“For all I said,” Emma mused aloud, putting fine stitches into a linen band for an infant’s cap, in the lofty midday light in the window of Aline’s bedchamber, “I do grieve for those gloves of mine. Such fine leather, supple and black, and a wealth of gold in the embroidery. I never bought such expensive ones before.” She reached the end of her seam, and snipped off the thread neatly. “They say there’s a very good glover has a stall in the fair,” she said, smoothing her work. “I thought I might take a look at his wares, and see if he has anything as fine as those I’ve lost. They tell me he’s well known in Chester, and the countess buys from him. I think perhaps I’ll walk along the Foregate this afternoon, and see what he has. What with all these upsets, I’ve hardly seen anything of the fair.”
“A good idea,” said Aline. “Such a fine day, we should not be spending it here within doors. I’ll come with you.”
“Oh, no, you should not,” protested Emma solicitously. “You nave not had your sleep this afternoon. No need to keep me company that short way. I should be distressed if you tired yourself on my account.”
“Oh, folly!” said Aline cheerfully. “I am so healthy I shall burst if I have too little to do. It’s Constance and Hugh who want to make an invalid of me, just because I’m in a woman’s best and happiest estate. And Hugh is gone to the sheriff, and Constance is visiting with a cousin of hers in the Wyle, so who’s to fret? I’ll slip on my shoes, and we’ll go. I should like to buy a box of those sugared fruits your uncle brought from the east. We’ll do that, too.”
It seemed that Emma had, after all, lost her taste for the expedition. She sat stroking the embroidered band she had just finished, and eyed the shape of linen cut for the crown. “I don’t know—I should finish this, perhaps. After tomorrow there may be no choice, and I should be sorry to leave it for someone else to finish. As for the candied fruits, I’ll ask Roger to bring you a box, when he comes again this evening to tell me how the day has gone. Tomorrow it will be here.”
“That’s kind,” said Aline, slipping on her shoes none the less, “but he could hardly try on a pair of gloves for you, or choose with your eye. So let’s go and see for ourselves. It won’t take long.”
Emma sat hesitating, but whether in a genuine endeavour to make up her mind, or in search of a way of extricating herself from an unsatisfactory situation, Aline could not be sure. “Oh, no, I should not! How can I give my mind to such vanity, at a time like this! I’m ashamed that I ever thought of it. My uncle dead, and here am I yearning after trumpery bits of finery. No, I won’t be so shallow. Let me at least go on with my work for the child, instead of thinking only of my own adornment.” And she picked up the cut linen. Aline noted that the hand holding it trembled a little, and wondered whether to persist. Plainly the girl wanted to go forth for some purpose of her own, but would not go unless it could be alone. And alone, said Aline firmly to herself, she certainly shall not go, if I can prevent it.
“Well,” she said doubtfully, “if you’re determined to be so penitential, I won’t play the devil and tempt you. And I’m the gainer, your sewing is so fine, I could never match it. Who taught you so well?” She slipped off her soft leather shoes, and sat down again. Something, at least, she had learned, better to let well alone now. Emma welcomed the change of subject eagerly. Of her childhood she would talk freely.
“My mother was a famous embroidress. She began to teach me as soon as I could manage a needle, but she died when I was only eight, and Uncle Thomas took me in. We had a housekeeper, a Flemish lady who had married a Bristol seaman, and been widowed when his ship was lost, and she taught me everything she knew, though I could never equal her work. She used to make altar cloths and vestments for the church, such beautiful things...”
So a plain pair of good black gloves, thought Aline, would have done well enough for you at any time, since you could have adorned them to your own fancy. And those who can do such things exquisitely, seldom prefer the work of others.
It was not difficult to keep Emma talking, but for all that, Aline could not help wondering what was going through the girl’s mind, and how soon, and how cunningly, she would make the next bid to slip away solitary about her mysterious business. But as it fell out, she need not have troubled, for late in the afternoon came a lay brother from the gatehouse, to announce that Martin Bellecote had brought down Master Thomas’s coffin, and desired permission to proceed with his business. Emma rose instantly, laying down her sewing, her face pale and intent. If there was one thing certain, it was that no other matter, however urgent, would take her away from the church until her uncle was decently coffined and sealed down for his journey home, and prayers said for his repose, as later she would attend the first Mass for him. Whatever he had been to others, he had been uncle and father and friend to his orphaned kinswoman, and no reverence, no tribute, would be omitted from his obsequies.
“I will come myself,” said Emma. “I must say farewell to him.” She had not yet seen him, dead, but the brothers, long expert in the gentle arts that reconcile life to death, would have made sure that she would be able to remember him without distress.
“Shall I come with you?” offered Aline.
“You are very good, but I would rather go alone.”
Aline followed as far as the great court, and watched the little procession cross to the cloister, Emma walking beside the handcart on which Martin and his son wheeled the coffin. When they had lifted the heavy box and carried it in by the south door of the church, with Emma following, Aline stood for some minutes looking about her. At this hour most of the guests and many of the lay servants were out at the fair, only the brothers went about their business as usual. Through the wide gate of the distant stable-yard she could see Ivo Corbière’s young groom rubbing down a pony, and the archer Turstan Fowler sitting on a mounting block, whistling as he burnished a saddle. Sober and recovered from his debauch, he was a well-set-up and comely fellow, with the open face of one who has not a care in the world. Evidently he was long since forgiven, and back in favour.
Brother Cadfael, coming from the gardens, saw her still gazing pensively towards the church. She smiled at sight of him.
“Martin has brought the coffin. They are within there, she’ll think of nothing else now. But, Cadfael, she intends to give us all the slip when she can. She has tried. She would see, she said, if the glover at the fair has something to take the place of the ones she lost. But when I said I would go with her, no, that would not do, she gave up the idea.”
“Gloves!” murmured Brother Cadfael, scrubbing thoughtfully at his chin. “Strange, when you think of it, that it should be gloves she has on her mind, in the middle of summer.”
Aline was in no position to follow that thought, she took it at its surface meaning. “Why strange? We know there were some stolen from her, and here we are at one of the few fairs where rare goods are to be bought, it follows naturally enough. But of course the glover is only a handy excuse.”
Cadfael said no more then, but he went away very thoughtfully towards the cloister. The strange thing was not that a girl should want to replace, while chance offered, a lost piece of finery. It was rather that when she was suddenly confronted by the need to pass off as simple robbery a raid she knew to be something very different, one of the articles she claimed to have lost should be a thing so inappropriate to the season that she felt obliged to account for it by saying she had newly bought it in Gloucester on the journey. Why gloves, unless she had gloves running in her mind already for another reason? Gloves? Or glovers?
*
In the transept chapel Martin Bellecote and his young son set up the heavy coffin on a draped trestle, and reverently laid the body of Master Thomas of Bristol within it. Emma stood looking down at her uncle’s dead face for a long time, without tears or words. It would not be painful, she found, to remember him thus, dignified and remote in death, the bones of his cheeks and brow and jaw more strongly outlined than in life, his florid flesh contracted and paled into waxen austerity. Now at the last moment she wanted to give him something to take with him into his grave, and realised that in the buffeting of these two days she had not been able to think clearly enough to be ready for the parting. Not the fact of death, but the absolute need of some ceremonial tenderness, separate from the public rites, suddenly seemed to her overwhelmingly important.
“Shall I cover him?” asked Martin Bellecote gently.
Even so soft a sound startled her. She looked round almost wonderingly. The man, large, comely and calm, waited her orders without impatience. The boy, grave and silent, watched her with huge hazel eyes. From her four years’ superiority over him she pondered whether so young a creature should be doing this office, and then she understood that those eyes were preoccupied rather with her living self than with the dead, and the vigorous, flowing sap in him reached up towards light and life as to the sun, and recognised shadow only by virtue of its neighbouring brightness. That was right and good.
“No, wait just a moment,” she said. “I’ll come back!”
She went quickly out into the sunlight, and looked about her for the path that led into the gardens. The green lines of a hedge and the crowns of trees within drew her, she came into a walk where flowers had been planted. The brothers were great gardeners, and valued food crops for good reason, but they had time also for roses. She chose the one bush that bore a bloom like no other, pale yellow petals shading into rose at the tips, and plucked one flower only. Not the buds, not even the one perfect globe, but a wide-open bloom just beyond its prime but still unflawed. She took it back, hurrying, into the church with her. He was not young, not even at his zenith, but settling into his autumn, and this was the rose for him.
Brother Cadfael had watched her go, he watched her come again, and followed her into the chapel, but held aloof in the shadows. She brought her single flower and laid it in the coffin, beside the dead man’s heart.
“Cover him now,” she said, and stood well back to let them work in peace. When it was done, she thanked them, and they withdrew and left her there, as clearly was her wish. So, just as silently, did Brother Cadfael.
Emma remained kneeling on the stones of the transept, unaware of discomfort, a great while, her eyes wide open all that time upon the closed coffin, on its draped stand before the altar. To lie thus in the church of a great abbey, to have a special Mass sung for him, and then to be taken home in a grand coffin for burial with still further rites, surely that was glory, and he would have liked it. All was to be done as he would have liked. All! He would be pleased with her.
She knew her duty; she said prayers for him, a great many prayers, because the form was blessedly laid down, and her mind could range while her lips formed the proper words. She would do what he had wanted done, what he had half-confided to her, as he had to no other. She would see his task completed, and he would rest, pleased with her. And then... she had hardly looked beyond, but there was a great, summer-scented breeze blowing through her spirit, telling her she was young and fair, and wealthy into the bargain, and that boys like the coffin-maker’s young son looked upon her with interest and pleasure. Other young men, too, of less green years...
She rose from her knees at last, shook out her crumpled skirts, and walked briskly out of the chapel into the nave of the church, and founding the clustered stone pillars at the corner of the crossing, came face to face with Ivo Corbière.
He had been waiting, silent and motionless, in his shadowy corner, refraining even from setting foot in the chapel until her vigil was over, and the resolution with which she had suddenly ended it flung her almost into his arms. She uttered a startled gasp, and he put out reassuring hands to steady her, and was in no haste to let go. In this dim place his gold head showed darkened to bronze, and his face, stooped over her solicitously, was so gilded by the summer that it had almost the same fine-metal burnishing.
“Did I alarm you? I’m sorry! I didn’t want to disturb you. They told me at the gatehouse that the master-carpenter had come and gone, and you were here. I hoped if I waited patiently I might be able to talk with you. If I have not pressed my attentions on you until now,” he said earnestly, “it is not because I haven’t thought of you. Constantly!”
Her eyes were raised to his face with a fascinated admiration she would never have indulged in full light, and she quite forgot to make any move to withdraw herself from his hold. His hands slid down her forearms, but halted at her hands, and the touch, by mutual consent, became a clasp.
“Almost two days since I’ve spoken with you!” he said. “It’s an age, and I’ve grudged it, but you were well-friended, and I had no right... But now that I have you, let me keep you for an hour! Come out and walk in the gardens. I doubt if you’ve even seen them yet.”
They went out together into the sunlight, through the cloister garth and out into the bustle and traffic of the great court. It was almost time for Vespers, the quietest hours of the afternoon now spent, the brothers gathering gradually from their dispersed labours, guests returning from the fairground and the riverside. It was a gratifying thing to walk through this populous place on the arm of a nobleman, lord of a modest honour scattered through Cheshire and Shropshire. For the daughter of craftsmen and merchants, a very gratifying thing! They sat down on a stone bench in the flower-garden, on the sunny side of the pleached hedge, with the heady fragrance of Brother Cadfael’s herbarium wafted to them in drunken eddies on a soft breeze.
“You will have troublesome dispositions to make,” said Corbière seriously. “If there is anything I can arrange for you, let me know of it. It will be my pleasure to serve you. You are taking him back to Bristol for burial?”
“It’s what he would have wished. There will be a Mass for him in the morning, and then we shall carry him back to his barge for the journey home. The brothers have been kindness itself to me.”
“And you? Will you also return with the barge?”
She hesitated, but why not confide in him? He was considerate and kind, and quick to understand. “No, it would be—unwise. While my uncle lived it was very well, but without him it would not do. There is one of our men—I must say no evil of him, for he has done none, but... He is too fond. Better we should not travel together. But neither do I want to offer him insult, by letting him know he is not quite trusted. I’ve told him that I must remain here a few days, that I may be needed if the sheriff has more questions to ask, or more is found out about my uncle’s death.”
“But then,” said Ivo with warm concern, “what of your own journey home? How will you manage?”
“I shall stay with Lady Beringar until we can find some safe party riding south, with women among them. Hugh Beringar will advise me. I have money, and I can pay my way. I shall manage.”
He looked at her long and earnestly, until his gravity melted into a smile. “Between all your well-wishers, you will certainly reach your home without mishap. I’ll be giving my mind to it, among the rest. But now let’s forget, for my sake, that there must be a departure, and make the most of the hours while you are still here.” He rose, and took her by the hand to draw her up with him. “Forget Vespers, forget we’re guests of an abbey, forget the fair and the business of the fair, and all that such things may demand of you in future. Think only that it’s summer, and a glorious evening, and you’re young, and have friends... Come down with me past the fish-ponds, as far as the brook. That is all abbey land, I wouldn’t take you beyond.”
She went with him gratefully, his hand cool and vital in hers. By the brook below the abbey fields it was cool and fresh and bright, full of scintillating light along the water, and birds dabbling and singing, and in the pleasure of the moment she almost forgot all that lay upon her, so sacred and so burdensome. Ivo was reverent and gentle, and did not press her too close, but when she said regretfully that it was time for her to go back, for fear Aline might be anxious about her, he went with her all the way, her hand still firmly retained in his, and presented himself punctiliously before Aline, so that Emma’s present guardian might study, accept and approve him. As indeed she did.
It was charmingly and delicately done. He made himself excellent company for as long as was becoming on a first visit, invited and deferred to all Aline’s graceful questions, and withdrew well before he had even drawn near the end of his welcome.
“So that’s the young man who was so helpful and gallant when the riot began,” said Aline, when he was gone. “Do you know, Emma, I do believe you have a serious admirer there.” A wooer gained, she thought, might come as a blessed counter-interest to a guardian lost. “He comes of good blood and family,” said the Aline Siward who had brought two manors to her husband in her own right, but saw no difference between her guest and herself, and innocently ignored the equally proud and honourable standards of those born to craft and commerce instead of land. “The Corbières are distant kin of Earl Ranulf of Chester himself. And he does seem a most estimable young man.”
“But not of my kind,” said Emma, as shrewd and wary as she sounded regretful. “I am a stone-mason’s daughter, and niece to a merchant. No landed lord is likely to become a suitor for someone like me.”
“But it’s not someone like you in question,” said Aline reasonably. “It is you!”
*
Brother Cadfael looked about him, late in the evening after Compline, saw all things in cautious balance, Emma securely settled in the guest-hall, Beringar already home. He went thankfully to bed with his brothers, for once at the proper time, and slept blissfully until the bell rang to wake him for Matins. Down the night stairs and into the church the brothers filed in the midnight silence, to begin the new day’s worship. In the faint light of the altar candles they took their places, and the third day of Saint Peter’s Fair had begun. The third and last.
Cadfael always rose for Matins and Lauds not sleepy and unwilling, but a degree more awake than at any other time, as though his senses quickened to the sense of separateness of the community gathered here, to a degree impossible by daylight. The dimness of the light, the solidity of the enclosing shadows, the muted voices, the absence of lay worshippers, all contributed to his sense of being enfolded in a sealed haven, where all those who shared in it were his own flesh and blood and spirit, responsible for him as he for them, even some for whom, in the active and arduous day, he could feel no love, and pretended none. The burden of his vows became also his privilege, and the night’s first worship was the fuel of the next day’s energy.
So the shadows had sharp edges for him, the shapes of pillar and capital and arch clamoured like vibrant notes of music, both vision and hearing observed with heightened sensitivity, details had a quivering insistence. Brother Mark’s profile against the candle-light was piercingly clear. A note sung off-key by a sleepy elder stung like a bee. And the single pale speck lying under the trestle that supported Master Thomas’s coffin was like a hole in reality, something that could not be there. Yet it persisted. It was at the beginning of Lauds that it first caught his eye, and after that he could not get free of it. Wherever he looked, however he fastened upon the altar, he could still see it out of the corner of his eye.
When Lauds ended, and the silent procession began to file back towards the night stairs and the dortoir, Cadfael stepped aside, stooped, and picked up the mote that had been troubling him. It was a single petal from a rose, its colour indistinguishable by this light, but pale, deepening round the tip. He knew at once what it was, and with this midnight clarity in him he knew how it had come there.
Fortunate, indeed, that he had seen Emma bring her chosen rose and lay it in the coffin. If he had not, this petal would have told him nothing. Since he had, it told him all. With hieratic care and ceremony, after the manner of the young when moved, she had brought her offering cupped in both hands, and not one leaf, not one grain of yellow pollen from its open heart, had fallen to the floor.
Whoever was hunting so persistently for something believed to be in Master Thomas’s possession, after searching his person, his barge and his booth, had not stopped short of the sacrilege of searching his coffin. Between Compline and Matins it had been opened and closed again; and a single petal from the wilting rose within had shaken loose and been wafted unnoticed over the side, to bear witness to the blasphemy.