The Fallen Princess (25 page)

Gareth left Taran to his work. Walking away
from Taran’s office, he reflected on how much he was growing to
despise this investigation. He had never been one to gossip, and he
didn’t enjoy accumulating other people’s secrets the way Hywel did.
Had he wanted to know that Gwladys was unfaithful to King Owain?
No, he had not. And at this point, he didn’t know if her activities
had any bearing on Tegwen’s disappearance and death beyond
informing him that something wasn’t right in Bran’s relationship
with Tegwen. It occurred to him that nobody had yet told him if
Bran himself had wanted something different in a wife and had
married Tegwen only because his father made him.

At times like this, Gareth was glad he
wasn’t born a nobleman.

The great hall was filled with sleeping
guests, and Gareth paused to listen to the chapel bell toll for
prime. Many would be rising now that the sun was up, and Gareth
might not have a single quiet moment for the rest of the day. He
turned on his heel and left the hall.

Standing on the top step, Gareth beheld the
courtyard, which was already filling with villagers coming into
Aber to spend the day, anticipating rich meals, gossip, and
entertainment. Meilyr and Gwalchmai had sung for everyone last
evening and had even coaxed Gwen up on the dais for one song at the
end. They would play on and off for much of the day. King Owain had
also arranged for jugglers and storytellers, some who would sing
and some who would not. The most important event of the day,
however, would be Tegwen’s funeral.

Gareth had some time before then, so he
pointed himself towards the stables, thinking that he would saddle
his horse and roust one of the castle’s men-at-arms to ride with
him to Wena’s hut. When he arrived at the entrance, however,
Godfrid and his Danes blocked the way inside, in the midst of a
heated discussion.

Gareth stopped a few feet away. He’d picked
up some Danish over the years but not enough to make out more than
one word in three when they were speaking so quickly. After a
moment, Godfrid spotted him and sliced his hand through the air,
cutting off all discussion. Gareth took that to mean that he should
approach. “What’s wrong?”

“One of my men is missing,” Godfrid
said.

Gareth raised his hands and dropped them in
a gesture of disbelief. “I don’t know what to say.”

Then Godfrid’s eyes focused on something
behind Gareth; he turned to see four gravediggers with heavy
shovels on their shoulders depart through the main gate.

“When is it to be?” Godfrid said.

“Before the evening meal.” Gareth turned
back to Godfrid. “There’s plenty of time for a thorough search.
What is your man’s name, where have you looked, and why would he
have gone?”

Hywel

G
wen had once told
Hywel that he should have the words
never assume
inscribed
above his door, and right now, as he waited for Madog’s funeral
train to pass him, he reminded himself of the reason why. He had
thought that his main purpose in coming to Rhos was to pin Ifon
down about Tegwen’s last days. And he’d done it, but he felt now as
if he’d learned too much information about the wrong things. If
Bran had done something so terrible that both he and his wife had
died over it, Hywel almost didn’t want to know what it was.

Almost.

As Ifon had promised, it wasn’t quite noon
and Madog would be in the ground within the hour. The preparations
for Hallowmas could then go forward as planned. Tegwen might have
been dead for five years and Madog for only few hours, but from the
buzz of conversation around Hywel, most everyone was focused on
Tegwen. Her death had been violent, and everyone knew that it was
those spirits who were the most restless.

Hywel and Evan stood to one side of the path
leading out of Bryn Euryn as four mourners carried Madog’s body
towards them in its temporary coffin, inside which the body lay,
washed and shrouded. As was the custom in Gwynedd for all burials
other than noble ones, Madog would be laid in the grave in just his
shroud, and the coffin would be reused. The priest led the
procession, followed by Ifon, his family, and Madog’s family.

Hywel hated funerals. He understood the need
for them and the importance of easing the soul into the next life.
It was supposed to cleanse the grief of those left behind. But
Hywel had attended too many funerals of loved ones to have any
interest in witnessing the last journey of someone who may have
feared death less than speaking to Hywel about Tegwen’s
disappearance.

Evan shifted beside Hywel, restless too, and
Hywel canted his head to indicate that he should move through the
crowd. Hywel’s other men-at-arms had spread themselves out among
the mourners, acting as Hywel’s eyes and ears the best they knew
how.

Hywel brought his attention back to the
procession, and as the body passed his position, he felt the
pressure of a hand in his, followed by a low hiss and the words,
“Tegwen met with a man the morning she disappeared.”

Hywel licked his lips, his eyes flicking
among the crowd to make sure nobody was looking at him, and took a
step back. His fellow mourners shifted to fill in where he’d been
standing. An ancient yew tree arched over the pathway a few feet
away, and he and the woman who had come to find him stepped behind
it, allowing Hywel to get a good look at his informant for the
first time. She was perhaps ten years older than he was, blonde and
blue-eyed, and if he hadn’t been a happily married man he would
have regretted not meeting her the previous evening.

“What can you tell me?” Hywel said.

“You have to understand that when the story
of how Tegwen ran off with a Dane came out, I assumed I’d been
mistaken in what I’d seen. Madog was so sure that he saw her
getting into that boat. But now that Tegwen died instead, I knew I
needed to come forward.”

With
never assume
echoing in Hywel’s
head, he pressed the woman’s hand. “With whom did Tegwen meet?”

“His name was Erik, a half-Dane in Bran’s
company,” the woman said. “Tegwen met him over in the trees not far
from here. She wandered, you know.”

Hywel tried to keep his impatience in check.
“So I’ve heard.”

“I know she came back to the castle after
she met him, but my duties as wet nurse for her younger girl
prevented me from asking her what Erik had wanted. I never saw her
again.”

“You never told anyone about this?” Hywel
said.

The woman shook her head uncertainly.

“Not Lord Bran?” Hywel said, trying to keep
his voice gentle. What he wanted to do was shake the answers out of
her.

“No.” The woman’s eyes went wide. “When Lord
Bran was told that Tegwen had gone, his anger was terrifying! I
stayed out of his way, and since Erik was his man, I didn’t think
it was my place to say anything.”

“What about this Erik?” Hywel said. “Did you
ever talk to him about it?”

The woman sniffed and wiped at her nose.
Hywel was reconsidering his initial attraction. “No. He left Bran’s
service that summer, and by then I’d decided I was mistaken. He was
half-Dane, and since Tegwen had run off with a Dane, perhaps I’d
confused one man for the other and it hadn’t been Erik I saw.”

“Thank you for telling me.”

The woman gave him a coy smile.
Had he
actually fallen for this sort of thing in the past?
Hywel
decided he must be growing more discerning with age. He patted her
hand and dismissed her. By now, the funeral procession had reached
the bottom of the hill, and Hywel walked along the edge of the
road, passing some stragglers, until he could see the chapel and
the circular graveyard with its freshly dug grave. The pallbearers
had removed Madog from his coffin and were lowering him into the
ground.

Evan stood at the back of the mourners, and
Hywel moved to his side. They were standing to the left of the
priest who raised his hands and began a prayer. “Is everything all
right, my lord?”

Hywel settled back on his heels. He’d walked
up to Evan with a spring in his step, but to be so bright-eyed at a
funeral was unseemly, and he should have known better. “I was just
given helpful information and a real lead. I’ll tell you when this
is over.”

Hywel waited impatiently for the funeral
rites to end and for Ifon to greet each person who’d attended. Ifon
had made himself into a fine lord, even if he hadn’t been born to
it. If things had fallen out differently, Ifon might have been
pledged to the church, though it was rare enough in Hywel’s
experience for a lord with only three sons to think that he had any
to spare. Hywel’s father, King Owain, had fathered ten sons
already, only four of whom lived at their father’s court: Rhun and
Hywel as the eldest, both in their middle twenties, sons of an
Irishwoman their father had loved but never married; and the much
younger Iorwerth and Maelgwn, born to his first wife Gwladys.

Of the six remaining sons, Hywel had met
only three: Cynan, who was three years younger than Hywel himself;
Cadell; and Madoc, all of whom lived in Powys, serving lords who
would train them as warriors the way Hywel himself had been
trained. The Norman church would have had Iorwerth as his father’s
heir, but fortunately for Hywel, in Wales, all acknowledged sons
could inherit. In another world, Iorwerth might have made a fine
King of Gwynedd, but Hywel knew that Rhun would make a better one
than all of them.

“Lord Ifon, if I may have one more word
before I go.” Hywel touched Ifon’s elbow as the last of his people
bowed before him and departed.

Ifon’s eyes flicked to Hywel and then back
to the crowd of mourners heading up the hill to the castle.

“I know you have people to see to,” Hywel
said. “This won’t take but a moment, and my men and I will be on
our way.”

Ifon let out a breath and turned to face
Hywel directly. “Of course. How may I serve you?”

“It is my understanding that after Bran’s
death you found places for his men all over Wales,” Hywel said. “I
would like to know why.”

Ifon gave a snort. “Isn’t it obvious? It’s
as I told you last night. They were loyal to my brother.”

“In many households, that loyalty transfers
to the man next in line,” Hywel said, “which would be you.”

“I did not trust them,” Ifon said. “I had my
own men, and Bran’s men deserved the opportunity to serve a lord
who would use them well. That lord was not I.”

Hywel bent his head once in acknowledgement
of Ifon’s reasoning. “I’d like to inquire in particular about one
man, Erik. He would have been half-Welsh, half-Danish.”

Ifon was nodding before Hywel finished his
sentence. “Bran got rid of him before my time. He sent him home, I
believe.”

“Home, as in … Dublin?”

“Yes,” Ifon said.

“You say
got rid of him
. Do you know
why?” Hywel said.

“It was during the transition from my
father’s rule to Bran’s,” Ifon said. “Bran arranged for most of our
father’s men to find posts with other lords.”

“Thank you.” Hywel stepped back. “And thank
you for your hospitality. I won’t keep you from your people any
longer.”

Ifon bowed, his hands clasped before him,
and then strode past Hywel and up the road to Bryn Euryn, the
aforementioned people crowding around him as he went.

Evan and the other men from Aber, meanwhile,
converged on Hywel. “Do we have a lead?” Evan said.

Hywel’s eyes brightened. “Any of you fancy a
journey to Dublin?”

Gwen

T
oo many mornings
since she’d become pregnant, Gwen would wake so tired she could
barely lift her head from her pillow, and after last night’s late
conversation with Godfrid, this morning was no exception. She lay
with her arm across her eyes, listening to Mari throwing up into
the basin and knowing she should stop pretending to sleep and help
her friend. Gareth, lucky for him, had woken hours before while it
was still dark and gone off. He hadn’t returned. There was a time
when Gwen would have been irritated with him for continuing the
investigation without her, but this morning she was too tired to
care.

Growing a baby was far more work than she
had anticipated. And she thought she’d been paying attention.

She knew about the dangers of childbirth
itself. Her own mother had died birthing Gwalchmai, and Gwen had
been a witness until the very end when the midwife and pushed her
out the door before a last effort to save her mother. Gwen had been
left to sob alone in the corridor. She’d realized much later that
her father had known hours earlier that her mother was going to
die, which was why he was well into his cups by then and no use at
all to Gwen. The midwife had opened the door to hand Gwalchmai to
Gwen instead of Meilyr. She’d stood there, bereft, tears on her
cheeks and unable to wipe at them because of the squirming bundle
in her arms.

And here she was, pregnant herself and
joyful about it, despite the terrors ahead. She supposed she was
naïvely hopeful, but she couldn’t be anything else.

Gathering her strength as if she were about
to climb a mountain instead of get out of bed, Gwen pushed up from
her pallet and staggered to Mari’s side. Mari knelt on the floor
beside the basin, her head resting against the wall. Her face was
very pale. Gwen put a hand to her forehead, but she wasn’t
feverish. This was simply the sickness that many pregnant women
experienced—often in the morning—but in Mari’s case it afflicted
her all the time.

“Will you be all right for a moment if I ask
the maid to empty this?” Gwen said.

Mari nodded, barely moving her head and
keeping her eyes closed. “There’s nothing left inside me
anyway.”

Too often that wasn’t quite true. Holding
her nose, Gwen hastened to the door. Mari’s maid was just coming
through the front door of the manor house with a serving girl. Gwen
handed the basin to Hafwen, who passed it immediately to the girl,
who ran off with it.