The Fallen Princess (36 page)

The hosteler stepped back, shocked and
sputtering. “But-but—”

“Just tell him,” Prior Rhys said.

Then, as Gwen clutched Rhys around the
waist, the prior turned the horse towards the exit. Once underneath
the gatehouse, however, Gwen said, “Wait.”

Rhys slowed to allow Gwen to lean down to
the gatekeeper, who had come out of his small room next to the gate
in response to all the commotion. He was an aged man with white
hair and hunched shoulders. “Sion, would you please tell my husband
or Prince Hywel if he arrives that I have left with Prior Rhys on
an urgent matter?”

“Where am I to say you’ve gone?” Sion
said.

Gwen glanced at Rhys, who spoke for her.
“The millpond.”

“Of course, Prior Rhys,” Sion said. Gwen
didn’t know that he could actually see the prior at that distance,
but Rhys had a distinctive gravelly voice that the gatekeeper would
have recognized. “Go with God’s blessing.”

“Thank you,” Rhys said and then continued
under his breath as he spurred his horse out onto the road, “We’re
going to need it.”

The millpond had been carved out of the
north bank of the Rheidol River, southeast of the monastery.
Everyone in the region brought their grain there to grind, though
it was most often used by the castle and the monastery, since the
monks and the castle had the most land planted in grain.

Once on the road, they were forced to skirt
another group of travelers, some walking, one driving a cart, and
two on horseback. This party was bypassing the monastery in favor
of continuing south to the castle and the festival grounds.

Instead of following them, Gwen and Prior
Rhys turned east at the crossroads towards the mountains. A half
mile farther on, they turned into a clearing in front of the mill,
a stone building built on the edge of its pond. Several empty carts
were parked by the entrance, and the giant water wheel spun as the
water flowed past. A small group of people had gathered near the
edge of the millpond, some hundred feet from the mill itself.

At Rhys’s and Gwen’s appearance, the man in
the center, who’d been crouching low over something on the ground
looked over his shoulder. It was Prince Rhun, Hywel’s brother and
the eldest prince of Gwynedd. His bright blond hair was lit by the
afternoon sunlight that filtered through the green leaves
overhanging the pond. Even with a dead body at his feet, Rhun’s
blue eyes remained bright. Gwen had seen this prince somber, but
not often. Prince Rhun had been in Aberystwyth longer than Gwen,
escaping (he said) his stepmother’s matchmaking.

Prince Rhun had confessed to Gwen upon her
arrival that circumstances had reached such a dire point in Gwynedd
that his father had decided to become involved. He’d warned Rhun
before he left that if he didn’t find a wife for himself by the
Christmas feast, King Owain was going to allow Cristina to choose
one for him.

Recognizing Gwen, Rhun stood. “Thank the
Lord the prior found you.”

Two monks, instantly recognizable in their
undyed cloaks, and two men wearing the breeches and sweat-stained
shirts of laborers surrounded the body. The monks had kilted their
robes and were soaked to the waist, implying that they’d waded in
to retrieve the body. Although some monasteries employed day
laborers or lay brothers—peasant members of the order who were
restricted to agricultural work—this monastery required everyone to
work and made no distinctions among types of labor.

Rhys and Gwen dismounted,
and Gwen studied the dead man from a few feet away before
approaching Prince Rhun and the others. The body lay in the dirt
and grass beside the pond out of which he’d been dragged, far
enough away from the water that it didn’t lap at his feet. At other
murder scenes, how and when the body was moved could make a
difference between solving a murder and allowing the murderer to
walk free. Today it didn’t, since this wasn’t the spot where he’d
died. Nobody had yet said the word
murder,
but Prior Rhys had to know
the man’s death wasn’t an accident, or else he wouldn’t have come
to fetch her.

Gwen hadn’t been involved in an unexplained
death since before Tangwen’s birth. Men had died in Gwynedd since
then, but none mysteriously, not so far as she knew. And she would
have known: while Prince Hywel was absent and living in Ceredigion,
she’d served as a liaison between Hywel’s spies and King Owain.
Gareth had sworn more than once that he would protect her from
these investigations. But since he wasn’t here, Gwen was fully
capable of stepping into his place, even if she couldn’t be pleased
that a dead man had been found in the millpond.

“What happened?” she said.

One of the men, larger than most with thick
muscled arms characteristic of heavy labor, scoffed. “He
drowned.”

Rhun pinned the man with a gaze that would
have shot right through him had it been an arrow. “Start at the
beginning. Tell Lady Gwen what you know.”

Gwen hadn’t been surprised at the man’s
dismissal of her question. Until they learned more of her, most men
treated her that way. Rhun, however, was a prince, and the man’s
face flushed red to be chastised by him. He didn’t defend himself
but merely ducked his head in apology. “Yes, my lord.”

“What is your name?” Gwen said.

“My name is Bran. I work the mill,” the man
said. “I’m the journeyman, though I know more about milling than
the miller.” He made a motion as if to spit on the ground but
stopped himself at the last moment.

“So you’ve been here all day?” Gwen
said.

“Since early morning,” Bran said. “I had a
short break at noon, but I’ve been grinding since just after
dawn.”

“That means you’ve been inside all day?”
Gwen said.

Bran nodded. “You have to pay attention all
the time in case something goes wrong. I didn’t notice anything
amiss out here until young Teilo came running in to tell me that
he’d seen a body in the water. I don’t know how long it’d been
there. I didn’t notice anything this morning or after my noon meal,
but I didn’t look hard either.”

“Thank you.” Gwen looked at Teilo, the other
laborer not dressed as a monk. His brown hair was cropped close to
his head, and like everyone else, sweat beaded in his hairline. He
wore a filthy shirt that might have once been the color of cream,
brown breeches cut off at the knees, and bare feet. In regards to
the heat, he had to be the most comfortable of all of them. “What
did you see?”

Teilo looked as if answering the question
physically hurt his throat, but he cleared it and said in a low
whisper, “I was coming by like I always do—”

“From where?” Prior Rhys said.

Teilo swallowed, and his eye skated from
Gwen to Prior Rhys and back again. As with Prince Rhun, Prior
Rhys’s authority was unmistakable. “From swimming in the river with
my friends. We’ve all worked in the fields since dawn.” He said
these last words somewhat defensively.

Gwen didn’t care if he was avoiding work and
didn’t blame him for wanting to cool off in the river. “We passed a
water hole on our way here full of caterwauling local boys. You’d
been among them?”

Teilo nodded.

“My boys would have loved it.” Gwen gave a
rueful smile at the thought. Gareth had formally adopted their two
wayward charges, Llelo and Dai, who were now fifteen and twelve.
Their change of status had meant they were sons of a knight and no
longer destined to be herders like their grandfather or a trader
like their father. Consequently, their training to be soldiers had
begun.

Since neither Gareth nor Gwen had kin of
their own to provide guidance for the boys, Hywel had arranged for
them to fall under the care of Cynan, his twenty-three-year-old
half-brother. Cynan had been fostered by King Owain’s sister, who
was married to the King of Powys. Recently, King Owain had made
Cynan custodian of Denbigh Castle, north of Rhuddlan. From there,
he and his two younger brothers, Cadell and Madoc, protected
eastern Gwynedd for their father. Dai and Llelo had been welcomed
into the garrison, and Gareth was confident that there they would
learn to be knights.

It had been two months since she’d seen
them, and Gwen missed her sons. She planned to visit Denbigh upon
her return to Gwynedd in the autumn.

She motioned with her hand to encourage
Teilo to continue his story. “You were walking by and …?”

“And I saw him, bobbing about in the reeds,”
Teilo said.

“Face down or face up?” Gwen said.

Teilo’s face went blank for a moment, but
then he said, “Face down.”

She needed to ask these kinds of questions,
even if they appalled the men, so she tried to ignore their shock.
She looked at the two monks. “You two retrieved him?”

They nodded.

“Can you show me exactly where he was
floating?” she said.

Prince Rhun answered for them. “He was under
the trees, over there in an eddy.”

One of the monks then pointed east, to the
opposite side of the pond from the mill. The Rheidol River flowed
from east to west, emptying ultimately into the sea. Upstream, a
portion of the river had been diverted into a man-dug channel to
form a pond here, in order to provide a steady supply of water to
the water wheel that ran the mill.

Gwen turned back to Prior Rhys. “While I
examine the body, would you mind following the others around the
edge of the pond to see if you can discover the place where the
dead man went in? It would be good to know the exact spot.” Gwen
remembered from an earlier investigation how uncomfortable the
prior had been to witness her examination of a body. She would
avoid discomfiting him this time if she could.

A smile hovered around Prior Rhys’s
lips—perhaps in acknowledgement of what she was trying to spare
him—but he nodded and gestured to the two monks that they should
lead the way. The journeyman begged off, saying that he had to get
back inside the mill. Gwen watched him go, telling herself not to
distrust the man just because he was resentful of his position.

Teilo went with the monks, but before Prior
Rhys himself moved away, Gwen caught the edge of his sleeve. “I
don’t want to tell you what you already know, but Gareth would want
me to say this: try to make sure they don’t trample whatever
evidence has been left.”

“I’ll do my best.” A smile twitched at the
corner of Rhys’s mouth.

“Sorry.” Gwen looked down, chastising
herself for even mentioning it. Prior Rhys had been a soldier and
spy before she’d been born. She had no business telling him what to
do.

“You have a job to do, Gwen,” Prior Rhys
said. “I am glad you are doing it.”

“Thank you.”

Prior Rhys turned away to follow the other
men around the millpond, and Gwen eyed Prince Rhun, who was
hovering over the body. “Are you ready for this?”

“I’ve seen dead bodies before, Gwen.” He
looked at her carefully. “You must know that I have killed
men.”

“Yes, but—” Gwen broke off as she thought of
how best to say what she meant. Rhun meant that he’d killed men in
war. Gareth had too, of course. But murdering a man—and the sight
of a murdered man—was different in both thought and deed, and a man
who could kill another man in the heat of battle might find himself
squeamish at the sight of the same man dead beside a millpond on an
August afternoon. “I know you’ve seen murdered men before, but it’s
a beautiful day and maybe you have other tasks that need your
attention.”

“One—” Prince Rhun held up his right
forefinger, “I’m not leaving you alone here with a dead body and
men you don’t know, and two—” up went the second finger, “I’m
interested. I have witnessed the beginning of investigations
before—Newcastle comes to mind—but I had other duties there that
prevented me from seeing the whole of it.”

“Well—” Gwen took in a breath and let it
out, accepting that Rhun meant to stay and deciding not to worry
about it, “—if you mean it, we might as well get started.”

“What do we do first?” Prince Rhun said.

“Well, first of all, we should acknowledge
that this man didn’t drown.”

___________________

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