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.”
“Oh, you were here, no question!” Wat could not help grinning at the memory. “There was noise enough, we were busy, but you made yourself heard! No offence, lad, who hasn’t made a fool of himself in his cups from time to time? It can’t have been more than a quarter after eight when you came in, and I doubt you’d had much, up to then.”
Only a quarter after the hour of Compline—then he must have come straight here after shaking off his friends. Not straight, perhaps that was an inappropriate word, but weavingly and unsteadily, though at that rate not calling anywhere else on the way. It was a natural thing to do, to hurry clean through the thick of the fair, and put as much ground as possible between himself and his solicitous companions before calling a halt.
“I tell you what, boy,” said the expert kindly, “if you’d taken it slowly you’d have been sober enough. But you had to rush the matter. I doubt I’ve ever seen a fellow put so much down in the time, no wonder your belly turned against it.”
It was not cheering listening, but Philip swallowed it doggedly. Evidently he had been as foolish as he had been dreading, and the archer’s account of his behaviour had not been at all exaggerated.
“And was I yelling vengeance against the man who struck me? That’s what they said of me.”
“Well, now, I wouldn’t go so far as that, and yet it’s not too far off the mark, either. Let’s say you were not greatly loving him, and no wonder, we could all see the dunt he’d given you. Arrogant and greedy you called him, and a few other things I don’t recall, and mark your words, you kept telling us, pride like his was due for a disastrous fall, and soon. That must be what they had in mind who witnessed against you. I never heard word of any going to this hearing from my tavern, not until afterwards. Who were they that testified, then?”
“It was one man,” said Philip. “Not that I can blame him, it seems he told no lies—indeed, I never thought he had, I know I was the world’s fool that night.”
“Why, bless you, lad, with a cracked head a man’s liable to act like one cracked, he has the right. But who’s this one man? What with all the incomers at the fair, I had more strangers than known customers of these evenings.”
“It was a man attending one of the abbey guests,” said Philip. “Turstan Fowler, they said his name was. He said he was here drinking, and went from ale to wine, and then to strong liquor—it seems he ended up as drunk as I was myself, they took him up helpless later, and slung him into a cell at the abbey overnight. A well-set-up fellow, but slouching and unkempt when I saw him in the court. About thirty-five years old, at a guess, sunburned, a bush of brown hair...”
Wat shook his head, pondering the description. “I don’t know him, not by that, though I’ve got a rare memory for faces. An ale-house keeper has to have. Ah, well, if he’s a stranger he’d no call to give false witness, I suppose he was but honest, and put the worst meaning on your bletherings for want of knowing you.”
“What time was it when I left here?” Philip winced ever at the recollection of the departure, sudden and desperate, with churning stomach and swimming head, and both hands clamped hard over his grimly locked jaw. Barely time to weave a frantic way across the road and into the edge of the copse beyond, where he had heaved his heart out, and then blundered some distance further in cover towards the orchards of the Gaye, and collapsed shivering and retching into the grass, to pass into a sodden sleep. He had not dragged himself out of it until the small hours.
“Why, reckoning from Compline, I’d say an hour had passed, it would be about nine of the clock.”
Thomas of Bristol had set out from his booth to return to his barge only a quarter of an hour or so later. And someone, someone unknown, had intercepted him on the way, dagger in hand. No wonder the law had looked so narrowly at Philip Corviser, who had reason to resent and hate, and had blundered out of sight and sound of other men around that time, after venting his grievance aloud for all to hear.
Wat rose to go and cope with the custom that was overwhelming his two potboys, and Philip sat brooding with his chin on his fist. Most of the flares must be out by now along the Foregate, most of the stalls packed up and ready for departure. Another balmy summer night, heaven dropping fat blessings on the abbey receipts and the profits of trade, after a lost summer of warfare and a winter of uncertainty. And the town walls still unrepaired, and the streets still broken!
The door stood propped wide on the warm, luminous twilight, and the traffic in and out was brisk. Youngsters came with jugs and pitchers to fetch for their elders, maids tripped in for a measure of wine for their masters, labourers and abbey servants wandered in to slake their thirst between spells of work. Saint Peter’s Fair was drawing to its contented and successful close.
Through the open door came a fresh-faced youngster in a fine leather jerkin, and on his heels a sturdy, brown-faced man at least fifteen years older, in the same good livery. It took Philip a long moment of staring to recognise Turstan Fowler, sober, well-behaved, in good odour with his lord and all the world. Still longer to cause him to reflect afresh how he himself must have looked, drunk, if the difference could stretch so far. He watched the little potboy serve them. Wat was busy with others, and the room was full. The end of the fair was always a busy time. Another day, and these same hours would hang heavy and dark.
Philip never quite knew why he turned his head away, and hoisted a wide shoulder between himself and Ivo Corbière’s men. He had nothing against either of them, but he did not want to be recognised and condoled with, or congratulated on his release, or in any way, sympathetic or not, have public attention called to him. He kept his shoulder hunched between, and was glad to have the room so full of people, and most of them strangers.
“Fairs are good business,” remarked Wat, returning to his place and plumping down on the bench with a sigh of pleasure, “but I wish we could spread them round the rest of the year. My feet are growing no younger, and I’ve hardly been off them an hour in all, the last three days. What was it we were saying?”
“I was trying to describe for you the fellow who reported me as threatening revenge,” said Philip. “Cast a look over yonder now, and you’ll see the very man. The two in leather who came in together—the elder of the two.”
Wat let his sharp eyes rove, and surveyed Turstan Fowler with apparent disinterest, but very shrewdly. “Slouching and hangdog, was he? Smart as a new coat now.” His gaze returned to Philip’s face. “That’s the man? I remember him well enough. I seldom forget a man’s face, but his name and condition I’ve no way of knowing.”
“He can’t have looked quite so trim that evening,” said Philip, “seeing he owned to being well soused. He was lost to the world two hours later, by his own tale.”
“And he said he got it all here?” Wat’s eyes had narrowed thoughtfully.
“So he said. ‘Where I got my skinful’ is what he said.”
“Well, let me tell you something interesting, friend...” Wat leaned confidentially across the table. “Now I see him, I know how I saw him the last time, for if you’ll credit me, he looked much as he looks now. And what’s more, now I know of the connection he had with you and your affairs, I can recall small things that happened that night, things I never gave a thought to before, and neither would you have done. He was in here twice that evening, or rather, he was in the doorway once, before he came over the threshold later. In that doorway he stood, and looked round him, a matter of ten minutes or so after you came in. I made nothing of it that he gave you a measuring sort of look, for well he might, you were in full cry then. But look at you he did, and weighed you up, and went away again. And the next we saw of him, it might be half an hour later, he came in and bought a measure of ale, and a big flask of strong geneva liquor, and sat supping his ale quietly, and eyeing you from time to time—as again well he might, it was about then you were greenish and going suspicious quiet. But do you know when he drank up and left, Philip, lad? The minute after you made for the door in a hurry. And his flask under his arm, unopened. Drunk? Him? He was stone cold sober when he went out of here.”
“But he took the juniper liquor with him,” pointed out Philip, reasonably. “He was drunk enough two hours later, there were several of them to swear to that. They had to carry him back to the abbey on a trestle-board.”
“And how much of the juniper spirit did they find remaining? Did they ever mention that? Did they find the flask at all?”
“I never heard mention of it,” owned Philip, startled and doubtful. “Brother Cadfael was there, I could ask him. But why?”
Wat laid a kindly if patronising hand on his shoulder. “Lad, it’s easy to see you never went beyond wine or ale, and if you’ll heed me you’ll leave the strong stuff to strong stomachs. I said a large flask, and large I meant. There was a quart of geneva spirits in that bottle! If any man drank that dry in two hours, it wouldn’t be dead drunk they’d be carrying him away, it would be plain dead. Or if he did live to tell of it, it wouldn’t be the next day, nor for several after. Sober as the sheriff himself was that fellow when he went out of here on your heels, and why he should want to lie about it is more than I can say, but lie about it he did, it seems. Now you tell me why a man should go to some pains to convict himself of a debauch he never even had, and get himself slung into a cell for recompense. Unless,” added Wat, considering the problem with lively interest, “it was to get himself out of something worse.”
The elder potboy, a freckled lad born and bred in the Foregate, came by with a cluster of empties in either hand, and paused to nudge Wat in the ribs with an elbow, and lean to his ear.
“Do you know who you have there, master?” A jerk of his head indicated the two in leather jerkins. “The young one’s fellow-groom to the one that got a bolt through him along the Foregate a while ago. And the other—Will Wharton just told me, and he was close by and saw it all!—that’s the fellow who loosed the bolt! His comrade in the same price, mark! Should he be here and in such spirits the same night? That’s a stronger stomach than mine. ‘Fetch him down!’ says the master, and down the fellow fetches him, sharp and cool. You’d have thought his hand would have shook too much to get near the target, but no!—thump between the shoulders and through to the breast, so Will says. And that’s the very man that did it, supping ale like any Christian.”
They were both of them staring at him open-mouthed, and turned away only to stare again, briefly and intently, at Turstan Fowler sitting at ease with his tankard, sturdy legs splayed under the table. It had never even occurred to Philip to ask in whose service the dead malefactor was employed, and perhaps Wat would not have known the name if he had asked. He would have mentioned it else.
“That’s the man? You’re sure?” pressed Philip.
“Will Wharton is sure, and he helped to pick up the poor devil who was killed.”
“Turstan Fowler? The falconer to Ivo Corbière? And Corbière ordered him to shoot?”
“The name I don’t know, for neither did Will. Some young lord at the abbey guest-hall. Very handsome sprig, yellow-haired, Will says. Though it’s no great blame to him for wanting a murderer and thief stopped in his tracks, granted, and any road, the man had just stolen his horse, and kicked him off into the dust when he tried to halt him. And I suppose when a lord orders, his man had better jump to obey. Still, it’s a grim thing to work side by side with a man maybe months and years, and then to be told, strike him dead! And to do it!” And the potboy rolled up his eyes and loosed a long, soft whistle, and passed on with his handful of tankards, leaving them so sunk in reconsideration that neither of them had anything to say.
*
But there could not be anything in it of significance for him, surely? Philip looked back briefly as he left the inn, and Turstan Fowler and the young groom were sitting tranquilly with their ale, talking cheerfully with half a dozen other sober drinkers around them. They had not noticed him, or if they had, had not recognised him, and neither of them seemed to have anything of grave moment on his mind. Strange, though, how this same man seemed to be entangled in every untoward episode, never at the centre of things yet always somewhere in view.
As for the matter of the flask of juniper spirits, what did it really signify? The man had been picked up too drunk to talk, no one had looked round for his bottle, it might well have been left lying, still more than half-full, if the stuff was as potent as Wat said, and some scavenger by night might have picked it up and rejoiced in his luck. There were a dozen ways of accounting for the circumstances. And yet it was strange. Why should he have said he was drunk before he left Wat’s inn, if he had really left it cold sober? More to the point, why should he have left so promptly on Philip’s heels? Yet Wat was a good observer.
The tiny discrepancies stuck like barbs in Philip’s mind. It was far too late to trouble anyone else tonight, Compline was long over, the monks of Shrewsbury, their guests, their servants, would all be in their beds or preparing to go there, except for the few lay stewards who had almost completed their labours, and would be glad enough to make a modestly festive night of it. Moreover, his parents would be vexed that he had abandoned them all the day and he could expect irate demands for explanations at home. He had better make his way back.
All the same, he crossed the road and made for the copse, as on the night he was repeating, and found some faint signs of his wallow still visible, dried into the trampled grass. Then back towards the river, avoiding the streets, keeping to the cover of woodland, and there was the sheltered hollow where he had slept off the worst of his orgy, before gathering himself up stiffly and hobbling back to the town. There was enough lambent starlight to see his way, and show him the scuffled and flattened grasses.
But no, this was not the place! Here there was a faint, trodden path, and he had certainly moved much deeper into the bushes and trees, down-river, hiding even from the night. This glade looked very like the other, but it was not the same. Yet someone or something, large as a man, had lain here, and not peacefully. Surely more than one pair of feet had ploughed the turf. A pair of opportunist lovers, enjoying one of the traditional pleasures of the fair? Or another kind of struggle? No, hardly a struggle, though something had been dragged downhill towards the river, which was just perceptible as a gleam between the trees. There was a patch of bare soil, dry and pale as clay, between the spreading roots of the birch tree against which he leaned, and ribbons of dropped bark littered it. The largest of them showed curiously dark instead of silvery, like the rest. He stooped and picked it up, and his fingertips recoiled from the black, encrusted stain. In the grass, if he searched by daylight, there might well be other such blots.
In looking for the place of his own humiliation, he had found something very different, the place where Master Thomas had been killed. And below, from that spur of grass standing well above the undermined bank, his body had been thrown into the river.