are open,” said Philip in an eager whisper. “She’s smiling.”

Cadfael
stooped to her. “How is it with you now, daughter?”

“I
am alive,” she said, almost inaudibly, but with great joy.

“So
you are, God be thanked, and Philip here next after God. But lie still, we’ll
find you a cloak to wrap you in, for you’ll be feeling the cold that comes
after danger. There’ll be pain, too, my poor child.” She already knew about the
pain. “You’ve a badly burned hand, and I’ve no salves here, I can do no more
than cover it from the air, until we get back to town. Leave your hand lie quiet,
if you can, the stiller the better. How did it come that you escaped clean, but
for the one hand so badly burned?”

“I
put it into the brazier,” said Emma, remembering. She saw with what startled
eyes Philip received this, and realised what she had said; and suddenly the
most important thing of all seemed to her that Philip should not know
everything, that his candid clarity should not be made to explore the use of
lies, deceptions and subterfuges, no matter how right the cause they served.
Some day she might tell someone, but it would not be Philip. “I was afraid of
him,” she said, carefully amending, “and I tipped over the brazier. I never
meant to start such a fire…”

Somewhere
curiously distant from the corner of peace where she lay, Hugh Beringar and the
sergeant and officers who had followed him from Shrewsbury were mustering the
distracted servants in salvage, and damping down all the outhouses
that were still in danger from flying sparks and debris, so that the beasts
could be housed, and a roof, at least, provided for the men and maids. The fire
had burned so fiercely that it was already dying down, but not for some days
would the heat have subsided enough for them to sift through the embers for Ivo
Corbière’s body.

“Lift
me,” entreated Emma. “Let me see!”

Philip
raised her to sit beside him in the clean, green grass. They were in a corner
of the court, their backs against the stockade. Round the perimeter the barns
and byres steamed in the early evening sun from the buckets of water which had
been thrown over them. Close to the solar end, men were still at work carrying
buckets in a chain from the well. There would be roofs enough left to shelter
horses, cattle and people, until better could be done for them. They had the
equipment of the kitchen, the stores in the undercroft might be damaged, but
would not all be spoiled. In this summer weather they would do well enough, and
someone must make shift to have the manor restored before the winter. All that
terror, in the end, had taken but one life.

“He
is dead,” she said, staring at the ruin from which she, though not he, had
emerged alive.

“No
other possibility,” said Cadfael simply.

He
surmised, but she knew. “And the other one?”

“Turstan
Fowler? He’s prisoner. The sergeant has him in charge. It was he, I believe,”
said Cadfael gently, “who killed your uncle.”

She
had expected that at the approach of Beringar and the law he would have helped
himself to a horse and taken to his heels, but after all, he had known of no
reason why he should. No one had been accusing him when he left Shrewsbury.
Everyone at the abbey ought to have taken it for granted that Emma had been
duly conducted home to Bristol. Why should they question it? Why had they questioned
it? She had much to learn, as well as much to tell. There would be time, later.
Now there was no time for anything but living, and exulting in living, and
being glad and grateful, and perhaps, gradually and with unpractised pleasure,
loving.

“What
will become of him?” she asked.

“He’ll
surely tell all he knows, and lay the worst blame
where it
belongs, on his lord.” Cadfael doubted, all the same, whether Turstan could
hope to evade the gallows, and doubted whether he should, but he did not say so
to her. She was deeply preoccupied at this moment with life and death, and
willed mercy even to the lowest and worst in the largeness of the mercy shown
to her. And that was good, God forbid he should say any word to deface it.

“Are
you cold?” asked Philip tenderly, feeling her shiver in his arm.

“No,”
she said at once, and turned her head a little in the hollow of his shoulder,
resting her forehead against his grimy cheek. He felt the soft curving of her
lips in the hollow of his throat as she smiled, and was filled with so secure a
sense of possession that no one would ever be able to take her away from him.

Hugh
Beringar came to them across the trampled grass of the court, even his neatness
smoked and odorous.

“What
can be done’s done,” he said, wiping his face. “We had better get her back to
Shrewsbury, there’s no provision here. I’m leaving my sergeant and most of the
men here for the time being, but the place for you,” he said, smiling somewhat
wearily at Emma, “is in a comfortable bed, with your hurt properly dressed, and
no need for you to think or stir until you’re restored. Bristol will have to
wait for you. We’ll take you to Aline at the abbey, you’ll be easy there.”

“No,”
said Philip, with large assurance. “I am taking Emma to my mother in Shrewsbury.”

“Very
well, so you shall,” agreed Hugh, “it’s hardly a step further. But give Cadfael
time at the abbey to hunt out the salves and potions he wants from his
workshop, and let Aline see for herself that we’ve not let Emma come to any
great harm. And don’t forget, friend, you owe Aline something for entertaining
the fellow you robbed of his horse, and guarding your back for you until you
can restore him.”

Beneath
his coating of soot Philip could still blush. “True enough, I’m likely to end
in gaol again for theft, but not until I’ve seen Emma safe lodged in my
mother’s care.”

Hugh
laughed, and clapped him amiably on the shoulder. “Nor then nor ever, while I’m
in office—not unless you choose to kick the law in the teeth on some other
occasion. We’ll satisfy the merchant, Aline will have sweetened him
into complacency, you’ll find. And his horse has been rubbed down
and watered and rested, while you’ve been otherwise occupied, and we’ll take
him back with us unloaded, none the worse for his adventures. There are horses
enough here, I’ll find you the pick of them, a steady ride fit to bear two.” He
had had one eye on Emma while he had been mustering water-carriers and
husbanding household effects, he knew better than to try to wrest her out of
Philip’s arms, or send for a horse-litter to carry her back. There were two
here so joined together that only a fool would attempt to part them even for a
few hours; and Hugh was no fool.

They
wrapped her gently in a brychan borrowed from the salvaged bedding, rather for
comfortable padding than for warmth, for the evening was still serene and mild,
though she might yet suffer the cold that comes after effort is all over. She
accepted everything with serenity, like one in a dream, though the pain of her
hand must, they reasoned, be acute. She seemed to feel nothing but a supreme
inner peace that made everything else of no account. They mounted Philip on a
great, broad-backed, steady-paced gelding, and then lifted Emma up to him in
her swathing blanket, and she settled into the cradle of his lap and arms and
braced shoulder as though God had made her to fit there.

“And
perhaps so he did,” said Brother Cadfael, riding behind with Hugh Beringar
close beside him.

“So
he did what?” wondered Hugh, starting out of very different considerations, for
two officers brought a bound Turstan Fowler behind them.

“Direct
all,” said Cadfael. “It is, after all, a way he has.”

Halfway
back towards Shrewsbury she fell asleep in his arms, nestled on his breast. For
the fall of her black, smoke-scented hair he could see only the lower part of
her face, but the mouth was soft and moist and smiling, and all her weight
melted and moulded into the cradle of his loving body as into a marriage-bed.
In her dream she had gone somewhere beyond the pain of her burned hand. It was
as if she had thrust her hand into the future, and found it worth the price.
The left hand, the unmarked one, lay clasped warmly round him, inside his coat,
holding him close to her in her dream.

Chapter Five

THE
SUMMER DARKNESS OF FINE NIGHTS, which is never quite dark, showed a horse-fair
deserted, no trace of the past three days but the trampled patches and the
marks of trestles in the grass. All over for another year. The abbey stewards
had gathered in the profits of rent and toll and tax, delivered their accounts,
and gone to their beds. So had the monks of the abbey, the lay servants, the
novices and the pupils. A sleepy porter opened the gate for them; and
mysteriously, at the sounds of their arrival, though circumspect and subdued,
the great court awoke to life. Aline came running from the guest-hall with the
aggrieved merchant, now remarkably complacent, at her back, Brother Mark from
the dortoir, and Abbot Radulfus’s own clerk from the abbot’s lodging, with a
bidding to Brother Cadfael to attend there as soon as he arrived, however late
the hour.

“I
sent him word what was toward,” said Hugh, “as we left. It was right he should
know. He’ll be anxious to hear how it ended.”

While
Aline took Emma and Philip, half awake and dazedly docile, to rest and refresh
themselves in the guest-hall, and Brother Mark ran to the herbarium to collect
the paste of mulberry leaves and the unguent of Our Lady’s mantle, known
specifics for burns, and the men-at-arms went on to the castle with their
prisoner, Brother Cadfael duly attended Radulfus in his study. Whether at
midday or midnight, the abbot was equally wide-awake. By the single candle
burning he surveyed Cadfael and asked simply: “Well?”

“It is well, Father. We are returned with Mistress
Vernold safe and little the worse, and the murderer of her uncle is in the
sheriff’s hands. One murderer—the man Turstan Fowler.”

“There
is another?” asked Radulfus.

“There
was another. He is dead. Not by any man’s hand, Father, none of us has killed
or done violence. He is dead by fire.”

“Tell
me,” said the abbot.

Cadfael
told him the whole story, so far as he knew it, and briefly. How much more Emma
knew was a matter for conjecture.

“And
what,” the abbot wished to know, “can this communication have been, to cause
any man to commit such crimes in pursuit of it?”

“That
we do not know, and no man now will know, for it is burned with him. But where
there are two warring factions in a land,” said Cadfael, “men without scruples
can turn controversy to gain, sell men for profit, take revenge on their
rivals, hope to be awarded the lands of those they betray. Whatever evil was
intended, now will never come to fruit.”

“A
better ending than I began to fear,” said Radulfus, and drew a thankful sigh.
“Then all danger is now over, and the guests of our house are come to no harm.”
He pondered for a moment. “This young man who did so well for us and for the
girl—you say he is son to the provost?”

“He
is, Father. I am going with them now, with your permission, to see them safely
home and dress their burns. They are not too grave, but they should be cleansed
and tended at once.”

“Go
with God’s blessing!” said the abbot. “It is convenient, for I have a message
to the provost, which you may deliver for me, if you will. Ask Master Corviser,
with my compliments, if he will be kind enough to attend here tomorrow morning,
about the end of chapter. I have some business to transact with him.”

Mistress
Corviser had undoubtedly been fulminating for hours about her errant son, a
good-for-nothing who was no sooner bailed out of prison than he was off in
mischief somewhere else until midnight and past. Probably she had said at least
a dozen times that she washed her hands of him, that he was
past
praying for, and she no longer cared, let him go to the devil his own way. But
for all that, her husband could not get her to go to bed, and at every least
sound that might be a footstep at the door or in the street, steady or
staggering, she flew to look out, with her mouth full of abuse but her heart
full of hope.

And
then, when he did come, it was with a great-eyed girl in his arm, a thick
handful of his curls singed off at one temple, the smell of smoke in his coat,
his shirt in tatters, a monk of Saint Peter’s at his heels, and a look of
roused authority and maturity about him that quite overcame his draggled and
soiled state. And instead of either scolding or embracing him, she took both
him and the girl by the hand and drew them inside together, and went about
seating, feeding, tending them, with only few words, and those practical and
concerned. Tomorrow Philip might be brought to tell the whole story. Tonight it
was Cadfael who told the merest skeleton of it, as he cleansed and dressed
Emma’s hand, and the superficial burns on Philip’s brow and arm. Better not
make too much of what the boy had done. Emma would take care of that, later;
his mother would value it most of all from her.

Emma
herself said almost nothing, islanded in her exhaustion and bliss, but her eyes
seldom left Philip, and when they did, it was to take in with deep content the
solid, dark furnishings and warm panelling of this burgess house, so familiar
to her that being accepted here was like coming home. Her rapt, secret smile
was eloquent; mothers are quick to notice such looks. Emma had already
conquered, even before she was led gently away to the bed prepared for her, and
settled there by Mistress Corviser with all the clucking solicitude of a hen
with one chick, with a posset laced with Brother Cadfael’s poppy syrup to make
sure that she slept, and forgot her pain.