The Uninvited Guest (35 page)

“
I wouldn’t mention any of
this to your father,” Gareth said. “It would only awaken bad
memories and create the dissent and disunity Tomos
wanted.”

Hywel thought a moment and then nodded.
“You’re right. My father doesn’t need to know of it.” He set off
into the snow, whistling.

Gareth watched Hywel go, lighter of heart in
regards to the outcome of the conversation, but uncomfortable with
the lie he’d just told his lord. Gareth’s instinct had been to
protect Hywel from uncertainty, to resolve this investigation
without any loose ends.

Because, while Gareth had
been with his uncle Goronwy when he died, and Goronwy had been
lying side by side with Prince Cadwallon, Goronwy had died first.
Gareth had cried for a time, and then fallen asleep beside the
pallet. He
didn’t
know how Cadwallon died. All Gareth knew was that by morning,
he had been the only one left alive in the tent.

Gareth thought he understood better why
Hywel hadn’t told him the truth about Cadwaladr last summer.
Somehow, they’d come full circle.

Chapter Thirty

“H
ow is it that you have all the luck?” Hywel nudged Gareth from
behind.

Gareth grinned. Some
wouldn’t call his recent run
lucky
. He’d grown used to the peppery
taste of sanicle, which he’d been drinking as a tea and which Gwen
had rubbed as a lotion on his wounds every day since he’d come
home.

But not today. Today was his wedding day and
he was not only going to be standing upright before the priest when
Gwen became his wife, but he was going to be belted and armored
like the knight he was, and no longer smelling like an invalid.

Not that anyone but Gwen would be able to
smell him, given the lush evergreens, holly, and mistletoe that
adorned the great hall. The greenery covered the mantle, decorated
every table, high and low, and hung from the rafters. Queen
Cristina (for all her faults) attributed her present well-being to
Gareth and Gwen and had not only decorated the great hall for
Christ’s mass a few days earlier than she might otherwise have
done, but had ordered a feast laid on as well.

With Cristina in charge, Gwen was getting
that big wedding after all.

Many of the guests who had come for the
wedding of Cristina and Owain had gone home to their own people and
halls, but some had stayed—enough so that the tables had been full
at most meals. At Gwen’s request, however, Cristina had invited the
villagers from Aber and the surrounding farms to help celebrate the
day.

Gareth didn’t try to suppress the warm
feeling of pride that welled within him as he looked at his bride,
just making her way up the hall towards him on her father’s arm.
The train of her long evergreen hued gown, a gift from the queen,
trailed behind her. King Owain’s wedding had been a statement of
his power and wealth, even if rather diminished in the end due to
the murders. The wedding of Gareth and Gwen was pure celebration
for noblemen and common folk alike.

Rhun, King Owain, Queen Cristina, Cadwaladr
(of all people), and Taran sat at the high table just behind Gareth
and the priest, who stood on the edge of the dais so he could look
down on them as if he were standing on the steps of the church.
Since Gareth and Meilyr had signed the contract giving Gwen to him
an hour ago, their marriage was already legal, but King Owain’s
priest had a habit of inserting himself into formal occasions
whether the participants liked it or not. In this case, Gareth
couldn’t begrudge him the pleasure.

Gwen approached the dais, kissed her
father’s cheek, and allowed Gareth to take her hands in his. The
priest raised his staff of office. “My friends! I welcome you to
the wedding of Gareth ap Rhys and Gwen ferch Meilyr. Thank you all
for witnessing this occasion. If you would please bow your heads in
prayer …”

As the priest chanted on, having switched to
Latin for the prayer, Gareth gazed into Gwen’s brown eyes. She
smiled up at him. He couldn’t see anything but her.

The prayer ended. Gwen tipped up her chin
for a kiss and as Gareth bent his head to hers, Gwalchmai’s soprano
soared to the rafters. At long last, Gwen had become his wife.

The End

Author’s Note

The historical setting
for
The Uninvited Guest
, as with
The Good
Knight
, the first of the Gareth and Gwen
medieval mysteries, is the court of King Owain Gwynedd,
one of the most powerful and stable monarchs of
north Wales in the middle ages. He was fortunate to have ruled
during a time in which England, which had been trying to conquer
Wales for a hundred and fifty years, was torn apart by the rivalry
of two claimants to the throne: King Stephen and Empress Maud.
Owain, in the fine tradition of Welsh royalty, took advantage of
the strife in England to consolidate his rule and bring the other
Welsh dynasties under his control.

In doing so, however, he engendered
animosity among the other lords of Wales—and within his own family.
With two wives, multiple mistresses, and a dozen sons, many of whom
fought among themselves for power and favor, he created a legacy
that would last until the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd at the
hands of the English in 1282.

And made him a fulcrum of murder and mayhem
in the middle ages.

Thank you for
reading,
The Uninvited
Guest
, the second
Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mystery
!
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Read on for the first
chapter of the next
Gareth and Gwen
Medieval Mystery
,
The Fourth Horseman
, available
wherever books are sold.

Sample: The Fourth
Horseman

Chapter One

Stephen de Blois came to London,

and the people received him

and hallowed him to king on midwinter
day.

But in this king's time was all dissension,
and evil, and rapine;

for against him rose soon the rich men who
were traitors.

Then was England very much divided.

Some held with the king and some with the
empress;

for when the king was in prison,

the earls and the rich men supposed that he
would never more come out,

and they settled with the empress,

and when the king was out,

he heard of this, and took his force,

and beset her in the tower.

By such things, and more than we can
say,

we suffered nineteen winters for our
sins.

To till the ground was to plough the
sea:

the earth bore no corn,

for the land was all laid waste by such
deeds;

they said openly that Christ and his saints
slept …

–
The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle

And this time shall be known to history as …
the Anarchy.

May 1144

Gwen

“Y
ou two keep your ears and eyes open,” Hywel said. “Earl Robert
may be courting friendship with Wales, but I want everyone to
remain on their guard nonetheless. I don’t trust these
Normans.”

Gwen glanced at Gareth, who laughed. “Of
course,” they said together.

Gareth’s eyes glinted, and if Gwen hadn’t
been married to him for five months already, she would have
blushed. It wasn’t the first time they’d spoken in unison.

Hywel mumbled something Gwen didn’t
catch—half-laughing too—and led the way into the bailey of the
enormous Norman castle at Newcastle-under-Lyme. In its shadow lay a
prosperous village which, according to Hywel, had grown in recent
years. What had once been a few huts planted in the lower bailey of
the original timber castle was now a thriving market town beyond
the new castle’s stone walls.

The castle bailey teemed with soldiers, and
Gwen knew why: the war between King Stephen and Empress Maud was in
its ninth year. The man they had come to see, Robert, Earl of
Gloucester, was Maud’s brother and led her armies. Although most
men agreed that Robert would have made a better king than either
Stephen or Maud, he was a bastard, so he could never claim the
English throne for himself.

The steps up to the stone keep, which had
replaced the original motte and bailey castle, lay two hundred feet
in front of them, on low lying ground to the north of the Lyme
Brook. Hywel and his brother, Prince Rhun, urged their horses
through the crowd. Gareth and Gwen followed, along with their other
companions: Evan, Gareth’s second-in-command; Gruffydd, Rhun’s
captain; and Rhys, the prior of St. Kentigern’s monastery in St.
Asaph, whom Gareth had befriended last winter.

Three Normans waited for them on the
flagstone pathway that ran from the gatehouse to the keep. The men
stood with their hands behind their backs and bowed at the princes’
approach. Then one stepped forward and spoke in French. “Welcome to
Newcastle. Earl Robert sends his greetings. Please dismount, my
lords.” He caught sight of Gwen. “Madam.”

Gwen waited for Gareth to get down first so
he could help her. He always wanted her to wait for him, even when
she didn’t need his help. When he held her a moment longer than was
strictly necessary, once she was on the ground, she smiled up at
him. She would have kissed him, too, but for the large audience
around them.

After a long look, he let her go, and Gwen
swished her skirt into place. She was wearing finery today, as were
they all. They had dressed well and deliberately that morning in
their camp, located less than a mile from Newcastle, in order to
present the Welsh cause to Robert in the best light possible.

Hywel, with his deep blue eyes, broad
shoulders, and handsome face, would do well wherever he went. Rhun,
with his shock of blonde hair and thick shoulders, looked more like
a Dublin Dane than a Welsh prince. As the Normans were themselves
descended from the same Viking ancestors as the Danes, his visage
was one the Normans could respect. King Owain of Gwynedd, the
princes’ father, knew what he was doing when he sent his sons to
foster diplomacy between the two kingdoms.

The stable boys led the horses away, and the
companions turned towards the keep. Built into the curtain wall of
the castle, it had towers on every corner and loomed above them.
“Here comes Earl Ranulf himself,” Hywel said, leaning in to speak
to Gareth and Gwen.

“
Sir Amaury de Granville
walks with him, my lord,” Gareth said. “I told you about him. He is
Ranulf’s man at Chester Castle.”

“
I remember,” Hywel
said.

It was good news that Ranulf had come to
greet the Welsh princes. He wasn’t Earl Robert himself, of course,
but he was Robert’s son-in-law and the Earl of Chester. Maybe Earl
Robert truly had invited the princes to visit Newcastle out of
goodwill and a genuine interest in an alliance with Wales, not as a
ploy to put the Welsh at a disadvantage and intimidate them with
Norman power.

Gwen tried to watch Ranulf without staring
at him. He appeared slightly unkempt. The brooch holding his cloak
closed at the neck had drifted towards his left shoulder, he had
mud on his boots, and a dark stain marred his brown breeches. Then
a ray of sunlight shot over the castle wall, forcing Gwen to blink
and turn her head away.

She put up one hand to block the light and
nudged Gareth. “I can’t see. Let’s move over here.” She tugged him
to the right of the steps that flared out from the keep and into
the long shadow cast by the castle’s old motte, which rose up on
the east side of the bailey.

Several men who’d been milling about in the
courtyard pressed forward, eagerly filling the space which Gwen and
Gareth had vacated. These onlookers seemed to want to hear the
princes’ exchange with Ranulf, or maybe they were Ranulf’s men and
had been waiting for him to appear from the keep.

“
Thank you.” Gwen squeezed
Gareth’s hand, glad she was with him, even if visiting a Norman
castle had never been something she’d wanted to do.

A dozen yards away, Rhun and Hywel bowed
slightly, as did Ranulf in return. “Welcome,” Ranulf said, in
French.

From where she stood with Gareth, Gwen
couldn’t hear Hywel’s response, though she could see his lips move.
She stepped closer, trying to make out what the men were saying,
but then a movement on the tower at the top of the keep distracted
her. She glanced up and saw two men, their faces clearly visible in
the sunlight.

They looked down on the Welsh party for a
heartbeat, one man clutching the other’s shoulders. Then they
separated: one to disappear from view, and the other to fall head
first over the battlement and land flat on his back at Gwen’s
feet.

__________

The Fourth Horseman
is available at wherever books are
sold.

www.sarahwoodbury.com