The Favored Son

by Sarah Woodbury

  Angharad had subsided, even though she hadn’t wanted to. “Passionate answers are the truest answers, I know.”

  “Most of the time,” Evan said, though his mind had immediately concocted a scenario where a culprit fooled them by feigning anger or tears to mislead them. “Anger and disdain are legitimate responses to questioning, even if they are unpleasant, and Gwen wouldn’t thank you for interfering.”

  As they headed out of the keep, Angharad had to take two steps to keep up with every one of John’s. “So you liked him?”

  “Bernard? Of course I liked him. Everybody liked him. It was impossible not to, even as you suspected those dice he insisted on using were weighted.”

  Evan took in a breath. “He gambled?”

  The ewerer waved his hand in the air. “Earl Robert—and Earl William in turn—forbade gambling for coins or possessions. The man caught gambling finds himself in the stocks for a day. We gambled for bragging rights and occasionally whose turn it was to fetch another flagon.” His face fell. “I was up three hundred pennies.” He looked down at Evan and Angharad. “Bernard really wasn’t very good at it.”

  Three hundred pennies, if the gambling had been for real, would have been a fortune. The ewerer’s sorrow at his friend’s death appeared genuine, however, and had nothing to do with what may or may not have been owed, in life or imagination.

  “Do you know of anyone who would have wished to harm him?” Angharad said.

  “No one. I can’t think it.” But then the man stopped his relentless forward movement, chewing on his lower lip.

  “There is someone?” Angharad pounced on the moment of hesitation. “Who?”

  “I don’t know of anyone specifically,” John hastened to say, “though I have to admit Bernard did have a way with women. If anyone wanted to murder him it would have been his wife, but she died before he did.” Then he tipped his head in a way that again qualified his answer. “Or a cuckolded husband.”

  “He was unfaithful?” Evan said.

  John’s eyes flicked to Angharad and back to Evan. With a little snort under her breath, Angharad moved away towards Dai, both suddenly greatly interested in those coming in and out of the gatehouse.

  Once she was out of earshot, Evan raised his eyebrows.

  John sighed. “In a word, yes.”

  “He had many women?”

  “Bernard had every woman he could, and given how happy he made them, few could resist him.” John put up a hand. “He didn’t seek out maidens, mind you. He liked married women. Less need to worry about the aftermath.” Again the tipping of the head. “Though if he was murdered for it, he may have greatly underestimated the wrath of a husband who found his wife no longer his sole possession.”

  “What about the young woman with Lady Mabel in the hall?”

  “Mabs?” John half laughed, half gasped his surprise. “Not in this lifetime.”

  “What about Rose, the laundress?”

  The ewerer’s expression turned thoughtful. “I don’t know for certain. She wasn’t married, it’s true, so I wouldn’t normally have said she’d caught his eye, but—”

  Evan tried not to lean forward and press the man. “But?”

  “She is beautiful.” Then he shook his head forcefully. Evan had seen few men—especially Saxon men who tended towards stoic—reveal themselves so clearly by motioning with their head. “If I had to guess, I’d say she was already taken—and by someone even Bernard would not want to cross.”

  “Who might that be?”

  More head waggling ensued, encouraging Evan to guess. “Earl William? Sir Aubrey?”

  John laughed outright. “No! I was thinking of Robert Fitzharding.”

  “He can be intimidating, I suppose. He is a Saxon, of course, so disadvantaged here as a result.”

  “Is he? That may have been true by birth, but in practice?” John shook his head. “Fitzharding is a worthy man, and he knows it. Bernard would have been beneath him, and not only did Bernard know it, he would not take a woman from a man of higher rank.” John pressed his lips together.

  “There’s more?”

  “I’m probably wrong about them. At least, I haven’t seen them together recently.”

  “Rose has gone away, anyway,” Evan said.

  “Has she? When?”

  “The day before yesterday.”

  John made a sound at the back of his throat that sounded like a huh.

  “Why do you think they were lovers?” Evan said.

  “Because Fitzharding was trusted by Sir Aubrey and Earl William, he was a frequent visitor to the castle and had a room in one of the towers. Rose would bring fresh linens to his bedchamber, passing me after I’d filled his basin. She would stay longer than necessary.”

  That was definitive enough for Evan, but entirely beside the point. Rose was a mystery woman, but it was Jenet who was dead.

  “Did you ever see Rose with Jenet?”

  John shook his head. “Jenet was a quiet little thing. I have no idea why Bernard married her. Maybe he felt sorry for her. Maybe—” He closed his mouth over whatever words he thought better of expressing.

  “Yes?”

  John shrugged. “It may be that the child she died with was not their first loss. If he made her pregnant, he did have enough honor to marry her. That was before I knew him, and before they were elevated to Earl Robert’s chamber.”

  “So they had no other children?”

  “No.”

  Angharad wandered back. “Who else should we speak to about Bernard?”

  “Anyone. You’ll see. Just ask.”

  Evan thanked him, but as he turned away, he saw that the big man’s eyes were thoughtful.

  * * * * *

  John’s description of Bernard, at least according to the men in the castle, proved to be wholly accurate. He had many friends, made both before and after he became Earl Robert’s valet.

  “It is my understanding he began serving Earl Robert only recently,” Evan said to the butler, the next man with whom they chose to speak. In charge of the drink at the castle, he had an army of brewers, dispensers, distillers, and servers under him.

  Before answering, the butler handed Angharad a cup of beer. She smiled sweetly as she took a sip, though Evan knew she hated the taste. Evan himself had spent enough time on the border between England and Wales to no longer despise beer—or perhaps it was merely that he was older and his sense of taste had dulled over the years.

  To keep on his wife’s good side, he took the cup Angharad offered to share with him, as if he didn’t know that her goal was to avoid drinking it.

  “He worked his way up through the castle. Earl Robert himself picked him out. When the earl’s illness caused him particular pain, Bernard could make him laugh. And he could sing like a Welshman.” He put out a hand. “No offense meant.”

  “None taken,” Evan said.

  “A worthy enough reason to elevate a man,” Angharad said. “Did some resent his advancement?”

  “Only those with jealous souls. The earl was dying. We all knew it. Who could resent bringing a little light and joy to his last days?” He shrugged. “In the end Earl Robert lived months longer than we thought he would.”

  “Bernard sounds like a good man,” Angharad said.

  The butler’s eyes narrowed. “Good? Amusing, certainly. But I wouldn’t say good. He had a wandering eye, and though he laughed a great deal and was proficient with the ladies, I’m not sure his joy always rose to his eyes.” He paused. “I know he was in debt too.”

  Evan felt a chill between his shoulder blades. “To whom?”

  The butler tried to cover his frankness with a laugh. He waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t mind me. It is unlucky to speak ill of the dead. Now that I think about it, I’m sure I’m wrong about that and shouldn’t have said anything.”

  Evan wanted to say that it was too late, but Angharad reached out a soft hand and put it on the butler’s arm. “His wife died, and then he died, and
now Sir Aubrey and Aelfric are dead too. If you can point us in any direction that might lead to an explanation of who and why, please tell us. More lives may depend on it.”

  The butler stared at her, as if it had just occurred to him why they had been asking him all these questions. “I never thought—” He stopped and took in a breath. “Bernard used to go into town. Earl Robert wasn’t one to skimp on the beer, but we keep the stronger stuff for feast days. If a man wanted more, he could go to a tavern, and Bernard was known to do that. Mostly we assumed it was for female companionship, but one day I was looking over a shipment that had come upriver by boat, and I saw him arguing with someone near the dock.” He put up a hand. “Don’t ask me who. I don’t know. It was raining, and the man wore a hat pulled down low.”

  This was the first time anyone had mentioned the possibility of a stranger, though with murder it was the safest answer and one that many minds went to.

  “This was at the castle dock?”

  “No, at the town port. Bernard would never have met someone unsavory inside the castle.”

  Evan’s eyes narrowed. “Why would that be?”

  “Because of the lists. You know about the lists?”

  Evan and Angharad nodded. They’d gone over the lists themselves last night with Gareth and Llelo. The names numbered in the hundreds and were so many, it seemed nonsensical to keep them. But Gareth was convinced Sir Aubrey wouldn’t have gone to such effort without good reason.

  “You should ask the steward. He—” The butler broke off, his face turning ashen since, of course, the steward had been Sir Aubrey, and he was dead. “Ask Charles, then. He knows all about it.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Cadoc

  Cadoc had agreed to become a member of the Dragons because, for a man to whom killing had been a profession, serving Hywel as a member of an elite squad sounded, by comparison, fun. Killing was what he knew best.

  In fact, it was all he knew.

  Since he was seven years old and his uncle had put his first cut-down-to-size bow into his hand and told him to draw it, he’d felt an affinity for the weapon that was akin to a man who could track a deer or one who could read the weather. Cadoc’s father had been a drunkard, and all Cadoc had known up until that time was hunger and the back of his father’s hand.

  To hold a bow and shoot it, even at seven, had been like touching God. From the very first, he’d felt the hair on his neck rise at a breath of wind, evaluating its speed and direction. As he’d grown, he’d been able to see tiny differences in terrain from a distance, like no one he’d met before or since. Almost immediately, his uncle had realized what he had. Even before Cadoc could shoot an arrow a hundred yards, he was accompanying his uncle to war as his eyes, to tell him where to shoot, how high or low to aim above what he wanted to hit, and the distance to his target.

  Admittedly, there’d been a ten-year period during Cadoc’s twenties and thirties where he’d lost himself to the bow and to drink and had no life outside of either. Later, after he’d drunk away his payment, he occasionally had second thoughts, but it was never enough to change his course in life. When a man had the ability to kill other men the way Cadoc did, and when he allowed himself to be used for that purpose by other men—not always the most honorable of men either—it created dark patches on the soul. Dark patches that could never be returned to the light.

  Cadoc had killed for Rhys, who himself spied for Geoffrey of Anjou. And yet, knowing that a man of Rhys’s mettle was on his side had changed Cadoc. Under Rhys’s command, he’d begun to wonder if he might have a chance in the world of the living. It had made him recognize the way he’d been used in the past and despise the idea of being used in the present.

  He knew himself well enough by then, however, to acknowledge that most of the time he couldn’t honestly say what was right and what was wrong. The Bible said thou shalt not kill, but war was the single greatest occupation of kings and lords. How was it that a king could be chosen by God and yet spend his reign ordering the death of hundreds of men, whose own king or lord was also divinely ordained?

  These questions were too thorny for Cadoc, and he hadn’t the temperament to turn priest and abbot like Rhys. But he recognized grace and integrity in other men, even if he retained none for himself. Over time, Cadoc had come to acknowledge that he needed men like Rhys in his life. He could trust that they wouldn’t ask him to aim an arrow at someone who didn’t deserve to be shot. Thus, if his bow was to be put to use for its intended purpose, he’d resolved only to do so at the command of a man like Rhys. Once Rhys had left Geoffrey’s service, and thus stopped providing work for Cadoc, he’d discovered that it was a type of man that was few and far between.

  Prince Hywel was not, in fact, such a man.

  But Gareth was.

  And if Gareth, whom Cadoc knew to have left more than one lord’s service because of that lord’s lack of honor, could serve Hywel, then who was Cadoc to argue or choose a different path? He already knew he had no soul, but Gareth’s glowed around him like a halo.

  The only man to whom he’d ever hinted any of this was Abbot Rhys. While the former spy had not told him what to do or which path to tread, his blessing had been clear enough. And somewhere along the way, despite Cadoc’s best efforts to live his life apart and behave as if he was self-sufficient, he’d found himself in the center of a large family. And one that he loved.

  Over the years, Cadoc had learned to fear emotion, convinced that feeling anything at all for anyone would harm his ability to kill. Instead, he’d been surprised to find that his new emotions sharpened his attention. It was his job to protect his friends, to watch over them, like he’d done at Wiston Castle.

  He slept much better these days too.

  Even so, he was a little surprised at himself for volunteering to assist in the investigation in the way he had, and particularly that he’d suggested the addition of the two young men who walked behind him. But he’d told Gareth the truth when he’d said that he knew boats. And almost despite himself, he was growing interested in Llelo’s development. While Cadoc had spoken his true opinion when he’d suggested that Dai was a born Dragon—a soldier-spy—Llelo had too much of Gareth in him to take to it easily. His mind was sharp, however, which when investigating criminals was a good counterbalance to his mile-wide streak of honesty. Too many Gareths in the world might make life a great deal less colorful, but Wales could afford at least one more.

  “So you’re the Welshman, are you?”

  Cadoc had inquired at the priory gatehouse as to where and from whom the valet would have acquired his boat and had been told that the boatman, Edgar, was the man to speak to.

  “One of them,” Cadoc said mildly, also in English. He didn’t introduce the two young men, which was a calculated strategy. He feared that the presence of Prince Henry’s brother might in this instance silence talk instead of encouraging it. Edgar was his own man, but simple, and not under the authority of the castle in the same way as a guard.

  They were standing on the edge of the River Frome, adjacent to a wooden dock, one of many jutting into the river. Pilings that supported the dock had been driven deep into the riverbed. In his forty years of existence, Cadoc had traveled from the tip of Anglesey to Italy (the latter in the service of Geoffrey of Anjou). Many of the trading cities on the Continent were larger and more sophisticated than any town in England—certainly than in Wales—but he found that he liked the smaller, more rough-and-tumble, free-wheeling nature of Bristol better. If nothing else, it was more honest. The Venetians prettied up their politics and social interactions with politeness and polish— right before they crept up behind you and stabbed you in the back.

  The castle dominated the town, and all trade was taxed for the Earl of Gloucester, but from what Cadoc could see, he kept a light hand on the reins. Though the rumors of William’s character were not favorable towards him, Cadoc was more impressed with the man in person and thought he might be as capable as his father. One in
dication of Bristol’s success in establishing itself as a trading center of importance was the construction of a Templar stronghold south of the castle on the other side of the River Avon, on land granted to them by Earl Robert.

  “Where’s the boat?” Llelo said, apparently wanting to hurry the conversation along and impatient with Edgar’s apparent prejudice against the Welsh.

  “Just there.” Edgar indicated the third boat in the row, tied amongst a dozen others.

  Cadoc left Edgar to crouch above the boat, studying its shape and sturdiness. It was an English boat, like every other one at the dock, and nothing out of the ordinary. Welsh fishing coracles were round, in appearance something like a basket, in which the fisherman stood rather than sat to row. This craft was made with wooden strakes shaped around a frame of ribs and risings. It had a pointed bow and stern, a center seat, and rowlocks for the oars.

  Cadoc asked Edgar over his shoulder, “Why was he fishing in the Frome instead of the Avon?”

  “The Avon is busier. He and Earl Robert had a favorite spot, up past the weirs and sluice gates.”

  Cadoc allowed himself a low laugh, which he couldn’t seem to help every time anyone said the word Avon. Afon meant ‘river’ in Welsh, so those early Saxons, perhaps thinking to keep the Welsh original name for the river, had dubbed one of the largest, most significant rivers in England River River. He could imagine the Welshmen those long-ago Saxons had displaced similarly laughing at their conquerors’ expense and never mentioning the mistake they’d made. Cadoc didn’t either.

  Edgar didn’t seem to notice Cadoc’s amusement, and added, “He was last seen rowing up the Frome towards one of the fishing holes.”

  “Who saw him?” Cadoc hated asking obvious questions, but Edgar wasn’t imparting information quickly. Maybe he was wrong not to sic Hamelin on him. Except Hamelin likely spoke no English.

  “Two boys. My sister’s lads. They saw him get into the boat with his fishing net.”