An Unlikely Match (14 page)

“If I had known our wager would mean Gwen would force herself to spend the night in The Tower, I would have chosen a different forfeiture,” Dafydd said with something like a sigh in his tone.

“She was decidedly unhappy there.”

“I have never known her to spend any time in The Tower,” Dafydd said. “She has always given it a very wide berth. When I was a child, even, she would not permit any of the local children to play in it or near it. Some she resorted to frightening away from it, despite the fact that she strongly objects to frightening children.”

“That is a very strong dislike of the place,” Griffith said. “Not one to be taken lightly.”

“And entirely warranted,” Nickolas said wearily. He remembered all too well the chilling pain he’d experienced on the stairwell, remembered the fear in Gwen’s eyes, the sense of near doom he himself had felt.

Dafydd, Nickolas realized, was watching him closely, a look of concern and curiosity on his face. “Did something happen there last night, Nickolas?”

Griffith’s gaze had locked on him as well.

He did not, at first, answer. How could he possibly explain what he’d felt? How did one convey that sort of inexplicable experience?

“Do either of you believe in evil spirits?” It was an abrupt opening to the subject, but he could not think of another way of beginning.

Only a fleeting look gave away Dafydd’s surprise. “The Bible certainly makes mention of demons and evil spirits.”

Leave it to a clergyman to set one’s mind at ease by means of holy writ. “Not that kind of spirit.” Nickolas smiled at the relief he felt when Dafydd didn’t immediately dismiss his question or laugh outright. “I mean, do you believe that . . . that a place can have a spirit, a
feeling
, about it?”

“As in, a chapel feeling peaceful?”

“I suppose.” Nickolas shrugged. “Except, a . . . a . . .
bad
feeling.”

Griffith entered the discussion. “I have heard soldiers recounting how the site of a past battle can have an unsettling feel about it.”

“Have you ever known a place to have an evil feel?” Nickolas pressed, looking between his two friends.

“Evil?” Griffith seemed to think a moment before shaking his head. He watched Nickolas, a look of anticipation on his features.

Dafydd hadn’t answered at all.

Nickolas glanced at him, half expecting a look of dismissal or mockery. But Dafydd seemed more thoughtful than anything else. They were nearly to the house. Nickolas wondered if Dafydd meant to answer his question or if he was simply ignoring it. He felt foolish enough having broached the subject. He was beginning to regret it.

“The Tower feels that way?” Dafydd eventually asked.

Nickolas nodded. “The feeling grows as one ascends the stairs.”

Again, Dafydd fell silent, his feelings, for once, hidden behind an unreadable mask. Griffith looked as confused as Nickolas felt.

Two footmen met them at the door, taking the blankets from them. Just as Nickolas lifted a foot to step inside, Dafydd stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You need to see something.”

* * *

“The middle of nowhere,” Nickolas answered after Dafydd asked him if he knew where they were.

Dafydd laughed, but looking around, Nickolas couldn’t help thinking he’d given a rather apt description. The three of them had walked to the north property line of Tŷ Mynydd and stopped at what looked to Nickolas to be a place of absolutely no significance.

“Until approximately three hundred years ago, this was the path of a road that ran along the Tŷ Mynydd property line. A second road crossed this one only a few yards from where we are now.”

Nickolas nodded his understanding, assuming there was another reason they’d come to that particular spot besides a discussion of centuries-old roads.

“I can see you think I am absolutely daft to have brought you here.” Dafydd chuckled.

“
Are
you daft?” Griffith asked.

Dafydd shook his head but didn’t look the least offended. “You are horribly lacking in faith, my friends.”

“Then perhaps you should take pity on our lack of confidence in you and simply explain your reasoning,” Nickolas said.

Dafydd began walking, motioning for the others to follow him. After only a few steps, the air around them changed. An oppressive coldness seemed to trickle in, not unlike what he’d felt on the first few steps of The Tower. Nickolas instinctively slowed his pace. Griffith did the same, shooting him a look of confused inquiry.

“There.” Dafydd pointed ahead to a large rock, easily the size of a sow.

Etched deeply into its surface were words, worn with age but clearly visible.

Griffith muttered a shocked exclamation, his eyes on the inscription.

Nickolas couldn’t make out the words. “I don’t read Welsh,” he reminded them both.

Dafydd undertook the translation. “It says, ‘Here lie the remains of Arwyn ap Bedwyr, buried at these crossroads. Be ye chastised and warned all ye who disregard the laws of God.’”

The seeping coldness had not lessened but had rather increased as they’d come closer to what Nickolas now knew was a burial site. He rubbed at his arms as he looked warily at the large stone. “What did Arwyn ap Bedwyr do that deserved such a scathing epitaph?”

“Do you not know what a burial at a crossroads means?” Dafydd gave him a pointed look, and Nickolas instantly began searching his memory.

Griffith pieced it together first.

“A suicide.”

“Precisely, though most crossroads burials are unmarked. This one is unique in that respect.”

According to Dafydd’s description, this now wild and untamed corner of the estate had once been very public. “He was made an example of?”

Dafydd nodded. “His suicide rocked the tiny community surrounding Y Castell. Arwyn ap Bedwyr, you must understand, was the local priest.”

The priest?
Nickolas felt his eyes pop. He didn’t think he’d ever heard of a priest committing suicide.

“Some believed that having been a man of God, he would be spared the disgrace of a suicide’s burial. That obviously was not the case. And it was rumored he was guilty of some horrific misdeed. The only other man who knew of his guilt, whom locals believed had been a coconspirator of sorts, died only a few short weeks before Arwyn’s death.”

“Was this other man’s death a suicide as well?” Griffith asked.

Dafydd shook his head. “The other man’s health had begun a steep decline in the preceding years. The impact of his overwhelming guilt, many said. Arwyn, unable to die naturally as his comrade had, took his life to escape the pain, leaving others to deal with the aftermath of both his original wrongdoing and his community-shaking suicide.”

Griffith moved closer to the rock. “Was it the suicide or his rumored misdeed that inspired this scathing inscription?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps both.”

The quiet peace of the landscape stood in sharp contrast to the unsettling feel of the place. As he stood listening to Dafydd’s explanation, Nickolas fought against a growing urge to flee with all possible haste. Griffith looked every bit as unsettled.

“And the priest’s history is why this place feels so . . . so . . . ?” He searched for the right word but came up empty.

“Bad?” Dafydd finished for him, using Nickolas’s own inadequate wording from earlier. He nodded, however, indicating that was the case. “Less than a century after Arwyn’s death, the roads that crossed here were rerouted. There were a great many complaints about the
feeling
here, as you described it. Travelers disliked the arctic sensation. Horses were known to spook. Many acknowledged the horrible feeling of the place. The fact that you describe The Tower as feeling the same way makes me wonder if the two are connected somehow.”

“That both were the sites of suicides?” Griffith suggested.

“No,” Dafydd said. “Arwyn ap Bedwyr was the priest at the time of the Welsh uprising. He would have been there at the time of Gwen’s death and the subsequent battles. The fact that Gwen is—and, it seems, always has been—afraid of going inside The Tower would, to me, indicate that she knows something about it that the rest of us do not, something that happened during her lifetime.”

Nickolas nodded. “That ‘something’ could be the reason for the spirit of the place.”

“And since this unexplained incident she seems to know about and Arwyn ap Bedwyr’s unknown crime are rumored to have occurred during that same period, one must wonder if those two events are . . .”

“Related,” Griffith finished the sentence.

Dafydd nodded. “If not one and the same.”

“It is possible, I suppose,” Nickolas said.

“Consider this,” Dafydd said. “Arwyn’s rumored coconspirator was none other than Cadoc ap Richard, Gwen’s father. And toward the end of Gwen’s life, Gwen’s father had a falling out with his brother, Dilwyn, over something neither would disclose, and the two never reconciled. They had, until that time, been quite close.”

“There is a mystery here,” Nickolas muttered, his mind beginning to spin with the possibilities.

Griffith had never been one to let a puzzle go unsolved. His expressive face clearly showed he’d begun pondering the mystery as well.

Dafydd nodded and indicated they ought to begin their return trek to the house. The cold had seeped into Nickolas’s very organs, and he did not wish to remain.

They walked in silence. Nickolas was deep in thought, as, he assumed, the others were. Questions raced through his mind.

What could those men have done that was horrible enough for the priest to have taken his own life out of apparent guilt?

Was there truly a connection to The Tower?

Was there a connection to Gwen?

Words she had said to him the night before flew into his thoughts.

“Gwen talked about this last night,” Nickolas blurted.

“What?” Dafydd spoke with a mixture of surprise and eager astonishment.

“I am certain of it now. She said, ‘What they did was wrong. And the spirit of it lingers here still.’
Here
meaning The Tower.”

Dafydd shook his head as if in disbelief. “How did you force that revelation out of her?”

“I didn’t
force
anything.” He quickly realized Dafydd was not accusing him of anything.

“Gwen never—
never—
talks about her life or the people she knew then or the things she saw. It is rather remarkable that she even hinted at her past.”

“She spoke of it as something of a warning,” Nickolas said.

“Like the warning she issued all of us over future wagers?” Griffith asked.

Nickolas nodded. “She meant to convince me to never return.”

“Perhaps, despite her dramatic first appearance, Gwen has come to care about what happens to you.” Griffith looked to Dafydd for confirmation, as did Nickolas.

“Perhaps,” Dafydd said with a shrug.

“Or,” Nickolas threw in, “perhaps she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to finish me off herself if she left me to the not-so-tender mercies of whatever specter resides at the top of The Tower.” Nickolas shook his head and couldn’t prevent himself from chuckling. Gwen had, many times since their first introduction, glared at him as though she’d like nothing better than to toss him out of the house.

“You do not know her well, then,” Dafydd said. “She’s not nearly as troublesome as you seem to think she is.”

A screech carried over the short distance between the three men and the house. Visible in several of the windows were people moving in what seemed to be chaotic patterns. Several windows stood open and sounds of pandemonium flooded out.

“That sounded decidedly ‘troublesome’ to me,” Griffith said.

Nickolas raised an eyebrow at both men before they all sped their steps.

“What has she done now?” Dafydd mumbled.

Chapter Thirteen