Read Brother Cadfael 04: St. Peter's Fair for Free Online Page B

see that the long arm was still gallantly clasped round the girl's waist. Nor was she in any hurry to extricate herself. Indeed, she was gazing at the smiling, comely, reassuring face of her rescuer wide-eyed, much as Philip Corviser had gazed at her.
    "There, you're quite safe! But let me help you back aboard, you'd do best to stay there a while, your uncle, too. I advise it, sir," he said earnestly. "No one will offer you further offence. With this lady beside you, no one could be so ungallant," he said, his eyes wide in candid admiration. The cream of the girl's fair skin turned all to rose.
    Thomas of Bristol dusted himself down with slightly shaky hands, for he was a big man, and had fallen heavily. "I thank you, sir, warmly, for your help. You, too, brother. But my wines - my goods -"
    "Leave them to us, sir. What can be salvaged, shall be. You stay safe aboard, and wait. This cannot continue, the law will be out after these turbulent young fools any moment. Half of them are off along the Foregate, overturning stalls and hounding the abbey stewards. Before long they'll be in the town gaol with sore heads, wishing they'd had better sense than pick a fight with the abbot of a Benedictine house."
    His eye was on Cadfael, who was busy righting and retrieving the fugitive casks, and still within earshot. He felt himself being drawn companionably into this masterful young man's planning, perhaps as reassurance and guarantee of respectability. The eyes were slightly mischievous, though the face retained its decent gravity. The nearest Benedictine was being gently teased as representative of his order.
    "My name," said the rescuer blithely, "is Ivo Corbiere, of the manor of Stanton Cobbold in this shire, though the main part of my honour lies in Cheshire. If you'll allow me, I'm happy to offer my help ..." He had taken his arm from about the girl's waist by then, decorously if reluctantly, but his gaze continued to embrace and flatter her; she was well aware of it, and it did not displease her. "There!" cried Corbiere triumphantly, as a shrill whistle resounded from a youth hanging over the parapet of the bridge above them. "Now watch them dive to cover! Their look-out sees the sheriff's men turning out to quell the riot."
    His judgment was accurate enough. Half a dozen heads snapped up sharply at the sound, noted the urgently waving arm, and half a dozen dishevelled youths extricated themselves hastily from the fight, dropped whatever they were holding, and made off at speed in several directions, some along the Gaye, towards the coverts by the riverside, some up the slope into the tangle of narrow lanes behind the Fore-gate, one under the arch of the bridge, to emerge on the upstream side with no worse harm than wet feet. In a few moments the sharp clatter of hooves drummed over the bridge, and half a dozen of the sheriff's men came trotting down to the jetty, while the rest of the company swept on towards the horse-fair.
    "As good as over!" said Ivo Corbiere gaily. "Brother, will you lend an oar? I fancy you know this river better than I, and there's many a man's hard-won living afloat out there, and much of it may yet be saved."
    He asked no leave; he had selected already the smallest and most manageable boat that swung beside the jetty, and he was across the boards and down into it almost before the sheriff's men had driven their mounts in among the still-locked combatants, and begun to pluck the known natives out by the hair. Brother Cadfael followed. With Compline but ten minutes away, by his mental clock, he should have made his escape and left the salvage to this confident and commanding young man, but he had been sent out here to aid a client of the abbey fair, and could he not argue that he was still about the very same business? He was in the borrowed boat, an oar in his hand and his eye upon the nearest cask bobbing on the bright sunset waters, before he had found an answer; which was answer enough.
    The noise