The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery) (18 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

T
he small company rode through the early hours of the morning, stopping every now and then for Gareth to dismount and ensure they still followed the proper path. Even though much of the stonework of the old Roman road remained, grass and dirt had made headway between the rocks and revealed traces of a recent passage of men and horses. Cadwaladr’s company hadn’t tried to disguise their route. Like the act of killing Anarawd itself, it revealed a disturbing overconfidence.

At Caernarfon, some fifteen miles west of Aber, the trail ended, along with the road. Gareth dismounted to crouch beside the last traces of hoof prints, embedded deep in the sandy soil ten feet from the edge of the swift-flowing waters of the Menai Straits, which were just visible beneath the light of the waning moon that had finally managed to peek through the clouds. The other men stopped beside him and stared across the Straits to the opposite shore. Anglesey, the bread basket of Gwynedd, lay before them.

The water slopped at his feet, about half-way between high and low tide. The rest of the footprints had washed away. Cadwaladr’s company, if they’d had any sense, had taken the ferry across the Straits nine hours before, when the tide was at its lowest.

“It’s Aberffraw, isn’t it?” Gareth said to Hywel, who trotted his horse close to where Gareth stood.

“That’s my guess as well,” Hywel said. “I’ve thought so all along.”

I’ve thought so all along
. As Gareth stared across the Straits, his prince beside him, Gareth understood Hywel as he never had before. Unlike most men, Hywel never lied to himself. He might not know what was at stake with every task he undertook, but he was clear-eyed about what he knew and what he didn’t know.

His stance and tone told Gareth that this particular venture was only beginning and that Hywel was prepared for it going
bad
to a degree that surpassed anything they’d ever experienced. It wasn’t that people were going to die, though they might, but that Hywel understood one true thing: that by bringing Cadwaladr to justice—if indeed that became necessary—he would break his father’s heart. By doing so, he would put himself, as the bringer of bad news, in a more precarious position than any he’d ever been in before.

In that light, Hywel’s choice to bring Rhun with them, or rather, to allow him to come along, was no longer odd. Rhun was always ready for adventure—in many ways he was more reckless than Hywel—but he’d not taken part in any of Hywel’s tasks up until this night. King Owain protected his eldest son, and thus he rarely participated in the less savory aspects of ruling Gwynedd. But he was here, now, because Hywel knew that if Rhun told King Owain that Cadwaladr had stolen Gwen; if Rhun told his father that Cadwaladr had been behind the murder of Anarawd and his men, his father would believe him when he couldn’t bring himself to believe Hywel.

For Gareth’s part, he no longer had any doubts.

Evan sighed. “I’ll see about waking the ferryman.”

“Best to cross once it’s light. I’d say we have three hours to rest.” Hywel made a small motion with his hand to settle the men. “If we wait for the slack water before the turn of the tide, the water will be at its calmest and lowest.”

Nodding their acquiescence, the rest of the men dismounted. Gareth continued to stare across the Straits. A light flared in the distance. Perhaps it came from a fire burning in an open pit and he imagined Gwen sleeping beside it. He measured the distance from shore to shore, wishing he could ride to her immediately. But Hywel was right: he couldn’t rescue Gwen single-handedly and it would be foolhardy to try to swim the Straits in the dark. The Menai Straits were not something a man should take lightly.

Strong men and too many ships to count had foundered in its waters—at times deceptively slow and at others, moving so fast the current could pull a man under and out into the Irish Sea before anyone could save him. That was not a fate that any of them wanted to share.

 Besides, if Gwen was still alive, she wasn’t sleeping next to a fire pit but was already at Aberffraw. The castle lay on the western shore of Anglesey, only five miles from where Gareth stood. Aberffraw had always been the seat of the Royal House of Gwynedd. Its construction dated back to Rhodri Mawr, who ruled Gwynedd two hundred years before, and possibly even earlier to the great Cunedda, the legendary founder of the kingdom of Wales.

The castle had been decimated at various times: by Viking raiders from the north and west; by Normans from the east—the last before King Owain’s father had retaken Anglesey from them over twenty years ago. When King Owain succeeded to Gwynedd after the death of his father, he began reconstructing Aberffraw anew, quarrying stone from the east coast of the island and bringing slate from Snowdonia. Meanwhile he lived primarily at Aber, which if nothing else was a more convenient location for his many subjects to find him.

“Rest easy, Gareth.” Evan stopped at Gareth’s right shoulder to look across the water with him. “Cadwaladr will not have harmed her.”

Gareth turned to look at him. “Why do you say that?”

“He had plenty of opportunity between Aber and here to kill her and dispose of the body,” Evan said. “Did he?”

“No,” Gareth said. “We would have seen the signs.”

“Exactly,” Evan said. “That means she still serves a purpose—and it’s not to warm his bed. I’m not saying he’s above that, but I’ve never heard that Cadwaladr enjoys forcing women, for all his other faults.”

Gareth clenched his teeth, but nodded and returned his gaze to the water moving in front of him. Come Owain Gwynedd’s wrath, prison cell, or the very gates of hell, he was never letting Gwen out of his sight again.

Chapter Twenty-Two

“
J
esus
! I wish he would hurry!” Rhun cursed from beside Gareth.

“Only a short while longer, my lord.” Gareth eyed the ferryman’s placid poling. “We’ll soon reach the other side.”

As Hywel had planned, it was half an hour before low tide, the best time to cross the Straits. They all had to get across within that half hour, however, because once the tide turned, the current would shift so suddenly, it could capsize the boats. Unhindered, Gareth could swim (and had swum) the Straits, but that was as a youth. These were grown men—heavier, worried, out of practice—and in some cases, afraid of the water. The bards sang of the Welsh being caught between the mountains and the sea. But for the some of these men—those raised inland—the sea was as foreign as Ireland or London.

The fog had risen to coat the trees, the shoreline, and the company in damp cobwebs of mist. Normally, that would have bothered Gareth, because it meant an enemy might sneak up on them unawares. In this case, however, it allowed them to cross the water unseen. He thought it unlikely that Cadwaladr had left scouts to watch the shore. The arrogant prince wasn’t a good enough soldier for that, even if some of his men knew better. It was one of the problems Gareth had encountered in serving in his company: Cadwaladr’s bravado wouldn’t let him admit when he didn’t have all the answers.

It might even be that Cadwaladr had yet to admit that he’d done anything wrong in taking Gwen from Aber. His highest moral imperative was his own well-being. Anything that ensured it, Cadwaladr believed, was for the greater good of all.

At last, the men gathered on the opposite shore, all in one piece. Gareth fought down shivers from the cold wind that blew from the west and checked his belongings before mounting. Then, Hywel and Rhun led them away from the Straits, down a narrow pathway that led to a wider road a half a mile from the shore.

Once away from the water, the fog dissipated, revealing a remarkably beautiful day. Anglesey as a whole was comprised of flat farmland with rich crops, which upon harvest, were shared—sold, bartered, tithed—with the people of mainland Gwynedd. Now in mid-August, the wheat was nearly ready to harvest and the land was a patchwork of green, blue, and gold.

The road went north-west from the Straits, through a region with farmland to the east and extensive mudflats to the west, interspersed with stands of well-leafed trees that thrived in the marshy land. Aberffraw had been built on one of the few hills on Anglesey.

The Welsh had occupied that hilltop since before the Romans came. The foundations, then, were older than even the Roman fort that superseded it. Many other Welsh castles had been built the same way, on older foundations, rather than building from scratch. That was how Aber was blessed with an entire room devoted to bathing, not to mention two narrow tunnels leading from the main building, one heading south, towards Aber Falls, and the second to the beach.

Another half a mile and the castle rose before them, the top of the gatehouse just visible above the trees that lined the road on either side. Although Rhun outranked him, it was Hywel who raised a hand to stop the company. Rhun had (delightedly) made clear from the start that this was Hywel’s task while Rhun was just along for the ride. Obeying Hywel’s unspoken order, the company turned off the road and into the woods to the west of it. The men circled around Hywel, expectant.

“What now?” Rhun said. Then, at Hywel’s uncharacteristic silence, he threw back his head and laughed in perfect imitation of their father. “No wonder you’ve been so silent for the last five miles. You don’t actually have a plan, just now, do you?” Hywel had the grace to smile sheepishly. His brother was one of the few who could get away with that kind of comment. Rhun slapped Hywel on the shoulder. “Never mind. You’ll think of something. You always do.”

“I was waiting to see if Aberffraw was truly our destination before formulating one,” Hywel said. His words didn’t come out defensive, just matter-of-fact. “I need to know what we’re dealing with.” He pointed a finger at Gareth. “Three of you circle around the fort to the south and west, three to the north. Feel free to draw their attention—and their arrows. I want to know what we’re up against. Alun will stay with me and watch the front gate. If my uncle means us no harm, this will be like singing scales. If he orders his archers to shoot…”

“He’s not that much a fool,” Rhun said, ever the optimist.

Hywel met Gareth’s gaze with a skeptical one of his own. “We’ll meet back here in half an hour. At that point, I’ll need to speak with Cadwaladr, if he is, indeed, here. We must know if Gwen is his prisoner.”

“If he’s here, he has Gwen,” Gareth said.

“Likely,” Hywel said, “but I owe it to all of us—and to my father—to be sure.”

With a chorus of “my lords,” the men dispersed to their tasks. Gareth had the luck to partner with Rhun and Evan. They surreptitiously crossed the Ffraw River before it opened into the estuary, and, a quarter mile from the entrance to the castle, slipped from tree to tree, careful not to give the watchers on the wall of the castle above them any glimpse of their passage. Not yet anyway. Gareth didn’t expect Cadwaladr to leave sentries down here. The view from the castle walls would provide him with all the warning he needed if anyone got too close.

At one point, Gareth thought he caught a glimpse of a face in an upper floor window and stopped. “Evan, your eyes are better than mine. What do you see?”

Evan peered through the trees to get a better look. “A woman. Could be Gwen.”

A few dozen yards further, the forest could hide them no longer. It hadn’t been thick to begin with, but the closer they got to the beach, the more scrub-like the trees became. Once they petered out entirely, grass and sand were all that stood between them and the ever-widening Ffraw River. On one side, it wended it’s way the last half-mile to the sea, while on the other, the castle sat on its higher hill above the north bank of the river.

It was Gareth’s job to protect the trio’s southern flank and he scanned the grass, looking for archers or traps. Consequently, he didn’t see the threat on the other side until Rhun grasped his shoulder and pulled him down into the grass.

“Watch out!”

A heartbeat later, an arrow slammed into the sand where Gareth had been standing a moment before. Scrambling behind a scrubby bush, the three men crouched among the cheat grass, thankful they’d tied their horses a hundred paces away, out of sight and arrow range.

“So much for finding a peaceful solution,” Gareth said. “Cadwaladr doesn’t mean well.”

 “It gets worse,” Evan said, looking around the bush, first at the castle and then at the water behind them.

“How so?” Rhun said, his back to a too-small dune.

Evan jerked his head. A hundred yards away, on a half-moon of sand created by a bend in the river, three Danish ships rested. Six men guarded them—two to a boat. Bad enough that the Danes outnumbered them two to one, but each ship was big enough to carry an additional fifteen men. Those were odds that would give even Hywel pause. Knowing it, the Danish guards smirked at them, not even bothering to stir from their posts. Instead, they had the look of men watching an archery contest from a ringside seat.

“We have to get back,” Gareth said. “This is already more than we bargained for.”

Rhun took in a deep breath and tipped back his head, gazing at the wispy clouds above their heads. “Uncle Cadwaladr,” he said, hissing through his teeth. “Why are you doing this?”

“It won’t please your father, that’s for sure,” Evan said.

“The real question is what has Cadwaladr gotten himself into—and does he know how to get himself out of it again?” Rhun said. “Danish allies are not to be taken lightly and if my uncle reneges on any deal he’s made, they’ll kill him and sleep untroubled afterwards, even if he is Owain Gwynedd’s brother.”

“He’ll be telling himself that it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Gareth said.

“That’s where all bad ideas start, don’t they?” Evan said.

“And end the same way too,” Gareth said. “He’ll expect that King Owain will get him out of whatever trouble he’s made.”

“He’ll have to surrender to Hywel,” Rhun said. “He can’t possibly believe he’ll get away with this.”