Brother Cadfael 04: St. Peter's Fair

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