Peters Ellis // Saint Peter's fair

• Saint Peter's fair

July, 1139 is the time of the 3-day St. Peter’s Fair, a large yearly trading fair that takes place on the grounds of the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul at Shrewsbury. The previous year’s fair was cancelled because Shrewsbury was under siege during the civil strife between the forces of King Stephen and the Empress Maude over the British crown. This year, a contingent of townspeople comes to the Abbey to request that the new Abbot, Radulfus, allocate ten percent of the fair’s proceeds to the town to make infrastructure repairs. The Abbot is reluctant to change the nature of the charter to the Abbey, and turns them down.

A group of the young sons from the town gets involved in a brawl with the merchants over the issue. Not long after, one of the most important of these traders, Thomas of Bristol, is found dead. The chief suspect is the leader of the town brawlers, Phillip Corviser.

Brother Caedful from the monastery, who was a witness to the mob scene, doesn’t think Phillip is guilty. Caedful is at the fair acting as a Welsh translator for one of the merchants. He is a good choice since he is one of the more worldly Benedictines, having been a monk only for the last sixteen of his fifty-nine years. He is also known to have led an adventurous life prior to the monastery, and so would be wise in the ways of the trading and politics that take place at the fair.

Emma Vernold, the beautiful niece of Thomas, requests that Brother Caedful, together with the deputy sheriff of Shropshire, Hugh Beringar, work to help solve the murder of her uncle. Phillip is rapidly exonerated as more burglaries and murders take place while he is imprisoned. This pleases Phillip, who has fallen for the lovely Emma, but Emma only has eyes for another visitor to the fair, Ivo Corbiere, a young man so handsome even the other young men stop to stare at him.

Emma’s troubles aren’t only of the heart, however. Someone at the fair is after something Thomas supposedly was carrying. The other crimes show that this something hasn’t yet been found; will Emma herself be in danger as well?