‘It rains in now,’ said the old man ruefully. ‘Last year it was all sound and good, I thought to do well there. But that’s my lot, always shoved out like a stray dog, to shiver under a hedge.’
‘Tell me,’ said Cadfael, ‘of last year. This man who turned you out was a pedlar come to sell at the fair? He stayed there in that cottage till the fair ended?’
‘He and the woman.’ The old man had sharpened into the realisation that his information was here of urgent interest, and had begun to enjoy the sensation, quite apart from the hope of turning it to advantage. ‘A wild, black-haired creature she was, every whit as bad as her man. Every whit! She threw cold water over me to drive me away when I tried to creep back.’
‘Did you see them leave? The pair together?’
‘No, they were still there when I went packman, with a fellow bound for Beiston who had bought more than he could manage alone.’
‘And this year? Did you see this same fellow at this year’s fair?’
‘Oh yes, he was there,’ said the old man indifferently. ‘I never had any ado with him, but I saw him there.’
‘And the woman still with him?’
‘No, never a glimpse of her this year. Never saw him but alone or with the lads in the tavern, and who knows where he slept! The potter’s place wouldn’t be good enough for him now. I hear she was a tumbler and singer, on the road like him. I never did hear her name.’
The slight emphasis on the ‘her’ had not escaped Cadfael’s ear. He asked, with a sense of lifting the lid from a jar which might or might not let loose dangerous revelations: ‘But his you do know?’
‘Oh, everybody about the booths and alehouses knows his name. He’s called Britric, he comes from Ruiton. He buys at the city markets, and peddles his wares round all this part of the shire and into Wales. On the move, most times, but never too far afield. Doing well, so I heard!’
‘Well,’ said Cadfael on a long, slow breath, ‘wish him no worse, and do your own soul good. You have your troubles, I doubt Britric has his, no easier or lighter. You take your food and your rest, and do what Brother Oswin bids, and your burden can soon be lightened. Let’s wish as much to all men.’
The old man, squatting there observant and curious on his bed, watched them withdraw to the doorway. Cadfael’s hand was on the latch when the voice behind them, so strangely resonant and full, called after them: ‘I’ll say this for him, his bitch was handsome, if she was cursed.’
Chapter Seven
NOW THEY HAD it, a veritable name, a charm with which to prime memory. Names are powerful magic. Within two days of Cadfael’s visit to Saint Giles, faithfully reported to Hugh before the end of the day, they had detail enough about the pedlar of Ruiton to fill a chronicle. Drop the name Britric into almost any ear about the market and the horse-fair ground, and mouths opened and tongues wagged freely. It seemed the only thing they had not known about him was that he had slept the nights of last year’s fair in the cottage on the Potter’s Field, then no more than a month abandoned, and in very comfortable shape still. Not even the neighbouring household at Longner had known that. The clandestine tenant would be off with his wares through the day, so would his woman if she had a living to make by entertaining the crowds, and they would have discretion enough to leave the door closed and everything orderly. If, as the old man declared, they had spent much of their time fighting, they had kept their battles withindoors. And no one from Longner had gone up the field to the deserted croft once Generys was gone. A kind of coldness and desolation had fallen upon the place, for those who had known it living, and they had shunned it, turning their faces away.
Only the wretched old man hoping for a snug shelter for himself had tried his luck there, and been driven away by a prior and stronger claimant. The smith’s widow, a trim little elderly body with bright round eyes like a robin, pricked up her ears when she heard the name of Britric. ‘Oh, him, yes, he used to come round with his pack some years back, when I was living with my man at the smithy in Sutton. He started in a very small way, but he was regular round the villages, and you know a body can’t be every week in the town. I got my salt from him. Doing well, he was, and not afraid to work hard, either, when he was sober, but a wild one when he was drunk. I remember seeing him at the fair last year, but I had no talk with him. I never knew he was sleeping the nights through up at the potter’s croft. Well, I’d never seen the cottage myself then. It was two months later when the prior put me in. there to take care of the place. My man was dead late that Spring, and I’d been asking Haughmond to find me some work to do. Smith had worked well for them in his time, I knew the prior wouldn’t turn me away.’
‘And the woman?’ said Hugh. ‘A strolling tumbler, so I’m told, dark, very handsome. Did you see him with her?’
‘He did have a girl with him,’ the widow allowed after a moment’s thought, ‘for I was shopping at the fishmonger’s booth close by Wat’s tavern, at the corner of the horse fair, the one day, and she came to fetch him away before, she said, he’d drunk all his day’s gain and half of hers. That I remember. They were loud, he was getting cantankerous then in his cups, but she was a match for him. Cursed each other blind, they did, but then they went off together as close and fond as you please, and her holding him about the body from stumbling, and still scolding. Handsome?’ said the widow, considering, and sniffed dubiously. ‘Some might reckon so. A bold, striding, black-eyed piece, thin and whippy as a withy.’
‘Britric was at this year’s fair, too, so they tell me,’ said Hugh. ‘Did you see him?’
‘Yes, he was here. Doing quite nicely in the world, by the look of him. They do say there’s a good living to be made in pedlary, if you’re willing to work at it. Give him a year or two more, and he’ll be renting a booth like the merchants, and paying the abbey fees.’
‘And the woman? Was she with him still?’
‘Not that I ever saw.’ She was no fool, and there was hardly a soul within a mile of Shrewsbury who did not know by this time that there was a dead woman to be accounted for, and the obvious answer, for some reason, was not satisfactory, since enquiry was continuing, and had even acquired a sharper edge. ‘I was down into the Foregate only once during the three days, this year,’ she said. ‘There’s others would be there all day and every day, they’ll know. But I saw nothing of her. God knows what he’s done with her,’ said the widow, and crossed herself with matronly deliberation, standing off all evil omens from her own invulnerable virtue, ‘but I doubt you’ll find anyone here who set eyes on her since last year’s Saint Peter’s Fair.’
‘Oh, yes, that fellow!’ said Master William Rede, the elder of the abbey’s lay stewards, who collected their rents and the tolls due from merchants and craftsmen bringing their goods to the annual fair. ‘Yes, I know the man you mean. A bit of a rogue, but I’ve known plenty worse. By rights he should be paying a small toll for selling here, he brings in as full a man-load as Hercules could have hefted. But you know how it is. A man who sets up a booth for the three days, that’s simple, you know where to find him. He pays his dues, and no time wasted. But a fellow who carries his goods on him, he sets eyes on you from a distance, and he’s gone elsewhere, and you can waste more time chasing him than his small toll would be worth. Playing hoodman blind in and out of a hundred stalls, and all crowded with folk buying and selling, that’s not for me. So he gets off scot-free. No great loss, and he’ll come to it in time, his business is growing. I know no more about him than that.’
‘Had he a woman with him this year?’ Hugh asked. ‘Dark, handsome, a tumbler and acrobat?’