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we live together, better than princes
manage it. Though I grant you,” he said weightily, “princes make good use of
these occasions, for that matter. No place like one of your greater fairs for
exchanging news and views without being noticed, or laying plots and
stratagems, or meeting someone you’d liefer not be seen meeting. Nowhere so
solitary as in the middle of a market-place!”
    “In
a divided land,” said Cadfael thoughtfully, “you may very well be right.”
    “For
instance—look to your left a ways, but don’t turn. You see the meagre fellow in
the fine clothes, the smooth-shaven one with the mincing walk? Come to watch
who’s arriving by water! You may be sure if he’s here at all, he’s come early,
and has his stall already up and stocked, to be free to view the rest of us.
That’s Euan of Shotwick, the glover, and an important man about Earl Ranulfs
court at Chester, I can tell you.”
    “For
his skill at his trade?” asked Cadfael dryly, observing the lean, fastidious,
high-nosed figure with interest.
    “That
and other fields, brother. Euan of Shotwick is one of the sharpest of all of
Earl Ranulfs intelligencers, and much relied on, and if he’s setting up a booth
here as far as Shrewsbury, it may well be for more purposes than trade. And
then on the other side, look, that great barge standing off ready to come
alongside—downstream of us. See the cutof her? Bristol-built,
for a thousand marks! Straight out of the west country, and the city the king
failed to take last year, and has let well alone ever since.”
    Above
the softly-flowing surface of Severn, its green silvered now with slanting
evening sunlight, the barge sidled along the grassy shore towards the end of
the jetty. She loomed impressively opulent and graceful, cunningly built to
draw hardly more water than boats half her capacity, and yet steer well and
ride steadily. She had a single mast, and what seemed to be a neat, closed
cabin aft, and three crewmen were poling her inshore with easy, light touches,
and waiting to moor her alongside as soon as there was room. Twenty pence, as
like as not, thought Cadfael, before she gets her load ashore and cleared!
    “Made
to carry wine, and carry it steady,” said Rhodri ap Huw, narrowing his
sharply-calculating eyes on the boat. “Some of the best wines of France come
into Bristol, they should have a ready sale as far north as this. I should know
that rig!”
    A
considerable number of onlookers, whether they recognised her port and rig or
not, were curious enough to come down from the bridge and the highroad to see
the Bristol boat come in. She was remarkable enough among her fellow craft to
draw all eyes. Cadfael caught sight of a number of known faces craning among
the crowd: Edric Flesher’s wife Petronilla, Aline Beringar’s maid Constance
leaning over the bridge, one of the abbey stewards forgetting his duties to
stare; and suddenly sunlight on a head of dark gold hair, cropped short, and a
young man came running lightly down from the highway, to halt on the grass
slope above the jetty, and watched admiringly as the Bristol boat slid
alongside, ready to be made fast. The lordling whose assured beauty had aroused
Mark’s wistful admiration was evidently just as inquisitive as the raggedest
barefoot urchin from the Foregate.
    The
two Welshmen had completed their unloading by this time, and were waiting for
orders, and Rhodri ap Huw was not the man to let his interest in other men’s
business interfere with his own.
    “They’ll
be a fair while unloading,” he said briskly. “Shall we go and choose a good
place for my stall, while the field’s open?”
    Cadfael led the way along the Foregate, where
several booths had already been set up. “You’ll prefer a site on the horse-fair
itself, I fancy, where all the roads meet.”
    “Ah,
my customers will find me, wherever I am,” said Rhodri smugly; but for all
that, he kept