The Uninvited Guest

by Sarah Woodbury

  Gareth was wearier than he ever remembered being, even during the wars with the Normans for Ceredigion when he first became a man. After months of near-constant battle in Hywel’s service, he felt as if his armor had fused with his skin. He could feel every link of his mail through his padded shirt and he ached to remove it; to lay his head down just once on a bed—a real bed in a real room, with a lit fire that heated the room all the night through.

  Even better if Gwen could be in that bed with him, though he’d settle for sharing the same hall. He could survive without her in his bed for the time that remained, until after King Owain’s wedding. He’d burned for her for five years. He could wait a little longer.

  In addition, during his hike to the hay barn, he had come to understand that the miles from Ceredigion to Aber hadn’t entirely burnished the muck and mire of battle from him. His sword blade shone, his eyes were clear, but he could put his hand on his hilt and still feel the sweat and blood that had marred it, almost daily for a time. Gwen was everything that was whole and clean in his life. When Gareth finally stood up with her at their wedding, he needed to enter their marriage as a whole man.

  Gareth headed away from Aber, skirting the holdings to the east of the barn and then turning north, towards the Irish Sea. Since he was supposed to be dead, it wouldn’t do to have him speaking to the residents at Aber’s village. Gwen had agreed to take on that task. He’d given his three drawings to her, and then used his last scrap of paper to draw more pictures for himself. Hywel promised to acquire another stash of paper for him when he returned.

  The issue immediately before him was which path to take? If Gareth were the assassin and fleeing Aber, he would certainly have headed east, but on what road? After some thought and a consultation with Hywel and Gwen about what King Owain’s men had found—or not found—Gareth had decided that a wanted man would not take the main road that led to the standing stones, Caerhun, Dolwyddelan, and points east of the Conwy River. While the only regular inhabitants of those ten miles were sheep, other travelers used that road far more often than any of the other trails and tracks that crisscrossed the landscape.

  Thus, Gareth followed a track that would take him along the shore of the Irish Sea and through the small fishing communities that lined it. If nothing else, this path gave him the opportunity to talk to people, even if they had nothing to tell him. But as it turned out, he had luck at the third home he came to, owned by a daughter and her aged father.

  “Come inside, out of the rain,” the daughter said, eyeing Gareth’s bandaged head.

  The hut was small, even for a poor peasant, and Gareth merely stepped under the eaves. His horse nudged his back, demanding that he make room. Gareth edged forward and held out the piece of paper with the drawings on it.

  “I seen ‘em,” the man said.

  “Which one?”

  Gareth wasn’t really sure that the old man could see anything, but both he and his daughter pointed to the image of the assassin.

  “Rode past on the track some days ago, just like you but going the other way. Fine horse he had, for a man with such poor weave to his clothing,” the woman said. “I would have thought he’d stolen the horse, except that he spoke with a refined tongue when he asked to fill his water skin from our well. Down on his luck, I guessed.”

  “Did he tell you his name?” Gareth said. “Or where he was from?”

  The woman shook her head. “He came from the east. He didn’t linger.”

  “Come to think on it, I heard hoof beats two nights ago. Early morning it was.” The old man poked his daughter’s arm. “Told you about them, didn’t I?

  “That’s right,” the daughter said. “They came from the west that time. Do you think it could be the same man?”

  “It could be,” Gareth said.

  “Sure it could,” the old man said. “We don’t get so many riding through, you know, not like the fine folk up at the castle.”

  Gareth looked east from where he stood, still in the sheltered bay that Aber Castle overlooked. Several miles down the beach the Great Orme loomed. To continue this way would take him to the Conwy River. As the assassin had possibly come this way both times, he would have known that he wouldn’t be able to ford it anywhere south of Caerhun.

  Gareth really didn’t want to stop at Caerhun. He had friends there who might have heard of his death by now. The thought made him uneasy—this was the part of his deception that made him the most uncomfortable—and he hoped the stories they were telling about him were good ones. For the garrison at Caerhun to keep his resurrection quiet under those circumstances would be impossible. Their primary purpose was to watch the ford on the Conwy day and night. The assassin wouldn’t have wanted the attention either.

  “Is anyone running a ferry across the mouth of the Conwy since old Ceri died?” Gareth said.

  “His son, Daff,” the woman said. “He fishes most mornings but you might catch him before night falls if you hurry.”

  Hurrying was what Gareth had every intention of doing. Gareth checked the sky. He’d left the hay barn well before noon, but the sun set earlier every day. Tomorrow was the first of December, with three weeks to the winter solstice and Christmas. King Owain would want to be married by then, if he was to be married at all.

  It did seem that King Owain genuinely cared for Cristina, and both of them were used to getting what they wanted. Gareth figured it wouldn’t be long before Cristina convinced the king that going through with the wedding was the right thing to do, even without knowing who had killed Enid and despite the evil such deaths had brought to Aber.

  Gareth said goodbye to the old man and his daughter and thanked them. He shook out the thick cloak Hywel had given him, remounted Dewi, and urged the horse down the sandy trail. The rain had let up over the last half an hour, becoming more mist than raindrops. He pushed back his hood and as he rode along, carefully unwound the bandage from his head. He ran his fingers over the wound. It had stopped bleeding.

  He could have been jubilant that he’d found the assassin’s trail so easily. Somehow, he felt desperation instead. If the killer had come through here in the early hours of yesterday morning (which made sense since he left Aber after midnight), Gareth trailed far behind him. Once across the Conwy River, the boy would have all of Gwynedd before him. And England after that.

  The detail of the hoof beats and the horse helped clarify one aspect of the assassin’s escape that had troubled Gareth: namely, how he’d gotten away so quickly. Since he hadn’t ridden a horse into Aber, he must have picketed him outside the castle, ready for the moment he was needed.

  Gareth stopped to question every fisherman and wife who lived along the path. The assassin had been noticed, both in his journey west, which he’d done in daylight, and on his return. Two more times, the picture of the assassin drew recognition, always pointing Gareth east. That Gareth had a picture at all caused quite a bit of comment. He had been drawing since he was a boy and thought nothing of it, but few had ever seen a likeness of a person, barring the statues in the chapel at Bangor.

  Horses were expensive, too, and few rode this way. One of the women had left her bed for the latrine and heard the boy galloping past her home in the dark. Gareth was beginning to think the assassin would have been better off hiding in plain sight on the high road than taking the less used track. Something to think on if he ever found himself on the run.

  At last, Gareth trotted his horse into the little village on the western bank of the Conwy River. Like the scattered peasantry he’d already encountered, everyone here was a fisherman first and foremost, though they might send their sons into the hills in the summer with a flock of sheep. These lands were also in the personal domain of King Owain and all here tithed to him.

  The tide was out when he arrived and he almost could have walked across the silt and sand bars that clogged the Conwy River. Almost. He’d heard travelers’ tales about people who’d been caught unawares in the middle of the river, either by a change
in the tide or by sinkholes that sucked them down and trapped them before they knew what had happened. The Conwy River wasn’t the Menai Straits, but it wasn’t to be underestimated either.

  A rocky outcrop jutted twenty yards into the river. The water wended around the rock and the ferry ran from a wooden pier clinging to its tip. It was matched by another pier on the opposite shore. With no matching rock to anchor its posts, they were driven deeply into the sand. The ferry was docked on the western side, but Gareth didn’t see the ferryman.

  “He was up at dawn,” a voice said from behind him. “You’ll have to wake him.”

  Gareth twisted in the saddle to see a boy of eight, barefoot despite the cold and the rain, with a fishing pole in his hand and six fish slung on a string.

  “Who?”

  “The ferryman.”

  “How do you know I want to ride the ferry?” Gareth said.

  “You have a fine horse and wear a sword. It’s not like you’re going to swim the river,” the boy said.

  “Can you show me where he lives?” Gareth said.

  The boy pointed towards a line of huts.

  “But which one?” Gareth said.

  The boy sighed as if to say must I do everything? Gareth smiled, because he’d seen that expression on many adult faces and found it amusing rather than irritating to see it on the chubby face of the boy. Gareth dismounted while the boy grabbed Dewi’s bridle and began to lead him down the slope towards the river.

  “Where you from?” the boy said.

  “Aber Castle,” Gareth said. “What’s your name?”

  “Padrig.”

  “I can see that you’re a fine fisherman,” Gareth said.

  “It’s in my blood.” Padrig shrugged. “Some days are better than others.”

  “And you have mouths to feed, do you?” Gareth said.

  “We’ve twelve, with my grandma.”

  “So you spend most of your days outside.” Gareth stopped the boy and took the piece of paper from his pocket. “Have you seen any of these people recently?”

  Without hesitation, Padrig pointed to the assassin. “This man. He came from the east and tried to get across the river without the ferry, but his horse sank to his hocks after only ten feet. My father rescued him.”

  “So, your father is Daff, the ferryman?”

  “Yup.” Padrig studied the paper. “Who are these other two?”

  “Do you know them?”

  “No,” Padrig said.

  “I didn’t expect that they came this way. They’re dead.”

  Padrig’s eyes went wide. “Did the first man kill them?”

  “I don’t think so,” Gareth said. “But it may be that he knows who did.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Padrig said. “Father took him across the river yesterday morning. At first light.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course,” Padrig said. “It was the same man as before, though he was in a bigger hurry and didn’t look well.”

  “He was ill?” Gareth said.

  Padrig shook his head. “Nervous, more like. He kept checking behind him, as if he was afraid he was being followed.”

  Which well he might. He couldn’t know if anyone had seen him leave Aber, if the chase was an hour behind, a day, or the nearly two days that Gareth had lost. If the man who hired the youth was the same man who killed Enid and Ieuan, he had effectively distracted them from pursuing this one lead that might tell them all. On purpose? Chance? As appeared to be the case far too often, there was too much Gareth didn’t know.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Gwen hated to see Gareth ride away again; hated that she was going to have to do her part on her own (albeit with Hywel to help, but it wasn’t the same); hated that all the while she was trying to solve this murder, she would have to pretend that Gareth was missing, or possibly dead.

  She didn’t know how she was going to do that.

  “I suggest that you remain relentlessly cheerful,” Hywel said. “I can’t see you weeping your eyes out for him in public anyway.”

  Gwen wasn’t so sure about that. At sixteen, she’d certainly cried enough when he’d left her. But maybe Hywel was right. “Perhaps my presence will make people more likely to talk, to offer their sympathy. One thing could lead to another.”

  “Shall I come with you to the village?” Hywel said.

  Gwen shook her head. “You might be more off-putting than helpful, my lord. Besides, I can take advantage of how sorry they feel for me—and how angry they are at you for making me pursue our investigation despite Gareth’s absence.”

  “I’m offended,” Hywel said, but his expression told her otherwise.

  Gwen pulled up her hood and wrapped her cloak tightly around herself. “I might as well get started.”

  “You should come back through the tunnel—”

  “No!” Gwen said, and then at Hywel’s knowing smile, moderated her tone. “I’ll walk around. If someone asks where I am, tell them you saw me leave by the wicket gate. Nobody will question you.”

  “There are advantages to being a prince.” Hywel was in high good humor now.

  “A few.” Gwen set off into the rain without looking back. She entered the woods that encroached on the castle to the south and came out on the eastern bank of the Aber River. A footbridge led across it to the village.

  The number of homes and craft houses at Aber had grown in the years since King Owain had moved his primary seat from Aberffraw to Aber. His rebuilding efforts had required the hiring of men, most of whom labored at the castle during the day and went to bed at night in the village, after drinking a substantial portion of their wages in the local tavern. That was where Gwen would start.

  At this hour of the morning, Gwen didn’t expect a crowd, and so was surprised to be greeted by one when she opened the door to the common room. It was packed to the rafters, even more so than the great hall had been for the pre-wedding feast. A fire burned in the fire pit against the far wall, but smoke, more than heat, filled the room.

  That wasn’t stopping the conversation among the clientele, however. Gwen’s arrival did that. She’d silenced a room more often in the last two days than in her entire life. Her only previous experience with this sort of thing was when she and Gwalchmai sang together—and the silence and respect people accorded them at those times was joyful, rather than distressed.

  Gwen had supposed at first that everyone in the room was a visitor from the castle, tired of kicking their heels all day in the great hall. But when faces turned and stared at her as she stepped through the doorway, she realized the tavern held the inhabitants of the village. All of them.

  “Gwen!” The tavern keeper raised a hand from the other side of the bar. “Come inside and get warm!”

  “Thank you, Huw.” Gwen edged through the villagers who gave way before her, and who then filled in the gap behind her as she passed. She reached the bar and turned to survey the crowd, all of whom still watched her.

  “We are very sorry to hear about Sir Gareth,” Huw said.

  “Thank you,” Gwen said. “But I haven’t given up hope.”

  “Nor should you!” Huw patted her hand. “Gareth is a sturdy fellow and is probably walking home just now.”

  “I hope so,” Gwen said, aware that everyone was listening to them. “I didn’t realize you knew him.”

  “Knew him!” Huw was offended. “He’s a favorite here. It was he that Prince Hywel sent if there was trouble in the village. Always fair was—” Huw cleared his throat, “—is your Gareth.”

  Men and women nodded all around the bar.

  “But what’s going on here?” Gwen said. “Surely such a crowd is unusual for this time of day.”

  “Oh, this.” Huw eyed his customers. “It’s funny you should ask. We were just discussing what we could do to help.”

  “To help Gareth?” Gwen said.

  “Of course,” Huw said.

  “Then perhaps you can help him by helping me.” Gw
en lowered her voice. “You know he was looking for the murderer?”

  Huw nodded. “We’re all afraid he stepped into a wasp nest and got stung.”

  “When he gets back, he’ll need to pick up the investigation again,” Gwen said, “but in the meantime, do you recognize any of these people?” Gwen took out the drawings Gareth had made and handed them to Huw.

  “Not that one.” Huw pointed at the assassin. “But the girl and Ieuan met here not three days ago.”

  “You knew Ieuan, then?” Gwen said.

  “Not well,” Huw said. “He kept to himself, mostly, and didn’t have much to spend, if you know what I mean.”

  “Did you hear what they talked about?” Gwen said.

  Huw shook his head. “We were busy that night and the tavern was packed cheek by jowl. My upper rooms are full and it’s only today that a few of my guests have left.”

  “Did you ever see the girl before?”

  “No,” Huw said. “And not since. I might not have noticed her at all, since she came in with her hood up and didn’t put it down the whole time she was here, but one of the patrons knocked into her and spilled his drink. I cleaned it up myself and saw her face. She’s pretty.”

  “Was pretty,” Gwen said. “She’s the girl who was murdered, along with Ieuan.” As Gwen and Huw had been talking, the noise level had risen again in the tavern. “Did Ieuan have a family?”

  Huw shook his head. “Not here. Not that I know. As I said, he kept to himself.”

  “Could you ask around?” Gwen said. “Find out if any of your regulars remember seeing him with someone else? Or overheard his conversation with Enid?”

  “I’d be glad to.” Huw studied the paper. “Who drew the pictures?”

  “Gareth,” Gwen said.

  Huw nodded. “He’s a good man. I was paying attention when Prince Cadwaladr took you to Dublin. I’m glad Sir Gareth came home with you.”