St. Peter's Fair Read Free

of theabbey flocked all
the gentry of the shire, and of neighbouring shires, too, lordlings, knights,
yeomen, with their wives and daughters, to take up residence in the overflowing
guest-halls for the three days of the annual fair. Subsistence goods they grew,
or bred, or brewed, or wove, or span for themselves, the year round, but once a
year they came to buy the luxury cloths, the fine wines, the rare preserved
fruits, the gold and silver work, all the treasures that appeared on the feast
of Saint Peter ad Vincula, and vanished three days later. To these great fairs
came merchants even from Flanders and Germany, shippers with French wines,
shearers with the wool-clip from Wales, and clothiers with the finished goods,
gowns, jerkins, hose, town fashions come to the country. Not many of the
vendors had yet arrived, most would appear next day, on the eve of the feast,
and set up their booths during the long summer evening, ready to begin selling
early on the morrow. But the buyers were arriving in purposeful numbers
already, bent on securing good beds for their stay.
    When
Brother Cadfael came up from the Meole brook and his vegetable-fields for
Vespers, after a hard and happy afternoon’s work, the great court was seething
with visitors, servants and grooms, and the traffic in and out of the stables
flowed without cease. He stood for a few minutes to watch the pageant, and
Brother Mark at his elbow glowed as he gazed, dazzled by the play of colours
and shimmer of movement in the sunlight.
    “Yes,”
said Cadfael, viewing with philosophical detachment what Brother Mark
contemplated with excitement and wonder, “the world and his wife will be here,
either to buy or sell.” And he eyed his young friend attentively, for the boy
had seen little enough of the world before entering the order, being thrust
through the gates willy-nilly at sixteen by a stingy uncle who grudged him his
keep even in exchange for hard work, and he had only recently taken his final
vows. “Do you see anything there to tempt you back into the secular world?”
    “No,”
said Brother Mark, promptly and serenely. “But I may look and enjoy, just as I do
in the garden when the poppies are in flower. It’s no blame to men if they try
to put into their own artifacts all the colours and shapes God put into his.”
    There were certainly a few of God’s more charming
artifacts among the throng of visitors moving about the great court and the
stable-yard, young women as bright and blooming as the poppies, and all the
prettier for being in a high state of expectation, looking forward eagerly to
their one great outing of the year. Some came riding their own ponies, some
pillion behind husbands or grooms, there was even one horse-litter bringing an
important dowager from the south of the shire.
    “I
never saw it so lively before,” said Mark, gazing with pleasure.
    “You’ve
not lived through a fair as yet. Last year the town was under siege all through
July and into August, small hope of getting either buyers or sellers into
Shrewsbury for any such business. I had my doubts even about this year, but it
seems trade’s well on the move again, and our gentlefolk are hungrier than ever
for what they missed a year ago. It will be a profitable fair, I fancy!”
    “Then
could we not have spared a tithe to help put the town in order?” demanded Mark.
    “You
have a way, child, of asking the most awkward questions. I can read very well
what was in the provost’s mind, since he spoke it out in full. But I’m by no
means so sure I know what was in the abbot’s, nor that he uttered the half of
it. A hard man to read!”
    Mark
had stopped listening. His eyes were on a rider who had just entered at the
gatehouse, and was walking his horse delicately through the moving throng
towards the stables. Three retainers on rough-coated ponies followed at his
heels, one of them with a cross-bow slung at his saddle. In