The Unexpected Ally (5 page)

Proving that he was awake after all, Gareth
said, once Gwen was out of earshot, “Erik was doing more for you in
Ireland than simply looking for Cadwaladr, wasn’t he?”

Hywel made a noncommittal noise. “Why do you
say that?”

“Because he sent word that Cadwaladr wasn’t
in Ireland. If his tasks were done, he would have come
himself.”

“True.”

When Hywel didn’t embellish his answer,
Gareth prodded him. “What was he doing?”

Hywel sighed. “Politics.”

Gareth’s face was towards the fire, and he
spoke softly so his voice didn’t carry on the off chance there was
anyone else but Hywel to hear. “You are looking for allies.”

It was a guess, but a good one. Hywel chewed
on his lower lip, not so much stalling for time as gathering his
thoughts. He hadn’t been deliberately keeping this information from
Gareth so much as simply not discussing it. “Since Rhun’s death, I
have felt that my position in my father’s household is more
precarious than I would like. Cristina is ambitious, and with two
sons already, she has a right to be. My father’s current state of
mind implies there might not be any more sons with her, but I
didn’t know that when I sent Erik to Ireland … and you know my
father.”

“Yes,” Gareth said. “He can be very
forgiving.”

“The priests would say that isn’t a fault,
but—”

“But you realize more than ever that you
have to make your own way and develop your own allies.”

“Yes.” Hywel looked down at Gareth.
“Hopefully my father will live another twenty years or more, but
war is everywhere, and life is uncertain. I must be ready to take
the throne on my own terms when the time comes, and that means I
need men. I will have Welshmen, for certain, but a pledge of
support from Irishmen and Danishmen would not go amiss.”

“Your brothers will support you,” Gareth
said. “Cynan and Madoc, for two.”

“Will they? I’d like to think so, but we
have a long tradition in Wales of parceling out land to all sons in
equal measure, regardless of the fact that the kingdom is weakened,
if not destroyed, as a result. Cynan knew Rhun hardly at all, and
while he knows me better, how long before he realizes that he is
now next in line for the throne?”

“When Rhun was alive, the idea of you
becoming King of Gwynedd was a distant future.” Gareth chewed on
his lower lip as he thought. “Now it’s a real possibility. Men die
for all sorts of reasons.”

“My father has many sons, and each one will
want something. I will have to appease them for their support.”

“Or fight them.”

“And maybe kill them,” Hywel said.

Hywel

“W
e will pray that
it never comes to that.” Gwen stepped back into the common room, a
bundle of clothing in her arms.

Hywel looked down at his feet and spoke in
an undertone. “It will come to that.” He was with friends, so he
could be completely honest.

And it wasn’t only his father’s sons that
Hywel would have to fight. Fifteen years ago, Cadwallon, who was
Hywel’s uncle and his father’s older brother, had died in fighting
near Dinas Bran, but he’d spent years systematically attacking each
of his uncles in turn to eliminate them and their claim to the
throne of Gwynedd. He’d done it for his father, Gruffydd, and for
himself, knowing that he would one day be king. Unfortunately for
him, it had turned out badly in the end, and it was Owain who’d
reaped the rewards of Cadwallon’s sacrifice.

Gareth knew as well as Hywel that he was
right, and he grimaced. “It is your assumption then that Erik was
working for you still?”

“Yes, though I have no idea what he was
doing here.”

The sound of boots scraping on wood came
from the opposite side of the room through the doorway that led to
the dining room. Then Conall, the agent of
Diarmait mac Murchada, King of Leinster,
appeared. He’d
ridden with them from Aber at King Owain’s invitation, one that at
the time had seemed impossible for anyone to refuse. With bright
red hair still tousled from sleep and so many freckles it would be
impossible to count them all, he was the very vision of what an
Irishman should look like. The bruises he’d received when he’d been
captured by the same band of slavers in Shrewsbury who’d hurt
Gareth were finally fading. And it was clear from his stance that
while his cracked ribs still pained him, they were healing too,
maybe more quickly than Gareth’s wounds, especially after today’s
assault.

Conall waved the piece of bread in his hand.
“I couldn’t help overhearing some of your conversation and thought
I ought to make my presence known.”

Hywel grunted, not liking the idea of Conall
being a party to the majority of what he and Gareth had talked
about. Conall couldn’t unhear it, however, and Hywel motioned that
he should enter the room. “You heard that Erik is dead?”

“Yes, and that Gareth has done himself
another injury.”

“Merely renewed the old one,” Gareth said.
“I was starting to feel a little better too.”

Conall stepped behind Gareth to peer at his
bare back. “Ah.”

Hywel snorted. He liked this Irish spy. He
had an air about him that implied constant amusement, though what
had happened to him in Shrewsbury had been far from amusing. Like
Gareth, Conall appeared to have a good mind, though he was more
willing than Gareth was to compromise his honor in the service of
his lord. Hywel suspected that it made him both better and worse at
his job than Gareth, and Gareth’s honor hadn’t been something Hywel
had regretted for a single moment since he hired him—not even when
Gareth was on the trail to catching Hywel himself in wrongdoing.
Gareth’s sense of honor was the reason that Hywel had brought him
into his retinue in the first place.

“If you two would give me a moment, I’ll get
Gareth out of these wet clothes and bandaged.” Gwen gestured with
her head that Hywel and Conall should leave them for the dining
room. “Perhaps you could ask the cook to prepare breakfast for two
more?”

Gwen had essentially given Hywel, her lord,
an order, but Hywel had known her since he was a boy, and with a
hint of a smile at the way she mothered him, her husband, and
everyone else, he led Conall from the room. He wouldn’t have been
embarrassed to see Gareth stripped naked, and he would have been
surprised if Gareth would have felt discomfited either. Upon
reflection, however, Gwen was probably less concerned about
Gareth’s modesty than his reaction to being bandaged. She didn’t
want him to feel the need to hide his weakness and pain because he
didn’t want to show it in front of other men more than he already
had.

Hywel settled himself at the long table in
the dining room in the seat closest to the fire. The monks lived a
frugal existence, with the only fire for their personal use in the
warming room underneath the dormitory, but they didn’t expect such
sacrifice from guests, something for which Hywel was very grateful.
Hywel didn’t think he’d learned much from Rhun’s death—other than
how full of grief and anger he could be and still walk—but he knew
one thing: life was too short to spend cold.

Conall went to the fire too and put out his
hands to warm them.

Hywel studied the Irishman for a moment and
then said. “If you know anything about Erik’s death, tell me
now.”

Instantly, Conall turned to him, both hands
up in a gesture of appeasement. “I know nothing. I saw nothing. I
have never been to St. Asaph before. I have never met a half-Dane
named Erik. I was fast asleep from the moment my head hit the
pallet after I was shown to my room until the bell rang for Lauds.
The monk who served me breakfast told me about Erik’s death, but I
knew nothing else about it until I overheard you speaking to Gareth
and Gwen.”

That was about as comprehensive a denial as
it was possible to give, and Conall had done it with his eyes on
Hywel’s and a completely straight face. Hywel let out a low laugh.
“Erik is half-Welsh too. He used to serve Prince Godfrid of
Dublin—and after that, my uncle Cadwaladr.”

Conall’s eyes lit. “A man flexible in his
allegiances. Men like that are good to know as long as you never
turn your back on them.”

Conall was a spy, so he knew well the
vagaries of men’s loyalties. But he might have been specifically
referring to the shifting nature of allegiances in Ireland, such
that Leinster had at times been allied with Dublin Danes like
Godfrid, sometimes ruled them, and at other times fought alongside
the Irish clans who opposed them. King Diarmait had even entreated
the Normans in south Wales to come to the aid of Leinster against
the Danes, perhaps not knowing that the Danes had asked those
self-same Normans for help against the Irish.

For Hywel’s part, he had Welsh, Irish, and
Danish blood, but he specifically owed his friend Godfrid, the son
of a former king of Dublin, a debt that he suspected he would be
working off in the next year or two as Godfrid and his brother
finally acted against the usurper of their throne, a fellow Dane
named Ottar. How involved the Irish lords of Ireland would be in
the fight for the throne of Dublin remained an open question. That
was one reason Hywel had been so amiable to Conall: it never hurt
to be on the right side of a king of Leinster.

“And then Erik spied for you,” Conall said,
not as a question.

“It was a recent arrangement, and possibly
not one that weighed too heavily on him as I didn’t know he’d
returned to Wales. I have no notion as to what he might have been
doing in St. Asaph.”

“Most likely he was coming to speak to you.”
Conall went to the narrow window to gaze out at the courtyard. He
held his left arm somewhat gingerly across his lower rib cage in an
attitude Hywel had seen him in quite often. Never having met Conall
before he was injured, Hywel didn’t know if the stance was normal
to him or because he was nursing aching ribs. “If he’d arrived at
Aber not long after we left, he could have ridden here hard on our
heels to arrive within an hour of us. It might be just like a spy
to attempt to enter the monastery by the back way rather than go
through the front door after midnight.”

Hywel let out a breath of air that was
almost a laugh. Leave it to Conall, the outsider, to see things
differently from anyone else. “I hadn’t thought of that. If it
turns out you’re right, I will beg forgiveness when I pray for him.
Since Erik’s last message we’ve been a little busy—” Hywel laughed
for real now, “—but you remind me that I did leave word with Aber’s
gatekeeper, in the moments before we left, that if Erik appeared he
was to tell him where I’d gone.”

Conall turned to look at him, his eyes
assessing. “Likely he was killed to prevent him from speaking to
you.”

“What could he have had to tell me?” Hywel
clenched his hand into a fist and banged it on the table,
frustrated that he honestly had no idea. His mind went immediately
to what new and terrible plot his Uncle Cadwaladr might have set in
motion, but without Erik alive or access to his belongings that
might tell them something, Hywel was at a total loss.

“If someone followed him from Aber, or he
was recognized once he arrived, they could have surprised him.”
Conall tapped a finger of his right hand to his lower lip as he
thought. “Though I must admit, all of this had to have happened in
a very short amount of time, and if that’s the case, his death
might have been a matter of a chance encounter rather than
premeditated.”

“Perhaps it isn’t that he followed us from
Aber but that he was already here, waiting for me, knowing that I
would eventually come through here on my way to Mold.” Hywel
sighed, acknowledging again, as he seemed to be doing more and more
of late, that the price for serving him was often very high. If
Erik’s death wasn’t enough to prove it, Gareth’s wounds were a
daily reminder.

“In that case, wouldn’t he have made himself
known to some of the men already here?” Conall said. “Prince
Cynan’s encampment lies less than a mile from the monastery.
Doesn’t your brother oversee this region for your father?”

“He does, but I doubt Erik would have sought
him out,” Hywel said. “Erik’s and my arrangement was known to only
a few—or rather, to only one other person.”

“Gareth.” Conall grinned. “Then it was known
to two because Gwen knew as well.”

Hywel laughed. “Indeed. Regardless, I have
yet to speak to Cynan, so perhaps I’m wrong and Erik did go to him.
At the very least, one of his men or a monk here at St. Kentigern’s
might have seen Erik and be able to tell us about his movements.
Such questioning is a task that Gareth and Gwen usually take charge
of.”

“I offer you my service as well in this
matter.” Conall spoke formally, and there was no doubting that he
felt he could be of use.

Hywel eyed the Irishman, not sure he was
entirely ready to trust Conall with an investigation, though the
events in Shrewsbury implied that he could, at least in regard to
something over which the King of Leinster had no stake. He canted
his head, deciding for the moment that he’d include him. “I accept.
Our first task, since we can’t know Erik’s mind and are deprived of
all evidence of his death, is to find out if anyone in the village,
the encampment, or the monastery saw him. Even more, we should
simultaneously be searching for the people who took his body.
Hopefully questions about one will lead to answers about the
other.”

Gareth appeared in the doorway. “This is a
small community. Someone had to have seen something. And Erik was
an easy man to remember.”

“Have you ever investigated a murder before,
Conall?” Hywel said.

Conall contemplated Hywel for a moment
before answering in a completely even tone. “No.”

Hywel hadn’t meant his question as a
criticism. He genuinely wanted to know because it would help Gareth
to figure out how much direction to give Conall as the day
progressed.