The Uninvited Guest

by Sarah Woodbury

  Hywel thought a moment and then nodded. “You’re right. My father doesn’t need to know of it.” He set off into the snow, whistling.

  Gareth watched Hywel go, lighter of heart in regards to the outcome of the conversation, but uncomfortable with the lie he’d just told his lord. Gareth’s instinct had been to protect Hywel from uncertainty, to resolve this investigation without any loose ends.

  Because, while Gareth had been with his uncle Goronwy when he died, and Goronwy had been lying side by side with Prince Cadwallon, Goronwy had died first. Gareth had cried for a time, and then fallen asleep beside the pallet. He didn’t know how Cadwallon died. All Gareth knew was that by morning, he had been the only one left alive in the tent.

  Gareth thought he understood better why Hywel hadn’t told him the truth about Cadwaladr last summer. Somehow, they’d come full circle.

  Chapter Thirty

  “How is it that you have all the luck?” Hywel nudged Gareth from behind.

  Gareth grinned. Some wouldn’t call his recent run lucky. He’d grown used to the peppery taste of sanicle, which he’d been drinking as a tea and which Gwen had rubbed as a lotion on his wounds every day since he’d come home.

  But not today. Today was his wedding day and he was not only going to be standing upright before the priest when Gwen became his wife, but he was going to be belted and armored like the knight he was, and no longer smelling like an invalid.

  Not that anyone but Gwen would be able to smell him, given the lush evergreens, holly, and mistletoe that adorned the great hall. The greenery covered the mantle, decorated every table, high and low, and hung from the rafters. Queen Cristina (for all her faults) attributed her present well-being to Gareth and Gwen and had not only decorated the great hall for Christ’s mass a few days earlier than she might otherwise have done, but had ordered a feast laid on as well.

  With Cristina in charge, Gwen was getting that big wedding after all.

  Many of the guests who had come for the wedding of Cristina and Owain had gone home to their own people and halls, but some had stayed—enough so that the tables had been full at most meals. At Gwen’s request, however, Cristina had invited the villagers from Aber and the surrounding farms to help celebrate the day.

  Gareth didn’t try to suppress the warm feeling of pride that welled within him as he looked at his bride, just making her way up the hall towards him on her father’s arm. The train of her long evergreen hued gown, a gift from the queen, trailed behind her. King Owain’s wedding had been a statement of his power and wealth, even if rather diminished in the end due to the murders. The wedding of Gareth and Gwen was pure celebration for noblemen and common folk alike.

  Rhun, King Owain, Queen Cristina, Cadwaladr (of all people), and Taran sat at the high table just behind Gareth and the priest, who stood on the edge of the dais so he could look down on them as if he were standing on the steps of the church. Since Gareth and Meilyr had signed the contract giving Gwen to him an hour ago, their marriage was already legal, but King Owain’s priest had a habit of inserting himself into formal occasions whether the participants liked it or not. In this case, Gareth couldn’t begrudge him the pleasure.

  Gwen approached the dais, kissed her father’s cheek, and allowed Gareth to take her hands in his. The priest raised his staff of office. “My friends! I welcome you to the wedding of Gareth ap Rhys and Gwen ferch Meilyr. Thank you all for witnessing this occasion. If you would please bow your heads in prayer …”

  As the priest chanted on, having switched to Latin for the prayer, Gareth gazed into Gwen’s brown eyes. She smiled up at him. He couldn’t see anything but her.

  The prayer ended. Gwen tipped up her chin for a kiss and as Gareth bent his head to hers, Gwalchmai’s soprano soared to the rafters. At long last, Gwen had become his wife.

  The End

  Author’s Note

  The historical setting for The Uninvited Guest, as with The Good Knight, the first of the Gareth and Gwen medieval mysteries, is the court of King Owain Gwynedd, one of the most powerful and stable monarchs of north Wales in the middle ages. He was fortunate to have ruled during a time in which England, which had been trying to conquer Wales for a hundred and fifty years, was torn apart by the rivalry of two claimants to the throne: King Stephen and Empress Maud. Owain, in the fine tradition of Welsh royalty, took advantage of the strife in England to consolidate his rule and bring the other Welsh dynasties under his control.

  In doing so, however, he engendered animosity among the other lords of Wales—and within his own family. With two wives, multiple mistresses, and a dozen sons, many of whom fought among themselves for power and favor, he created a legacy that would last until the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd at the hands of the English in 1282.

  And made him a fulcrum of murder and mayhem in the middle ages.

  Thank you for reading, The Uninvited Guest, the second Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mystery! To sign up to be notified whenever I have a new release, please see the sidebar on my web page: www.sarahwoodbury.com

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  Read on for the first chapter of the next Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery, The Fourth Horseman, available wherever books are sold.

  Sample: The Fourth Horseman

  Chapter One

  Stephen de Blois came to London,

  and the people received him

  and hallowed him to king on midwinter day.

  But in this king's time was all dissension, and evil, and rapine;

  for against him rose soon the rich men who were traitors.

  Then was England very much divided.

  Some held with the king and some with the empress;

  for when the king was in prison,

  the earls and the rich men supposed that he would never more come out,

  and they settled with the empress,

  and when the king was out,

  he heard of this, and took his force,

  and beset her in the tower.

  By such things, and more than we can say,

  we suffered nineteen winters for our sins.

  To till the ground was to plough the sea:

  the earth bore no corn,

  for the land was all laid waste by such deeds;

  they said openly that Christ and his saints slept …

  –The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

  And this time shall be known to history as … the Anarchy.

  May 1144

  Gwen

  “You two keep your ears and eyes open,” Hywel said. “Earl Robert may be courting friendship with Wales, but I want everyone to remain on their guard nonetheless. I don’t trust these Normans.”

  Gwen glanced at Gareth, who laughed. “Of course,” they said together.

  Gareth’s eyes glinted, and if Gwen hadn’t been married to him for five months already, she would have blushed. It wasn’t the first time they’d spoken in unison.

  Hywel mumbled something Gwen didn’t catch—half-laughing too—and led the way into the bailey of the enormous Norman castle at Newcastle-under-Lyme. In its shadow lay a prosperous village which, according to Hywel, had grown in recent years. What had once been a few huts planted in the lower bailey of the original timber castle was now a thriving market town beyond the new castle’s stone walls.

  The castle bailey teemed with soldiers, and Gwen knew why: the war between King Stephen and Empress Maud was in its ninth year. The man they had come to see, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, was Maud’s brother and led her armies. Although most men agreed that Robert would have made a better king than either Stephen or Maud, he was a bastard, so he could never claim the English throne for himself.

  The steps up to the stone keep, which had replaced the original motte and bailey castle, lay two hundred feet in front of them, on low lying ground to the north of the Lyme Brook. Hywel and his brother, Prince Rhun, urged their horses through the crowd. Gareth and Gwen followed, along with their other co
mpanions: Evan, Gareth’s second-in-command; Gruffydd, Rhun’s captain; and Rhys, the prior of St. Kentigern’s monastery in St. Asaph, whom Gareth had befriended last winter.

  Three Normans waited for them on the flagstone pathway that ran from the gatehouse to the keep. The men stood with their hands behind their backs and bowed at the princes’ approach. Then one stepped forward and spoke in French. “Welcome to Newcastle. Earl Robert sends his greetings. Please dismount, my lords.” He caught sight of Gwen. “Madam.”

  Gwen waited for Gareth to get down first so he could help her. He always wanted her to wait for him, even when she didn’t need his help. When he held her a moment longer than was strictly necessary, once she was on the ground, she smiled up at him. She would have kissed him, too, but for the large audience around them.

  After a long look, he let her go, and Gwen swished her skirt into place. She was wearing finery today, as were they all. They had dressed well and deliberately that morning in their camp, located less than a mile from Newcastle, in order to present the Welsh cause to Robert in the best light possible.

  Hywel, with his deep blue eyes, broad shoulders, and handsome face, would do well wherever he went. Rhun, with his shock of blonde hair and thick shoulders, looked more like a Dublin Dane than a Welsh prince. As the Normans were themselves descended from the same Viking ancestors as the Danes, his visage was one the Normans could respect. King Owain of Gwynedd, the princes’ father, knew what he was doing when he sent his sons to foster diplomacy between the two kingdoms.

  The stable boys led the horses away, and the companions turned towards the keep. Built into the curtain wall of the castle, it had towers on every corner and loomed above them. “Here comes Earl Ranulf himself,” Hywel said, leaning in to speak to Gareth and Gwen.

  “Sir Amaury de Granville walks with him, my lord,” Gareth said. “I told you about him. He is Ranulf’s man at Chester Castle.”

  “I remember,” Hywel said.

  It was good news that Ranulf had come to greet the Welsh princes. He wasn’t Earl Robert himself, of course, but he was Robert’s son-in-law and the Earl of Chester. Maybe Earl Robert truly had invited the princes to visit Newcastle out of goodwill and a genuine interest in an alliance with Wales, not as a ploy to put the Welsh at a disadvantage and intimidate them with Norman power.

  Gwen tried to watch Ranulf without staring at him. He appeared slightly unkempt. The brooch holding his cloak closed at the neck had drifted towards his left shoulder, he had mud on his boots, and a dark stain marred his brown breeches. Then a ray of sunlight shot over the castle wall, forcing Gwen to blink and turn her head away.

  She put up one hand to block the light and nudged Gareth. “I can’t see. Let’s move over here.” She tugged him to the right of the steps that flared out from the keep and into the long shadow cast by the castle’s old motte, which rose up on the east side of the bailey.

  Several men who’d been milling about in the courtyard pressed forward, eagerly filling the space which Gwen and Gareth had vacated. These onlookers seemed to want to hear the princes’ exchange with Ranulf, or maybe they were Ranulf’s men and had been waiting for him to appear from the keep.

  “Thank you.” Gwen squeezed Gareth’s hand, glad she was with him, even if visiting a Norman castle had never been something she’d wanted to do.

  A dozen yards away, Rhun and Hywel bowed slightly, as did Ranulf in return. “Welcome,” Ranulf said, in French.

  From where she stood with Gareth, Gwen couldn’t hear Hywel’s response, though she could see his lips move. She stepped closer, trying to make out what the men were saying, but then a movement on the tower at the top of the keep distracted her. She glanced up and saw two men, their faces clearly visible in the sunlight.

  They looked down on the Welsh party for a heartbeat, one man clutching the other’s shoulders. Then they separated: one to disappear from view, and the other to fall head first over the battlement and land flat on his back at Gwen’s feet.

  __________

  The Fourth Horseman is available at wherever books are sold.

  www.sarahwoodbury.com