The Favored Son

by Sarah Woodbury

  “We will be the judge of that.” Cadoc’s tone was dry, as if capturing a wanted man was all in a day’s work to him.

  The argument between Henry and William was instantly forgotten. Cadoc forced Bernard to his knees in the dirt inside the circle. The crowd had been both entertained and horrified by the argument between prince and earl, but now there were shouts and fists raised. Bernard was lucky it had been the Dragons who’d captured him. Otherwise he might have been dead already.

  “Traitor!”

  “Hanging’s too good for him!”

  “Kill him now!”

  These words were shouted in English, and it occurred to Llelo only now that many of the people from the town might not even have understood the fight between Henry and William, since it had been conducted entirely in French.

  Charles had been among those shouting. His face was flushed, and he shook a fist in the air. Then he started forward. Seeing his ire, Roger and Harold made a grab for his arms, but he eluded them. As he passed in front of Llelo, he pulled a knife from its sheath at his waist. At first Llelo couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and then Charles’s steady walk turned into a run.

  “Stop him, Llelo!”

  The command came from Gareth, but Llelo was already moving. If Bernard really was the killer, then he might view it a blessing to die at the end of Charles’s knife rather than a hangman’s rope, but that wasn’t how justice was done in Llelo’s world. His steps quickened, his long legs driving him forward.

  Maybe Cadoc would have stopped Charles before he could hurt Bernard, once he’d seen him coming, but it was too great a risk for Llelo to take. As Charles raised his arm to force the knife into Bernard’s chest, Llelo hit him from the side, his arms wrapping around the understeward’s chest and shoulders in a full-body tackle. They fell together to the ground, Charles beneath and Llelo on top.

  Llelo had moved instinctively, without time to think or plan, and while Charles had no time to evade Llelo’s blow, he did have time to pivot just slightly. So it was into Llelo’s body instead of Bernard’s that the knife slid home.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Gwen

  Gwen couldn’t hear anything above the rushing in her ears. When Llelo had moved and Gareth had shouted, she had stepped forward as well, pulled along in Llelo’s wake by his evident urgency. But when she saw him take down Charles—and then roll off him to find the whole right side of his body covered in blood, she’d handed the sleeping Taran to Angharad and fallen to her knees at his side.

  “Mam.”

  “Just lie still. You’re going to be fine.” She spoke automatically, reassuring him out of habit and because she could do nothing else, though her words were as much for herself as for Llelo. She pulled up his shirt, gasping at the blood and the violent slash through his tissues, and then pressed down hard. Dai landed on his knees beside her, closer to Llelo’s head, and she told him to put his hands in the place of hers and press hard, while she whipped off Taran’s sling to use as a bandage.

  Llelo’s eyes had rolled up in his head, which might have been the best thing as far as the pain was concerned, but could be deadly if he went into shock. Meanwhile, his lifeblood was flowing into the dirt beneath him.

  “Keep him awake, Gruffydd!” Gwen ordered.

  Because, of course, the Dragons had gathered around too.

  Meanwhile, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Charles rising to his feet, the bloody knife still in his hand. He looked at it a moment, and then dropped it as if it were a hot coal.

  Gareth’s hand came down on her shoulder and squeezed as he bent to look into his son’s face, and then he stepped towards Charles. “Stay where you are.”

  Charles put up both hands. “I’m sorry! I never meant to hurt your son. I don’t know what came over me!” His voice was high, panicked and contrite.

  Gareth didn’t have any sympathy in him. “Watch him, Iago. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

  Iago obeyed without asking why, and then Gareth moved back to Gwen. “It’s a flesh wound, cariad. He’s going to be fine.”

  Gruffydd was supporting Llelo’s head, and he growled something back that sounded like agreement. The tiny part of Gwen’s mind that wasn’t called mother acknowledged her husband spoke a possible truth. While there was a terrifying amount of blood, the knife had sliced along Llelo’s side, not been driven into the middle of his belly.

  Earl William bent forward, his hands on his knees. “A stretcher is coming, and I’ve sent for Denis. If anyone can help him, he can.”

  Llelo’s eyes fluttered, and Gwen’s heart caught in her throat, fearful that her son had already lost so much blood he couldn’t waken, but he opened his eyes and looked at her, and somehow his words were clear and sane. “It hurts.”

  Gareth sat back on his heels. “It would.”

  Charles’s voice could be heard protesting to Earl William at his treatment, but two Dragons were standing on either side of him, and Iago, who was twice as large as Charles, had hold of his upper arm.

  True to the earl’s word, the stretcher and the healer arrived, and Gareth put his hand under Gwen’s elbow to help her up. Dai still pressed hard on his brother’s side, and while the cloth was bloody, the rational part of Gwen’s mind acknowledged that it wasn’t soaked through. The guards began to move away, and Gwen would have followed except Earl William now said, “Charles didn’t stab your son on purpose, Gareth. You should not be holding him. He has duties to attend to.”

  “That’s not why I’m holding him.” Gareth thrust a handful of paper in the earl’s direction as Prince Henry had done to him a quarter of an hour before.

  Then he and Gwen started after their son. The castle’s infirmary was in the southeastern ward, and that was where the guards were taking him—at a fast walk so they would jar Llelo the least.

  Gwen glanced back to see Earl William standing where they’d left him, glancing from one paper to another. Then his long strides ate up the yards between them, and he caught up as they passed through the castle barbican. He put out a hand and Gwen and Gareth let the stretcher continue on without them. While Gwen felt the urgency of her son’s wound, it was beyond her skill to care for, unless the healer felt that her sewing hand would be better than his. She didn’t know if she could sew up a wound on her own son, but she would if she had to.

  “What am I looking at?” Earl William said.

  “Take note of the writing on the message and then on the list.”

  Gwen could hear the forced patience in her husband’s voice, and she sensed a similar impatience in William’s. Roger and Henry had been hovering on the margins of their conversation too, and now they moved beside the earl to look as well.

  “Just tell him, Gareth, because I don’t understand either,” Henry said.

  “Look.” Gareth took the papers back, holding them in front of him so everyone could see the writing. “The handwriting on King Stephen’s supposed message—” he shook the paper, “—is identical to the handwriting on this list.” He shook the other. “And then there are these notes, which I discovered in Sir Aubrey’s rooms just now.” Gareth pulled two more pieces of paper from his pocket. “Are these the two you intercepted before today?”

  Henry answered somewhat hesitatingly. “Y-yes. The one today is the third of them. I told you when you arrived that I’d shared them with Sir Aubrey, and he kept them in his chambers.”

  “You didn’t share them with me,” William said.

  Henry simply looked rueful. “You weren’t here at the time, and I feared what you might have done.” Then he turned to Gareth. “What are these lists of names? Where did they come from?”

  Gareth gave an involuntary scoff, his patience gone, so it was Gwen who answered, “Sir Aubrey instituted a policy of writing down the name of every man, woman, and child who entered the castle. You can see our names clearly on this list from when we arrived three days ago.”

  “I see that, yes.” Henry nodded.

 
Gwen took in a breath, anxious to get to her son, but knowing how important it was for Henry and William to understand. “Look more closely. The same man who wrote these notes, carried by King Stephen’s courier, is the one who wrote our names when we arrived.” She paused. “That man is the understeward, Charles.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Gareth

  What had begun as a funeral service for a staunch companion had ended in chaos and recriminations. Once Gareth was convinced his son would live, he visited both Bernard and Charles in their cells. Bernard was being kept in a genuine dungeon, with iron bars and damp floor, but Charles had a room at the top of the tower, at Gareth’s request, with a chair to sit on and a table to eat at. Gareth didn’t approve in theory, but he was hoping to lull Charles into thinking they didn’t understand what he’d done, and that he could still talk his way out of a hanging.

  Gareth began with Bernard, who’d practically prostrated himself at his feet, in relief and gratitude that Gareth was willing to listen. During Sir Aubrey’s funeral service, Cadoc and Hamelin, who was the one who recognized Bernard, had caught the former valet exiting the latrine in the outer ward, and as Gareth listened to the tale of woe, made all the worse by Bernard’s own mistakes, he felt sullied himself.

  “I’m an inveterate gambler. I admit it! But I didn’t kill anyone! Earl Robert knew about my gambling. He even gave me a coin at one time or another to keep my creditors at bay. I think if he hadn’t been so ill he might have spoken to them himself, but he was nearing the end, and he couldn’t help me. I took nothing from him! I swear it!

  “When he died, and then my own wife died, it was as if something snapped inside me. I was in more debt than ever, and those Italians don’t take no for an answer. Even Fitzharding wanted his silver. I was going to lose my position. I’d already lost my lord, my wife, and my child. There was nothing left for me. They would have killed me if I hadn’t killed myself. So, yes, I faked my own drowning. I thought to start over somewhere else.”

  Bernard drew in a steady breath.

  “Charles wooed me over a long period of time. I think now that some of my worst debts were by his hand, because the wine he fed me was richer than I was used to. One time he found me in a tavern and plied me with drink—and I ended up losing worse than ever.”

  “Don’t blame him for your gambling,” Gareth said. “There’s no honor in that.”

  Bernard scoffed. “I have no honor. I betrayed my lord. I can’t come back from that.”

  “What about Earl Robert?”

  “What about him?”

  “Did you murder him?”

  “Of course not!” Bernard had his hands clasped in front of him like he was before an altar. “In my heart, I knew it was only a matter of time before someone started asking questions, and those questions would lead to Charles, and thus to me. Or maybe to me and then Charles.” He pointed with his chin again at Gareth. “You’re here, aren’t you? And Charles and I are behind bars. I was right to run.”

  Gareth had thought he understood where this was going, and now he was sure. “To pay off some of your debt, you did favors for Charles. What, in particular, did you do for him?”

  “I gathered information.”

  Gareth didn’t think he had to ask about what, but he did anyway.

  “Everything that I could about what Earl Robert and his allies were thinking and doing. Movements of armies. Our resources. Charles had access to some of it, but I was with Earl Robert all the time, and nobody notices a servant, do they?”

  “What did Charles do with it?”

  Bernard shrugged. “He sent it on to his masters.”

  “When did you realize that master was King Stephen?”

  “It wasn’t too hard to figure out.” Bernard snorted. “Once, I even saw the great William of Ypres.” At the widening of Gareth’s eyes, he continued, “Yes, King Stephen’s spymaster himself. Charles met with him in an abandoned barn outside Bristol. I went with him to keep watch.”

  “You say you didn’t murder Earl Robert, but in the same breath you accuse Charles of spying for Stephen? It was Charles, then, who murdered the earl?”

  Bernard shook his head emphatically. “The earl’s death, my wife’s death, even poor Sir Aubrey’s, were all accidents. Charles kept his hands clean because he was playing a long game. He has been a spy at the very heart of Bristol for years, you understand, never giving himself away by word or deed.”

  “What changed?”

  “Earl Robert’s death, I think. It was all coming to a head. William didn’t favor Charles, and perhaps he feared for his position. Maybe he was tired of his passive role, or maybe King Stephen wanted more from him. Maybe he’d had people making mischief all along, like Aelfric chiseling out bits of the castle. You should have the mason go over the entire castle, by the way. There are more stones on those battlements waiting to fall.”

  “Maybe you’re the spy and Charles is the pawn,” Gareth said. “You’re the one who faked his own death, after all.”

  “No! I didn’t hurt anyone!”

  Gareth studied Bernard’s pleading face. “Why did Aelfric end up dead? Why did Charles try to murder you? That certainly isn’t keeping his hands clean.”

  Bernard became even more agitated. “You were here, asking questions. Charles was worried about Aelfric’s loyalties, and Rose had decided she wanted more from her life than spying.”

  Gareth had been waiting for her name to come up. “Rose ran errands for him too?”

  Bernard snorted. “Why do you think he killed her? In speaking to your wife, she’d done her last errand for him. You were getting too close, and he thought she was going to talk. Just like Aelfric.”

  “So to be clear, you, Aelfric, and Rose all worked for Charles, knowing that his intent was to betray Earl Robert?”

  Bernard’s hands were clenched in his hair, the very image of regret and despair. “I never meant to hurt anyone, but I needed to pay off my debts.”

  “Why did Rose do it?”

  He sneered. “She wanted silver so she could rise above her station.”

  “And Aelfric?”

  Bernard shrugged. “He wanted revenge.”

  “Revenge on whom?”

  “Not all Saxons have taken to the Normans, you know. You Welsh aren’t the only ones who look to fight back.”

  That was the first Gareth had ever heard of a Saxon resistance, but he supposed one was bound to turn up eventually. He canted his head as he contemplated his prisoner. “Why did you come back, Bernard? You faked your own death perfectly. What possible reason could you have for coming back?”

  “I tried not to! But when it came down to it, it’s hard to start over with no money, no name, no friends. It had been three weeks of hell, living on the run, and I couldn’t take it anymore. Besides, I knew—” he stopped short.

  Gareth pounced on the hesitation. “What did you know?”

  “What Charles’s real plan was, of course! Why do you think Charles tried to kill me just now? To silence me!”

  Gareth was skeptical. “Why would he want to do that?”

  Bernard’s chin stuck out, and even though his life was on the line, he was still reluctant to admit the truth. But then he did—to save his skin rather than his soul. “Because I knew what he was up to. I couldn’t—” he looked down at his hands. “Charles’s plan was to open the castle to King Stephen’s forces on Christmas Day, when everyone was merry from revelry and good cheer. I know what you think of me, but even I am not so worthless that I would allow all of my friends to die.”

  This was credible and believable, but he tsked through his teeth anyway. “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true, my lord! You have to believe me!”

  “I don’t, actually. You may have some modicum of conscience, but I don’t believe that’s why you returned—” He paused and began to nod as more pieces of the puzzle started falling into place. Everyone had liked Bernard, and he’d found favor with many, but n
obody had trusted him—because he wasn’t trustworthy. “You came back for money.”

  Bernard had been groveling at Gareth’s feet, but now his head came up. “What? No, I didn’t.”

  “Who did you think would give you money, Bernard?”

  Bernard gaped at him, and then shook his head vehemently. “No, no. You have it wrong.”

  Then the door opened behind Gareth, and he turned to see Gwen standing on the threshold of the guardroom with Mabs, of all people. Gareth frowned at them, feeling this was no place for women, even one as daring as his wife.

  But Gwen came forward anyway, her arm hooked through Mab’s elbow. “Mabs has something to tell you, Gareth.”

  Bernard gasped. “No.” But the word came out strained and didn’t carry.

  “It’s my fault he was caught. He came back for me.” Mabs sniffed and wiped away a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand. “I told him I needed a few more days before I could leave. The manhunt caught us by surprise, so I smuggled him into the castle because we thought it would be the last place anyone would look. He was only caught because the latrine nearest my chambers is blocked, so he had to go outside.” She looked past Gareth to where Bernard was on his knees on the floor. “We were leaving tonight, as soon as we could get away. We were going to be together forever!”

  “I love you, Mabs,” Bernard begged. “Don’t believe anything anyone has said about me.”

  “I love you too!” Mabs burst into tears and turned to sob on Gwen’s shoulder. “It isn’t true. It isn’t true.”

  Gwen looked over the top of Mab’s head, neither she nor Gareth having the heart to tell the grieving woman that the only thing Bernard had cared about was her money.

  * * * * *

  Prince Henry spoke first, as was his right, silencing the company of noblemen who’d gathered in the conference room. “We have gathered this week for a noble cause, but I must speak to you now of the deaths that have occurred at Bristol over the last month, beginning with the loss of my uncle, Robert.” Here he gestured to William, who was sitting with an elbow on the arm of his chair and a finger to his lips. His other hand tapped out a rhythm on the table. “While the information uncovered recently has shown me that I was mistaken in thinking my uncle was murdered, murder has been done.” Now he motioned to Gareth. “I give you Sir Gareth of Gwynedd, to explain the hows and the whys—and the danger that lies before us now.”