11 - The Lammas Feast by Kate Sedley Read Free Book Online

in various stages of construction, ready for the opening of the fair in five days’ time.
    Cicely must have read my thoughts. ‘By this hour next Saturday afternoon,’ she said, ‘this place will be crowded with people buying, selling, dancing, cramming the side-shows––’
    ‘Drinking, thieving, throwing up,’ I interrupted, and incurred her displeasure.
    ‘That’s a very jaundiced view, if I may say so, Roger. Don’t you like people to enjoy themselves?’
    ‘Of course! Just so long as they don’t pick my pockets or try to steal my children away. We live in perilous times, Mistress Ford.’
    She laughed. ‘We always have. I used to listen to my father talking when I was a child. There never were such perilous days as he lived through.’ I grinned in acknowledgement of her argument, and she smiled up at me. ‘I’m so glad you’re happy, Roger. I can tell that you and Adela were made for one another. I was sad when you married Lillis Walker. I never thought her the right wife for you. But Adela’s different. You
are
happy, aren’t you?’
    ‘Oh, yes.’ Only I heard the note of hesitation in my voice.
    Her beautiful eyes filled with tears. ‘Then mind you don’t have anything to reproach yourself with. If only I’d believed in Robert! I could have comforted his final hours, let him know that one person, at least, had faith in him.’
    I tried to console her. ‘It might only have made things worse. His death would have seemed even more pointless and unjust.’
    We had climbed halfway up Saint Michael’s Hill to where the gallows stood. Some poor lost soul was hanging there in chains, part of his face already pecked away by the crows.
    ‘Why do you choose to live here?’ I demanded violently, chasing off two of these scavengers as I spoke. But I knew the answer before she made it.
    ‘It’s close to the nunnery. And I feel closer to Robert. Sometimes, I feel he’s there in the cottage with me. Do you think that foolish?’
    ‘I think it unwise to encourage such morbid fancies.’
    A man had just passed Saint Michael’s Church and the boundary stone that marked the city’s limit, and was climbing steadily uphill towards us; a man dressed in hose and tunic of brown burel, carrying a cloak made of the same material, together with his pack; a man I had seen three times before that day, the last time in Broad Street well over an hour ago. What, I wondered, had he been doing in the meantime that it had taken him so long to get this far?
    I must have exclaimed involuntarily, because Cicely asked, ‘Do you know him, Roger?’
    I shook my head. ‘No. But he’s been haunting me ever since this morning. This is the fourth occasion that I’ve seen him today.’
    Cicely stared curiously at the man.
    The stranger, however, did not return our interest. He strode purposefully past us without a glance, although he did falter for an instant at the sight of the felon dangling from the gibbet. It appeared to startle him and I glimpsed the whites of his eyes as he shied away from the corpse. It crossed my mind that it might hold some special significance for him; but then, I suppose that might be said about all of us when there are so many crimes that carry the penalty of death.
    He recovered quickly, walking on towards the high ground above Bristol, known as Durdham Down, and the road to Gloucester.
    ‘He looks as though he knows where he’s going,’ Cicely commented, watching the stranger dwindle to a speck in the distance. She turned back to me. ‘Thank you for bringing me home, Roger.’ She stood on tiptoe and kissed my cheek. But I wasn’t fooled for a minute into thinking it anything other than a chaste, sisterly peck. Her heart belonged to a dead man and would do so until the day she died. ‘You and Adela won’t forget to come to Vespers on Wednesday evening?’
    ‘We shan’t forget,’ I promised. Then I saw her safely inside her cottage, with its grisly outlook, took the liberty of