The Lost Brother (23 page)

The headman had initially greeted Gareth’s
proffered arm with suspicion, but at his words, real relief swept
across his face. “Thank you, my lord. I am Sion ap Robat, and I
welcome you and your men to our village.”

“We were hoping to be welcomed to your inn
as well,” Gareth said.

Sion bowed. “My home is your home, my lord.”
He straightened and gestured to the east. “Please come with
me.”

He set off towards the inn. Gareth waved the
rest of the soldiers off their horses and then fell into step
beside him. “I’m surprised your village can maintain an inn.”

Taverns such as the one at Cilcain were
common, since (as in the great hall at Lord Morgan’s fort or at
Aber), men and women liked to gather together at the end of the day
at a place where they could drink and talk. With winter coming,
nights were growing longer, and a man could sleep only so much. To
have the village together in one place most evenings saved on
candles and firewood. It was friendlier too.

But an inn was something else entirely,
requiring the resources to build a structure on the scale of a
manor house and the commerce to justify it.

“Ach, I know what you’re thinking. With Mold
Castle or Lord Morgan’s stronghold so close, why would anyone stop
here instead of there? Here’s the real truth.” Sion leaned in close
to whisper conspiratorially. “We have the best mead and the best
cook in all of Gwynedd. People come for miles to sample our fare.
Just the other day, a fine lord from west of the Conwy by his
accent stopped for the night with his companions.”

Gareth’s step faltered for an instant. He
covered up the hesitation with an extra-long stride and said, “When
was this?”

“Hmmm. Three or four nights ago?” Sion said,
his brow furrowing. “I’d have to look in my ledger.”

“What was the lord’s name?”

“He called himself Gareth ap Rhys.”

Gareth almost choked on his own saliva.
What had he been expecting? The man to name himself?
He
cleared his throat. “Had this Gareth ever stopped here before?”

“No, my lord.” Sion’s expression was one of
studied neutrality.

“This lord did not comport himself
well?”

“I would never speak ill of a customer. We
don’t get many men as high as he.”

“
And a good thing too
, are the words
you aren’t saying.”

Sion shrugged. “Still, we’re full up five
nights out of six.”

Gareth looked at the headman with new
respect, even as his stomach tied itself in knots yet again. “You
own the inn.”

“My father built it with his own hands,”
Sion said. “Most people don’t understand that a better life can
cost nothing more than time and effort.”

Gareth almost laughed at the sudden
smoothing of Sion’s elocution. The last words he’d said had been a
quote from someone else. “Is that what your father used to
say?”

“Every day, God rest his soul,” Sion
said.

“Would I have known your father?” Gareth
said.

“He was a man-at-arms in the Earl of
Chester’s retinue.” Sion drew in a breath before holding out a
supplicating hand to Gareth. “My loyalties lie with King Owain, of
course.”

“Of course,” Gareth said, but he felt the
chill that had fallen between them at the innkeeper’s words. He
tried to dispel it, if only because Sion was so voluble a talker
and a wealth of information. Gareth wanted to know more about the
man who’d given Sion his name. “So, your father retired to run an
inn.”

Some of the tension that was showing in
Sion’s manner eased. “He did. Have you ever been to the inn before
tonight, my lord?”

“No, but I’m looking forward to it.”

“And we are happy to welcome you.” With an
extravagant bow, he gestured Gareth’s men inside.

Gareth was used to the dampening effect his
presence had on the joviality of a tavern, so he held back at first
and allowed everyone else to enter ahead of him. Madoc stepped to
one side as well. At Madoc’s own request, Gareth hadn’t introduced
him to the headman as a prince of Wales. He was very glad that he
hadn’t given Sion his own name either.

“Did I overhear Sion say that a lord stayed
here a few days ago?”

“You did,” Gareth said. “He called himself
Gareth ap Rhys.”

“Holy hell,” Madoc said. “What did the man
look like? Was it this Cole?”

“I would imagine not, since Sion didn’t
blink an eye at my appearance,” Gareth said.

“Christ, man. Why didn’t you press him
further?” Madoc said.

“I didn’t want to show too much interest in
his visitor in case my queries made him clam up too soon,” Gareth
said. “I thought I’d take it slowly. The night is young.”

“What if I were to speak to him?” Madoc
said.

Gareth nodded as he studied the young
prince. Ten years younger than Gareth, Madoc had the surety of a
much older man. That’s what came from being one of a dozen sons of
the King of Gwynedd.

“I would be grateful,” Gareth said. “It goes
without saying that we’re trying to be discreet.”

“Indeed.” Madoc put a hand on Gareth’s
shoulder. “Leave it to me.”

The inn consisted of a large main room,
almost the size of Morgan’s hall, with an adjacent smaller, more
private chamber. The sleeping rooms were above, accessed by a
stairway that ran against a side wall. Great beams supported the
roof, and a large fire burned in a stone fireplace, which was built
against the wall opposite the stairs. An overhanging smoke canopy
vented out the back wall and prevented the room from being filled
with smoke. Gareth was pleased to see that it was doing a
reasonable job—better than the vent in the tavern at Aber, which
had been designed poorly and tended to draft inwards instead of
out.

Thirty of the village men had met Gareth’s
force on the green, but a few—mostly elderly—had stayed behind at
the inn near the fire. Gareth headed towards them, not because he
was cold in his thick cloak and leather gloves, but because he had
learned over the years that the aged tended to look upon authority
with more favor than the young. He didn’t order a drink but instead
settled back into the corner to watch the crowd for a while. His
stomach growled. He had missed dinner and wished he wasn’t on duty
because he would like to take the opportunity to taste the fare
here.

It was probably just as well he didn’t,
however. Sion might think he was obligated to serve Gareth for
free.

That Sion’s father had been a man-at-arms in
the company of the Earl of Chester explained a great deal, mostly
about how he’d acquired the money to build an inn in the first
place. Whether or not he, in fact, had constructed the inn himself
by hand, the land had to have been given to him by an overlord. In
Saxon England, a village was carved out of the land belonging to
the lord, and the homes were paid for by him too.

Bigger market towns like Shrewsbury had
petitioned the English crown for independence from local lords.
Merchants there owned their own land and houses. In Wales, more
often than not, towns grew up next to a castle, or as in the case
of Gwern-y-Waun, next to a mine and quarry. It was the
productiveness of the lead mine, along with the beauty of the
limestone found here—a source of building material for his
castles—

that was one of the reasons King Owain had
been so eager to press forward and take Mold Castle. The people
here tithed to the Lord of Mold, which today happened to be the
Earl of Chester.

Tomorrow … well, they’d see about that.

Gareth

“Y
ou don’t have a
drink in your hand, laddie.”

Gareth blinked and straightened, focusing on
the man speaking to him, one of the elderly gentlemen at the
nearest table. His face was deeply lined and his hair snow white.
Gareth had been neglectful both of his manner and of his duty.

He smiled. “I don’t, do I? If I were to
acquire one, may I get another for you as well?”

“Four.” The man nodded, looking very pleased
with himself.

Gareth stood up, laughter on his lips. He
had expected no less, since the man had three companions as aged as
himself and knew a soft target when he saw one. Gareth edged his
way through the crowded benches and tables to the serving area
located against the wall opposite the fire. The old men would be
more likely to answer Gareth’s questions once they had another
drink in front of them.

“Five.” Gareth held up one hand, fingers
spread wide, in case the bartender couldn’t hear him over the
hubbub.

An elbow dug into his ribs, accompanied by a
grating voice. “If it isn’t the incorruptible Gareth ap Rhys. Not
so much on your high horse anymore, are you?”

The man next to Gareth was seated on a
stool, drinking with a companion, and from the smell of him, which
was wafting unpleasantly up to Gareth’s nostrils, he was extremely
drunk.

“How is that?” Gareth said, his cheerful
mood dissipating in the face of yet another man confusing him for
Cole.

“I knew you were just like the rest of
us.”

Gareth’s eyes narrowed as he gazed down at
the top of the man’s head, sure he knew him from somewhere but
unable to place him. Gareth bent forward, his elbows on the bar,
trying to act nonchalant, though his heart was pounding loudly in
his ears.

To hear his full name again, though in a
completely different context from how Sion had used it, almost had
him confused about who he was supposed to be. Sion’s
Gareth ap
Rhys
had been a lord from west of the Conwy River. Now he was
either Lord Morgan’s traitor or a brigand such as John Fletcher
would have recognized.

The man glanced up at him, drained his
drink, and gave a belch. The bartender had already placed two
drinks in front of Gareth, and Gareth instantly swapped out the
man’s empty cup for a full one. He was glad it wasn’t Sion tending
the drinks and hoped Madoc was questioning him in a corner
somewhere.

“Do I know you?” Gareth said.

The man grinned, showing yellow teeth, the
same color as the mead he was drinking. “Served Prince Cadwaladr
once upon a time, didn’t you? Left because you didn’t want to
follow his orders if they sullied your hands. They’re well and
truly sullied now, aren’t they?”

And with this last phrase, Gareth recognized
the man by the way he talked. Looking many years older than when
Gareth had last spoken to him, Morien had been a man-at-arms in
Prince Cadwaladr’s retinue at Aberystwyth when Gareth had belonged
to the garrison. Now, instead of becoming angry at Morien’s
smirking face and ongoing insults, Gareth braced his right side
against the bar and affected a curious look. “I wouldn’t say so.
Why do you?”

“Because we know the truth, don’t we?”
Morien said.

“Do we?”

“What are you going on about, Morien?” the
man beside him said. Then he looked at Gareth. “Don’t mind him.
He’s in his cups and doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

“I’d like to hear it anyway.” Gareth
couldn’t recall the newcomer’s name. He wore a full beard that
obscured his mouth and chin, but Gareth thought he remembered
seeing him at Aber Castle a few years ago. As a younger man he’d
had less gray in his hair and been unable to grow the beard he wore
now.

Gareth didn’t care about the man’s origins.
He wanted to get to the bottom of Morien’s snide remarks before the
man collapsed into drunkenness or his friend succeeded in silencing
him. Gareth clapped Morien on the shoulder. “When was this?”

“What do you mean,
when
?” Morien
sneered into his cup. “You rode next to the prince as fine as you
please, didn’t you? You and your lady wife.”

“We’re talking about Prince Hywel, right?”
Gareth said, and then was annoyed with himself for picking up on
Morien’s habit of ending every sentence in a question.

Morien gave him a sour look. “You know I
don’t mean him.”

“You’re going to have to say what you mean,”
Gareth said.

“Cadwaladr.” Morien took a long drink.

Gareth felt as if someone had poured a
bucket of cold water over his head, and it was even now running
down his back. He and Gwen had sworn that they wouldn’t say
Cadwaladr’s name unless all evidence pointed to him, and here was
testimony falling into his lap from the lips of a drunken
man-at-arms.

Morien’s friend made a disgusted sound at
the back of his throat, reached across Morien to put a hand on his
right shoulder, and tried to turn him away from Gareth. “Of course
he meant Prince Hywel.”

“Get off me!” Morien shoved his friend away.
“Putting on airs with the Earl of Chester himself, weren’t
you?”

The rage that had been building in Gareth
since he’d learned that Cole had been pretending to be him
threatened to overwhelm him again, but he ruthlessly shoved it back
down. “You saw me with Ranulf, the Earl of Chester, in the company
of Prince Cadwaladr?”

Morien’s friend growled. “Close your lips,
Morien.”

To Gareth’s great relief, Morien ignored his
friend, though his face had sunk into a sullen mask. “No.”

Gareth crashed to earth. Was this not what
he thought it was? He studied Morien through a half-dozen
heartbeats and then said, “What exactly do you think I’ve done if
you never saw me yourself?”

“I saw you,” Morien said. “We all did, and
we heard about what you’d done.”

“From whom?”

Morien hesitated, seeming to realize for the
first time that something might be amiss, either with him or with
Gareth. “From one who was there.”

“This is at Chester Castle?” Gareth said,
taking a guess.

“No.” Morien frowned again at Gareth, his
puzzlement at Gareth’s ignorance finally breaking through his
mead-saturated brain.

Gareth bent closer to Morien, enduring his
foul breath. “Go on.”