Brother Cadfael 04: St. Peter's Fair

picked up English. Not a tall man, but square-built and powerful, fierce Welsh bones islanded in a thick growth of thorny black hair and beard. His dress, though plain and workmanlike, was of excellent material and well-fitted. He saw the steward hurrying towards him, evidently having carried out his wishes to the letter, and large, white teeth gleamed contentedly from the thicket of the black beard.
    "Here am I, Master Rhodri," said Cadfael cheerfully, "to keep you company in your own tongue. And my name is Cadfael, at your service for all your present needs."
    "And very welcome, Brother Cadfael," said Rhodri ap Huw heartily. "I hope you'll pardon my fetching you away from your devotions ..."
    "I'll do better. I'll thank you! A pity to have to miss all this bustle, I can do with a glimpse of the world now and again."
    Sharp, twinkling eyes surveyed him from head to toe in one swift glance. "You'll be from the north yourself, I fancy. Mold is where I come from."
    "Close by Trefriw I was born."
    "A Gwynedd man. But one who's been a sight further through the world than Trefriw, by the look of you, brother. As I have. Well, here are my two fellows, ready to unload and porter for me before I send on part of my cargo downriver to Bridgnorth, where I have a sale for mead. Shall we have the goods ashore first?"
    The steward bade them choose a stand at whatever point Master Rhodri thought fit when he had viewed the ground, and left them to supervise the unloading. Rhodri's two nimble little Welsh boatmen went to work briskly, hefting the heavy bales of hides and the wool-sacks with expert ease, and piling them on the jetty, and Rhodri and Cadfael addressed themselves pleasurably to watching the lively scene around them; Its many of the townsfolk and the abbey guests were also doing. On a fine summer evening it was the best of entertainments to lean over the parapet of the bridge, or stroll along the green path to the Gaye, and stare at an annual commotion which was one of the year's highlights. If some of the townspeople looked on with dour faces, and muttered to one another in sullen undertones, that was no great wonder, either. Yesterday's confrontation had been reported throughout the town, they knew they had been turned away empty-handed.
    "A thing worth noting," said Rhodri, spreading his thick legs on the springy boards, "how both halves of England can meet in commerce, while they fall out in every other field. Show a man where there's money to be made, and he'll be there. If barons and kings had the same good sense, a country could be at peace, and handsomely the gainer by it."
    "Yet I fancy," said Cadfael dryly, "that there'll be some hot contention here even between traders, before the three days are up. More ways than one of cutting throats."
    "Well, every wise man keeps a weapon about him, whatever suits his skill, that's only good sense, too. But we live together, we live together, better than princes manage it. Though I grant you," he said weightily, "princes make good use of these occasions, for that matter. No place like one of your greater fairs for exchanging news and views without being noticed, or laying plots and stratagems, or meeting someone you'd liefer not be seen meeting. Nowhere so solitary as in the middle of a market-place!"
    "In a divided land," said Cadfael thoughtfully, "you may very well be right."
    "For instance - look to your left a ways, but don't turn. You see the meagre fellow in the fine clothes, the smooth-shaven one with the mincing walk? Come to watch who's arriving by water! You may be sure if he's here at all, he's come early, and has his stall already up and stocked, to be free to view the rest of us. That's Euan of Shotwick, the glover, and an important man about Earl Ranulf's court at Chester, I can tell you."
    "For his skill at his trade?" asked Cadfael dryly, observing the lean, fastidious, high-nosed figure with interest.
    "That and other fields, brother. Euan of Shotwick is one of the sharpest of all of Earl Ranulf's intelligencers, and much relied on, and if he's setting up a booth here as far as Shrewsbury, it may well be for more purposes than trade. And then on the other side, look, that great barge standing off ready to come alongside - downstream of us. See the cut of her? Bristol-built, for a thousand marks! Straight out of the west country, and the city the king failed to take last year, and has let well alone ever since."
    Above the softly-flowing surface of Severn,