St. Peter's Fair by Ellis Peters Page B

duty if I turned him
loose, even to your care, master provost.” And the sheriff ordered, with a
motion of his hand: “Take him away!”
    Philip was slow to move, until the butt of a lance
prodded him none too gently in the side. Even then he kept his chin on his
shoulder for some paces, and his eyes desperately fixed upon Emma’s distressed
and doubting face. “I did not touch him,” he said, plucked forcibly away
towards the door through which his guards had brought him. “I pray you, believe
me!” Then he was gone, and the hearing was over.
    Out
in the great court they paused to draw grateful breath, released from the
shadowy oppression of the hall. Roger Dod hovered, with hungry eyes upon Emma.
    “Mistress,
shall I attend you back to the barge? Or will you have me go straight back to
the booth? I had Gregory go there to help Warin, while I had to be absent, but
trade was brisking up nicely, they’ll be hard pushed by now. If that’s what you
want? To work the fair as he’d have worked it?”
    “That
is what I want,” she said firmly. “To do all as he would have done. You go
straight back to the horse-fair, Roger. I shall be staying with Lady Beringar
at the abbey for this while, and Brother Cadfael will escort me.”
    The
journeyman louted, and left them, without a backward glance. But the very rear
view of him, sturdy, stiff and aware, brought back to mind the intensity of his
dark face and burning, embittered eyes. Emma watched him go, and heaved a
helpless sigh.
    “I
am sure he is a good man, I know he is a good servant, and has stood loyally by
my uncle many years. So he would by me, after his fashion. And I do respect
him, I must! I think I could like him, if only he would not want me to love
him!”
    “It’s
no new problem,” said Cadfael sympathetically. “The lightning strikes where it
will. One flames, and the other remains cold. Distance is the only cure.”
    “So
I think,” said Emma fervently. “Brother Cadfael, I must go to the barge, to
bring away some more clothes and things I need. Will you go with me?”
    He
understood at once that this was an opportune time. Both Warin and Gregory were
coping with customers at the booth, and Roger was on his way to join them. The
barge would be riding innocently beside the jetty, and no man aboard to trouble
her peace. Only a monk of the abbey, whodid not trouble it at
all. “Whatever you wish,” he said. “I have leave to assist you in all your
needs.”
    He
had rather expected that Ivo Corbière would come to join her once they were out
of the hall, but he did not. It was in Cadfael’s mind that she had expected it,
too. But perhaps the young man had decided that it was hardly worthwhile making
a threesome with the desired lady and a monastic attendant, who clearly had his
mandate, and would not consent to be dislodged. Cadfael could sympathise with
that view, and admire his discretion and patience. There were two days of the
fair left yet, and the great court of the abbey was not so great but guests
could meet a dozen times a day. By chance or by rendezvous!
    Emma
was very silent on the way back through the town. She had nothing to say until
they emerged from the shadow of the gate into full sunlight again, above the
glittering bow of the river. Then she said suddenly: “It was good of Ivo to
speak so reasonably for the young man.” And on the instant, as Cadfael flashed
a glance to glimpse whatever lay behind the words, she flushed almost as deeply
as the unlucky lad Philip had blushed on beholding her a witness to his shame.
    “It
was very sound sense,” said Cadfael, amiably blind. “Suspicion there may be,
but proof there’s none, not yet. And you set him a pace in generosity he could
not but admire.”
    The
flush did not deepen, but it was already bright as a rose. On her ivory, silken
face, so young and unused, it was touching and becoming.
    “Oh,
no,” she said, “I only