St. Peter's Fair by Ellis Peters

And this fellow was there,
drinking fit to beat me, and I’m an old toper, and can carry it most times. The
place was full, there must be others can tell you the same. He was nursing his
sore head, and breathing fire against the man that gave it him. He swore he’d
be up with him before the night was out. And that’s all the meat of it, my
lord.”
    “At
what hour was this?” asked Prestcote.
    “Well,
my lord, I was still firm on my feet then, and clear in my mind, and that I
certainly was not later in the evening. It must have been somewhere halfway
between eight and nine. I should have borne my drink well enough if I had not
gone from ale to wine, and then to a fierce spirit, and that last was what laid
me low, or I’d have been back within the wall before my lord came home, and
escaped a night on the stones.”
    “It
was well earned,” said Prestcote dryly. “So you took yourself off to sleep off
your load—when?”
    “Why,
about nine, I suppose, my lord, and was fathoms deep soon after. Troth, I can’t
recall where, though I remember the inn. They can tell you where I was found
who found me.”
    At
this point it dawned abruptly upon Brother Cadfael that by pure chance this
whole interrogation, since Philip had been brought in, had been conducted
without once mentioning thefact that Master Thomas at this
moment lay dead in the castle chapel. Certainly the sheriff had addressed Emma
in tones of sympathy and consideration appropriate to her newly-orphaned state,
and her uncle’s absence might in itself be suggestive, though in view of the
importance of his business at the fair, and the fact that Emma had once, at
least, referred to him in the present tense, a person completely ignorant of
his death would hardly have drawn any conclusion from these hints, unless he
had all his wits about him. And Philip had been all night in a prison cell, and
haled out only to face this hearing, and moreover, was still sick and dulled
with his drinking, his broken head and his sore heart, and in no case to pick
up every inference of what he heard. No one had deliberately laid a trap for him,
but for all that, the trap was there, and it might be illuminating to spring
it.
    “So
these threats you heard against Master Thomas,” said Prescote, “can have been
uttered only within an hour, probably less, of the time when the merchant left
his booth to return alone to his barge. The last report we have of him.”
    That
was drawing nearer to the spring, but not near enough. Philip’s face was still
drawn, resigned and bewildered, as though they had been talking Welsh over his
head. Brother Cadfael struck the prop clean away; it was high time.
    “The
last report we have of him alive,” he said clearly.
    The
word might have been a knife going in, the slender kind that is hardly felt for
a moment, and then hales after it the pain and the injury. Philip’s head came
up with a jerk, his mouth fell open, his bruised eyes rounded in horrified
comprehension.
    “But
it must be remembered,” continued Cadfael quickly, “that we do not know the
hour at which he died. A body taken from the water may have entered it at any time
during the night, after all the prisoners were in hold, and all honest men in
bed.”
    It
was done. He had hoped it would settle the issue of guilt and innocence, at
least to his satisfaction, but now he still could not be quite sure the boy had
not known the truth already. How if he had only held his peace and listened to
the ambiguous voices, and been in doubt whether Master Thomas’s corpse had yet
been found? On the face of it, if he had had any hand in that death, he was a
better player thanany of the travelling entertainers who would
be plying their trade among the crowds this evening. His pallor, from underdone
dough, had frozen into marble, he tried to speak and swallowed half-formed
words, he drew huge breaths into him, and straightened his back, and