The Renegade Merchant (16 page)

His uncle didn’t speak for a count of five,
which was a terribly long time when one was standing before a lord
in his completely silent hall. Then Madog pressed his lips together
in an almost-smile. “Of course, nephew. I am delighted you are here
and honored that you have given us a chance to provide you with
hospitality. Let me say also, now that I have you here in person,
that I am sorry for the loss of your brother. He was a valiant
warrior. We have been much grieved here.”

It was his uncle who was lying this time.
Hywel was a hundred miles away from Aber, however, and was backed
by too few men to call him on it. Lying was part of what lords did.
Hywel was generally very good at it and, in the past, had taken
pleasure from a verbal back and forth with an adversary.

Somehow, tonight, the interplay wasn’t
nearly as enjoyable. If his father ever woke from his stupor, he
might turn his attention to Powys, and Hywel wasn’t looking forward
to bringing his men to besiege his uncle’s fort. And yet, he knew
that his father couldn’t be sad forever and, when he stopped
mourning, it would be anger he would be feeling. That anger would
have to find a direction. It was as likely as not that he would
direct it outside Gwynedd’s borders.

Thus, his uncle wasn’t mourning Rhun, not
really, because he would know this too. And he would know that Rhun
would have been sent against him eventually, just as they both knew
that it would be Hywel who would be sent in Rhun’s place.

“Thank you,” Hywel said.

“I would hope you might sing later, after
you’ve dined,” Madog said. “My people would view me as much remiss
if I didn’t ask you.”

Hywel almost said no, but a quick look at
the eager expressions on the faces of the people seated on either
side of his uncle, all of whom were looking at him, had him
reconsidering. It was the least he could do, especially given the
suddenness of his appearance tonight. If nothing else, it might
well-dispose his uncle’s people to him. There might come a time
when he was glad he’d done his uncle’s bidding.

Again, Hywel bent his neck to Madog. “Thank
you for asking. I would be honored to sing.”

To Hywel’s relief, he was dismissed.

“I will ask about Cadwaladr among your
uncle’s guardsmen,” Cadifor said in an undertone before he went to
his seat next to Cadell at one of the lower tables. “Discreetly. As
for you, my lord, don’t let the name pass your lips. Now that
you’ve started down this path, better not to give the game
away.”

“Thank you.” Hywel then went to join his
aunt and uncle at the high table for what was bound to be an
uncomfortable meal, especially since they’d be watching him eat,
having already eaten themselves.

His aunt was gracious, however, sending for
more wine and fruit tarts for everyone to enjoy. Hywel had been
here often enough in his younger days to know that she didn’t
condone a rowdy hall and would ration the wine most evenings,
making available only very watered down mead that couldn’t get a
four-year-old drunk.

“How is Mari?” Aunt Susanna said as Hywel
sat down next to her.

“She is well, aunt,” Hywel said. “We have
two sons now, who keep her busy.”

“When did you see her last?” Susanna said,
understanding, as she could, being a wife of a king, the long
separations of a noble marriage.

“It has been a mere two weeks,” Hywel said.
“She had been in Ceredigion, but she and the boys now reside at my
castle at Dolwyddelan.”

Susanna laughed. “I hope it’s in better
condition than when I last saw it!”

“Rhun saw to that,” Hywel said.

Susanna pressed her lips together. Their
shared grief was just below the surface, and there was no need to
comment on it. “Not … Aber?”

Hywel could tell that his
aunt had tried to phrase this question delicately, not asking
outright, as she could have, how it was that the wife of the
edling
of Gwynedd didn’t
reside in the same household as the king.

“She likes being the mistress of her own
house,” he said.

“Understandable,” Susanna said, without
asking for a better reason.

Hywel didn’t know if rumors of the full
extent of his father’s current malaise had reached this far east.
He had to assume they had—that and the fact that his stepmother,
Cristina, ruled Aber with an iron fist. The latter, at least, was
well known to the whole of Gwynedd.

As to his father’s illness, it was very much
their luck that Gwynedd’s Norman enemies were otherwise occupied,
or else Hywel’s forces would have been retreating from Mold rather
than taking it. Up until now, Gwynedd’s Welsh allies—namely Cadell
of Deheubarth and Susanna’s husband—had been respectful of their
grief. Hywel didn’t suppose that was going to last very much
longer.

Susanna shot a look at her husband, who was
deep in conference with his steward, so she took the opportunity to
lean closer to Hywel. “Cadwaladr came here, but he left again,
before we knew what he had done. I cannot tell you his whereabouts
now.”

As Susanna started
speaking, Hywel had taken in a breath of surprise, but now he eased
it out.
Cannot
did
not mean that she didn’t know, but he understood that if her
husband had ordered her not to speak of Cadwaladr to Hywel, she
would not disobey. Hywel would expect no less of Mari.

“Thank you, aunt,” he said. “We have heard
little but rumor as to where he has gone. Alice, his wife, claims
not to know.”

“But you seek him,” she said, not as a
question.

Hywel opted for the truth, and not even
against his better judgement. “I can do nothing else until my
brother’s death is avenged.”

Gareth

“
W
hat are you doing—” Gwen closed her
lips on her protest before it was fully realized, and allowed
Gareth to tug her out of the street and around a corner.

Gareth stopped a little way down the alley,
keeping his arm around her and his head bowed in the darkness until
Luke passed. The wall behind him felt cold at his back, and he
tried to ignore the rank smell in the alley. As he held Gwen, his
overriding need was to protect her from where this investigation
was heading. More than when they’d gone to Newcastle-under-Lyme and
found themselves saving the life of Prince Henry, he felt out of
his depth in this English town.

After Luke had gone by, Gareth stayed where
he was through another count of ten, and then he finally released
Gwen.

She looked up into his face. “Am I to guess
what this is about, or do I already know?”

“You said it earlier,” Gareth said. “That’s
the brothel, the one that goes with the coin we found in Conall’s
room. According to John Fletcher’s information, if I show it to the
man at the door, it will gain me entrance.”

Both of them peered around the corner of the
alley again, looking towards the house where the doorman still
stood in shadow, watching the street and obviously on guard.

“We aren’t far from where the girl died,”
Gwen said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I sincerely hope not and fear to ask,”
Gareth said.

“What if nobody will admit to knowing the
girl because she worked at this brothel?” Gwen gestured towards the
house. “How many of the townspeople with whom we spoke would
willingly admit they knew her from there?”

“Not many,” Gareth said. “The town council
and the good citizens of Shrewsbury tolerate whores out of
necessity, but they don’t like them.”

“If she was a whore, and she escaped, why
kill her? Why not simply bring her back to the brothel?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why the bruising?”

Gareth didn’t want to answer, but it wasn’t
information he felt he could keep to himself. “From what I
understand, not from experience but from what others have told me,
that guard we see there in the doorway is employed by the brothel
to keep the girls who work there in line.”

Gwen contemplated that piece of information
for a few heartbeats. “In case any decide they want to earn their
living another way?”

“Yes. Beating would not be outside his
purview,” Gareth said. “Such men also are called upon to control
unruly patrons.”

“Oh.” Gwen nodded. “They probably serve mead
in there, don’t they.”

“Wine and beer, rather, since we’re in
England.” Out of a desire to fleece the men who patronized them to
the fullest extent, brothels served alcohol as well as women, but
too much beer in a violent man could be dangerous to a woman, a
fact which Gwen would have seen for herself often enough.

Gareth closed his eyes briefly, forced for
honesty’s sake to add a final comment to the conversation. “It
isn’t uncommon for girls to be forced into this life, Gwen, and
once in it, they have no means of getting out. They’re whores.
Who’s going to marry them?”

Gwen chewed on her lower lip as she studied
the house in front of her.

Except for the guard, the brothel looked
nothing out of the ordinary. This was probably on purpose, so the
worthies of Shrewsbury could walk by without having to think about
what went on inside.

“Here in England, a child produced out of
wedlock is such a shame that it might leave a girl without a home,”
Gareth said. “Or the child herself might be abandoned.
Alternatively, a father might be so in debt that he sells his
daughter to free himself of it.”

Gwen drew in a breath. “I feel like a child
who’s just discovered that the puppets at an Easter fair aren’t
real but hang on strings pulled by men.”

“I don’t see it that way, Gwen,” Gareth
said. “It’s just that you have no experience with a town like
Shrewsbury, with all the darkness that goes on beneath the surface
here.”

“I investigate murder!” she said. “How could
I not have known any of this before?”

Gareth put his arm across her shoulders and
turned her away from the brothel, heading back towards the east
gate and the monastery. “We have done what we came to do tonight. I
will speak to John Fletcher in the morning.”

“And it will be with John that you visit the
brothel—in daylight,” she said. “Without me.”

“Without you,
cariad
,” he said to her.
“I cannot express to you how unwilling John was to take you in
there. I confess, I’m starting to share his opinion.”

To Gareth’s relief, Gwen gave way. “I will
not argue. Is it possible, however, to discover how many girls
don’t want to be there? Is there any way to free them?”

“You can’t save them, Gwen,” Gareth said.
“We are strangers here, and those are questions I cannot ask, not
even for you.”

Gwen looked down at her feet as she walked.
While a Welsh woman could divorce her husband if he beat her, in
English law, women had no rights at all. These women weren’t wives,
but at one time they might have been. Certainly they’d been
daughters. The dilemma preoccupied them both for the whole of the
walk back to the east gatehouse.

As they passed through the wicket gate,
Gareth said to the guardsman on duty, the same one they’d spoken to
earlier on their way into the town, “I’m going to walk my wife to
the monastery, and then I intend to return. I need to speak to John
Fletcher at the castle.”

“Of course, my lord.”

“You’re going back to speak to John?” Gwen
said as they headed across the bridge towards the monastery. “Can’t
it wait until morning?”

“I don’t think so. Spare me that long.”
Gareth lifted a hand to Gwalchmai, who was hovering in the entrance
to the monastery. At the sight of them, he hurried out.

“Tangwen’s asleep,” he said before Gwen
could ask where her daughter was. “I’ve been waiting for
hours!”

“Hardly,” Gwen said. “We weren’t gone that
long.”

“What did you find?” Gwalchmai’s expression
was eager.

Gwen looked at Gareth, and then she put her
arm around her brother’s shoulder and turned him underneath the
archway. “Let’s get inside, and I’ll tell you everything.” She
glanced back over her shoulder at Gareth.

“A quick word with John, and then I’ll come
home to sleep. I promise,” he said.

Gwen let go of Gwalchmai and came back to
her husband, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Do what you
must. I will be waiting.” She disappeared into the darkness of the
courtyard.

With a lighter heart, Gareth turned on his
heel and paced along the road back to the bridge. The guards
admitted him without argument, and soon the imposing bulk of
Shrewsbury Castle rose up before him. Even at this late hour, the
gate was open and the portcullis was up, and the guards, seemingly
recognizing Gareth, waved him through.

As he approached John’s quarters, however,
Gareth heard the bark of an angry voice coming through an open
doorway. It cut off almost immediately as if the owner had thought
better of his words.

Gareth quickened his pace, and as he turned
into the last corridor, he came face-to-face with Martin
Carter.

Both men pulled up short, and then Martin
ducked his head. “Excuse me, my lord.” He brushed past Gareth and
disappeared around the corner Gareth had just turned.

Curious, Gareth stepped back in time to see
Martin disappearing into the courtyard. With concern furrowing his
brow, he continued onto John’s rooms, where he found the deputy
sheriff seated behind a table, his feet sprawled out in front of
him, staring at the fire.

“What was that about?” Gareth said.

John released a low groan. “Martin Carter
came here asking for details of the investigation, and he was angry
that I wouldn’t give them to him. I don’t blame him for that.”

“He had to have known you couldn’t tell him
much,” Gareth said.