St. Peter's Fair (32 page)

“As
pretty a thing as ever I saw,” said Mistress Corviser, coming back softly into
the room, and closing the door between. She cast a fond look at her son, and
found him asleep in his chair. “And to think that’s what he was about, while I
was thinking all manner of bad things about him, who should have known him
better!”

“He
knows himself a deal better than he did a few days
ago,” said
Cadfael, repacking his scrip. “I’ll leave you these pastes and ointments, you
know how to use them. But I’ll come and take a look at her later tomorrow. Now
I’ll take my leave, I confess I’m more than ready for my own bed. I doubt if I
shall hear the bell for Prime tomorrow.”

In
the yard Geoffrey Corviser was himself stabling the horse from Stanton Cobbold
with his own. Cadfael gave him the abbot’s message. The provost raised
sceptical eyebrows. “Now what can the lord abbot want with me? The last time I
came cap in hand to chapter, I got a dusty answer.”

“All
the same,” advised Cadfael, scrubbing thoughtfully at his blunt brown nose, “in
your shoes I think I’d be curious enough to come and see. Who knows but the
dust may have settled elsewhere by this time!”

It
was no wonder if Brother Cadfael, though he did manage to rise for Prime, took
advantage of his carefully chosen place behind a pillar to doze his way through
chapter. He was so sound asleep, indeed, that for once he was in danger of
snoring, and at the first melodious horn-call Brother Mark took fright, and
nudged him awake.

The
provost had obeyed the abbot’s invitation to the latter, and arrived only at
the very end of chapter. The steward of the grange court had just announced
that he was in attendance when Cadfael opened his eyes.

“What
can the provost be here for?” whispered Mark.

“He
was asked to come. Do I know why? Hush!”

Geoffrey
Corviser came in in his best, and made his reverence respectfully but coolly.
He had no solid cohort at his back this time, and to tell the truth, though he
may have felt some curiosity, he was attaching very little importance to this
encounter. His mind was on other things. True, the problems of the town
remained, and at any other time would have taken foremost place in his concern,
but today he was proof against public cares by reason of private elation in a
son vindicated and praised, a son to be proud of.

“You
sent for me, Father Abbot. I am here.”

“I
thank you for your courtesy in attending,” said the abbot mildly. “Some days
ago, Master Provost, before the fair, you came with a request to me which I
could not meet.”

The provost said not a word; there was none due, and
he felt no need to speak at a loss.

“The
fair is now over,” said the abbot equably. “All the rents, tolls and taxes have
been collected, and all have been delivered into the abbey treasury, as is due
by charter. Do you endorse that?”

“It
is the law,” said Corviser, “to the letter.”

“Good!
We are agreed. Right has therefore been done, and the privilege of this house
is maintained. That I could not infringe by any prior concession. Abbots who
follow me would have blamed me, and with good reason. Their rights are
sacrosanct. But now they have been met in full. And as abbot of this house, it
is for me to determine what use shall be made of the monies in our hold. What I
could not grant away in imperilment of charter,” said Radulfus with
deliberation, “I can give freely as a gift from this house. Of the fruits of
this year’s fair, I give a tenth to the town of Shrewsbury, for the repair of
me walls and repaving of the streets.”

The
provost, enlarged in his family content, flushed into startled and delighted
acknowledgement, a generous man accepting generosity. “My lord, I take your
tenth with pleasure and gratitude, and I will see that it is used worthily. And
I make public here and now that no part of the abbey’s right is thereby changed.
Saint Peter’s Fair is your fair. Whether and when your neighbour town should
also benefit, when it is in dire need, that rests with your judgment.”

“Our
steward will convey you the money,” said Radulfus, and rose to conclude a
satisfactory encounter. “This chapter is concluded,” he said.

Chapter Six

AUGUST
CONTINUED BLESSEDLY FINE, and all hands turned gladly to making sure of the harvest.
Hugh Beringar and Aline set off with their hopes and purchases for Maesbury, as
did the merchant of Worcester for his home town, a day late, but well
compensated with a fee for the hire of his horse in an emergency, on the
sheriff’s business, and a fine story which he would retail on suitable
occasions for the rest of his life. The provost and council of Shrewsbury
drafted a dignified acknowledgement to the abbey for its gift, warm enough to
give proper expression to their appreciation of the gesture, canny enough not
to compromise any of their own just claims for the future. The sheriff put on
record the closure of a criminal affair, as related to him by the young woman
who had been lured away on false pretences, with the apparent design of stealing
from her a letter left in her possession, but of the contents of which she was
ignorant. There was some suspicion of a conspiracy involved, but as Mistress
Vernold had never seen nor been told the significance of what she held, and as
in any case it was now irrevocably lost by fire, no further action was
necessary or possible. The malefactor was dead, his servant, self-confessed a
murderer at his master’s orders, awaited trial, and would plead that he had
been forced to obey, being villein-born and at his lord’s mercy. The dead man’s
overlord had been informed. Someone else, at the discretion of the earl of
Chester, would take seisin of the manor of Stanton Cobbold.

Everyone drew breath, dusted his hands, and went
back to work.

Brother
Cadfael went up into the town on the second day, to tend Emma’s hand. The
provost and his son were at work together, in strong content with each other
and the world. Mistress Corviser returned to her kitchen, and left leech and
patient together.

“I
have wanted to talk to you,” said Emma, looking up earnestly into his face as
he renewed the dressing. “There must be one person who hears the truth from me,
and I would rather it should be you.”

“I
don’t believe,” said Cadfael equably, “that you told the sheriff a single thing
that was false.”

“No,
but I did not tell him all the truth. I said that I had no knowledge of what
was in the letter, or even for whom it was intended, or by whom it was sent.
That was true, I had no such knowledge of my own, though I did know who brought
it to my uncle, and that it was to be handed to the glover for delivery. But
when Ivo demanded the letter of me, and I span out the time asking what could
be so important about a letter, he told me what he believed to be in it. King
Stephen’s kingdom stood at stake, he said, and the gain to the man who provided
him the means to wipe out his enemies would stretch as wide as an earldom. He
said the empress’s friends were pressing the earl of Chester to join them, and
he would not move unless he had word of all the other powers her cause could
muster, and this was the promised despatch, to convince him his interest lay
with them. As many as fifty names there might be, he said, of those secretly
bound to the empress, perhaps even the date when Robert of Gloucester hopes to
bring her to England, even the port where they plan to land. All these sold in
advance to the king’s vengeance, life and limb and lands, he said, and the earl
of Chester with them, who had gone so far as to permit this approach! All these
offered up bound and condemned, and he would get his own price for them. This
is what he told me. This is what I do not know of my own knowledge, and yet in
my heart and soul I do know it, for I am sure what he said was true.” She
moistened her lips, and said carefully: “I do not know King Stephen well enough
to know what he would do, but I remember
what he did here, last
summer. I saw all those men, as honest in their allegiance as those who hold
with the king, thrown into prison, their lives forfeit, their families stripped
of land and living, some forced into exile… I saw deaths and revenges and still
more bitterness if the tide should turn again. So I did what I did.”

“I
know what you did,” said Brother Cadfael gently. He was bandaging the healing
proof of it.

“But
still, you see,” she persisted gravely, “I am not sure if I did right, and for
right reasons. King Stephen at least keeps a kind of peace where his writ runs.
My uncle was absolute for the empress, but if she comes, if all these who hold
with her rise and join her, there will be no peace anywhere. Whichever way I
look I see deaths. But all I could think of, then, was preventing him from
gaining by his treachery and murders. And there was only one way, by destroying
the letter. Since then I have wondered… But I think now that I must stand by
what I did. If there must be fighting, if there must be deaths, let it happen
as God wills, not as ambitious and evil men contrive. Those lives we cannot
save, at least let us not help to destroy. Do you think I was right? I have
wanted someone’s word, I should like it to be yours.”

“Since
you ask what I think,” said Cadfael, “I think my child, that if you carry scars
on the fingers of this hand lifelong, you should wear them like jewels.”

Her
lips parted in a startled smile. She shook her head over the persistent tremor
of doubt. “But you must never tell Philip,” she said with sudden urgency,
holding him by the sleeve with her good hand. “As I never shall. Let him
believe me as innocent as he is himself…” She frowned over the word, which did
not seem to her quite what she had wanted, but she could not find one fitter
for her purpose. If it was not innocence she meant—for of what was she
guilty?—was it simplicity, clarity, purity? None of them would do. Perhaps Brother
Cadfael would understand, none the less. “I felt somehow mired,” she said. “He
should never set foot in intrigue, it is not for him.”

Brother Cadfael
gave her his promise, and walked back through the town in a muse, reflecting on
the complexity of women. She was perfectly right. Philip, for all his two years
advantage, his intelligence, and his new and masterful maturity,
would
always be the younger, and the simpler, and—yes, she had the just word, after
all!—the more innocent. In Cadfael’s experience, it made for very good marriage
prospects, where the woman was fully aware of her responsibilities.

On
the thirtieth of September, just two months after Saint Peter’s Fair, the
Empress Maud and her half-brother Robert of Gloucester landed near Arundel and
entered into the castle there. But Earl Ranulf of Chester sat cannily in his
own palatine, minded his own business, and stirred neither hand nor foot in her
cause.

About
the Author

ELLIS PETERS is
the
nom-de-crime
of English novelist Edith Pargeter, author of scores of
books under her own name. She is the recipient of the Silver Dagger Award,
conferred by the Crime Writers Association in Britain, as well as the coveted
Edgar, awarded by the Mystery Writers of America. Miss Pargeter is also well
known as a translator of poetry and prose from the Czech and has been awarded
the Gold Medal and Ribbon of the Czechoslovak Society for Foreign Relations for
her services to Czech literature. She passed away in 1995, at the age of 82, at
home in her beloved Shropshire.