St. Peter's Fair (23 page)

Radulfus
listened in disciplined silence to all, and there was no telling from his face
whether he deplored or approved such summary justice.

“Violence
can never be anything but ugly,” he said thoughtfully, “but we live in a world
as ugly and violent as it is beautiful and good. Two things above all concern
me, and one of them may seem to you, brother, a trivial matter. This death, the
shedding of this blood, took place outside our walls. For that I am grateful.
You have lived both within and without, what must be accepted and borne is the
same to you, within or without. But many here lack your knowledge, and for
them, and for the peace we strive to preserve here as refuge for others beside
ourselves, the sanctity of this place is better unspotted. And the second thing
will matter as deeply to you as to me: Was this man guilty? Is it certain he himself
had killed?”

“It
is certain,” said Brother Cadfael, choosing his words with care, “that he had
been concerned in murder, most likely with at least one other man.”

“Then
harsh though it may be, this was justice.” He caught the heaviness of Cadfael’s
silence, and looked up sharply. “You are not satisfied?”

“That
the man took part in murder, yes, I am satisfied. The proofs are clear. But
what is justice? If there were two, and one bears all, and the other goes free,
is that justice? I am certain in my soul that there is more, not yet known.”

“And
tomorrow all these people will depart about their own affairs, to their own
homes and shops, wherever they may be. The guilty and the innocent alike. That
cannot be the will of God,” said the abbot, and brooded a while in silence.
“Nevertheless, it may be God’s will that it should be taken out of our hands.
Continue your vigil, brother, through the morrow. After that others, elsewhere,
must take up the burden.”

Brother Mark sat on the edge of his cot, in his cell
in the dortoire, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and
grieved. From a child he had lived a hard life, privation, brutality and pain
were all known to him as close companions until he came into this retreat, at
first unwilling. But death was too monstrous and too dark for him, coming thus
instant in terror, and without the possibility of grace. To live misused,
ill-fed, without respite from labour, was still life, with a sky above it, and
trees and flowers and birds around it, colour and season and beauty. Life, even
so lived, was a friend. Death was a stranger.

“Child,
it is with us always,” said Cadfael, patient beside him. “Last summer
ninety-five men died here in the town, none of whom had done murder. For
choosing the wrong side, they died. It falls upon blameless women in war, even
in peace at the hands of evil men. It falls upon children who never did harm to
any, upon old men, who in their lives have done good to many, and yet are
brutally and senselessly slain. Never let it shake your faith that there is a
balance hereafter. What you see is only a broken piece from a perfect whole.”

“I
know,” said Brother Mark between his fingers, loyal but uncomforted. “But to be
cut off without trial…”

“So
were the ninety-four last year,” said Cadfael gently, “and the ninety-fifth was
murdered. Such justice as we see is also but a broken shred. But it is our duty
to preserve what we may, and fit together such fragments as we find, and take
the rest on trust.”

“And
unshriven!” cried Brother Mark.

“So
went his victim also. And he had neither robbed nor killed, or if he had, only
God knows of it. There has many a man gone through that gate without a
safe-conduct, who will reach heaven ahead of some who were escorted through
with absolution and ceremony, and had their affairs in order. Kings and princes
of the church may find shepherds and serfs preferred before them, and some who
claim they have done great good may have to give place to poor wretches who
have done wrong and acknowledge it, and have tried to make amends.”

Brother
Mark sat listening, and at least began to hear. Humbly he recognised and
admitted the real heart of his grievance. “I had his arm between my hands, I
saw him
wince when I cleansed his wound, and I felt his pain.
It was only a small pain, but I felt it. I was glad to help him, it was
pleasure to anoint the cut with balm, and wrap it clean, and know he was eased.
And now he’s dead, with a cross-bow bolt through him…” Briefly and angrily,
Brother Mark brushed away tears, and uncovered his accusing face. “What is the
use of mending a man, if he’s to be broken within a few hours, past mending?”

“We
were speaking of souls,” said Cadfael mildly, “not mere bodies, and who knows
but your touch with ointment and linen may have mended to better effect the one
that lasts the longer? There’s no arrow cleaves the soul but there may be balm
for it.”

Chapter Five

HEAD-DOWN
ON HIS OWN TRACES, Philip had run his friend John Norreys to earth at last at
the butts by the riverside, where the budding archers of the town practised,
and together they hunted out Edric Flesher’s young journeyman from the yard
behind his master’s shop. Philip’s odyssey on the eve of the fair had begun
with these two, who had had him bundled into their arms by Brother Cadfael when
the sheriff’s men descended on the Gaye.

By
their own account, they had hauled him away through the orchards and the narrow
lanes behind the Foregate, avoiding the highroads, and sat him down in the
first booth that sold drink, to recover his addled wits. And very ungrateful
they had found him, as soon as the shock of his blow on the head began to pass,
and his legs were less shaky under him.

Furious
with himself, he had turned his ill-temper on them, snarled at them, said John
tolerantly, that he was capable of looking after himself, and they had better
go and warn some of the other stalwarts who had rushed on along the Foregate
overturning stalls and scattering goods, before the officers reached them.
Which they had taken good-humouredly enough, knowing his head was aching villainously
by that time, and had followed him for a while at a discreet distance as he
blundered away through the fair-ground, until he turned on them again and
ordered them away. They had stood to watch him, and then shrugged and left him
to his own devices, since he would have none of them.

“You had your legs again,” said John reasonably,
“and since you wouldn’t let us do anything for you, we thought best to let you
go your own way. Let alone, you wouldn’t go far, but if we followed, you might
do who knows what, out of contrariness.”

“There
was another fellow who looked after you a thought anxiously,” said the
butcher’s man, thinking back, “when we left that booth with you. Came out after
us, and set off the same way you took. He thought you were already helpless
drunk, I fancy, and might need helping home.”

“That
was kind in him,” said Philip, stiffening indignantly, and meaning that it was
damned officious of whoever it was. “That would be what hour? Not yet eight?”

“Barely.
I did hear the bell for Compline shortly after, over the wall. Curious how it
carries over all the bustle between.” In the upper air, so it would; people in
the Foregate regulated their day by the office bells.

“Who
was this who followed me? Did you know him?”

They
looked at each other and hoisted indifferent shoulders; among the thousands at
a great fair the local people are lost. “Never seen him before. Not a
Shrewsbury man. He may not have been following, to call it that, at all, just
heading the same way.”

They
told him exactly where he had left them, and the direction he had taken. Philip
made his way purposefully to the spot indicated, but in that busy concourse,
spreading along the Foregate and filling every open space beyond, he was still
without a map. All he knew was that before nine, according to the witness in
the sheriff’s court, he had been very drunk and still drinking in Wat’s tavern,
and blurting out hatred and grievance and the intent of vengeance against
Master Thomas of Bristol. The interval it was hard to fill. Perhaps he had made
his way there at once, and been well advanced in drink before the stranger
noted his threats.

Philip
gritted his teeth and set off along the Foregate, so intent on his own quest
that he had no ears for anything else, and missed the news that was being
busily conveyed back and forth through the fair, with imaginative variations
and considerable embellishments before it reached the far corner of the
horse-fair. It was news more than two hours old by then, but Philip had heard
no word of it, his mind was on his
own problem. All round him
stalls were being stripped down to trestle and board, and rented booths being
locked up, and the keys delivered to abbey stewards. Business was almost put
away, but the evening was not yet outworn, there would be pleasure after
business.

Walter
Renold’s inn lay at the far corner of the horse-fair, not on the London
highroad, but on the quieter road that bore away north-eastwards. It was handy
for the country people who brought goods to market, and at this hour it was
full. It went against the grain with Philip even to order a pot of ale for
himself while he was on this desperate quest, but alehouses live by sales, and
at least he was so formidably sober now that he could afford the indulgence.
The potboy who brought him his drink was hardly more than a child, and he did
not remember the tow hair and pock-marked face. He waited to speak with Wat
himself, when there was a brief interlude of calm.

“I
heard they’d let you go free,” said Wat, spreading brawny arms along the table
opposite him. “I’m glad of it. I never thought you’d do harm, and so I told
them where they asked. When was it they loosed you?”

“A
while before noon.” Hugh Beringar had said he should eat his dinner at home,
and so he had, though at a later hour than usual.

“So
nobody could point a finger at you over the latest ill-doings. Such a fair as
we’ve had! Good weather and good sales, and good attendance all round, even
good behaviour,” said Wat weightily, considering the whole range of his
experience of fairs. “And yet two merchants murdered, the second of them a
northern man found only this morning broken-necked in his stall. You’ll have
heard about that? When did we ever have such happenings! It’s not the lads of
Shrewsbury, I said when they asked me, that get up to such villainies, you look
among the incomers from other parts. We’re decent folk herebouts!”

“Yes,
I know of that,” said Philip. “But it’s not that death they pointed at me, it’s
the first, the Bristol merchant…” North and south had met here, he reflected,
fatally for both. Now why should that be? Both the victims strangers from far
distances, where some born locally were as well worth plundering.

“This one they could hardly charge to your account,”
said Wat, grinning broadly, “even if you’d been at large so early. It’s all
past and gone. You hadn’t heard? There was a grand to-do along the Foregate, a
few hours ago. The murderer’s found out red-handed, and made a break for his
freedom on his lord’s horse, and kicked his lord into the dust on the way. And
he’s shot down dead as a storm-struck tree, at his lord’s orders. A master’s
shot, they say. The glover’s soon avenged. And you’d not heard of it?”

“Not
a word! The last I heard they were looking for a man who might have a slit
sleeve to show, and a gash in his arm. When was this, then?” It seemed that
Brother Cadfael must have found his man, unaided, after all.

“Not
an hour before Vespers it must have been. All I heard was the shouting at the
abbey end of the Foregate. But they tell me the sheriff himself was there.”

About
five in the afternoon, perhaps less than an hour after Philip had left Brother
Cadfael and gone back into the town to look for John Norreys. A short hunt that
had been, no need any longer for him to cast a narrowed eye at men’s sleeves
wherever he went. “And it’s certain they got the right man?”

“Certain!
The merchant had marked him, and they say there were goods and money from the
glover’s stall found in his pack. Some groom called Ewald, I heard…”

A
mere sneak-thief, then, who had gone too far. Nothing there to bear on Philip’s
own quest. He was free to concentrate his mind once again, and even more
intently, upon his own pilgrimage. It had begun as a penitential exercise, but
was gradually abandoning that aspect. Certainly he had made a fool of himself,
but the original impulse on which he had acted, and roused others to act, had
not been so foolish, after all, and was nothing to be ashamed of. Only when it
collapsed about him in ruins had he thrown good sense to the winds, and
indulged his misery like a sulking child.

“Now
if only I could find out as certainly who it was did for Master Thomas! It was
that night there was grave matter urged against me, and I will own I laid
myself open. It’s all very well being let out on my father’s bail, but no one
has yet said I’m clear of the charge. The rest I’ll pay my score for, but I
want to prove I never did the merchant any violence. I know I was here that
night—the eve of the fair, you’ll
remember? From what hour?
I’ve no recollection of times, myself. According to his men, Master Thomas was
alive until a third of the hour past nine.”