Brother Cadfael 04: St. Peter's Fair

lay like a sleepy load on the air within the pleached hedges, and set him yawning against his will and his mood, which was for serious discussion. They were well away from the outer world here, the busy hum of the marketplace drifted to them only distantly and pleasantly, like the working music of Brother Bernard's bees. And Brother Mark, weeding the herb-beds with delicate, loving hands, habit kilted to his knees, was no hindrance at all to their solitude.
    "A separate creature," said Brother Cadfael, eyeing him with detached affection "My priest, my proxy. I had to find some way of evading the fate that closed on me. There goes my sacrificial lamb, the best of the flock."
    "Some day he will take your confession," said Hugh, watching Mark pluck out weeds as gently as though he pitied them, "and you'll be a lost man, for he'll know every evasion." He sipped wine, drew it about his mouth thoughtfully, swallowed it and sat savouring the after-taste for a moment. "This fellow Warin had little to add," he said then. "What do you say now? This cannot be chance."
    "No," agreed Cadfael, propping the door of his workshop wide to let in the air, and coming to sit beside his friend, "it cannot be chance. The man is killed, stripped, his barge searched, his booth searched. Not a soul besides, at this fair where there are several as wealthy, has suffered any attack or any loss. No, there is nothing done at hazard here."
    "What, then? Expound! The girl claimed there were things stolen from the barge. Now something positive, a strong-box, the single portable thing in the booth that might confidently be supposed to hold valuables, is demonstrably stolen from this last assault. If these are not simple thefts, what are they? Tell me!"
    "Stages in a quest," said Cadfael. "It seems to me there's a hunt afoot for something. I do not know what, but some quite single, small thing, and precious, which was, or was thought to be, in the possession of Master Thomas. On the night he came here he was murdered, and his body stripped. The first search. And it was fruitless, for the next day his barge was visited and ransacked. The second search."
    "Not altogether fruitless this time," said Beringar dryly, "for we know on the best authority, do we not, that whoever paid that visit left the richer by three things, a silver chain, a girdle with a gold clasp, and a pair of embroidered gloves."
    "Hmmm!" Cadfael twitched his brown nose doubtfully between finger and thumb, and eyed the young man sidewise.
    "Oh, come!" said Hugh indulgently, and flashed his sudden smile. "I may not stumble on these subtleties as quickly as you, but since knowing you I've had to keep my wits about me. The lady has a bold mind and an excellent memory, and I have no hope in the world of getting her to make a mistake in one detail of the embroidery on those lost gloves, but for all that, I doubt if they ever existed."
    "You might," Cadfael suggested, though without much hope, "try asking her outright what it is she's hiding."
    "I did!" owned Hugh, ruefully grinning. "She opened great, hurt eyes at me, and could not understand me! She knows nothing, she's hiding nothing, she has nothing to tell more than she's already told, and every word of that is truth. But for all that, and however angelically, the girl's lying. What was it stuck in your craw, and brought you up against the same shock before ever it dawned upon me?"
    "I should be sorry," said Cadfael slowly, "if anything I have done or said made you think any evil of the girl, for I think none."
    "Neither do I, you need not fear it. But I do think she may be meddling in something she would do better to let well alone, and I would rather, as you would, as Abbot Radulfus would, that no harm should come to her under our care. Or ever, for that matter. I like her well."
    "When we went together to the barge," said Cadfael," and she took no more than a minute within to cry out that someone had been there, pawing through all their belongings, I never doubted she was telling truth. Women know how they leave things, it needs only a wrong fold to betray an alien hand, and certainly it shocked and startled her, that was no feigning. Nor was it the next moment, when I asked if anything had been taken, and without pause for thought, she said: 'No!' An absolute no, I would say even triumphant. I thought little of it, then, but urged her to look thoroughly and make sure. When I said she must report the matter, she thought again, and