“We went back. Roger waited there, for that very case, but no, he has not come. I asked those still working in the Foregate if they had seen such a man, but I could get no news. And then I thought that perhaps—” She turned in appeal to Cadfael. “The young gentleman who was so kind, this evening—he is staying here in the guest-hall, so he told us. I wondered if perhaps my uncle had met him again on his way home, and lingered . . . And he, at least, knows his looks, and could tell me if he has seen him. But he is not yet back, they tell me.”
“He left the jetty earlier than your uncle, then?” asked Cadfael. The young man had looked very well settled to spend a pleasant hour or two in the lady’s company, but perhaps her formidable uncle had ways of conveying, even to lords of respectable honours, that his niece was to be approached only when he was present to watch over her.
Emma flushed, but without averting her eyes; eyes which were seen to be thoughtful, resolute and intelligent, for all her milk-and-roses baby-face. “Very soon after you, brother. He was at all points correct and kind. I thought to come and ask for him, as someone on whom I could rely.”
“I’ll ask the porter to keep a watch for him,” offered Cadfael, “and have him step in here when he returns. Even the horse-fair should be on its way to bed by now, and he’ll be needing his own sleep if he’s to hunt the best bargains tomorrow, which is what I take it he’s here for. What do you say, Hugh?”
“A good thought,” said Hugh. “Do it, and we’ll make provision to look for Master Thomas, though I trust all’s well with him, for all this delay. The eve of a fair,” he said, smiling reassurance at the girl, “and there are contacts to be made, customers already looking over the ground . . . A man can forget about his sleep with his mind on business.”
Brother Cadfael heard her sigh: “Oh, yes!” with genuine hope and gratitude, as he went to bid the porter intercept Ivo Corbière when he came in. His errand could hardly have been better timed, for the man himself appeared in the gateway. The main gate was already closed, only the wicket stood open, and the dip of the gold head stepping through caught the light from the torch overhead, and burned like a minor sun. Bare-headed, with his cotte slung on one shoulder in the warm last night of July, Ivo Corbière strolled towards his bed almost rebelliously, with a reserve of energy still unspent. The snowy linen shirt glowed in the lambent dark with a ghostly whiteness. He was whistling a street tune, more likely Parisian than out of London, by the cadence of it. He had certainly drunk reasonably deep, but not beyond his measure, nor even up to it. He was alert at a word.
“What, you, brother? Out of bed before Matins?” Amiable though his soft laughter was, he checked it quickly, sensing something demanding gravity of him. “You were looking for me? Something worse fell out? Good God, the old man never killed the fool boy, did he?”
“Nothing so dire,” said Cadfael. “But there’s one within here at the gatehouse came looking for you, with a question. You’ve been about the Foregate and the fairground all this time?”
“The whole round,” said Ivo, his attention sharpening. “I have a new and draughty manor to furnish in Cheshire. I’m looking for woollens and Flemish tapestries. Why?”
“Have you seen, in your wanderings, Master Thomas of Bristol? At any time since you left his barge earlier this evening?”
“I have not,” said Ivo, wondering, and peered closely “in the strange, soft light of midsummer, an hour short of midnight.
“What is this? The man made it clear—he has practice, which is no marvel!—that his girl is to be seen only in his presence and with his sanction, and small blame to him, for she’s gold, with or without his gold. I respected him for it, and I left. Why? What follows?”
“Come and see,” said Cadfael simply, and led the way within.
The young man blinked in the sudden light, and opened his eyes wide upon Emma. It was a question which of them showed the more distracted. The girl rose, reaching eager hands and then half-withdrawing them. The man sprang forward solicitously to welcome the clasp.
“Mistress Vernold! At this hour? Should you . . .” He had a grasp of the company and the urgency by then. “What has happened?” he asked, and looked at Beringar.
Briskly, Beringar told him. Cadfael was not greatly surprised to see that Corbière was relieved rather than dismayed. Here was a young, inexperienced girl, growing nervous all too easily when she was left alone an hour or so too long, while no doubt her uncle, very travelled and experienced indeed, and well able to take care of himself, was in no sort of trouble at all, but merely engaged in a little social indulgence with a colleague, or busy assessing the goods and worldly state of some of his rivals.
“Nothing ill will have happened to him,” said Corbière cheerfully, smiling reassurance at Emma, who remained, for all that, grave and anxious of eye. And she was no fool, Cadfael reflected, watching, and knew her uncle better than anyone else here could claim to know him. “You’ll see, he’ll come home in his own good time, and be astonished to find you so troubled for him.”
She wanted to believe it, but her eyes said she could not be sure. “I hoped he might have met you again,” she said, “or that at least you might have seen him.”
“I wish it were so,” he said. “It would have been my pleasure to set your mind at rest. But I have not seen him.”
“I think,” said Beringar, “this lies now with me. I have still half a dozen men here within the walls, we’ll make a search for Master Thomas. In the meantime, the hour is late, and you should not be wandering in the night. It will be best if your man here returns to the barge, while you, madam, if you consent, can very well join my wife, here in the guest-hall. Her maid Constance will make room for you, and find you whatever you need over the night.” There was no knowing whether he had noted her uneasiness about returning to the barge, just as acutely as Cadfael had, or was simply placing her in the nearest safe charge, and the best; but she brightened so eagerly, and thanked him so fervently, that there was no mistaking the relief she felt.
“Come, then,” he said gently, “I’ll see you safely into Constance’s care, and then you may leave the searching to us.”
“And I,” said Corbière, shrugging enthusiastically into the sleeves of his cotte, “will bear a hand with you in the hunt, if you’ll have me.”
They combed the whole length of the Foregate, Beringar, with his six men-at-arms, Ivo Corbière, as energetic and wide-awake as at noon, and Brother Cadfael, who had no legitimate reason to go with them at all, beyond the pricking of his thumbs, and the manifest absurdity of going to his bed at such an hour, when he would in any case have to rise again at midnight for Matins. If that was excuse enough for sharing a drink with Beringar, it was excuse enough for taking part in the hunt for Thomas of Bristol. For truly, thought Cadfael, shaking his head over the drastic events of the evening, I shall not be easy until I see that meaty blue-jowled face again, and hear that loud, self-confident voice. Corbière might shrug off the merchant’s non-return as a mere trivial departure from custom, such as every man makes now and again, and on any other day Cadfael would have agreed with him; but too much had happened since noon today, too many people had been trapped into outrageous and uncharacteristic actions, too many passions had been let loose, for this to be an ordinary day. It was even possible that someone had stepped so far aside from his usual self as to commit deliberate violence by stealth in the night, to avenge what had been done openly and impulsively in the day. Though God forbid!
They had begun by making certain that there was still no word or sign at the jetty. No, Thomas had neither appeared nor sent word, and Roger Dod’s forays among the other traders along the riverside, as far as he dared go from the property he guarded, had elicited no news of his master.
He was a burly, well-set-up young man of about thirty, this Roger Dod, and very personable, if he had not been so curt and withdrawn in manner. No doubt he was anxious, too. He answered Hugh’s questions in the fewest possible words, and gnawed an uncertain lip at hearing that his master’s niece was now lodged in the abbey guest-hall. He would have come with them to help in their search, but he was responsible for his master’s belongings, and would have to be answerable for their safety when his master returned. He stayed with the barge, and sent the mute and sleepily resentful Gregory to lead them straight to the booth Master Thomas had rented. Beringar’s sergeant, with three men, was left behind to work his way gradually along the Foregate after them, questioning every waking stallholder as he went, while the rest followed the porter to the fairground. The great open space was by this time half-asleep, but still winking with occasional torches and braziers, and murmuring with subdued voices. For these three days in the year it was transformed into a tight little town, busy and populous, to vanish again on the fourth day.