The Traitor of St. Giles by Michael Jecks

Author:Michael Jecks [Jecks, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781471126321
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

Chapter Eighteen

Jeanne chose not to join them to witness the inquest. She had come all the way to Tiverton with a view to visiting St Giles’s Fair, and if her husband now intended questioning a number of people about a possible murder, Jeanne was content to leave him to it. She returned to store the spices in their room, kissed him, and begged that he should not spend too long at the inquest, but when he asked that she should take Edgar with her if she did walk about the Fair, she agreed happily. She knew Edgar was a useful judge of cloths and trinkets.

When about to leave they saw Wat in the yard watching sulkily as Petronilla fed her child watched by another young mother. Wat jumped up at the sight of his mistress and Edgar, and his expression of desperate eagerness made Jeanne relent. She agreed that he and Petronilla should join her, and Petronilla smiled, passing her boy to the other maid and refastening her tunic while Stephen gurgled happily.

The Fair was only a short distance from the castle and they were soon past the toll-booth and in among the shouting, excited populace. Flags fluttered from strings, children walked about with sugar sweets, mothers gripping their hands as they peered from one stall to another; men chewed pies or drank ale; hucksters of all kinds bawled their wares; scruffy dealers offered dubious goods half-visible within baskets or concealed under their coats while shiftily looking about for the watchmen of the Fair’s court; and all about them were women and children munching on roasted fowl: thrushes, starlings, fieldfares and larks.

At one meat stall Jeanne allowed her empty stomach to direct her. She selected five honeyed larks for herself and Petronilla at one and a half pennies. A board demanded another one and a half pennies for the ‘Fire, paste and trouble’ to put them into coffins, and she asked him to put them all into a pie. Wat and Edgar shared three plump pigeons for another twopence-halfpenny.

Jeanne threw occasional glances at her maid. Petronilla appeared to have forgotten her trial of the day before. Fresh-faced, happy, calm, she looked as if she had never imbibed to excess. In comparison Jeanne felt like a doddery old woman; her head was light, her back ached, and someone appeared to have sanded the interior of her eyelids – all because she had sat up half the night with Edgar to make sure Petronilla didn’t vomit and suffocate.

Although the Fair was not of the same dimensions as the one at Tavistock, where Jeanne had first met Baldwin, Tiverton had a respectable mix of goods for sale and she was soon immersed in the relative merits of the silks and velvets on offer.

Edgar too eyed the various materials. His wife-to-be was becoming demanding, now that he had put off their wedding day for so long, and a good fur trimming or piece of fine linen might soothe her impatient breast. He wasn’t sure, but he was wondering whether she was the right woman for him after all.

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