The Unexpected Ally (6 page)

Gareth tipped his head. “I would be grateful
for your help. Between the two of us, we might have one working
body.” He snorted laughter.

“You need more than just Conall, Gareth, if
not to help with the questioning then to watch your backs.” Hywel
glowered at his captain. “You surely need it.”

“You have me.” Gwen slipped through the
doorway, which Gareth was mostly blocking, and came forward to the
table.

Hywel had forgotten to call for breakfast,
and he sent an apologetic look in her direction as he reached for
the bell above the mantle. “I will find other men to help, Gareth.
You will stay here, Gwen. I won’t risk you. It doesn’t bear
thinking about what would have happened if you’d ridden in the cart
with Gareth—or instead of Gareth.”

In a lowered voice, Gareth added, “What I
really need you to do, Gwen, is question the monks working within
the monastery walls.”

Gwen expression turned more than a little
mutinous, but she didn’t argue out loud, just gave both men a brief
nod. Then a monk bustled through the kitchen door, carrying a tray
of food and drink for breakfast. He began setting out the dishes on
the table. The smell was heavenly. Given the fire, it came as no
surprise to Hywel to learn that Abbot Rhys didn’t skimp on other
important things either.

Eyeing the monk, Hywel spoke his next words
carefully, not wanting to talk of anything important in an
outsider’s presence. “As for you, Conall, if you help Gareth, it
might delay even longer your return journey home.”

Conall shrugged. “Another day or two of
absence from Leinster will hardly matter one way or the other. My
king knows where I am and when I tell him of what I have learned he
will not begrudge time spent in the royal court of Gwynedd.
Besides, I’m in no condition for a sea voyage.”

The monk bowed to them and departed, at
which point Gwen began pouring breakfast mead into cups for each of
them, and Hywel reached for a serving spoon to ladle porridge into
his bowl.

Gareth turned to Conall. “You should know by
now, but it’s only fair to remind you again, that our
investigations have a tendency to be far worse than any sea
journey.” Gareth accepted a cup from Gwen and looked at her over
the rim. “In fact, sometimes they include them.”

Gwen smiled, though Hywel knew that the
memory of her journey to and from Dublin as Cadwaladr’s captive was
one of the worst periods of her life. “I will do as you ask and
speak to the monks.” She gave a low laugh. “Heaven knows I’ve done
it before when you didn’t want me wandering about by myself. I’ll
need a sketch to show them, Gareth.”

“I’ll make several.” Gareth nodded his head
to Hywel. “If we discover anything that pertains to the king or to
you, my lord, I’ll let you know immediately. But until then—”

“Until then, I am the
edling
.” Hywel
spoke matter-of-factly, surprised to find himself completely
unresentful of the fact that he was leaving the investigation of
Erik’s death to others. “My duty is to my father and to address the
treachery of my Uncle Madog.”

Gareth snorted into his cup. “You do seem to
have your share of treasonous uncles, my lord.”

Hywel looked up from his wooden bowl, taking
in Gareth, Gwen, and Conall in a single glance. Despite another
murder, a healing shoulder wound, and a brush with death, his
friend was laughing again. Hywel was glad to see it. He wasn’t sure
where Gareth’s amusement and the general banter around the table
was coming from, but it was a welcome change from the heaviness of
heart they’d all felt over the last few months in the wake of
Rhun’s death. “It may be that our interests will coincide before
we’re through.”

Gwen

G
wen wasn’t pleased
to be relegated to questioning the monks as she had at Aberystwyth
and Shrewsbury, but she understood why Hywel had given her this
task and Gareth had backed him up: they were genuinely afraid of
losing her.

She understood too why the men felt that way
and couldn’t add to their burden by knowingly putting herself in
danger again. Staying behind at the monastery did mean that she
could check in with Tangwen and Gwalchmai (who were still asleep)
every so often. Above all, she was a mother, so she couldn’t be
sorry that she would remain safe—for her own sake, for Tangwen’s
sake, and for that of her unborn child.

She also wasn’t sorry that staying behind
gave her a chance to speak to Abbot Rhys again. He’d been a monk
for only ten years, but that Rhys would become the abbot of his
monastery had been a foregone conclusion from the moment he’d
chosen the Church as his vocation. Gareth had trusted him almost
from the moment the two had met, and Rhys had become a friend to
both Gwen and Gareth in the subsequent years. Although Rhys had
initially balked at Gwen’s participation in the investigations that
came their way, he had grown to accept her presence, learned from
her, and now treated her in the fashion of a proud and beloved
uncle. As a rule, priests and monks didn’t get to have children,
and she was pleased to have adopted him in some measure into her
own family.

Thus, after she’d eaten and checked on
Tangwen again—and resisted the temptation to lie down on the pallet
beside her daughter—she went in search of Rhys, finding him in the
abbot’s quarters. These were a suite of rooms in the west range of
the cloister. As she arrived, he was finishing breakfast.

At the sight of her entering the room, Rhys
pushed away his bowl with its remains of porridge and rose to his
feet to greet her. “Did you find something?”

His expression was so hopeful, Gwen hated to
disappoint him, but she shook her head sadly. “Not yet, but I did
want to congratulate you on your rise to abbot.”

Rhys made a
huh
sound in the back of
his throat and gestured that she should sit in the chair on the
other side of his desk. Then he sat too and clasped his hands in
front of him. “I don’t know if congratulations are really in order,
my dear. Some would say that my job and that of a sheepdog are much
the same.”

“But you are so good at it,” Gwen said.
“It’s always nice when someone outside your immediate friends or
family acknowledges your particular skills. Just because you were a
warrior once doesn’t mean you didn’t have a head for managing money
and men.”

Rhys smiled. “You are as sweet as ever.
Now—it was kind of you to congratulate me, but that isn’t really
why you’re here, is it? Tell me what you need from me.”

“I think you already know the routine,
Father. We need to question everyone in the monastery about Erik.
We don’t know anything about his movements over the last months,
never mind the last few days. We don’t even know if he arrived last
night, or weeks ago.”

“And you don’t have a body to examine for
clues.” He grimaced. “Despite that lack, did Gareth get enough time
with it to estimate when he died?”

“No, except that the condition of the body
tells him that Erik wasn’t in the water for more than a few hours.
That could mean he died shortly after midnight and was put in the
trough directly, or if he died longer ago, that the body was
moved.”

“How does he know that?”

“It has to do with the way the blood pooled,
discoloring Erik’s back, and the extent to which the skin wrinkled
and loosened on his fingers—” Gwen broke off as Rhys raised one
hand.

“I understand. No need to explain. I accept
Gareth’s judgment in this matter.”

Gwen smiled gently. “I’m sorry. You’ve been
involved in these deaths before, and sometimes I get carried away
with my explanations.”

“I must be growing squeamish in my old age.
Don’t mind me.”

Gwen moved a hand dismissively. “It’s fine.
For now, we’re working on the premise that Erik died during the
night between sunset and when your milkman found the body this
morning. We’re hoping that among all the people in St. Asaph last
night, someone will have noticed something amiss.”

“Men can be restless during those hours,
myself included, though I saw and heard nothing that could be
useful.” Rhys eyed her. “While you question my brethren, what will
Gareth be doing?”

“He and Conall—that’s the Irishman we’ve
befriended—are going to survey the murder site, speak to the monk
who found Erik, and try to find some sign of the men who took the
body and where they might have taken it. Why they might have taken
it will have to wait.”

“I can tell you the answer to that: they
took it to cover up wrongdoing,” Rhys said, speaking like the
churchman he was. “I’ve just come from talking to Brother Ben, the
monk who was driving the cart. Ben says he never saw the faces of
the men who attacked him. They wore their hoods pulled down over
their foreheads. He was not subdued quite as forcefully as Gareth,
however, and he was able to count five of them.

“Gareth couldn’t even tell us that much.
Three attacked him at once. He almost drowned.” She shuddered.

“Your husband does have a knack for finding
trouble, doesn’t he?” Rhys reached a hand across the desk, and she
took it, squeezing once.

Despite her worries about Gareth’s
wellbeing, Gwen managed a smile, though inside, her heart quailed
again at how badly injured he was. Since Shrewsbury, with the long
journey on horseback home to Aber, the two-day ride to St. Asaph,
and then this new attack, Gareth was pushing the edge of what his
body was capable of recovering from without real rest. He needed to
be in bed.

She and Gareth had resolved to take the
investigations they encountered in the path of service to Prince
Hywel with a lighter heart, if at all possible, and also to strive
to avoid entangling her family members in them more than could be
helped. That they were faced with another murder so soon after the
last one was troubling, and it was even more troubling that they
not only knew the dead man, but that his profession was akin to
theirs: there was no getting around the fact that Erik had been a
spy, and he may well have been killed for it.

“It’s going to be all right, Gwen. Will you
tell me what happened in Shrewsbury?”

It was as if Rhys could read her mind, and
to have him so solicitous had tears pricking at the corners of
Gwen’s eyes. She closed them for a moment, forcing her shoulders to
relax and the lines that had formed on her forehead without her
realizing it to smooth.

And then she told him all about the couple
who’d impersonated her and Gareth; the quest to discover the
impersonaters’ identities; how it had led her whole family to
Shrewsbury where they’d become embroiled in another investigation;
and how the end result implicated Cadwaladr and Madog in nefarious
activities.

When she finished and met Rhys’s eyes, she
found him studying her, more concern in his expression than she’d
ever seen.

Gwen lifted one shoulder in imitation of
Gareth. “Gareth and Hywel want to keep me out of danger. We came
close to dying in Shrewsbury, and they don’t want to risk me
again.”

“We men can’t help feeling protective of
you, Gwen. You know that.” Rhys frowned. “I too am concerned about
what happened in Shrewsbury and particularly about the wounds you
and your husband sustained.”

Gwen opened her mouth to say that she
herself hadn’t been injured, but Rhys had already thought of that
and forestalled her. “I’m not talking about just physical wounds,
Gwen. You cannot survive what you endured and remain unchanged.”
But then he sighed. “Unfortunately, right now I have duties to
attend to or I would be the one to take you around the monastery. I
assume Prince Hywel has thought far enough ahead that he has
assigned a guard to you?”

“That he has. Gareth’s friend, Evan, has
consented to come along. I think he’s angry at Gareth for leaving
him behind as much as he has in recent weeks. Otherwise, the number
of fighting men you have in the region means they’ll be tripping
over themselves this week, seeing danger in every shadow. Wait
until you meet Hywel’s foster father. He isn’t a large man, but
he’s ferociously protective of Hywel.”

“As well he should be.” Rhys slapped both
thighs sharply and stood. “They rode east expecting a war and got a
peace conference and a murder instead.”

Gwen tipped up her chin to look at him.
“Only the youngest among them could be sorry about peace.” Then she
hesitated, biting her lip. She hadn’t risen to her feet yet, even
though Rhys was implying that their meeting was over by rising
himself.

“What is it, Gwen?”

“King Owain is very angry. It is hard to see
how Madog could be in the right in any way. He tried to kill
Hywel.”

“I understand that Madog’s offense against
Hywel cannot go unanswered,” Rhys came around his desk and looked
down at her, “but Madog’s grievances against Owain and Gwynedd run
deep and are not limited to what occurred this month. You know
that.”

Gwen nodded. “I suppose I shouldn’t complain
about my task today. Solving a murder is easy compared to what’s in
store for you.”

Rhys laughed and held out his hand to help
her to her feet. “I am aware that King Owain is here only out of
respect for me. I think he
wants
a war.”

“He lost a son,” Gwen said simply. “But
peace or war, I can be grateful that Gareth’s injuries will keep
him out of the fighting for the foreseeable future.”

Rhys smiled broadly. “God works in
mysterious ways, doesn’t he? A week ago, you would never have said
that Gareth taking a blow like he did would be a blessing. And
now—”

Gwen’s eyes lit. “And now I would! Thank you
for reminding me that good can come from any setback. In truth, we
rode here with King Owain because we could do nothing else, but if
the king had realized how unfit Gareth was, he would have left him
behind at Aber.”