The Fallen Princess (15 page)

“What is this all about, Owain?” Cadwaladr’s
voice echoed down the corridor towards her. “I was just about to—”
He pulled up short as he spied Gwen standing outside King Owain’s
door.

King Owain took his brother’s elbow and
urged him forward.

Cadwaladr’s face screwed up in disdain.
“What is she doing here?”

At times, King Owain wasn’t as good a judge
of people and situations as Hywel, but he’d been right in this
instance. If Gwen’s presence sent Cadwaladr into sputtering
protests, the presence of Gareth and Hywel would have thrown him
into apoplexy. Even if they had remained silent and allowed King
Owain to question him, Cadwaladr would have hated to have them
witness his interrogation.

“We have identified some … irregularities
regarding the finding of Tegwen’s body and hoped that you could
help us with the investigation,” King Owain said. “It seemed
preferable to have this conversation in my chambers rather than
under the watching eyes of everyone in the hall.”

“I didn’t kill Tegwen.” Cadwaladr came to a
full stop.

“We know that,” Gwen said, daring to speak.
It wasn’t strictly true. They didn’t
know
anything of the
sort, but it seemed politic to appease the prince on the chance
this admission might encourage him to be more helpful. “But someone
killed her, and we were hoping that you could help us discover who
that might have been.”

The pinched look remained in Cadwaladr’s
face. “I have been on the receiving end of another of your
investigations
, girl, and it wasn’t pleasant. Why should I
help you now?”

“You should help because
I
am asking,
not Gwen. This way, Cadwaladr.” King Owain practically shoved his
brother into his receiving room. “As Gwen said, we aren’t accusing
you of Tegwen’s murder. We know already that you didn’t kill
her.”

Cadwaladr straightened his tunic with a
jerk. “I should hope so.”

Gwen followed, closing the door behind her.
She felt rage boiling up inside her and was afraid that if she
opened her mouth, it would come out. That wouldn’t be good for
anyone. Needlessly antagonizing Cadwaladr—and King Owain—with
Cadwaladr’s past sins wouldn’t help them find Tegwen’s killer. When
Gareth had shown her the coin pendant, she’d had a moment of wild
hope that Cadwaladr was the murderer, but even between the pendant
and his ownership of Wena’s hut, she couldn’t construct an argument
to hang him for it yet.

“You know more than you’re telling,” King
Owain said. “I realize that the body just came to light this
morning, but to clarify your role in these events would allow us to
pursue more profitable leads.”

Gwen looked down at her feet, trying not to
laugh at how easily King Owain had adopted Hywel’s way of speaking.
Profitable leads,
indeed.

Cadwaladr put his nose into the air. “More
profitable leads than what? Than dragging me in here? I can
guarantee you that I had no role—”

“You own the farmhouse where Wena used to
live,” King Owain said.

“What of it?”

Gwen sighed. “We found where Tegwen’s body
has been hidden all these years, in the loft, concealed behind the
retaining wall.”

Cadwaladr’s face went completely blank. Then
his expression hardened, and he glared at Gwen. “I have no idea
what you’re talking about.”

King Owain shot Gwen a warning look and put
a hand on his brother’s arm. “The cart that delivered Tegwen’s body
to the beach this morning was seen and recognized as the one
stabled at Wena’s former steading to the west of the village. The
cart and horse belong to old Wynn, who maintains the house and
lands for you. Brother, you are familiar with the house. Don’t deny
it.”

King Owain didn’t remind Cadwaladr that he
brought his women there. It turned Gwen’s stomach to think about
the prince with any woman, even his wife, who had to be a saint to
put up with him. Under Welsh law, Alice could divorce Cadwaladr if
she caught him with another woman three times. Alice was Norman,
however, and might not feel the option was truly hers. If she left
Cadwaladr, she would have to return to her family in England. The
English Church would never accept her divorce as legitimate nor
allow her to remarry. Still, Gwen would have accepted that shame
over having to live with Cadwaladr for the rest of her life.

“Do you think that I would ever have entered
the house if I had known that Tegwen’s body was hidden there?”
Cadwaladr said. “What do you take me for?”

Cadwaladr was putting on a very good show of
ignorance. Could it be that he knew nothing about this? Gwen shot
King Owain a worried look, but he was observing his brother with an
amused expression.

“I know you wouldn’t have,” King Owain said.
“When did you find the body? Only yesterday? Or was it old Wynn who
found it and ran to tell you of it?”

Cadwaladr still had his nose in the air.
“You should be speaking to Wynn, not me. I have had nothing to do
with the place for years.”

King Owain’s expression was one of complete
disbelief. Gwen took out the coin pendant, which Gareth had given
to her before he left, and showed it to Cadwaladr. “We would
believe that if this hadn’t been found on the beach this morning.
It is yours.”

“We? Who’s we? Hywel and that … that bastard
husband of yours?” Cadwaladr said. Facing a question he didn’t want
to answer, Cadwaladr had gone on the attack. It was typical
behavior for a cornered man. Or dog.

Gwen didn’t flinch and fought back the image
of Cadwaladr as a wolfhound, barking and gnashing his teeth at her,
having surged to the end of his leash. But it was a leash that King
Owain still held. The king lifted the pendant from Gwen’s palm by
its leather thong. “The girl is right, Cadwaladr. This
is
yours.”

Cadwaladr took a step back, his hands
reaching for the table behind him. He leaned against it. “I haven’t
seen that coin in years.”

“From all the to and fro that occurs daily
on the beach, it couldn’t have been lying in the pathway longer
than a few hours. It was sitting up in the sand and was picked up
by one of the village boys on his way to clamming,” King Owain
said. “It would have been obvious to anyone walking by.”

“It has nothing to do with me,” Cadwaladr
said.

“Cadwaladr, how came it to the beach?” his
brother said.

“I have no idea.” Cadwaladr snatched the
pendant from King Owain’s hand. “The man who stole it from me must
have dropped it.”

King Owain heaved a sigh. He gazed at his
brother through several heartbeats. Cadwaladr set his jaw and
glared defiantly back. The king walked to his chair and sat in it,
leaning back and resting his elbows on the arms. Cadwaladr was
forced to turn around and now stood before the table like a
supplicant while King Owain observed him over hands steepled
together in front of his lips.

Gwen recognized that silence was the best
option for her, and she backed away slowly towards the side wall to
sit on a bench underneath the lone window.

“This might go better if I told you what I
think happened,” King Owain said and continued without waiting for
agreement from Cadwaladr. “I think your man, Wynn, discovered the
body recently—maybe as recently as yesterday.”

Cadwaladr sputtered, spittle flying from his
lips in his anger, but King Owain held up one finger to stop him
from speaking. To Gwen’s amazement, Cadwaladr subsided. King Owain
had power over him. Gwen felt a little better to see it.

“He informed you of its existence,” King
Owain said, “and you decided that with Hallowmas so close, you had
to get rid of it. You couldn’t have a dead body in a house to which
you brought your women. So, in the middle of the night, you loaded
the body into the cart and drove to the beach at Aber, where you
left her in the sand. Are you going to stand there and tell me I’m
wrong?”

Cadwaladr’s hands were clenched into fists
at his sides like Gwen’s had been earlier. “I didn’t kill her.”

“Nobody said you did.” King Owain’s voice
turned soothing. “We merely want to know what you did do, so we can
look to others for the actual deed.” King Owain kept his eyes fixed
on his brother’s face. Cadwaladr looked down so he wouldn’t have to
meet the king’s gaze, chewing on his lower lip and staring at the
floor.

Cadwaladr remained that way for a long count
of ten before he gave a sudden laugh and threw up his hands. “Fine.
You caught me out.” Cadwaladr pulled up a chair that had been set
at an angle to the table and plopped himself into it, still
laughing. He shook his head as if he was mocking himself instead of
capitulating completely.

“I should have known better than to expect I
could remain anonymous in this. Just as you said, old Wynn found
the body and told me of it. God knows what he was doing up in that
loft, the old fool.
Seeing to things
, he told me. Meddling,
more like. Once he’d found it, though, I couldn’t have a dead body
in my house, so I took it to the beach this morning. I must have
dropped my pendant when Wynn and I lifted her from the cart.”

King Owain leaned forward. “I’m trying to
understand how you could find the body of your niece—”

“I didn’t know who it was! What little I saw
of the body told me it was a woman, but it was all—” Here,
Cadwaladr waved his hand back and forth, his face contorted in
disgust, “—wrinkled and brown. To my eyes, it was a body wrapped in
a cloak. Nothing more or less. I didn’t look closely other than to
make sure she was dead. Long dead, by my reckoning.”

King Owain sat back in his chair again,
contemplating his brother. “You didn’t notice the lions embroidered
into the hem of the cloak or her garnet necklace?”

“I didn’t look at her closely,” Cadwaladr
said, “and even if I had noticed, I wouldn’t have linked those
items to Tegwen. I barely knew the girl. What would I know of her
jewelry or clothing?”

Cadwaladr’s assertion was completely in
keeping with his character. King Owain knew it too. He heaved a
sigh and fingered a stack of papers on his desk. “God knows why,
but I believe you.”

Cadwaladr sat straighter in his seat. “Well,
you should.”

Neither Gwen nor King Owain jeered, though
they could have. King Owain cleared his throat. “Nevertheless, your
first impulse when you came upon a dead body in your house was not
to tell me or to bring it to the attention of my son—”

Cadwaladr made a disgusted face.

“—who has years of experience dealing with
such matters. Instead, your next move was to leave her on Aber’s
beach?”

“I could have buried her in the garden,
couldn’t I? I knew someone would have missed her, even if her death
occurred a long time ago, but I didn’t want to involve myself.”
Cadwaladr glared at his brother. “Given our history, I knew that
Hywel’s first thought would be that she was one of my women and
that I’d killed her. What reason I could possibly have had to do
that, I don’t know, but under the circumstances, it seemed better
to remain anonymous.”

Gwen bit the inside of her lip to keep
herself from speaking. Cadwaladr was right about that, startling as
it was for her to admit. If the body hadn’t been Tegwen’s and
Cadwaladr had come to Hywel with the news of its appearance in his
wall, Hywel would have suspected Cadwaladr’s hand in her death. In
fact, if the body had belonged to anyone but Tegwen, the list of
suspects would have been hugely long.

“Except, of course, you didn’t remain
anonymous,” King Owain said. “You were seen, and since you were
seen, we traced the body back to your property and wasted most of a
day chasing after evidence that you could have told us yesterday!”
His last words were accompanied by a raised voice and the thump of
his fist on the table. “You left your niece’s body on the
beach!”

Cadwaladr’s chin jutted out defiantly. “I
did what I thought was best.”

Then Cadwaladr stood abruptly, the chair
protesting as he shoved it back. He adjusted his long burgundy
robe, made of finely woven wool embroidered at the hem, much like
Tegwen’s. Like all of Cadwaladr’s clothes, it couldn’t have come
cheap, and for the first time ever, Gwen wondered how Cadwaladr
afforded it. With his reduced lands and the huge expense he’d
incurred in paying off the Danes he’d hired to kill King Anarawd,
she would have thought he wouldn’t have had the wherewithal to buy
himself expensive clothes. And then she wondered what he could be
doing to gather wealth to himself—and if it was something King
Owain wouldn’t like if he knew about it.

“You did what you thought was best for you,”
King Owain said. “You always do.”

“I will return to the hall.” Cadwaladr
turned on his heel and paced towards the door, his shoulders back
and his dignity—at least on the surface—intact. He even closed the
door gently behind him.

King Owain’s last comment had been the
truest thing Gwen had ever heard him say about his brother. She
closed her eyes, struggling to contain her own emotions. She hated
Cadwaladr and wanted to see him humiliated—but the actual seeing of
him humiliated hadn’t made her feel good at all. The sickness in
her stomach returned, and she rubbed her belly, comforting herself
when her child did a somersault under her hand.

“That went well,” King Owain said.

Gwen opened her eyes to find the king tipped
back in his chair with his boots on the table and his hands clasped
behind his head. The top rung of the chair hit the wall, and the
king smiled up at the ceiling.

“My brother is a sanctimonious bastard, and
I can’t believe he sprang from the same loins as I did. Where’s his
honor?” He spread his arms wide. “He cares only for himself.”

Gwen decided that the correct response was
to make no response. A silence fell between them as the king
continued to look up at the ceiling. Then he swung his feet off the
table and let the front legs of his chair hit the floor. He pointed
a finger at Gwen. “Don’t tell anyone I said that.”