you have patience for two or three weeks more, you can be rid of this trouble.’
‘And then you’ll throw me out of here,’ grumbled the vigorous voice bitterly. ‘I know the way of it! That’s my lot in this world. Mend me and then cast me out to fester and rot again. Wherever I go it’s the same. If I find a bit of a roof to shelter me through the night, some wretch comes and kicks me out of it to take it for himself.’
‘They can hardly do that here,’ Cadfael pointed out placidly, restoring the protective linen to its place round the scrawny neck. ‘Brother Oswin will see to that. You let him cure you, and give no thought to where you’ll lie or what you’ll eat until you’re clean. After that it will be time to think on such matters.’
‘Fine talk, but it will end the same. I never have any luck. All very well for you,’ he muttered, glowering up at Cadfael, ‘handing out crumbs in alms at your gatehouse, when you have plenty, and a sound roof over you, and good dry beds, and then telling God how pious you are. Much you care where us poor souls lay our heads that same night.’
‘So that’s where I saw you,’ said Cadfael, enlightened. ‘On the eve of the fair.’
‘And where I saw you, too. And what did I get out of it? Bread and broth and a farthing to spend.’
‘And spent it on ale,’ Cadfael guessed mildly, and smiled. ‘And where did you lay your head that night? And all the nights of the fair? We had as poor as you snug enough in one of our barns.’
‘I’d as soon not lie inside your walls. Besides,’ he said grudgingly, ‘I knew of a place, not too far, a cottage, nobody living in it. I was there the last year, until that red-baked devil of a pedlar came with his wench and kicked me out of it. And where did I end? Under a hedge in the next field. Would he let me have even a corner by the kiln? Not he, he wanted the place to himself for his own cantrips with his wench. And then they fought like wild cats most nights, for I heard them at it.’ He subsided into morose mutterings, oblivious of Cadfael’s sudden intent silence. ‘But I got it this year. For what it was worth! Small use it will be now, falling to pieces as it is. Whatever I touch rots.’
‘This cottage,’ said Cadfael slowly,’that had also a kiln?where is it?’
‘Across the river from here, close by Longner. There’s no one working there now. Wrack and ruin!’
‘And you spent the nights of the fair there this year?’
‘It rains in now,’ said the old man ruefully. ‘Last year it was all sound and good, I thought to do well there. But that’s my lot, always shoved out like a stray dog, to shiver under a hedge.’
‘Tell me,’ said Cadfael, ‘of last year. This man who turned you out was a pedlar come to sell at the fair? He stayed there in that cottage till the fair ended?’
‘He and the woman.’ The old man had sharpened into the realisation that his information was here of urgent interest, and had begun to enjoy the sensation, quite apart from the hope of turning it to advantage. ‘A wild, black- haired creature she was, every whit as bad as her man. Every whit! She threw cold water over me to drive me away when I tried to creep back.’
‘Did you see them leave? The pair together?’
‘No, they were still there when I went packman, with a fellow bound for Beiston who had bought more than he could manage alone.’
‘And this year? Did you see this same fellow at this year’s fair?’
‘Oh yes, he was there,’ said the old man indifferently. ‘I never had any ado with him, but I saw him there.’
‘And the woman still with him?’
‘No, never a glimpse of her this year. Never saw him but alone or with the lads in the tavern, and who knows where he slept! The potter’s place wouldn’t be good enough for him now. I hear she was a tumbler and singer, on the road like him. I never did hear her name.’
The slight emphasis on the ‘her’ had not escaped Cadfael’s ear. He asked, with a sense of lifting the lid from a jar which might or might not let loose dangerous revelations: ‘But his you do know?’
‘Oh, everybody about the booths and alehouses knows his name. He’s called Britric, he comes from Ruiton. He buys at the city markets, and peddles his wares round all this part of the shire and into Wales. On the move, most times, but never too far afield. Doing well, so I heard!’
‘Well,’ said Cadfael on a long, slow breath, ‘wish him no worse, and do your own soul good. You have your troubles, I doubt Britric has his, no easier or lighter. You take your food and your rest, and do what Brother Oswin bids, and your burden can soon be lightened. Let’s wish as much to all men.’
The old man, squatting there observant and curious on his bed, watched them withdraw to the doorway. Cadfael’s hand was on the latch when the voice behind them, so strangely resonant and full, called after them: ‘I’ll say this for him, his bitch was handsome, if she was cursed.’
Chapter Seven
NOW THEY HAD it, a veritable name, a charm with which to prime memory. Names are powerful magic. Within two days of Cadfael’s visit to Saint Giles, faithfully reported to Hugh before the end of the day, they had detail enough about the pedlar of Ruiton to fill a chronicle. Drop the name Britric into almost any ear about the market and the horse-fair ground, and mouths opened and tongues wagged freely. It seemed the only thing they had not known about him was that he had slept the nights of last year’s fair in the cottage on the Potter’s Field, then no more than a month abandoned, and in very comfortable shape still. Not even the neighbouring household at Longner had known that. The clandestine tenant would be off with his wares through the day, so would his woman if she had a living to make by entertaining the crowds, and they would have discretion enough to leave the door closed and everything orderly. If, as the old man declared, they had spent much of their time fighting, they had kept their battles withindoors. And no one from Longner had gone up the field to the deserted croft once Generys was gone. A kind of coldness and desolation had fallen upon the place, for those who had known it living, and they had shunned it, turning their faces away.
Only the wretched old man hoping for a snug shelter for himself had tried his luck there, and been driven away by a prior and stronger claimant. The smith’s widow, a trim little elderly body with bright round eyes like a robin, pricked up her ears when she heard the name of Britric. ‘Oh, him, yes, he used to come round with his pack some years back, when I was living with my man at the smithy in Sutton. He started in a very small way, but he was regular round the villages, and you know a body can’t be every week in the town. I got my salt from him. Doing well, he was, and not afraid to work hard, either, when he was sober, but a wild one when he was drunk. I remember seeing him at the fair last year, but I had no talk with him. I never knew he was sleeping the nights
