The Unexpected Ally (3 page)

Gareth waved a hand. “We will question
everyone. While on the whole I agree with your assessment of
Anselm, it is too early to draw conclusions, especially since we
haven’t yet removed the body from the trough.”

“Unless Erik was killed elsewhere and the
body moved, the man who strangled him would have had to be right in
the trough with him,” Gwen said.

There was a pause as both men looked at her,
and then they bent forward to see what she was seeing. “You think
he was strangled?” Rhys said.

“Even from here I can see the bruising on
his neck,” Gwen said.

Rhys released a sharp puff of air. “So it is
murder.”

Gareth had noted some discoloration around
Erik’s neck, but bending over hurt a little more than he wanted to
admit, so he’d resolved to wait to decide what he was seeing until
they got Erik out of the trough. Now that Gwen had pointed out the
marks, however, they were unmistakable, even through the water, as
she’d said.

Rhys rubbed his forehead with the back of
his hand. “Why did he die here?”

“That is one of a dozen questions we can’t
yet answer.” Gareth’s lips twisted in a rueful smile in case his
words had come across as more dismissive than he intended.

Gwen’s boots squished in the mud as she took
a few careful steps back from the trough. “The earth is so churned
up, Gareth, that I’m afraid we aren’t going to learn anything from
footprints, but maybe daylight will bring us a better perspective.”
She frowned. “I hate seeing him there. I wish we could take him out
of the trough now.”

Gareth gingerly straightened his back. “We
have no place to lay him, Gwen. Another few minutes to wait for the
cart won’t hurt him worse than he already is.”

Almost as if wishing made it true, the
moment Gareth stopped speaking he heard the sound of hooves
clopping.

Rhys turned to look towards the road that
lay to the west of the barn. “Ah. There they are.” Then he glanced
back to Gwen and Gareth and explained, “The track that leads from
here straight back to the monastery is too narrow for a horse-drawn
cart. Lwc would have arranged for a driver and cart to leave the
monastery by the front gate and take the long way around. The cart
will have to travel a short distance past the barn on the road
before he reaches a gate, which will give him access to the track
we see in front of us. Everyone should be here soon.”

When Lwc had led Gareth and Gwen from the
guesthouse, he’d taken them through the monastery’s protected
gardens and out the back gate to reach the extensive pasture and
farmlands owned by the monastery and worked by the monks who lived
in it. The paddock in which they found themselves was attached to a
barn that was part of a farmstead directly managed by the monks and
one which supplied the monastery with milk and eggs. To the left of
the barn was a fence and then the road Rhys had mentioned. Beyond
it lay the monastery’s mill and mill race on the Elwy River.

Sure enough, a few moments later, men could
be heard through the mist talking softly to one another, coming
towards them from the monastery grounds. It was Lwc with three
assistants. Shortly thereafter, a cart pulled by a single horse
arrived from the opposite direction, having reached the barn from
the north. The monk driving it maneuvered the cart until the bed
was as close to the entrance to the paddock as he could get it.
Then two of the men who’d accompanied Lwc pulled a thick, six-foot
board from the bed and carried it between them towards the
trough.

The third man hastily laid down four stones
in the muck to keep the board from getting dirty, and the others
set the board down on them. Gareth could have told them it was a
lost cause, since the moment they lifted Erik from the trough and
set him on the board, it would sink six inches farther into the
mud, but he didn’t say anything. Without the stones, the board
definitely would become mired, and he had enough on his trencher
without telling other men how to do their job.

Gareth gently pulled Gwen back to give the
men room to work, and with a heave, they got Erik’s body out of the
trough and onto the board (which sank as predicted). Then, grunting
with the effort, and with Erik’s body streaming water, the three
assistants and Lwc lifted the board and carried it to the back of
the cart. Gareth didn’t even attempt to assist them. He was more of
a hindrance than a help in any circumstance that required the use
of his left arm. While he hated feeling useless, he didn’t need a
glare from Gwen to know that his limited strength should be
reserved for the coming days and the discovery of Erik’s killer,
not expended in lifting the dead man himself.

Rhys had been watching the activity with his
arms folded across his chest and a finger to his lips. As the monks
settled the body in the bed of the cart, he turned to Gareth. “We
have a room along the cloister set aside specifically for the
washing of the dead. If we take Erik there, is that an acceptable
place for you to examine him?”

“That will be fine. You know well our
requirements.”

“Sadly, yes.” With a flick of his hand to
two of the monks who’d come with Lwc, he sent them running back to
the monastery, presumably to prepare the room for Erik’s arrival.
Then he held out his elbow to Gwen. “May I escort you back to the
guesthouse, my dear? We may have stood together over several dead
bodies in the past, but we can let Gareth shepherd this one home
without us, can’t we?”

Gwen frowned but took his arm. “I’m
perfectly capable of helping Gareth with whatever needs doing,
Father.”

“I am well aware of that, but you are
looking a little pale to me.” He glanced at Lwc and the last monk
who’d helped lift Erik. “Come, my sons. We’ve all had enough
excitement for one night. Sir Gareth and Brother Ben will ensure
that Erik is delivered safely.”

For a moment, Lwc’s chin stuck out as if he
was going to dig in his heels and not go with Rhys. The trip to get
the cart had enlivened him somewhat, and he wasn’t looking nearly
as pale as before. Gareth suspected that he’d experienced more
excitement in the past hour than in his whole career as a monk. A
flash of insight told him also that Rhys was taking Gwen away not
so much for her sake, but because he didn’t care for Lwc to spend
any more time with the body than strictly necessary.

But then Lwc’s expression cleared. He bent
his neck in an accepting bow and hustled off with the others with
only one regretful glance back.

That left Gareth alone with the last
remaining monk, the aforementioned Ben, who was the driver of the
cart. He nodded at Gareth before climbing into the driver’s seat
and taking the reins. Rather than sit beside the monk, even if that
would have been more comfortable, Gareth opted to ride in the cart
bed, since someone had to sit with the body to ensure that the
board Erik was on didn’t slide off the back end of the cart.

Gareth slotted his torch into the holder
beside the cart seat and banged each boot in turn into the wheel of
the cart to knock off the worst of the mud. Then he grasped the
rail of the bed with his right hand and swung himself over it to
land with a thud in the bed of the cart. It wasn’t a terribly
graceful move, but it was more than he could have done even two
days ago. With a feeling of satisfaction, Gareth lowered himself
into a sitting position beside Erik’s head.

It was still dark enough that they needed
the torch in order to see. Eventually the sun would rise, and
Gareth looked east with some anticipation. The clouds were showing
signs of thinning, such that the darkness that congealed under the
trees around the barn was slightly less gloomy.

Ben snapped the reins to get the horse
moving. In an attempt to minimize the distance Erik’s body had to
be carried from the paddock, the cart had been parked so the horse
faced north. Thus, as they lurched forward, Ben apologized for how
out of the way their trip was going to be: “The only way to reach
the monastery from here is to follow that road.” He tipped his head
to indicate the road to the west that ran between the barn and the
river. “But there’s a fence between us and it, so we have to head
down here a way to reach a gate that’s wide enough for the cart to
go through. We use handcarts around here mostly.”

“That’s fine, Ben.” Gareth braced himself as
the cart rocked and jostled along the narrow track. Then as it
steadied, he focused his attention on Erik.

A quick inspection revealed that the dead
spy had no purse on him, nor a weapon, indicating that his murderer
had taken them away with him. Robbery was as good a motive for
murder as any at this point, though given Erik’s profession as a
spy, simple theft seemed the least probable. More likely, the
killer took his possessions because he had something valuable or
important on him, or to keep him from being easily identified.
Possibly, they were somewhere to be found in the trees and bushes
around the enclosure—or perhaps in the river. Gareth would come
back when the sun was fully up and bring a larger complement of men
to search.

The rocking of the cart smoothed out enough
that Gareth was able to let go of his fierce grip on the side rail.
He moved to a half-kneeling crouch and started patting Erik down,
going through his clothing in advance of his more thorough
examination later. Unsurprisingly, Erik had hidden pockets in his
clothing—to hold weapons if nothing else—but Gareth found no secret
knives, darts, coins, rings, or valuables of any kind in them. He
did find a jagged slash in Erik’s shirt, along with a matching
wound in his belly beneath it. The existence of the wound went a
long way to explaining how someone could have strangled Erik in the
trough, if that was indeed what had happened. The wound was another
thing Gareth would need to examine more closely once Erik was
brought inside.

“What did you get yourself involved in that
got you killed?” Gareth spoke the words out loud, prompting Ben to
turn around and look at him. Gareth raised a hand in pardon. “I
knew him in life. He wasn’t a friend, but he would want me to find
his killer.”

“Yes, my lord.” Ben turned back to face
front. “I can’t say I have ever encountered a murdered man
before.”

“Then you are fortunate … for I have
encountered far too many.” Gareth said the last words under his
breath, not for Ben’s ears. The monk didn’t need to be burdened
with Gareth’s cares.

Silent now, Gareth gazed down at the body
with pursed lips. He felt a trickle of rain on the back of his
neck, and he pulled up his hood, regretting that he had no sheet or
blanket with which to shield Erik from the elements—not that he
could get any wetter than he already was. While Gareth hadn’t liked
or trusted Erik, ever since the big half-Dane had accepted Hywel’s
offer of a position, he had done nothing to warrant Gareth’s
suspicion.

Gareth bent to the body again and put his
hand to Erik’s neck, matching the size of his hand and fingers to
the bruises on Erik’s throat. They appeared to have been made by
someone with larger hands than Gareth had. When a dead man bore
marks such as these, more often than not the killer had sat on the
victim’s chest, holding him down with both hands—one above the
other—gripping his neck. This left finger imprints on the victim’s
neck that followed a predictable pattern. If the killer’s right
hand was above his left, the killer’s right thumb would have
pressed hard on the right side of Erik’s neck and the marks of four
fingers would appear on the left side. The killer’s left hand would
have marred Erik’s skin in a reverse pattern.

In this case, however, while both thumb
imprints were where they should be, the right side of Erik’s neck
had only three finger marks, while the left side had four. It
appeared to Gareth that the fifth and smallest finger on the
killer’s left hand had put no pressure on Erik’s neck—or at least
not enough to leave a mark. Gareth turned Erik’s head this way and
that, wanting to make sure of what he was seeing. He had just
reached out a hand to the torch, thinking the light would enable
him to see the bruises better when—

“Who goes there?” Ben slowed the cart, which
hadn’t been going very fast to begin with.

Abandoning his inspection for now, Gareth
rose to his feet and stood in the bed of the cart just behind Ben’s
seat. He placed his hand on the hilt of his sword, and his eyes
searched both sides of the narrow track. “Did you see
something?”

“I-I-I thought so, my lord.” The wind chose
that moment to pick up, blowing by them from the southwest, and
then the clouds above their heads unleashed another deluge. The men
ignored the rain as best they could, squinting forward into the
murk. “I thought I saw something up ahead, near the gate I told you
about.”

Pushing back his hood again in order to
expand his field of vision, Gareth jumped off the back of the cart,
a little more gingerly than he’d climbed into it, and walked to the
front. With a glance and a nod at Ben to stay where he was, Gareth
paced forward, his eyes searching both sides of the track. The
familiar creak of a water wheel sounded off to the left. Never mind
that it was barely six in the morning—the miller was working.
Gareth made a mental note to question him as to whether he’d seen
or heard anything this night. The mill was monastery property, but
that didn’t mean the miller himself was a monk who slept in the
dormitory. Experience told Gareth that either a miller or his
apprentice often stayed overnight on the premises, and if that was
the case here, one of them might have heard something.

Ben was standing on the cart seat.
“Anything?”

“Not that I can see—”

Both sides of the cart way erupted with men,
three of whom launched themselves at Gareth at the same instant:
the one from the front came at him with a long knife, one that
Gareth easily blocked with an upsweep of his right forearm. But
then two more men cannoned into him from behind, the first of them
catching him around his waist and falling with him to the ground to
land on top of him. Gareth’s stupid left arm was useless to hold
them off, and before he knew it, he’d been kicked in the stomach
several times to subdue him, he had a sack over his head, and his
arms were pinioned behind his back.