The Prodigal Son

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I first saw the strange young man whilst sipping a beaker of my favourite ale (the cheapest), sitting in a corner of the Green Lattis. Mind you, there was nothing unusual about seeing a stranger in Bristol at the beginning of August: it was the time of Saint James’s fair.

The priory had originally been granted a nine-day charter for this annual event, but over the years its time had gradually lengthened, first to a fortnight, then to three weeks until, in this year of Our Lord, 1480, it seemed to the inhabitants’ blunted senses to have been prolonged indefinitely. Although it was held outside the city walls, drunken brawls and dusk-to-dawn revelry meant sleepless nights for those of us who dwelt within earshot of the priory; and the house in Small Street, where I lived with my wife and three children, reverberated constantly to the shouts and cries of the hundreds of traders who converged on Bristol from all over the kingdom. It was the boast of the prior that Saint James’s fair had become one of the most popular in the land.

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