He looked at her long and earnestly, until his gravity melted into a smile.
“Between all your well-wishers, you will certainly reach your home without mishap. I’ll be giving my mind to it, among the rest. But now let’s forget, for my sake, that there must be a departure, and make the most of the hours while you are still here.” He rose, and took her by the hand to draw her up with him.
“Forget Vespers, forget we’re guests of an abbey, forget the fair and the business of the fair, and all that such things may demand of you in future.
Think only that it’s summer, and a glorious evening, and you’re young, and have friends … Come down with me past the fish-ponds, as far as the brook. That is all abbey land, I wouldn’t take you beyond.”
She went with him gratefully, his hand cool and vital in hers. By the brook below the abbey fields it was cool and fresh and bright, full of scintillating light along the water, and birds dabbling and singing, and in the pleasure of the moment she almost forgot all that lay upon her, so sacred and so burdensome.
Ivo was reverent and gentle, and did not press her too close, but when she said regretfully that it was time for her to go back, for fear Aline might be anxious about her, he went with her all the way, her hand still firmly retained in his, and presented himself punctiliously before Aline, so that Emma’s present guardian might study, accept and approve him. As indeed she did.
It was charmingly and delicately done. He made himself excellent company for as long as was becoming on a first visit, invited and deferred to all Aline’s graceful questions, and withdrew well before he had even drawn near the end of his welcome.
“So that’s the young man who was so helpful and gallant when the riot began,”
said Aline, when he was gone. “Do you know, Emma, I do believe you have a serious admirer there.” A wooer gained, she thought, might come as a blessed counter-interest to a guardian lost. “He comes of good blood and family,” said the Aline Siward who had brought two manors to her husband in her own right, but saw no difference between her guest and herself, and innocently ignored the equally proud and honourable standards of those born to craft and commerce instead of land. “The Corbicres are distant kin of Earl Ranulf of Chester himself. And he does seem a most estimable young man.”
“But not of my kind,” said Emma, as shrewd and wary as she sounded regretful. “I am a stone-mason’s daughter, and niece to a merchant. No landed lord is likely to become a suitor for someone like me.”
“But it’s not someone like you in question,” said Aline reasonably. “It is you!”
Brother Cadfael looked about him, late in the evening after Compline, saw all things in cautious balance, Emma securely settled in the guest-hall, Beringar already home. He went thankfully to bed with his brothers, for once at the proper time, and slept blissfully until the bell rang to wake him for Matins.
Down the night stairs and into the church the brothers filed in the midnight silence, to begin the new day’s worship. In the faint light of the altar candles they took their places, and the third day of Saint Peter’s Fair had begun. The third and last.
Cadfael always rose for Matins and Lauds not sleepy and unwilling, but a degree more awake than at any other time, as though his senses quickened to the sense of separateness of the community gathered here, to a degree impossible by daylight. The dimness of the light, the solidity of the enclosing shadows, the muted voices, the absence of lay worshippers, all contributed to his sense of being enfolded in a sealed haven, where all those who shared in it were his own flesh and blood and spirit, responsible for him as he for them, even some for whom, in the active and arduous day, he could feel no love, and pretended none.
The burden of his vows became also his privilege, and the night’s first worship was the fuel of the next day’s energy.
So the shadows had sharp edges for him, the shapes of pillar and capital and arch clamoured like vibrant notes of music, both vision and hearing observed with heightened sensitivity, details had a quivering insistence. Brother Mark’s profile against the candle-light was piercingly clear. A note sung off-key by a sleepy elder stung like a bee. And the single pale speck lying under the trestle that supported Master Thomas’s coffin was like a hole in reality, something that could not be there. Yet it persisted. It was at the beginning of Lauds that it first caught his eye, and after that he could not get free of it. Wherever he looked, however he fastened upon the altar, he could still see it out of the corner of his eye.
When Lauds ended, and the silent procession began to file back towards the night stairs and the dortoir, Cadfael stepped aside, stooped, and picked up the mote that had been troubling him. It was a single petal from a rose, its colour indistinguishable by this light, but pale, deepening round the tip. He knew at once what it was, and with this midnight clarity in him he knew how it had come there.
Fortunate, indeed, that he had seen Emma bring her chosen rose and lay it in the coffin. If he had not, this petal would have told him nothing. Since he had, it told him all. With hieratic care and ceremony, after the manner of the young when moved, she had brought her offering cupped in both hands, and not one leaf, not one grain of yellow pollen from its open heart, had fallen to the floor.
Whoever was hunting so persistently for something believed to be in Master Thomas’s possession, after searching his person, his barge and his booth, had not stopped short of the sacrilege of searching his coffin. Between Compline and Matins it had been opened and closed again; and a single petal from the wilting rose within had shaken loose and been wafted unnoticed over the side, to bear witness to the blasphemy.
The Third Day of the Fair
CHAPTER 1
Emma arose with the dawn, stole out of the wide bed she shared with Constance, and dressed herself very quietly and cautiously, but even so the sense of movement, rather than any sound, disturbed the maid’s sleep, and caused her to open eyes at once alert and intelligent.
Emma laid a finger to her lips, and cast a meaning glance towards the door beyond which Hugh and Aline were still sleeping. “Hush!” she whispered. “I’m only going to church for Prime. I don’t want to wake anyone else.”
Constance shrugged against her pillow, raised her brows a little, and nodded.
Today there would be the Mass for the dead uncle, and then the transference of his coffin to the barge that would take him home. Not surprising if the girl was disposed to turn this day into a penitential exercise, for the repose of her uncle’s soul and the merit of her own. “You won’t go out alone, will you?”
“I’m going straight to the church,” promised Emma earnestly.
Constance nodded again, and her eyelids began to close. She was asleep before Emma had drawn the door to very softly, and slipped away towards the great court.
Brother Cadfael rose for Prime like
