The Unlikely Spy (13 page)

“I should have thought of that.” Gareth
reached down and clasped Rhys’s forearm. “If you would send the
message, I can leave with a lighter heart.”

“I will do so immediately,” Rhys said.

Gareth departed with Fychan, and the prior
turned to Gwen. “I must arrange for word of our need to be sent to
the castle. What is next for you?”

“Food first,” Gwen said, “questions later.
Gareth suggested that I show the picture around the monastery. Do
you think it would be possible to speak to some of the
brothers?”

Prior Rhys plucked at his lower lip. “It’s
irregular, but the abbot did emphasize how important this
investigation was and assured me of the cooperation of everyone in
the monastery.”

Gwen acknowledged that the abbot probably
didn’t want her speaking to any of the monks alone, even though she
was married. She found the monastery a strange sort of place. It
functioned much like a castle, with a lord (the abbot), a steward
(the prior) and many underlings, all with specific tasks. Except
that there were no soldiers and no women. It seemed to her an
unnatural way to live.

Gwen

G
wen joined Elspeth
and Tangwen in the dining hall, where the guests had been lingering
over their food and mead. With more than twenty-five people seated
around the table, every room in the house had to be full to
bursting.

Before he’d left earlier, Hywel had
convinced Mari to join them for the meal, and she was making a
brave attempt to do so. Gruffydd and his nanny, Bronwen, were
present too. The girl was of an age with Elspeth, though the
similarities ended there. Bronwen was quiet and shy, dark where
Elspeth was blonde. Both were reliable nannies, however, and
despite their differences, the two girls seemed to get along well,
perhaps even more so because of their contrasting natures. Hafwen,
Mari’s patient maid, stood behind her mistress’s chair, prepared to
meet Mari’s every need.

Mari was as pale as ever, her blue eyes,
dark brows and lashes, and red lips standing out in her white face,
but her voice was stronger than it had been yesterday. From the
remains of the food on her trencher, it appeared that she’d managed
to eat a little this evening too—if not yet a normal amount, at
least not so little as to invite comment.

They had found seats at the end of the long
wooden table. Mari sat in a cushioned upright chair on the end,
while Elspeth and Tangwen sat on the bench to her right, and
Gruffydd and Bronwen sat to Mari’s left.

Gwen plopped down on the end of the bench
next to Tangwen. “My lady.”

Mari took a tentative sip of her heated
wine. “Hywel tells me there’s been a murder and that you briefly
suspected him.”

Gwen glanced down the table. Mari had kept
her voice low, but this really wasn’t something Gwen wanted anyone
else to overhear. Fortunately, their fellow diners were too busy
with the remains of their meal to pay attention to her, and the
family of four to Gwen’s right included a five-year-old son who was
refusing to sit quietly and kept shrieking at his mother. Gwen was
somewhat surprised Mari would bring up Hywel’s possible role in the
murder in a public setting, but Mari obviously thought the notion
was so unlikely as to border on the absurd—and not something she
needed to keep quiet about.

Mari noticed her furtive movements and
raised her eyebrows. “What’s wrong? Surely you don’t still suspect
him?”

Gwen leaned closer to her friend. “No. It
isn’t that. It’s just that we hope to keep the knowledge that Gryff
was murdered to ourselves for now. We want to lull whoever did kill
him into a false sense of security.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Mari tipped
her head. “And Hywel?”

Gwen shot her a rueful look. “I didn’t want
to suspect him, but the wound is similar to the one he gave
Anarawd.”

Mari managed a sardonic smile. “I realize
that his suspicious nature has rubbed off onto you, but you should
have known better. Hywel is smarter than to have used the same
knife in two murders.”

“As he himself told me.” Gwen hesitated. “Do
you have the knife with you here at Aberystwyth?”

“I left it in a trunk at Aber.” Now Mari
gave Gwen a broad smile. “If someone else found it, carried it all
the way to Aberystwyth, and used it to murder that poor man, it
isn’t my fault—or Hywel’s.”

Gwen smiled too. “I believed your husband as
soon as he said he didn’t do it. Gareth and I are already tugging
on other threads.”

“Speaking of which—” Mari elbowed Gwen in
the ribs and leaned in even closer to whisper in her ear, “Do you
see that man’s knife? It’s old and notched in two places.”

The man in question, dark-haired, of medium
height with a short v-shaped beard, was dressed, despite the heat,
in a fine green wool coat with embroidery on his sleeves. Gwen had
learned when she’d been introduced to him yesterday that he was a
minor landowner from lands south of Aberystwyth. He sat two seats
down from Bronwen, beside his wife, who was dressed in an equally
fine dress of deep red.

Mari spoke the truth, and as Gwen looked
more closely at the knife, she realized that her conversation with
Hywel was yet more evidence of how much he trusted her. Three years
ago when she’d confronted him with Anarawd’s death, Hywel could
have foisted her off with a lie or distracted her with a survey of
notched knives at Aber. Instead, he’d told her the truth of his
involvement in it.

A cup clattered on the table in front of
Gwen—fortunately it was empty—and Gwen used one hand to set it
upright and the other to catch her daughter around the waist.
Tangwen had been entertaining Gruffydd by making faces at him
across the table. She’d learned it from Dai, who made faces at her
to make her laugh or stop whatever fit she happened to be throwing.
Tangwen missed the boys even more than Gwen did.

Tonight, however, Gruffydd was making up for
their absence. Though only a year old, he was fully walking and
speaking single words, much to the astonishment of everyone around
him. Together, Tangwen and Gruffydd had managed to smear their
faces with honey, knock over Bronwen’s cup of mead, and nearly fall
off their benches, just in the short time since Gwen had joined the
meal. She would have preferred to plop them both on the floor and
let them eat their dinner from there, but the other diners would
have looked askance at that, so she’d resisted the impulse.

“Lady Mari.” The minor landowner with the
questionable knife had set down his mutton, and now he bent his
neck in a bow to Mari. “Let me say for all of us that we are
honored to have you at our table.”

“Thank you.” Mari inclined her head regally.
She’d become very good at it since she’d married Hywel.

“It is comforting to us that you are here,
my lady,” he said. “We all feel safer.”

“Is there some reason you might feel
unsafe?” Gwen said.

“It is my understanding that a dead man lies
in the chapel,” he said.

“Yes, one does,” Mari said.

“He drowned, they say,” the landowner
said.

“Indeed.” Mari really was playing her part
well.

“And yet, I have noticed the comings and
goings of many soldiers today,” the man said. “The word is that the
man drowned, and yet Prince Hywel has sent men to investigate the
death?”

Gwen looked down at her plate. This
landowner was annoyingly perceptive.

But Mari was ready with an answer. “Any time
a man dies of unnatural causes, my lord is concerned. He wants
everyone to feel safe, particularly with so many people here for
the festival.”

“I heard he killed himself.” One of the
women down the table from Gwen was chewing rapidly on her food and
speaking around it. She was tiny, maybe reaching only as high as
Gwen’s shoulder, but her voice projected over the general babble in
the room.

“Then why would they allow him to lie in the
chapel?” said a merchant’s wife, who was wearing a full wimple. “I
don’t like it. It isn’t right.”

Her husband—a tall, thin man with wispy,
balding hair, sitting beside her—put what looked like a warning
hand on her arm. “I’m sure that’s not the case, dear. Because
you’re right. He wouldn’t be allowed to lie in the chapel if the
abbot believed he took his own life.”

The tiny woman looked down the table at
Gwen. “Your husband is involved isn’t he? What does he say?”

“It is too soon to say much of anything,”
Gwen said, “but no, he doesn’t believe the man took his own
life.”

“So he drowned.” The merchant frowned. “Does
he believe the drowning wasn’t an accident?”

Everyone at the table was listening avidly
now, looking from the merchant to Gwen and back again. Gwen
swallowed hard, made uncomfortable by all the attention. “As Lady
Mari said, any unexplained death requires attention. There are
enough questions with this one to warrant an investigation of how
it came about.”

“Thus the extra measure taken for your
security, Lady Mari.” The landowner smiled in satisfaction. He
seemed to have decided that foul play was involved. Gwen supposed
there was no help for it. People were going to jump to their own
conclusions, and it was hard to fault them for jumping to the right
one. Still, she consoled herself with the knowledge that nobody
knew about the stab wound. “Though I would hope your lord husband
doesn’t believe you to be in danger here?”

“My lord does not believe any of us have any
reason to be concerned—unless you had something to do with the
man’s death, of course.” Mari passed this last addition off with a
laugh, which everyone around the table joined in with except Gwen,
who was watching the expressions on the diners’ faces. The only
furtive look so far had been her own.

Gwen spoke up. “As a precaution, you’re
right that the prince will augment the guard around the monastery
tonight. We don’t want anyone to feel unsettled, and if you are
concerned about your safety, you are free to move your lodgings to
the castle or elsewhere.”

A burly man with a patchy beard, sitting at
the far end of the table, snorted into his cup. “Not likely to find
any place with room to spare at this hour, are we?” Then he
gestured expansively to the room at large. “Besides, where better
to stay than in the same place as the Lady of Ceredigion?”

He rose to his feet, his movements awkward
since the bench he was sitting on was occupied by five other
people. He bowed at the waist to Mari and sat again. Mari nodded
her head and smiled, though she, like everyone else in the room,
was quite sure the man had drunk far more mead than was good for
him.

“Speaking of the poor man’s death, we are
trying to discover exactly who he is and what he was doing at the
millpond so late at night. We hope to notify whomever of his kin we
can find.” Gwen pulled the sketch that Gareth had given her from
her pocket and handed it to the landowner. “Do any of you recognize
him? He may have gone by the name of Gryff.”

The landowner looked at the sketch and then
passed it to his wife. The sketch went all the way around the table
to a general shaking of heads. It had been a long shot that any of
them might have known him. Gwen had hoped that because these
visitors were from other parts of Wales, and Iolo was a merchant
who traveled far and wide throughout the country, someone might
have seen Gryff before somewhere else.

Then one of the women seated down the table
from Gwen leaned forward. Up until now she’d remained silent, and
Gwen had barely noticed her. Closer inspection revealed pretty
brown eyes ringed with dark lashes and brown hair that perfectly
matched her eyes. She also had pox scars on her forehead, cheeks,
and chin, marring her loveliness. “I saw him yesterday.”

Gwen leaned forward too to look past Elspeth
and Tangwen, who was currently standing on the bench to eat and
jumping up and down at the same time. “You did?”

“Yes. We had just arrived, and I saw him
speaking to the gatekeeper as we waited on the cobbles for the
hosteler to come for us. They spoke briefly, and then he went
away.” She handed the sketch down the table to Gwen.

“Had you ever see him before?” Gwen
said.

The woman shook her head. “Nor again. I only
noticed him that one time because he seemed to be anxious. I’m
sorry he’s dead.”

“Thank you.” Gwen spoke fervently. “Thank
you so much.”

Mari put a hand on Gwen’s arm. “You should
speak to the gatekeeper. The girls and I will look after
Tangwen.”

“I will be back as soon as I can.” Gwen
kissed Tangwen’s plump cheek, patted Elspeth’s hand, and bid
goodbye to the other guests. “Thank you.”

As she headed for the door, a buzz of
conversation rose behind her. She knew it had to do with the speed
of her departure from dinner, but she also knew that even if she’d
waited an hour to act on the woman’s information, they still would
have talked among themselves when she left. That made her stop and
return briefly to Mari’s side, bending to whisper in her friend’s
ear. “Let me know if you learn anything else, will you?”

“Of course,” Mari said. “They’ll have this
investigation wrapped up by bedtime.”

Gwen gave a low laugh. “Except they’ll have
decided the cook did it because he’s stealing supplies from the
monastery to sell for his own enrichment.”

Mari laughed too, but then she sobered,
looking up at her friend. “You know, it could be something like
that.”

Gwen shook her head, still laughing, and
this time went through the door. Within a few moments, she was
hastening across the cobbles towards the gate. The sun had all but
set, and the courtyard was in full shade. Sweat had trickled down
her back all through dinner, and the slight breeze that came in
from the gardens came as a relief. The wet fabric on her back
cooled instantly, and she stood for a moment in the center of the
empty courtyard, her arms outstretched, trying to catch more of
it.