Saint Peter’s Fair

Saint Peter’s Fair (1981) Ellis Peters (Chronicles of Brother Cadfael)

Set in Shropshire England in 1139

St. Peter’s Fair is a grand, festive event, attracting merchants from across England and beyond. There is a pause in the civil war racking the country in the summer of 1139, and the fair promises to bring some much-needed gaiety to the town of Shrewsbury—until the body of a wealthy merchant is found murdered in the river Severn.

Brother Mark is so lovely.

Cadfael’s fragrant domain, dewy from the dawn and already warming into drunken sweetness in the rising sun, filled his senses with the kind of pleasure on which an ascetic church sometimes frowns, finding something uneasily sinful in pure delight. There were times when young Brother Mark, who worked with him this delectable field, felt that he ought to confess his joy among his sins, and meekly accept some appropriate penance. He was still very young, there were excuses to be found for him. Brother Cadfael had more sense, and no such scruples. The manifold gifts of God are there to be delighted in, to fall short of joy would be ingratitude.

(Brother Mark) had seen little enough of the world before entering the order, being thrust through the gates willy-nilly at sixteen by a stingy uncle who grudged him his keep even in exchange for hard work, and he had only recently taken his final vows. “Do you see anything there to tempt you back into the secular world?”

“No,” said Brother Mark, promptly and serenely. “But I may look and enjoy, just as I do in the garden when the poppies are in flower. It’s no blame to men if they try to put into their own artifacts all the colours and shapes God put into his.”

“It must be a pleasant thing,” he said thoughtfully, “to be so made as to give pleasure to those who behold you. Do you suppose he realises his blessings?”

Mark was rather small himself, from undernourishment from childhood, and plain of face, with spiky, straw-coloured hair round his tonsure. Not that he ever viewed himself much in the glass, or realised that he had a pair of great grey eyes of such immaculate clarity that common beauty faltered before them. Nor was Cadfael going to remind him of any such assets.

Characters: Cadfael, Abbot Radulfus, Aline Beringar, Arald, Mark, Edwy Bellecote, Emma Vernold, Euan of Shotwick, Ewald, Hugh Beringar, Ivo Corbière, Philip Corviser, Rhodri ap Huw, Sheriff Prestcote, Thomas of Bristol, Turstan Fowler

Publisher: Mysterious Press

Rating: 8.5/10

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