“Then there have been two attacks upon Mistress Vernold’s boat and booth, her goods taken, her men assaulted?” He had quite forgotten his own bedraggled appearance, he was striding towards home with his head up and his visage roused and belligerent, looking, indeed, very much as he had looked when he led his ill-fated expedition across the bridge on the eve of the fair. “And no one seized for it? Nothing done? Why, she herself may be in danger!” Indignation quickened his steps. “For God’s sake, what’s the sheriff about?”
“He has enough to do breaking up unseemly riots by you and your like,” said his father smartly, but could not raise so much as a blush from his incensed offspring. “But since you want to know, Mistress Vernold is in the guest-hall of the abbey, safe enough, in the care of Hugh Beringar and his lady. You’d do better to be thinking about your own troubles, my lad, and mind your own step, for you’re not out of the wood yet.”
“What did I do that was so wrong? I went only one pace beyond what you did yourself the day before.” He did not even sound aggrieved about being judged hard, he made that brief defence only absently, his mind all on the girl. “Even in the guest-hall she may not be out of reach, if this is all some determined plot against her uncle and all his family.” In the death of one more tradesman at the fair he showed less interest, shocking though it was, since it seemed to have little or nothing to do with the vindictive catalogue of offences against Master Thomas and all his possessions. “She spoke so fairly,” he said. “She would not have me accused of worse than I did.”
“True enough! She was a fine, honest witness, no denying it. But no business of yours now, she’s well cared for. It’s your mother you need to be thinking of, she’s been in a fine taking over you all this while, and now they’re looking in other directions for the one who did the killing—with one eye still on you, though, mind!—she’ll likely take some sweetening. One way or another, you’ll get a warm welcome.”
Philip was far beyond minding that, though as soon as he entered the house behind the shoemaker’s shop he did indeed get a warm welcome, not one way or another, but both ways at once. Mistress Corviser, who was large, handsome and voluble, looked round from her fireside hob, uttered a muted shriek, dropped her ladle, and came billowing like a ship in full sail to embrace him, shake him, wrinkle her nose at the prison smell of him, abuse him for the damage to his best cotte and hose, box his ears for laughing at her tirade, exclaim lamentably over the dried scar at his temple, and demand that he sit down at once and let her crop the hair that adhered to the matted blood, and clean up the wound. By far the easiest thing to do was to submit to all, and let her talk herself out.
“The trouble and shame you’ve put us to, the heartaches you’ve cost me, wretch, you don’t deserve that I should feed you, or wash and mend for you. The provost’s son in prison, think of our mortification! Are you not ashamed of yourself?” She was sponging away the encrusted blood, and relieved to find so insignificant a scar remaining; but when he said blithely: “No, mother!” she pulled his hair smartly.
“Then you should be, you good-for-nothing! There, that’s not so bad. Now I hope you’re going to settle down to work, and make up for all the trouble you’ve made for us, instead of traipsing about the town egging on other people’s sons to mischief with your wild ideas . . .”
“They were the same ideas father and all the guild merchant had, mother, you should have scolded them. And you ask those who’re wearing my shoes whether there’s much amiss with my work.” He was a very good workman, in fact, as she would have asserted valiantly if anyone else had cast aspersions on his diligence and ability. He hugged her impulsively, and kissed her cheek, and she put him off impatiently, with what was more a slap than a caress. “Get along with you, and don’t come moguing me until you’re cleared of the worse charge, and have paid your fine for the riot. Now come and eat your dinner!”
It was an excellent dinner, such as she produced on festivals and saints’ days. After it, instead of shedding the clothes he had worn day and night in his cell, he shaved carefully, made a bundle of his second-best suit, and left the house with it under his arm.
“Now where are you going?” she demanded inevitably.
“To the river, to swim and get clean again.” They had a garden upstream, below the town hall, as many of the burgesses had, for growing their own fruit and vegetables, and there was a small hut there, and a sward where he could dry in the sun. He had learned to swim there, shortly after he learned to walk. He did not tell her where he was going afterwards. It was a pity he would have to present himself in his second-best coat, but in this hot summer weather perhaps he need not put it on at all; in shirt and hose most men look the same, provided the shirt is good linen and well laundered.
The water was not even cold in the sandy shallow by the garden, but after his meal he did not stay in long, or swim out into deep water. But it was good to feel like himself again, cleansed even of the memory of his failure and downfall. There was a still place under the bank where the water hung almost motionless, and showed him a fair image of his face, and the thick bush of red-brown hair which he combed and straightened with his fingers. He dressed as carefully as he had shaved, and set off back to the bridge, and over it to the abbey. The town’s grievance, which he had had on his mind the last time he came this way, was quite forgotten; he had other important business now on the abbey side of Severn.
“There’s one here,” said Constance, coming in from the great court with a small, private smile on her lips, “who asks to speak with Mistress Vernold. And not a bad figure of a young fellow, either, though still a thought coltish about the legs. He asked very civilly.”
Emma had looked up quickly at the mention of a young man; now that she had gone some way towards accepting what had happened, and coming to terms with a disaster which, after all, she had not caused, she had been remembering words Ivo had used, almost disregarded then in her shocked daze, but significant and warming now.
“Messire Corbière?”
“No, not this time. This one I don’t know, but he says his name is Philip Corviser.”
“I know him,” said Aline, and smiled over her sewing. “The provost’s son, Emma, the boy you spoke for in the sheriff’s court. Hugh said he would see him set free today. If there’s one soul can say he has done no evil to you or any these last two days, he’s the man. Will you see him? It would be a kindness.”
Emma had almost forgotten him, even his name, but she recalled the plea he had made for her belief in him. So much had happened between. She remembered him now, unkempt, bruised and soiled, pallid-sick after his drunkenness, but still with a despairing dignity. “Yes, I remember him. Of course I’ll see him.”
Philip followed Constance into the room. Fresh from the river, with damp hair curling thickly about his head, shaven and glowing and in fierce earnest, but without the aggression of the manner she had first seen in him, this was a very different person from the humiliated prisoner of the court. The last look he had given her, chin on shoulder, as he was dragged out . . . yes, she saw the resemblance there. He made his reverence to Aline, and then to Emma.
“Madam, I am released on my father’s bail. I came to say my thanks to Mistress Emma for speaking so fairly for me, when I had no right to expect goodwill from her.”
“I’m glad to see you free, Philip,” said Aline serenely, “and looking none the worse. You will like to speak with Emma alone, I daresay, and company other than mine may be good for her, for here we talk nothing but babies.” She rose, folding her sewing carefully to keep the needle in view as she carried it. “Constance and I will sit on the bench by the hall door, in the sun. The light is better there, and I am no such expert needlewoman as Emma. You can be undisturbed here.”