Read Online St. Peter's Fair by Ellis Peters - Free Book Online Page A

they
peered close there was lambent light enough from the stars for accustomed eyes
to see what he had seen. From beneath a light wooden frame and stretched canvas
jutted two booted feet, motionless, toes pointed skywards. For a moment they
all stared in silence, dumbstruck, for truth to tell, not one of them had
believed that the merchant could have come to any harm, as they all agreed
afterwards. Then Beringar took hold of the frame and hoisted it away from the
trestles against which it leaned, and dim and large in the darkness they saw a
man’s long shape, from the knees up rolled in a cloak that hid the face. There
was no movement, and no noticeable sound.
    The
sergeant leaned in with the one torch they had brought with them, and Beringar
reached a hand to the folds of the cloak, and began to draw them back from the
shrouded head and shoulders. The movement of the cloth released a powerful wave
of an odour that made him halt and draw suspicious breath. It also disturbed
the body, which emitted an enormous snore, and a further gust of spirituous
breath.
    “Dead
drunk and helpless,” said Beringar, relieved. “And not, I fancy, the man we’re
looking for. The state he’s in, this fellow must have been here some hours
already, and if he comes round in time to crawl away before dawn it will be a
miracle. Let’s have a look at him.” He was less gingerly now in dragging the
cloak away, but the drunken man let himself be hauled about and dragged forth
by the feet with only a few disturbed grunts, and subsided into stertorous
sleepagain as soon as he was released. The torch shone its
yellow, resinous light upon a shock-head of coarse auburn hair, a pair of wide
shoulders in a leather jerkin, and a face that might have been sharp, lively
and even comely when he was awake and sober, but now looked bloated and
idiotic, with open, slobbering mouth and reddened eyes.
    Corbière
took one close look at him, and let out a gasp and an oath. “Fowler! Devil take
the sot! Is this how he obeys me? By God, I’ll make him sweat for it!” And he
filled a fist with the thick brown hair and shook the fellow furiously, but got
no more out of him than a louder snort, the partial opening of one glazed eye,
and a wordless mumble that subsided again as soon as he was dropped,
disgustedly and ungently, back into the turf.
    “This
drunken rogue is mine… my falconer and archer, Turstan Fowler,” said Ivo
bitterly, and kicked the sleeper in the ribs but not savagely. What was the
use? The man would not be conscious for hours yet, and what he suffered afterwards
would pay him all his dues. “I’ve a mind to put him to cool in the river! I
never gave him leave to quit the abbey precinct, and by the look of him he’s
been out and drinking— Good God, the reek of it, what raw spirit can it
be?—since ever I turned my back.”
    “One
thing’s certain,” said Hugh, amused, “he’s in no case to walk back to his bed.
Since he’s yours, what will you have done with him? I would not advise leaving
him here. If he has anything of value on him, even his hose, he might be
without it by morning. There’ll be scavengers abroad in the dark hours—no fair
escapes them.”
    Ivo
stood back and stared down disgustedly at the oblivious culprit. “If you’ll
lend me two of your men, and let us borrow a board here, we’ll haul him back
and toss him into one of the abbey’s punishment cells, to sleep off his
swinishness on the stones, and serve him right. If we leave him there unfed all
the morrow, it may frighten him into better sense. Next time, I’ll have his
hide!”
    They
hoisted the sleeper on to a board, where he sprawled aggravatingly into ease
again, and snored his way along the Foregate so blissfully that his bearers
were tempted to tip him off at intervals, by way of recompensing themselves for
their own labour. Cadfael, Beringar and the remainder of the partywere
left looking