Brother Cadfael 04: St. Peter's Fair

wretch could breathe, his strangled grunts were trying to form words long before the linen parted, and let him spit out his gag. Still beneath his sack, his hoarse croak demanded aggrievedly: "Where were you so long, and me half-killed?"
    A couple of pairs of willing hands were at work on the other bonds by that time, all the more zealously now they had heard him speak, and indeed complain, in such reassuringly robust tones. Warin emerged gradually from his swaddlings, unrolled unceremoniously out of the cloak so that he ended face-down on the ground, and still incoherently voluble. He righted himself indignantly, but so spryly that it was plain he had no broken bones, no painful injuries, and had not even suffered overmuch from the cramps of his bonds. He looked up from under his wild grey thatch of hair, half defensive and half accusing, glaring round the circle of his rescuers as though they had been responsible for his hours of discomfort.
    "Late's better than never!" he said sourly, and hawked, and spat out fibres of sacking. "What took you so long? Is everybody deaf? I've been kicking here half the night!"
    Half a dozen hands reached pleasurably to hoist him to his feet and sit him down gently on a cask of wine. Roger stood off and let them indulge their curiosity, scowling blackly at his colleague meantime. There was no damage done, not a scratch on the old fool! The first threat, and he had crumpled into a pliable rag.
    "For God's sake, what happened to you? You had the booth sealed. How could any man break in here, and you not know? There are other merchants sleep here with their wares, you had only to call."
    "Not all," said the cloth-merchant fairly. "I myself lie at a tavern, so do many. If your man was sound asleep, as he well might be with all closed for the night ..."
    "It was long past midnight," said Warin, scrubbing aggrievedly at his chafed ankles. "I know because I heard the little bell for Matins, over the wall, before I slept. Not a sound after, until I awoke as that hood came over my head. They rammed the stuff into my mouth. I never saw face or form, they rolled me up like a bale of wool, and left me tied."
    "And you never raised a cry!" said Roger bitterly. "How many were they? One or more?"
    Warin was disconcerted, and wavered, swaying either way. "I think two. I'm not sure ..."
    "You were hooded, but you could hear. Did they talk together?"
    "Yes, now I recall there was some whispering. Not that I could catch any words. Yes, they were two. There was moving about of casks and bales here, that I know ..."
    "For how long? They durst not hurry, and have things fall and rouse the fairground," said the armourer reasonably. "How long did they stay?"
    Warin was vague, and indeed to a man blindfolded and tied by night, time might stretch out like unravelled thread. "An hour, it might be."
    "Time enough to find whatever was of most value here," said the armourer, and looked at Roger Dod, with a shrug of broad shoulders. "You'd better look about you, lad, and see what's missing. No need to trouble for anything so weighty as casks of wine, they'd have needed a cart for those, and a cart in the small hours would surely have roused someone. The small and precious is what they came for."
    But Roger had already turned his back on his rescued fellow, and was burrowing frantically among the bales and boxes stacked along the wall. "My master's strong-box! I built it in behind here, out of sight ... Thank God I took the most of yesterday's gains back to the barge with me last night, and have them safe under lock and key, but for all that, there was a good sum left in it. And all his accounts, and parchments ..."
    He was thrusting boxes and bags of spices aside in his haste, scenting the air, pushing out of his way wooden caskets of sugar confections from the east, come by way of Venice and Gascony, and worth high prices in any market. "Here, against the wall ..."
    His hands sank helplessly, he stood staring in dismay. He had bared the boards of the booth; goods stood piled on either side, and between them, nothing. Master Thomas's strongbox was gone.
    Brother Cadfael had taken advantage of the early hours to put in an hour or two of work with Brother Mark in the herb-gardens, while he had no reason to anticipate any threat to Emma, for she was surely still asleep in the guest-hall with Constance, and out of reach of harm. The morning was clear and sunny, the mist just lifting from the river, shot through with