Free St. Peter's Fair by Ellis Peters

and shaped
soundlessly: “Dead!” it was clear that she was firm on her own feet again, and
in no danger of falling. Hereyes, once the momentary panic and
dizziness passed, looked straight at Hugh and made no appeal.
    “Drowned?”
she said. “But he swam well, he was raised by the river. And if he drank at
all, it was sparingly. I do not believe he could fall into Severn and drown.
Not of himself!” she said, and her large eyes dilated.
    “Sit
down,” said Hugh gently, “for we must talk a little, and then I shall leave you
with Aline, for of course you must remain here in our care for this while. No,
he did not drown. Nor did he come by his death of himself. Master Thomas was
stabbed from behind, stripped, and put into the river after death.”
    “You
mean,” she said, in a voice low and laboured, but quite steady, “he was waylaid
and killed by mere sneak-thieves, for what he had on him? For his rings and his
gown and his shoes?”
    “It
is what leaps to the mind. There are no roads in England now that can be called
safe, and no great fair that has not its probable underworld of hangers-on, who
will kill for a few pence.”
    “My
uncle was not a timid man. He has fought off more than one attack in his time,
and he never avoided a journey for fear in his life. After all these years,”
she said, her voice aching with protest, “why should he fall victim now to such
scum? And yet what else can it be?”
    “There
are some people recalling,” said Hugh, “that there was an ugly incident on the
jetty last evening, and violence was done to a number of the merchants who were
unloading goods and setting up stalls for the fair. It’s common knowledge there
was bad blood between town and traders, of whom Master Thomas was perhaps the
most influential. He was involved bitterly with the young man who led the raid.
An attack made in revenge, by night, perhaps in a drunken rage, might end
mortally, whether it was meant or no.”
    “Then
he would have been left where he lay,” said Emma sharply. “His attacker would
think only of getting clean away unseen. Those angry people were not thieves,
only townsmen with a grievance. A grievance might turn them into murderers, but
I do not think it would turn them into thieves.”
    Hugh
was beginning to feel considerable respect for this girl, as Aline, by her
detached silence and her attentive face,had already learned to
do. “I won’t say but I agree with you there,” he admitted. “But it might well
occur to a young man turned murderer almost by mishap, to dress his crime as
the common sneak killing for robbery. It opens so wide a field. Twenty young
men bitterly aggrieved and hot against your uncle for his scorn of them could
be lost among a thousand unknown, and the most unlikely suspects among them, at
that, if this passes as chance murder for gain.”
    Even
in the bleak newness of her bereavement, this thought troubled her. She bit a
hesitant lip. “You think it may have been one of those young men? Or more of
them together? That they burned with their grudge until they followed him in
the dark, and took this way?”
    “It’s
being both thought and said,” owned Hugh, “by many people who witnessed what
happened by the river.”
    “But
the sheriff’s men,” she pointed out, frowning, “surely took up many of those
young men long before my uncle went to the fairground. If they were already in
prison, they could not have harmed him.”
    “True
of most of them. But the one who led them was not taken until the small hours
of the morning, when he came reeling back to the town gate, where he was
awaited. He is in a cell in the castle now, like his fellows, but he was still
at liberty long after Master Thomas failed to come back to you, and he is under
strong suspicion of this death. The whole pack of them will come before the
sheriff this afternoon. The rest, I fancy, will be let out on their fathers’ bail,