And into the great court of the abbey flocked all the gentry of the shire, and of neighbouring shires, too, lordlings, knights, yeomen, with their wives and daughters, to take up residence in the overflowing guest-halls for the three days of the annual fair. Subsistence goods they grew, or bred, or brewed, or wove, or span for themselves, the year round, but once a year they came to buy the luxury cloths, the fine wines, the rare preserved fruits, the gold and silver work, all the treasures that appeared on the feast of Saint Peter ad Vincula, and vanished three days later. To these great fairs came merchants even from Flanders and Germany, shippers with French wines, shearers with the wool-clip from Wales, and clothiers with the finished goods, gowns, jerkins, hose, town fashions come to the country. Not many of the vendors had yet arrived, most would appear next day, on the eve of the feast, and set up their booths during the long summer evening, ready to begin selling early on the morrow. But the buyers were arriving in purposeful numbers already, bent on securing good beds for their stay.
When Brother Cadfael came up from the Meole brook and his vegetable-fields for Vespers, after a hard and happy afternoon’s work, the great court was seething with visitors, servants and grooms, and the traffic in and out of the stables flowed without cease. He stood for a few minutes to watch the pageant, and Brother Mark at his elbow glowed as he gazed, dazzled by the play of colours and shimmer of movement in the sunlight.
“Yes,” said Cadfael, viewing with philosophical detachment what Brother Mark contemplated with excitement and wonder, “the world and his wife will be here, either to buy or sell.” And he eyed his young friend attentively, for the boy had seen little enough of the world before entering the order, being thrust through the gates willy-nilly at sixteen by a stingy uncle who grudged him his keep even in exchange for hard work, and he had only recently taken his final vows. “Do you see anything there to tempt you back into the secular world?”
“No,” said Brother Mark, promptly and serenely. “But I may look and enjoy, just as I do in the garden when the poppies are in flower. It’s no blame to men if they try to put into their own artifacts all the colours and shapes God put into his.”
There were certainly a few of God’s more charming artifacts among the throng of visitors moving about the great court and the stable-yard, young women as bright and blooming as the poppies, and all the prettier for being in a high state of expectation, looking forward eagerly to their one great outing of the year. Some came riding their own ponies, some pillion behind husbands or grooms, there was even one horse-litter bringing an important dowager from the south of the shire.
“I never saw it so lively before,” said Mark, gazing with pleasure.
“You’ve not lived through a fair as yet. Last year the town was under siege all through July and into August, small hope of getting either buyers or sellers into Shrewsbury for any such business. I had my doubts even about this year, but it seems trade’s well on the move again, and our gentlefolk are hungrier than ever for what they missed a year ago. It will be a profitable fair, I fancy!”
“Then could we not have spared a tithe to help put the town in order?” demanded Mark.
“You have a way, child, of asking the most awkward questions. I can read very well what was in the provost’s mind, since he spoke it out in full. But I’m by no means so sure I know what was in the abbot’s, nor that he uttered the half of it. A hard man to read!”
Mark had stopped listening. His eyes were on a rider who had just entered at the gatehouse, and was walking his horse delicately through the moving throng towards the stables. Three retainers on rough-coated ponies followed at his heels, one of them with a cross-bow slung at his saddle. In these perilous times, even here in regions summarily pacified so short a time ago, no gentleman would undertake a longer journey without provision for his own defence, and an arbalest reaches further than a sword. This young man both wore a sword and looked as if he could use it, but he had also brought an archer with him for security.
It was the master who held Mark’s eyes. He was perhaps a year or two short of thirty, past the uncertainties of first youth?if, indeed, he had ever suffered them?and at his resplendent best. Handsomely appointed, elegantly mounted on a glistening dark bay, he rode with the negligent ease of one accustomed to horses almost from birth. In the summer heat he had shed his short riding-cotte, and had it slung over his lap, and rode with his shirt open over a spare, muscular chest, hung with a cross on a golden chain. The body thus displayed to view in simple linen shirt and dark hose was long and lissome and proud of its comeliness, and the head that crowned it was bared to the light, a smiling, animated face nicely fashioned about large, commanding dark eyes, and haloed in a cropped cap of dark gold hair, that would have curled had it been allowed to grow a little longer. He came and passed, and Mark’s eyes followed him, at once tranquil and wistful, quite without any shade of envy.
“It must be a pleasant thing,” he said thoughtfully, “to be so made as to give pleasure to those who behold you. Do you suppose he realises his blessings?”
Mark was rather small himself, from undernourishment from childhood, and plain of face, with spiky, straw- coloured hair round his tonsure. Not that he ever viewed himself much in the glass, or realised that he had a pair of great grey eyes of such immaculate clarity that common beauty faltered before them. Nor was Cadfael going to remind him of any such assets.
“As the world usually goes,” he said cheerfully, “he probably has a mind that looks no further ahead or behind than the length of his own fine eyelashes. But I grant you he’s a pleasure to look at. Yet the mind lasts longer. Be glad you have one that will wear well. Come on, now, all this will keep till after supper.”
The word diverted Brother Mark’s thoughts very agreeably. He had been hungry all his life until he entered this house, and still he preserved the habit of hunger, so that food, no less than beauty, was unflawed pleasure. He went willingly at Cadfael’s side towards Vespers, and the supper that would follow.
It was Cadfael who suddenly halted, hailed by name in a high, delighted voice that plucked his head about towards the summons gladly.
A lady, a slender, young, graceful lady with a heavy sheaf of gold hair and a bright oval face, and eyes like irises in twilight, purple and clear. Her body, as Brother Mark saw in his first startled glance, though scarcely swollen as yet, and proudly carried, was girdled high, and rounded below the girdle. There was a life there within. He was not so innocent that he did not know the signs.
He should have lowered his eyes, and willed to do so, and could not; she shone so that it was like all the pictures of the Visiting Virgin that he had ever seen. And this vision held out both hands to Brother Cadfael, and called him by his name. Brother Mark, though unwillingly, bent his head and went on his way alone.
“Girl,” said Brother Cadfael heartily, clasping the proffered hands with delight, “you bloom like a rose! And he never told me!”
“He has not seen you since the winter,” she said, dimpling and flushing, “and we did not know then. It was no more than a dream, then. And I have not seen you since we were wed.”
“And you are happy? And he?”
“Oh, Cadfael, can you ask it!” There had been no need, the radiance Brother Mark had recognised was dazzling
