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

after them somewhat ruefully, their own errand still unfulfilled.
    “Well,
well!” said Rhodri ap Huw softly into Cadfael’s ear, “Euan of Shotwick is
taking a modest interest in the evening’s happenings, after all!”
    Cadfael
turned to look, and in the shuttered booth tucked under the wall a hatch had
certainly opened, and against the pale light of a candle a head leaned out in
sharp outline, staring towards where they stood. He recognised the
high-bridged, haughty nose, the deceptively meagre slant of the lean shoulders,
before the hatch was drawn silently to again, and the glover vanished.
    They
worked their way doggedly, yard by yard, all the way back to the riverside,
where Roger Dod was waiting in a fume of anxiety, but they found no trace of
Thomas of Bristol.
    A
late boat coming up the Severn from Buildwas next day, and tying up at the
bridge about nine in the morning, delayed its unloading of a cargo of pottery
to ask first that a message be sent to the sheriff, for they had other cargo
aboard, taken up out of a cove near Atcham, which would be very much the
sheriff’s business. Gilbert Prestcote, busy with other matters, sent from the
castle his own sergeant, with orders to report first to Hugh Beringar at the
abbey.
    The
particular cargo the potter had to deliver lay rolled in a length of coarse
sail-cloth in the bottom of the boat, and oozed water in a dark stain over the
boards. The boatman unfolded the covering, and displayed to Beringar’s view the
body of a heavily-built man of some fifty to fifty-five years, fleshy, with
thinning, grizzled hair and bristly, bluish jowls, his pouchy features sagging
doughily in death. Master Thomas of Bristol, stripped of his elaborate
capuchon, his handsome gown, his rings and his dignity, as naked as the day he
was born.
    “We
saw his whiteness bobbing under the bank,” said the potter, looking down upon
his salvaged man, “and poled in to pick him up, the poor soul. I can show you
the place, this side of the shallows and the island at Atcham. We thought best
to bring him here, as we would a drowned man. But this one,” he said very
soberly, “did not drown.”
    No,
Thomas of Bristol had not drowned. That was already evident from the very fact
that he had been stripped of everything he had on, and hardly by his own hands
or will. But also, even more certainly, from the incredibly narrow wound under
his left shoulder-blade, washed white and closed by the river, where a very
fine, slender dagger had transfixed him and penetrated to his heart.

 
    ----
    The First Day of the Fair

 
     
     
    Chapter One
     
    THE
FIRST DAY OF SAINT PETER’S FAIR was in full swing, and the merry, purposeful hum
of voices bargaining, gossiping and crying wares came over the wall into the
great court, and in at the gatehouse, like the summer music of a huge hive of
bees on a sunny day. The sound pursued Hugh Beringar back to the apartment in
the guest-hall, where his wife and Emma Vernold were very pleasurably comparing
the virtues of various wools, and the maid Constance, who was an expert
spinstress, was fingering the samples critically and giving her advice.
    On
this domestic scene, which had brought back the fresh colour to Emma’s cheeks
and the animation to her voice, Hugh’s sombre face cast an instant cloud. There
was no time for breaking news circuitously, nor did he think that this girl
would thank him for going roundabout.
    “Mistress
Vernold, my news is ill, and I grieve for it. God knows I had not expected
this. Your uncle is found. A boat coming up early this morning from Buildwas
picked up his body from the river.”
    The
colour ebbed from her face. She stood with frightened, helpless eyes gazing
blindly before her. The prop of her life had suddenly been plucked away, and
for a moment it seemed that all balance was lost to her, and she might indeed
fall for want of him. But by the time she had drawn breath deep,