CHAPTER 1
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, and shaped soundlessly: “Dead!” it was clear that she was firm on her own feet again, and in no danger of falling. Her eyes, once the momentary panic and dizziness passed, looked straight at Hugh and made no appeal.
“Drowned?” she said. “But he swam well, he was raised by the river. And if he drank at all, it was sparingly. I do not believe he could fall into Severn and drown. Not of himself!” she said, and her large eyes dilated.
“Sit down,” said Hugh gently, “for we must talk a little, and then I shall leave you with Aline, for of course you must remain here in our care for this while.
No, he did not drown. Nor did he come by his death of himself. Master Thomas was stabbed from behind, stripped, and put into the river after death.”
“You mean,” she said, in a voice low and laboured, but quite steady, “he was waylaid and killed by mere sneak-thieves, for what he had on him? For his rings and his gown and his shoes?”
“It is what leaps to the mind. There are no roads in England now that can be called safe, and no great fair that has not its probable underworld of hangers-on, who will kill for a few pence.”
“My uncle was not a timid man. He has fought off more than one attack in his time, and he never avoided a journey for fear in his life. After all these years,” she said, her voice aching with protest, “why should he fall victim now to such scum? And yet what else can it be?”
“There are some people recalling,” said Hugh, “that there was an ugly incident on the jetty last evening, and violence was done to a number of the merchants who were unloading goods and setting up stalls for the fair. It’s common knowledge there was bad blood between town and traders, of whom Master Thomas was perhaps the most influential. He was involved bitterly with the young man who led the raid. An attack made in revenge, by night, perhaps in a drunken rage, might end mortally, whether it was meant or no.”
“Then he would have been left where he lay,” said Emma sharply. “His attacker would think only of getting clean away unseen. Those angry people were not thieves, only townsmen with a grievance. A grievance might turn them into murderers, but I do not think it would turn them into thieves.”
Hugh was beginning to feel considerable respect for this girl, as Aline, by her detached silence and her attentive face, had already learned to do. “I won’t say but I agree with you there,” he admitted. “But it might well occur to a young man turned murderer almost by mishap, to dress his crime as the common sneak killing for robbery. It opens so wide a field. Twenty young men bitterly aggrieved and hot against your uncle for his scorn of them could be lost among a thousand unknown, and the most unlikely suspects among them, at that, if this passes as chance murder for gain.”
Even in the bleak newness of her bereavement, this thought troubled her. She bit a hesitant lip. “You think it may have been one of those young men? Or more of them together? That they burned with their grudge until they followed him in the dark, and took this way?”
“It’s being both thought and said,” owned Hugh, “by many people who witnessed what happened by the river.”
“But the sheriff’s men,” she pointed out, frowning, “surely took up many of those young men long before my uncle went to the fairground. If they were already in prison, they could not have harmed him.”
“True of most of them. But the one who led them was not taken until the small hours of the morning, when he came reeling back to the town gate, where he was awaited. He is in a cell in the castle now, like his fellows, but he was still at liberty long after Master Thomas failed to come back to you, and he is under strong suspicion of this death. The whole pack of them will come before the sheriff this afternoon. The rest, I fancy, will be let out on their fathers’ bail, to answer the charges later. But for Philip Corviser, I greatly doubt it.
He will need to have better answers than he was able to give when they took him.”
“This afternoon!” echoed Emma. “Then I should also attend. I was a witness when this turmoil began. The sheriff should hear my testimony, too, especially if my uncle’s death is in question. There were others - Master Corbière, and the brother of the abbey, the one you know well …”
“They will be attending, and others besides. Certainly your witness would be valuable, but to ask it of you at such a time…”
“I would rather!” she said firmly. “I want my uncle’s murderer caught, if indeed he was murdered, but I pray no innocent man may be too hurriedly blamed. I don’t know - I would not have thought he looked like a murderer … I should like to tell what I do know, it is my duty.”
Beringar cast a brief glance at his wife for enlightenment, and Aline gave him a smile and the faintest of nods.
“If you are resolved on that,” he said, reassured, “I will ask Brother Cadfael to escort you. And for the rest, you need have no anxieties about your own situation. It will be necessary for you to stay here until this matter is looked into, but naturally you will remain here in Aline’s company, and you shall have every possible help in whatever dispositions you need to make.”
“I should like,” said Emma, “to take my uncle’s body back by the barge to Bristol for burial.” She had not considered, until then, that there would be no protector for her on the boat this time, only Roger Dod, whose mute but watchful and jealous devotion was more than she could bear, Warin who would take care to notice nothing that might cause him trouble, and poor Gregory, who was strong and able of body but very dull of wit. She drew in breath sharply, and bit an uncertain lip, and the shadow came back to her eyes. “At least, to send him back … His man of law there will take care of his affairs and mine.”
“I have spoken to the prior. Abbot Radulfus sanctions the use of an abbey chapel, your uncle’s body can lie there when he is brought from the castle, and all due preparations will be made for his decent coffining. Ask for anything you want, it shall be at your disposal. I must summon your journeyman to attend at the castle this afternoon, too. How would you wish him to deal, concerning the fair? I will give him whatever instructions you care to send.”
She nodded understanding, visibly bracing herself again towards a world of shrewd daily business which had not ceased with the ending of a life. “Be so kind as to tell him,” she said, “to continue trading for the three days of the fair, as though his master still presided. My uncle would scorn to go aside from his regular ways for any danger or loss, and so will I in his name.” And suddenly, as freely and as simply as a small child, she burst into tears at last.