Ellis Peters - St Peter's Fair

“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.

When Hugh was gone about his business, and Constance had withdrawn at Aline’s nod, the two women sat quietly until Emma had ceased to weep, which she did as suddenly as she had begun. She wept, as some women have the gift of doing, without in the least defacing her own prettiness and without caring whether she did or no. Most lose the faculty, after the end of childhood. She dried her eyes, and looked up straightly at Aline, who was looking back at her just as steadily, with a serenity which offered comfort without pressing it.

“You must think,” said Emma, “that I had no deep affection for my uncle. And indeed I don’t know myself that you would be wrong. And yet I did love him, it has not been only loyalty and gratitude, though those came easier. He was a hard man, people said, hard to satisfy, and hard in his business dealings. But he was not hard to me. Only hard to come near. It was not his fault, or mine.”

“I think,” said Aline mildly, since she was being invited closer, “you loved him as much as he would let you. As he could let you. Some men have not the gift.”

“Yes. But I would have liked to love him more. I would have done anything to please him. Even now I want to do everything as he would have wished. We shall keep the booth open as long as the fair lasts, and try to do it as well as he would have done. All that he had in hand, I want to see done thoroughly.” Her voice was resolute, almost eager. Master Thomas would certainly have approved the set of her chin and the spark in her eye. “Aline, shall I not be a trouble to you by staying here? I - my uncle’s men - there’s one who likes me too well ...”

“So I had thought,” said Aline. “You’re most welcome here, and we’ll not part with you until you can be sent back safely to Bristol, and your home. Not that I can find it altogether blameworthy in the young man to like you, for that matter,” she added, smiling.

“No, but I cannot like him well enough. Besides, my uncle would never have allowed me to be there on the barge without him. And now I have duties,” said Emma, rearing her head determinedly and staring the uncertain future defiantly in the face. “I must see to the ordering of a fine coffin for him, for the journey home. There will be a master-carpenter, somewhere in the town?”

“There is. To the right, halfway up the Wyle, Master Martin Bellecote. A good man, and a good craftsman. His lad was among these terrible rioters, as I hear,” said Aline, and dimpled indulgently at the thought, “but so were half the promising youth of the town. I’ll come in with you to Martin’s shop.”

“No,” said Emma firmly. “It will all be tedious and long at the sheriff’s court, and you should not tire yourself. And besides, you have to buy your fine wools, before the best are taken. And Brother Cadfael - was that the name? - will show me where to find the shop. He will surely know.”

“There’s very little to be known about this precinct and the town of Shrewsbury,” agreed Aline with conviction, “that Brother Cadfael does not know.”