Brother Cadfael 04: St. Peter's Fair

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 hi 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