The Unlikely Spy (8 page)

Hywel barked a laugh. “Oh yes. You could do
nothing else. But really, Gwen, do you think I’d be fool enough to
kill a man with the same knife I used on Anarawd—especially knowing
that both you and Gareth would be among those to investigate the
death?”

“You could have been too clever for your own
good,” Gwen said.

Hywel scoffed. “I could have been, but I
would have known not to try to get rid of a body in the millpond.
Dead bodies float. Drowned bodies sink. The killer didn’t know
that.”

“I know. I know.” Gwen was feeling much
better. “Please forgive me.”

“I most certainly will not,” Hywel said. And
when Gwen blinked at him, he added, “There would have been
something to forgive if you hadn’t spoken to me of it—if you and
Gareth had looked at me sideways for the next few days, wondering
all the while if I’d killed another man in cold blood. I will say
again that I did not. Believe me, the next man I want dead in
secret will be done very, very far from you or Gareth.”

“That’s comforting. I think.” Then Gwen
glared at Hywel as she caught the amusement in his face. “You’re
mocking me.”

“Just a little bit,” Hywel said. “And just
so you know, the knife is no longer in my possession.”

“What do you mean?”

“Before I married Mari, I gave her the knife
and told her the truth of what I’d done,” Hywel said.

Gwen stared at him. “You did?”

“She needed to know the whole of the man she
was marrying,” he said. “She understands who I am.”

“She forgave you?” Gwen said.

“There was nothing to forgive, Gwen,” Hywel
said. “I did what I believed I had to do. That is who I am, and it
would have been wrong of Mari to marry me in the expectation that I
would change into someone else. I needed to tell her for her sake
as much as she needed to know for mine.”

Gwen gazed down at her feet, shaking her
head. She hadn’t expected him to tell Mari the truth. And yet, it
eased her heart that he had. Mari and Hywel remained well-matched,
but it had always niggled at the back of Gwen’s mind that she knew
Hywel’s secrets and Mari did not.

“Is the knife here, in Aberystwyth?” Gwen
said.

Hywel pursed his lips. “I don’t think so. If
it were, it would be in Mari’s room. But Gwen—” he gestured to the
wound, “—it wouldn’t have had to be my blade that did this. It
could be any old blade.”

“Why do you say that?”

“At the next meal, take the opportunity to
study the knives of the diners around you. I predict that a handful
of them will have notches in them. People are lazy. They don’t
sharpen their knives like they should, and they use old ones
because they can’t be bothered to buy new ones or repair those they
have. You’ll see.”

Gwen didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of
that before. She could have made a study of belt knives over the
last three years. She wouldn’t have put it past Hywel to have done
so himself. He had the air of a man who knew what he was talking
about, and Gwen herself knew enough about blades to know that they
became brittle with age, especially ones that had been poorly or
cheaply made. In addition, a knife could be sharpened only so many
times before it failed.

Hywel’s easy denial also had her
acknowledging that while Hywel knew all about murder, this murder
was too sloppy to have been his handiwork. Certainly, he would have
been foolish to have used the same knife to kill a peasant as he’d
used to murder the king of Deheubarth. Prince Hywel was the Lord of
Ceredigion. He had the reach and the resources to end the life of
any man in his domain if his desire was great enough, and to do it
without murdering him in the dead of night and throwing the body
into his own millpond.

And Prince Hywel was anything but a
fool.

“Meanwhile, I’ll ask Mari about the blade.
It may well be safe at home in a trunk at Aber, but if she brought
it, I will have her show it to you,” Hywel said.

“And if she brought it, and it isn’t to be
found?” Gwen said.

Hywel raised his eyebrows. “Then we do have
a problem.” A bell sounded from the tower. “That is the signal for
Vespers. I really must go, and you must see to Tangwen. I will ask
Prior Pedr for two men to guard the body. I don’t know what more we
can learn from him, but I don’t want another body to go
missing.”

“We’ve had far too much of that in the
past,” Gwen said.

“True,” Hywel said. “But more to the point,
if any of us think of something in the short time we have left
before he’s put in the ground, I want him to be where I left
him.”

“I’ll wait here until the guards arrive,”
Gwen said.

“It’ll be only a moment.” Hywel disappeared
into the nave but returned a heartbeat later, poking his head
through the doorway to the vestibule. “On top of all that, I have
an alibi for last night.”

Gwen found a smile lurking around her lips.
“Let’s hear it.”

“Gryff has been dead some twelve hours, give
or take, correct?” Hywel said.

“Something like that. With the water, it’s
hard to pinpoint as surely as we might like, but he died sometime
after midnight. We’ll have to learn about his movements yesterday
and last night before we know more.”

Hywel waved a hand dismissively.
“Regardless, I was with Gruffydd all night.”

Gwen’s brow furrowed. “The baby, you
mean?”

“My son, yes. Mari was sleeping solidly for
the first time in a week, and I took Gruffydd away to sleep with me
in one of the cells that no monk was using. You can ask Prior Pedr.
He saw us together when the brothers filed past us for Matins.”

That was the prayer vigil the monks kept in
the middle of the night. “I don’t need to ask,” Gwen said. “You
would hardly have taken Gruffydd to the millpond after midnight,
nor left him alone in a monk’s cell while you murdered a man a
half-mile away from the monastery.”

Hywel saluted her. “Such was my thought. I
hope I have put your concerns to rest.”

It was with relief that Gwen accepted
Hywel’s assertion he hadn’t killed Gryff. Maybe he was lying to her
again, but she didn’t think so. They knew each other for who they
were by now. Hywel was Lord of Ceredigion. If he wanted a man dead,
he could have arranged for it in a hundred better ways. With Hywel
cleared, they could begin the real work of finding out who did
murder Gryff.

Since Rhun and Gareth had left to track down
Gryff’s master, Iolo, that left Gwen to explore some questions
closer to home, among them this issue of the notched knife. First,
however, she needed to find Tangwen and Elspeth and feed them both.
After going to her room to collect a clean dress for Tangwen, Gwen
made her way back to the gardens. As she had hoped, Tangwen had
spent a happy hour covering herself in dirt. Elspeth’s pinafore was
equally filthy, and Gwen sent the older girl away to change for the
evening meal while she saw to Tangwen.

Elspeth seemed to have infinite patience for
watching Tangwen. Gwen always felt when she was minding Tangwen
that she should be
doing
something in addition to watching
her daughter, even if she couldn’t take her eye off the baby for a
heartbeat in case Tangwen stumbled into the fire, poked herself
with a stick, or swallowed something she shouldn’t. Since she’d
brought Elspeth into her household, Gwen had come to realize that
there was nothing like having a fourteen-year-old girl to watch a
baby for keeping both mother and baby happy.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?” Gwen
helped Tangwen to her feet, brushed her off as best she could, and
then carried her towards the brook that ran past the gardens.
Tangwen’s dirty bare feet instantly marred Gwen’s apron, but since
Gwen had spent the last few hours with a dead body, she would
change into clean garments before dinner too. Gwen hadn’t done more
than touch Gryff in a few places, but that contact was enough to
make her feel unclean all over.

The first warm day after Gwen and Tangwen
had arrived at the monastery, the monk in charge of the gardens had
showed her a little pool, separated from the rest of the brook by
rocks, where she and Tangwen could wade to cool off. Gwen had
brought Tangwen there every warm evening since.

Once at the pool, Gwen sat on a rock, pulled
up her skirt, and slipped out of her boots. She stripped off
Tangwen’s dirty clothes and set them aside, and then, holding
Tangwen’s hand tightly, she helped her step into the pool. Tangwen
squealed at the cold water and splashed her free hand in it in
delight. It was shallow enough that Tangwen could sit on the bottom
on a flat rock and still keep her head above water, but Gwen still
needed to watch her closely, lest she slide under the surface.

“Do you like the water?” Gwen bent to feel
it with the fingers of her free hand. Because the shallow pool had
sat in the sun all day and the water flowed in and out of it
slowly, it was warmer than the brook that ran beside it. “Is it
nice?”

“Nice water.” Tangwen rarely said more than
one word at a time, so using two together today was something of a
triumph.

Gwen scooped water up in her cupped her hand
and poured it over Tangwen’s head, and then she rubbed at her
daughter’s dirty cheeks and hands with a wet cloth until they were
clean.

“Did you hear about the man found in the
millpond?”

The words carried to Gwen from her left. She
straightened slightly, continuing to hold onto Tangwen’s wrist to
keep her upright, and peered in the direction of the sound. Two
monks of an age with Elspeth were just visible through the trees
that grew down to the water’s edge. They lifted up their robes and
waded in the brook, still talking.

“I saw him!” the second monk said. “Hosteler
Adda sent me to bring water to wash him in preparation for burial
tomorrow morning. He said the man’s wife came to claim his body.
Did you see her?” At the other monk’s shake of his head, the second
continued, “She was beautiful, but …” He looked down at the water
rushing past his feet.

“But what?” The first monk was trying to
walk on the rocks into the middle of the brook. He slipped and fell
to one knee, soaking the hem of his robe. He cursed in a very
unmonklike fashion and rose to his feet again, balancing with his
arms outstretched on either side of him.

“When I brought the water, I looked into the
dead man’s face. I’ve never seen a drowned man before.” The second
monk shook his head. “The funny thing is that he looks very much
like my cousin’s husband. He is named Gryff too. Do you think I
ought to tell someone about that?”

The first monk sputtered his surprise at his
friend and slipped off his rock.

Gwen swung Tangwen onto her hip and
slithered through the mud on the bank to where the two monks had
gone into the brook. “I definitely think you need to tell someone
about that.”

The two boys swung around, gaping at her.
The monk who thought he knew Gryff said, “I didn’t mean for anyone
else to hear.”

“Well I did hear, and your instincts are
good.” Gwen put out a hand to the boys, trying to put them at their
ease. “I am Gwen. Sir Gareth is my husband, and he is investigating
Gryff’s death. Please tell me again what you just said about your
cousin’s husband.”

Both boys were still standing in the water,
staring at her, and it occurred to Gwen that they might be worried
about a whole host of things that had nothing to do with Gryff:
they’d been chatting with each other, the first monk had sworn like
a soldier, and very likely they were shirking whatever duties they
should be fulfilling. Vespers, for one.

They could also have been staring in horror
at Gwen herself, since her hair was askew, she was shoeless, and
she had a naked baby girl on her hip. But Gwen waited, and after
another pause, the first monk shook himself. “Tell her, Fychan.
This really might be important.”

Fychan still looked wary, but he took a few
steps closer to Gwen. “Gryff is the name of the husband. And this
man looked like him.” Fychan shrugged. “That’s all.”

“Could you come with me?” Gwen said. “Other
men will want to hear what you have to say.”

Fychan blanched. “I really couldn’t.”

“You really must.” Having Tangwen on her hip
meant Gwen was somewhat unbalanced, but she took two steps down the
bank towards the water.

Her movement seemed to prompt the boy,
however, and he nodded, seemingly resigned to his fate. He began to
pick his way towards the shore.

“Thank you,” Gwen said. “Let me get my
things.”

Gwen returned to the pool where Tangwen had
been bathing, swept up her boots and Tangwen’s clothes, and arrived
at the path that ran through the gardens at the same time that the
two monks appeared at the top of the bank. She took a moment to
drop the clean dress over Tangwen’s head and put her own boots back
on. The hem of Gwen’s dress was wet, but she hoped it wasn’t too
noticeable, and she tried to tame her hair back into its headscarf.
The truth was, Prior Pedr intimidated her more than a little. Like
Prior Rhys, he seemed to be able to see right through her, but
unlike Prior Rhys, they had no shared experience to temper their
relationship.

Fychan waited patiently for her to ready
herself, and then he followed her back to the cobbled courtyard.
Upon reaching it, Gwen hesitated. She didn’t see anyone she knew.
Another party of guests had just arrived. The guesthouse was
already full to bursting, so perhaps these people were sleeping in
the stables. Gwen certainly didn’t want to disturb them with a
discussion of the dead body lying in the vestibule.

She turned to the first monk, who’d come
with them but whose name she didn’t know. “Can you ask your prior
if he will speak to me? It would be better yet if Prior Rhys from
St. Kentigern’s is with him.”

The monk ducked his head in acknowledgement
of her request and ran off without arguing or questioning her.