The Renegade Merchant (32 page)

“Nobody has seen him,” Gareth said. “John
can send word to London that he’s wanted in connection with these
deaths, but—”

“He might not have gone to London,” Gwen
said, “and why would he when he can lose himself in territories
controlled by Robert of Gloucester?”

“John might not be able to send word of what
has transpired here to Robert, but I can.” A thoughtful expression
came over Hywel’s face. “My father remains on good terms with Earl
Robert.”

All of a sudden, Gwen’s heart felt lighter.
If England had been ruled by Welsh law, Robert would have been
king—and a more able king could not have been found in all of
Christendom. Once he learned of it, Robert would be offended by
what had happened here and would not want to harbor a slaver, even
if he’d sinned in Stephen’s lands. Robert’s hold on the reins of
his fiefdom was loosening due to illness and age, but Gwen knew as
surely as the sun would rise tomorrow that the man would do what he
could.

“Gwen, I need to talk to you.” Jenny Carter,
John’s sister and Martin Carter’s widow, hurried towards them,
having come from the service at the church. She was well wrapped in
a shawl that she’d pulled up over her head and held tightly under
her chin, and she was chewing on her lower lip as if she was
nervous. It wasn’t a posture that Gwen would have said came
naturally to her. Jenny was as vibrant and alive as any girl Gwen
had ever met—and she elbowed Gareth in the ribs so he would look at
her too.

Gareth’s expression softened at the girl’s
approach. Jenny was not only newly widowed, but had been forced to
accept that her husband had been a villain. The next few days and
weeks were not going to be easy.

“I came as soon as I could get away.” Jenny
embraced Gwen.

“I am so sorry for everything that has
happened,” Gwen said.

“None of it is your fault,” she said. “I was
the one who was deceived—by Martin, by Adeline. It turns out I knew
nobody as well as I thought I did.”

“You know your brother,” Gwen said.

That got a nod, but Jenny brushed any other
comfort away. “You need to know that whatever bad things he did and
harm he caused, Martin didn’t kill his own brother.”

Gareth expression showed skepticism, though
his voice remained gentle. “You sound very certain. How can you
be?”

Jenny looked him full in the face. “I know
you think that I was mistaken about Martin spending the night in
bed—or maybe you think that I lied—”

Gareth opened his mouth to protest, even if
Gwen knew that had been exactly what he’d thought, but Jenny didn’t
let him speak.

“—but I didn’t lie. Martin did spend the
night at home. I admit now that I didn’t know Martin as a wife
should, but I do know that he would never have set foot in Rob
Horn’s inn, not for money, not for hatred. Never.”

“Why would that be?” Gwen said.

“He found the smell of tanning leather
unbearable,” Jenny said. “I’ve seen him lose his dinner on the
ground at the slightest whiff of that smell, which is why his and
Roger’s business was located to the northwest of the castle, as far
from the tanning works as possible. At Martin’s urging, the Council
passed restrictions as to where leatherworking could take place and
ruled that no more tanning businesses could be established within
the town of Shrewsbury. It was Martin’s hope that the council could
eventually force the entire industry to move outside the town,
beyond the river. Believe me, he would not have murdered Roger in
that inn for any amount of gold.”

“Fear can be a powerful motivator,” Gareth
said. “The fact that you knew of his antipathy to the smell could
make his crime one he thought he could get away with, because
nobody would believe the murderer could be him.”

Jenny was shaking her head even as Gareth
was speaking. “Not Martin. No. But I know who did.”

Gwen put a hand on her shoulder. “Whoever it
is, just tell us.”

Jenny took in a breath. “Huw, Roger’s and
Martin’s apprentice. What’s more,” she added in the face of their
disbelief, “he’s been missing since this morning, since word came
to us about Martin’s death.”

“Why would Huw murder Roger?” Gareth
said.

“Roger treated him badly. You’ve heard that,
I’m sure. But what you don’t know is that I overheard Huw telling
Martin that he blamed Roger for Adeline’s death. What you don’t
know is that Huw was in love with her.”

Gareth

T
he manhunt for Huw was, according to John, one of the largest
in the history of Shrewsbury. Once Jenny had convinced John that
she was telling the truth—or that it was at least worth finding out
if she was right—John sent out every one of his men to find Huw.
Even Luke took to the effort with a will. In the fighting at the
brothel, he’d lost his friend, Alfred, one of the few casualties
for the victors, and was on fire for revenge against someone who
was still alive.

Privately, Gareth was
concerned that the apprentice would never make it to the castle to
be questioned—and not because the killing of Roger Carter needed to
be avenged. With the primary organizers of the slave ring missing
or dead, the watchmen and the townspeople who helped in the search
felt, as Luke did, the need to punish
someone
even if it was only a hapless
apprentice. John had set a three-man watch on Flann for the same
reason—just to make sure he lived to speak to the
sheriff.

Fortunately, it was Oswin and Cedric
together who found him. Huw had tried to flee the town through one
of the gates that led to the river—this one belonging to a stable,
where Huw had apparently hidden for the bulk of the day.

The two young watchmen had been among the
men John had sent to patrol the river side of the palisade, and
they happened to be walking past as Huw opened the gate, just as
darkness was falling. The apprentice was strong, but it was two
against one, and Cedric was able to call in a few of his fellow
watchmen who were within hailing distance. He also managed to
convince them not to kill the apprentice outright, and they brought
him to the castle.

After looking him up and down, John decided
that, as with Flann, it should be Gareth, as a fellow Welshman, who
would be the first to question him. So, with John looking on
through the barred window of the door to Huw’s cell, Gareth brought
in a straight back chair, turned it around so he could rest his
arms across the rail, and sat.

He held the pose for a count of thirty,
hoping the silence would unnerve Huw. Most people who weren’t
criminals by nature struggled not to fill a silence, especially
when they were guilty of what they’d been accused of doing. It
seemed to Gareth that Martin had been a natural villain, but Huw
wasn’t cast from the same mold.

Huw started fidgeting right away. He was
sitting on a stool opposite Gareth, with his hands tied behind his
back and each ankle tied to one of the stool’s legs.

Finally, Gareth decided he could afford to
break the silence. “You killed Roger Carter. There’s no point in
denying it. One of the maids at Rob Horn’s inn was on her way to
the latrine when she saw you leaving the yard. She thought you’d
been with a girl, which is why she hadn’t mentioned it before.”

Huw brought his head up at Gareth’s initial
statement, but unlike some accused murderers Gareth had questioned,
he didn’t color or pale. He simply looked at Gareth with a neutral
expression on his face. “I was so careful to leave nothing of me
behind. It seems it would have been better to leave something of
Martin’s in the room, but I didn’t think of it at the time.”

Gareth narrowed his eyes. The supposed
apprentice had spoken to him in the Welsh of an educated man, not
that of an illiterate peasant. “Who are you, really?”

“I am who everyone thinks I am,” Huw said,
“a cartwright’s apprentice.”

“But what more?” Gareth pressed.

“I was born in Morgannwg, to a mother who
loved me, and to a father, a steward for a minor lord, who saw to
my education,” Huw said. “It wasn’t until my mother’s dying breath
that she told me about my sister, born a year before I, whom she’d
given away to a man named Tom Weaver.”

Gareth was generally good at controlling his
reactions, but this was not the interview he’d expected to be
conducting. “You’re telling me that Adeline was your sister?” It
seemed Jenny had got it wrong too, though she’d been far closer to
the mark than anyone else.

“By the time I found her, after nearly nine
months of searching, she was engaged to Roger Carter and had no
idea that Tom Weaver was not her real father—none at all. I didn’t
want to spring my identity on her without warning, so I decided
that if I was happy with her circumstances, I would let her be and
return to Wales. I had some experience working in wood, so I
apprenticed myself to Roger to get close to them both.”

“But you weren’t happy,” Gareth said, not as
a question.

“Roger Carter was a hard man. He was very
kind to Jenny, but less so to others, and certainly not me. He
didn’t love Adeline, and Adeline had nothing but disdain for him,
which she proved by getting herself involved with that Welsh
nobleman and running away.”

“If what you say is true, and you were
Adeline’s brother, why did you stay once she died?”

Huw bobbed his head, as if agreeing that, to
an outsider, his behavior appeared strange. “I wanted revenge—on
Roger Carter, on Tom Weaver, and on that Welsh prince, though I
never saw him again after Adeline died, more’s the pity. He was
really the one for whom I was waiting.” Huw made a motion with his
head. “Then I found out about what Martin Carter was up to, and
that he was up to it with that same prince, and I stayed in hopes
of killing two birds with one stone.”

“Roger Carter beat you,” Gareth said.

Huw smirked. “No worse than my own father
did. I can take a few beatings if it means lulling a man into a
false sense of security. I could have killed Roger at any time. I
was merely waiting for the right moment.”

Gareth had a thought that he might have
liked Huw if they’d met under different circumstances—and if Huw’s
character hadn’t been twisted so far to one side. He spoke of
murder as if it were nothing. Gareth, who’d killed far more men
than Huw, had never done so with the cool demeanor that Huw was
displaying now.

“Walk me through what happened that day,”
Gareth said. “We know from Tom Weaver that he, Roger, and Martin
had a fight. Did you witness it?”

“Oh yes,” Huw said. “Nobody ever treats an
apprentice like he’s a person, with ears. Tom came to Martin to say
that he wanted out, that owning part of the brothel was one thing,
but enslaving—and killing girls—was something else entirely. Martin
told him to shut up.

“Unfortunately, Roger was home, and he
overheard. It seems he’d been suspicious of his brother for a
while—following him around and such—and now that he knew the truth,
he demanded to know who else was involved. Names were mentioned,
including Conall, that red-headed Irishman you were looking for.
They got into a shouting match that ended in fisticuffs and with
Tom getting walloped by Roger.

“I stayed in my bunk in the workshop until
late that evening, just watching to see what else would come of it.
Martin returned from wherever he’d gone off to, but the two
brothers didn’t speak again in my presence. Martin went to bed with
his wife as if nothing had happened but, after midnight, Roger left
his bed. On a whim, I followed him. I thought he was going to free
the slave girls, quite honestly, but he went instead to Rob Horn’s
inn, to Conall’s room, though I didn’t know who it belonged to at
the time.

“I waited outside to see what would happen,
and when nothing did, saw my opportunity. With the sheriff gone,
and only Jenny’s brother left to run things, it seemed the perfect
moment.” Huw grimaced. “I didn’t count on you coming into it.”

Gareth ignored the last comment, though it
was, in a way, a compliment to him. “You confronted Roger?”

“I did, and there’s irony for you. Roger
went to Conall’s room to accuse him of slaving, but he wasn’t the
slaver, and you spent all this time looking for his killer in the
wrong places.” Huw seemed very pleased with himself and the way
he’d almost pulled one over on Gareth. “It was for Adeline that I
killed him. I’d brought a length of rope from the shop. All I had
to do was knock on the door. He must have thought it was Conall
returning. He allowed me to get close, I kicked out at one of his
knees to lay him low, and then got behind him and strangled him.”
Huw spoke matter-of-factly, neither proud of what he’d done, nor
sorry.

“The wounds on his hands and face, then,
were from the earlier fight with Martin and Tom?” Gareth said.

“I suppose.” Huw shrugged. “He tried to
fight me, but I was the stronger, and it was over quickly.”

“And you went back to the cartwright’s yard
as if nothing had happened?” Gareth said.

“It would hardly look good for me if Roger
was found murdered and the next day his apprentice went missing,
would it? I figured I could leave after a day or two, say that with
Roger gone, I wanted a different life. Or maybe not say anything at
all. Wales is only a few miles away, after all, and the sheriff’s
writ runs only to the border.”

“You’re going to hang, you know,” Gareth
said.

Huw shrugged. “That may be.”

“You’re not sorry, are you?” Gareth
said.

“That Roger’s dead?” Huw said. “Not in the
slightest.”

Gareth glanced towards the door. John had
turned to speak to someone behind him, so Gareth took the
opportunity to lean in and question the man about something that
had nothing to do with the case. “Do you know the name of Adeline’s
father?”