The Renegade Merchant (25 page)

“I didn’t know you still needed them,” the
hospitaller said.

Gareth raised a hand, in half forgiveness,
half apology. “It is my fault for not requesting that you keep
everything here for at least another day or two. We haven’t
identified the girl as yet, and I wanted to take another look at
her garments in case they contained some clue I missed the first
time. Ah well.”

The monk nodded, and they all turned
away—the hospitaller to return to his duties, and Gwen and Gareth
to shelter in the overhang of the roof outside the kitchen door.
While they had been consulting with the hospitaller, the first
patterings of rain had sounded in the courtyard and on the slate
roof of the monastery buildings.

Gareth put a hand at the small of Gwen’s
back and canted his head in the direction of the archway that would
take them back into the courtyard of the monastery. As they ran
through it, the cool rain felt good to Gareth after the warmth of
the kitchen, but it was coming down so hard that by the time they
reached the shelter of the gatehouse, they were wet all over.

Gwen sighed. “I suppose you should ride to
St. Giles, but is it uncharitable to say that I don’t want you
anywhere near a leper?”

“I confess I’m not looking forward to going
there either, but I don’t know if I can avoid it.”

“Still,” Gwen said, “we just need to see the
dress. You wouldn’t have to take it off the back of a needy
indigent.”

Gareth smirked. “You know, I really think
this task might be one to leave to John Fletcher.”

 “It is important to include him in
every aspect of the investigation. It would be wrong to keep
something as important as this to yourself.” She laughed.

Hiding a smile, Gareth shook his head. “I
would have to think about how guilty I’d feel if I suggested
it.”

Gwen made a rueful face. “If you said it was
important, he would go, you know he would.”

Gareth pocketed the cloth. “Which is why I
won’t ask it of him. I will either go myself, or we’ll figure out
some other way to get the information we need.” Then, the bell in
the tower began to toll, calling the mourners to the funeral.

The townspeople clearly had been waiting for
it to ring, because several dozen immediately entered the courtyard
through the gatehouse. They were joined by a host of monks, all of
whom were hunched against the weather, with their hoods up and
their hands tucked into their wide sleeves.

With the wind and rain coming from the
south, and his back to the east-facing curtain wall, Gareth was
warm enough. He rested his shoulder next to Gwen’s, gazing out at
the falling rain as they waited for everyone to line up. “Are you
going to tell me what’s going on with you?”

Gwen clenched her hands tightly in front of
her.  

He reached out and grasped
both her hands in one of his. “
Cariad,
w
hatever it is, just tell me.
”

Gwen gave a little cry and tipped back her
head. “I don’t know if I can do this anymore, Gareth.”

“Do what?”

“This.” She waved a hand. “Investigate
murder.”

“My love, you’ve never been obligated—”

“Yes, I have! How much worse is it to let
you go into danger on your own when I know that at times my
presence can help? And—” she shook her head, and the tears she’d
refused to let fall earlier trickled down her cheeks, “—I used—we
used—Tangwen twice in the last two days to distract a possibly
dangerous man so we could further our investigation. Our own
daughter.”

Heedless of propriety, Gareth wrapped both
arms around Gwen and pulled her to him. She sobbed into his chest,
and he just held her, finding his own eyes filling with tears at
her sorrow.

Finally, she quieted, and he said, “I too
have been questioning, Gwen. I can talk to Prince Hywel. We can
stop doing this. We can say no to John Fletcher.”

She said something into his cloak he didn’t
catch, and then she pulled back to look into his face. “It isn’t
that I want to stop. I simply want to feel, and I want to do what
is right. I just don’t know what that is or how to do both.”

Gareth hugged her close again. “We can
figure this out—together, as we always do.” Then he tipped up his
chin to point across the courtyard. “The funeral procession.”

The rain didn’t care about death or Gwen’s
regrets, and the monks didn’t stop for it either. The line of
mourners that had formed up near the church parted so the dozen
monks carrying the two bodies in wooden caskets could get into
position behind the abbot and the prior, who would lead the
procession. It seemed like half the town had come to the monastery
for the funeral and, if what he could see on the other side of the
gatehouse was any indication, the other half was waiting in the
road or at the gravesite on the Abbey Foregate side of the
church.

Gareth wouldn’t know until the two were
buried, but if the custom here was the same as in Wales, the body
would be carried to the funeral in wooden boxes, and then removed
and placed into the ground for burial. Not to reuse the casket
would be a disturbing waste of good wood, and it was only the
wealthy who might insist on being buried in a box—though usually
they were laid to rest in stone mausoleums, tombs, or in the church
itself, and thus would be carried to the funeral ground in the same
wooden box as these poor souls.

Meilyr appeared from the guest hall. Beside
him, Gwalchmai was holding Tangwen’s hand. Meilyr nodded at Gareth
from across the courtyard, whispered a few words to Gwalchmai, who
nodded too but stayed where he was, and then Meilyr strode out into
the rain to join the procession. Gareth and Gwen met him at the end
of the train of monks.

“I thought the younger folk could stay
behind,” Meilyr said, by way of greeting.

“I’m glad you thought of it,” Gwen said. “I
don’t need Tangwen soaked to the skin, and she will attend enough
funerals in her life without going to one of a man and woman she
never met.”

Sadly, that was no
understatement. Their young daughter had already attended a dozen
funerals. Hardly a week passed in Gwynedd without the loss of
someone Gareth knew, though not all deaths brought heartache. Just
a few days before they left for Shrewsbury, one of the old matrons
of Aber village had finally passed at the ancient age of
eighty-six. Most of Gwynedd turned out that day, and her
daughter—herself very elderly at nearly seventy—lamented the fact
that her mother would have loved it if everyone had come to see
her
before
she died
and to have celebrated her life while she was still living
it.

That funeral was particularly notable, but
King Owain or Prince Hywel almost always sent a representative from
Aber to any funeral if at all possible. Death was a part of life
and the acknowledgement of it shouldn’t be avoided, simply for the
emotion it brought forth.

“You have your finery on.” Gwen looked her
father up and down. Her tears had passed, and she was back to being
her clear-eyed self. Gareth wasn’t fooled—and it wasn’t as if she
was trying to fool him. He meant what he’d said about figuring this
out together. “Do you have a role in the service?”

“I told the abbot that I knew several
funeral prayers in English and offered to sing one for the benefit
of the common folk,” Meilyr said. “He would have had Gwalchmai, of
course, but I persuaded him that I would do a serviceable job.”

His father-in-law’s tone was mocking without
rising to anger, though at one time he would have felt justified in
expressing it. Meilyr had mellowed since Gareth’s marriage to Gwen
but, at least in regard to his music, he knew his worth. An
unfortunate consequence of King Owain’s grief was that he’d banned
all music at Aber, even mournful tunes. That lack had left Meilyr
cooling his heels in the hall with nothing to do. He’d composed a
lengthy elegy to Rhun, which he’d sung in private to Hywel, Gareth,
and Gwen, but he hadn’t been able to play it in the hall for the
king. It was out of that frustration that he’d asked permission to
leave.

When they’d first arrived, Meilyr had been
introduced to the monks as Gwynedd’s official court bard, but the
abbot clearly hadn’t realized what that meant. He soon would. The
abbot had been impressed with Gwalchmai, but everything the young
man knew he’d learned from his father.

The three of them fell into place at the end
of the procession. Although they could have reached the cemetery by
way of the abbey’s gardens, it was more ceremonial to leave by the
front gate, walk a few yards along the road through the Abbey
Foregate, and then turn into the cemetery in front of the
church.

“Let’s take a moment to think about what we
know,” Gwen said, speaking evenly and as if they weren’t walking at
the rear of a funeral procession in the pouring rain.

Gareth looked down at her. “Really?”

“The sooner we discover what happened here,
the sooner we can go home.”

“All right,” Gareth said, willing to play
along because Gwen wasn’t wrong. “Well … yesterday morning, a girl
died in that alley, spending her life’s blood in a puddle, having
been stabbed with a jagged stick from a crate. We didn’t find her
body because someone carried her away and threw her in the river.
Given the square of cloth, likely she was moved in the back of
Flann’s cart, though with the dress gone and the cart wheel mended,
we might never be able to confront him with it.”

“We know what he might have done,” Gwen
said, “and that tells us where to keep looking for answers.”

“Next, with Conall and Flann, we have an
Irish connection,” Meilyr said, joining in. “One wonders if the
girl could have been Irish too.”

“We have no evidence to indicate it, so we
shouldn’t speculate more than we already have, Father,” Gwen said,
but her smile was gentle as she spoke, so he would know her words
weren’t meant as chastisement.

Gareth cleared his throat. “Next, we have
the murder of Roger Carter in Conall’s room and Conall’s subsequent
disappearance, albeit without his possessions, including his
horse.”

“Didn’t John mean to spend
the afternoon inquiring of Conall’s business associates?” Gwen
said. “Would it be too much of a stretch to wonder if Flann was one
of them, or if maybe he was
the
connection, which is why nobody has come forward
to say that he knew him?”

“Flann claimed not to recognize Conall’s
picture, but neither of us liked his manner,” Gareth said.

“So we have Roger dead in Conall’s room. A
brothel coin found among Conall’s possessions. Flann and Will going
to the same brothel. Conall and Flann as Irishmen. Flann and Will
as owners of the cart, which was mended in Roger’s shop, the cart
having been used to transport the dead girl.” Gwen almost laughed
as she came to the end of her litany. “Perhaps it’s time that John
had a talk with Flann and Will.”

Gareth had a finger to his lips, tapping
thoughtfully. “Definitely, though I’m sorry to say that without a
witness, we have only coincidence to connect him to either murder.
Does Flann strike you as the type of man who is going to break
under pressure?”

“No, unfortunately. He might bend, but you
couldn’t believe a word he said.” Gwen pursed her lips. “His
partner, though? Maybe Will would tell us something if we got him
alone.”

“Flann said he was returning to the
monastery tonight. Maybe we ought to invite John to dinner, so they
all could meet,” Meilyr said.

“That is a good idea,” Gareth said, and then
he lifted his chin to point to the west. As they passed through the
front gate back onto the road, John Fletcher himself hurried
towards them from the east bridge across the Severn. “And there is
the man in question.”

Meilyr continued on, since he was part of
the service, but Gwen and Gareth slowed to wait for John to reach
them. His hood covered his face to the point Gareth could barely
make out his features in the depths. He’d recognized him from his
walk alone.

“Any luck?” Gareth said.

John gave a quick shake of his head. “Conall
was a ghost, it seems. And if he has any sense in him, he’s long
gone by now.”

He gazed past them to the townspeople who
were crowding into the graveyard. When Gareth and Gwen had stepped
to one side after noticing John, everyone who’d gathered on the
road for the procession had passed them. Now, Gareth wasn’t sure
there’d be space to breathe inside the graveyard wall, much less
for the three of them to stand.

Gareth gestured towards the crowd. “As you
can see, the whole town is here. I was hoping for a smaller turnout
so that the murderer, were he to put in an appearance, might stand
out somehow.”

“Faint hope of that in this rain,” Gwen
said. “Everyone’s hoods are up and their coats and cloaks are
tucked tightly around them. We’ll be lucky if we recognize anyone
at all.”

That wasn’t entirely true. From where they
stood on a slight rise in the road, Gareth could see the coffin and
the lead mourners. Martin walked bareheaded beside Jenny, who was
well-wrapped in her cloak—appropriate since she was with child, and
it would be more than unfortunate if she fell ill as a result of
attending her brother-in-law’s funeral. Martin had his arm around
her and was being nothing but solicitous, but Gareth couldn’t help
remembering how little grief had showed in his voice when he’d been
told of his brother’s death—and how angry at John he’d been last
night.

Clearly, that side was one Martin kept
hidden, and Gareth wondered what else might be lurking beneath the
surface and the friendly face he showed the world.

The three of them started forward again, and
John sighed glumly as he slouched along through the puddles.
Shrewsbury had two murders and a missing man and, even with Gwen’s
discoveries, which Gareth related to John as they walked, they were
no closer to concluding their investigation than they’d been
yesterday morning when all they had to go on was a puddle of blood
in an alley.