“I’m coming with you.”
Gareth gave her a hard look but didn’t argue, for which Gwen was grateful. When she had thought last night that Dai was going to die, all she had wanted was to hold him in her arms and weep. But he hadn’t died, and while that made her happy, she was also livid at what had been done. If Meicol was the murderer, so be it. He had paid the ultimate price for his treachery. If he was an innocent bystander or had an accomplice, however, she wanted to catch the culprit as much as or more than Gareth did.
And, fortunately, because they were in Wales rather than England, she was going to be allowed to participate. At the very least, questioning suspects and following leads would give her something to do rather than constantly worrying over Dai.
They arrived at the barracks, which, along with the great hall, had been turned into an infirmary. Gareth had spent half the night ferrying the dead down the hill to lie in the church at the local monastery. Gareth had told her before he’d fallen asleep that the bodies were laid in rows in the nave. Some of the family members had protested the haste at their removal from the castle, but it was necessary rather than unseemly. The barracks and hall were needed for the living, so the only other alternative would have been to lay the bodies out in the courtyard of the castle, subjecting them to the elements.
Saran had opened all the windows in the barrack’s common room, where she was caring for upwards of two dozen ill people, but even so, the room smelled horribly of urine and vomit. Unapologetically playing favorites, she’d placed Dai on a table that had been pushed against the wall directly under a window facing the courtyard. When Gareth and Gwen arrived, Dai proved to have recovered enough to turn his head and raise a hand.
Gwen’s heart swelled with love, and she ran to him, skirting the people lying on the floor. There were fewer of them this morning than there had been last night, but she told herself that was because the missing people were feeling better. If it wasn’t true, there was no harm for now in the lie.
“How are you feeling?” She clasped Dai’s hand and bent to kiss his forehead, noting as she did so the absence of fever.
“Better. My mouth feels better too.” His eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry, Mam. I didn’t think one bite would matter.”
Gareth’s boots scraped on the floor as he came to a halt beside Gwen. He looked down at his foster son, his hands on his hips. Dai looked up at him, his expression one of utter wretchedness.
But then Gareth’s expression gentled, and he also bent forward to brush the hair off Dai’s forehead and kiss his foster son. “Just know we’re happy you’re alive and be glad this mistake is one you can learn from.”
Dai closed his eyes, and tears leaked out of the corners and fell down his cheeks. Gareth stepped back so Gwen could sit beside her son and hug him. “Don’t cry. Nobody is angry with you.”
“They should be.” He brushed at the tears with a jerky movement of his hand. “I’m angry with myself.”
Gareth grunted. “And that’s why we don’t need to say anything. You’re becoming a man, son. This is a hard lesson, but if you learn temperance and self-regulation from this mistake, it will be worth it.”
Gwen just hoped the incident didn’t dampen Dai’s native enthusiasm, which she loved. Gareth was right, however, that a man-at-arms was useless if he wasn’t obedient. He had to trust the wisdom of his superiors. If he couldn’t, then he needed to find new superiors, as Gareth had done, or a new line of work.
“Gareth.”
They all turned to see Evan standing in the doorway to the barracks, a grim set to his jaw. Gwen’s stomach seized. “Who—”
Evan hurried forward, waving his hand to imply that whatever they were thinking was not what was wrong and at the same time rearranging his expression to one of sympathy and understanding. “Don’t fear, Gwen. Everyone is well. The prince … everyone. This is something else.”
“Does Cadell live?” Gareth said.
“He does. It’s just—” Evan leaned in to speak conspiratorially, “—we have another murder.”
Gareth frowned. “Every person in the nave of St. Dyfi’s Church was murdered.”
Evan shook his head sharply. “Not that kind of murder. This wasn’t poison.” He drew in a breath. “Some time last night when we were dealing with the poisonings in the hall, Sir Robert was killed in the monastery graveyard.”
Chapter Nine
Gareth
If they hadn’t been in a sickroom—and the dead man hadn’t been an esteemed man of Deheubarth—Gareth might have laughed in morbid relief at being confronted with a much more straightforward death. “Take me to him,” he said simply.
Dai struggled to sit up. “You should bring Llelo.”
Gareth looked to his eldest son, who had been dozing on a bench against the wall, but who’d perked up at Evan’s arrival. An instant later he was on his feet.
Gareth raised his eyebrows at Dai. “You only want me to bring him so he can tell you everything that’s happening when he gets back, since you can’t go yourself.”
Dai didn’t even have the grace to look sheepish, or maybe he was too sick. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But then he laughed, which did more to ease the tension in Gareth’s stomach than anything else he could have done.
“You really must be feeling better.” Gwen put her hand to his forehead again.
Then Saran entered the room from a nearby stairwell, reminding Gareth there were more sick people upstairs. Gwen remembered too and asked after Lord William.
“I have a girl watching him.” Saran’s eyes were tired. “I thought for a few hours last night we were going to lose him, but he pulled through.”
“I should take a turn around the keep, give Saran a break.” Gwen looked between Evan and Gareth, torn, Gareth could see, between duty and duty.
But Saran shook her head. “I’ve been in the hall as much as I’ve been here. I can always use extra hands, but Angharad has been more than helpful and can step in for you. She was sleeping a quarter of an hour ago, but I know she will continue again when she wakes.”
Evan cleared his throat. “Tell her I will look in on her when I return?”
“Of course.” Saran made a shooing motion with her hand. “Go. We’re fine here. In fact, I’m thinking I could use Dai’s pallet for someone else.”
“We can put Dai in with Father before we go,” Gwen said.
Saran shook her head. “I’ll do it once I get some broth down him.”
Gwen had been perched with one hip on the table, but now she got down and leaned in to kiss Saran’s cheek. “Thank you. I am so thankful you’re here.”
Saran made the shooing motion again, though Gareth could tell she was touched. “Find who did this. Go on.”
“Sir Robert was found lying between two tombstones.” Evan held the door open for Gareth, Gwen, and Llelo, who didn’t need to be told twice that he could come.
Gareth eyed the young man as he strode beside him across the courtyard towards the stables. “This is starting to become a habit I’m not sure I have fully thought out, but I admit you can’t learn if you don’t come with me.”
Llelo’s eyes were bright at Gareth’s acceptance, and he would hardly be the first son who set his sights on following in his father’s footsteps. Besides, the long night had left them short-handed today. Many of the men in Prince Hywel’s teulu had stayed up with Gareth, tending the sick and taking over guard positions Cadell’s men could no longer fill. Llelo was a man—and not only that, he was a man-at-arms.
Now he considered it, Gareth couldn’t think of a single reason why Llelo shouldn’t come with them. “You are to stay beside your mam, yes?”
Llelo nodded. “Of course.”
As had become more usual than not for Hywel, he hadn’t chosen to stay at Dinefwr Castle itself but at St. Dyfi’s, the local monastery, located some three-quarters of a mile to the northwest of the castle. This was in part because the monastery provided him and his peo
ple with more spacious accommodations, and in part because staying outside the castle walls gave him more freedom of movement. While the bulk of Hywel’s army that had attacked the Flemings had been relieved of their duties and sent home to Ceredigion, the rest—Hywel’s teulu primarily—were housed either in the monastery guesthouse or in tents in an adjacent field.
Last night, Hywel had overseen the security of the castle and the transportation of the last of the dead to the church, but had eventually found his bed in the monks’ guesthouse. Gareth had left him under the watchful eyes of the Dragons and returned to the castle to be with Gwen and to check on Dai.
“Was that a moan, Evan?” Gwen put out a hand to him after they’d mounted the horses. “You’re not sick too, are you?”
“Not at all.” He rubbed his side. “A practice injury.”
Gwen frowned. “Practicing against whom?”
“Iago,” Evan said.
Gareth laughed. “Better you than me, friend.”
Evan looked him up and down, a mischievous light in his eye. “Isn’t it about time you joined us? You don’t want the men to think you’re fragile.”
Gareth scoffed. “I am fully recovered from the events in Shrewsbury. Conall was too.”
“Else I wouldn’t have let him go home.” Gwen pressed her lips together for a moment. “I do hope he’s all right.”
“I imagine he’s in Dublin, spying on Godfrid,” Gareth said—and then at Gwen’s startled look, he laughed. “I gave him a letter of introduction. Dublin is subordinate to Leinster right now, so no harm should come to either of them when they meet.”
“For now,” Evan growled. “You know it’s only a matter of time until things fall apart over there.”
“Godfrid is focused on overthrowing Ottar, not Diarmait MacMurchada,” Gareth said.
Gwen put a hand to her belly, making Gareth think about his promise to Godfrid to stand with him when it came time to claim his birthright. Hopefully, that time could wait until after the new baby was born in the autumn, at which point it would be a bad time of year to brave the Irish Sea anyway. What would be best and most convenient for Gareth was if Godfrid could bide his time for another year.
In short order, they arrived at the monastery and dismounted on the cobbles. The community here was large and prosperous, as befitting its patronage by the King of Deheubarth, much as the community at Llanfaes had benefitted from close association with the kings of Gwynedd. Unusually for a monastery in Gareth’s experience, the builders had aimed for beauty as well as functionality, and the church and buildings were adorned with stone flourishes on the outside, wooden carvings on the inside, and fancy ironwork, even in the design of the sconces that held the courtyard’s torches.
They’d also used different colored stones to create patterns in the walkways, and, in the center of the courtyard, gray river rock was interspersed with red to create a giant cross on the ground. Though beautiful, it had the side effect of making it take twice as long to cross the courtyard as it would have otherwise done, since none of the monks would walk on the cross and made a point of going around.
To Gareth’s amusement, Evan had no time for such affectation and dismounted right in the center of the cross. He insisted that Abbot Rhys, had he been with them, would have done the same. While Gareth could admit Abbot Rhys was an eminently practical man, he was also a man of God. Thus, the rest of them milled around the edges, and a moment later two stable boys ran out to take their horses. Evan then led them on foot around the outside of the church, through a gate, and into the cemetery. As in most churches that served both a monastery and a village, lay folk could access the church from the west without having to enter the monastery proper.
They crossed the grass until they reached the body, over which a monk was bent. Gareth blinked back the feeling he’d been here before. For a moment, the monk could have been Abbot Rhys, and they could have been back in St. Asaph. He wasn’t, of course, but that wasn’t to say the circumstances weren’t familiar. Here they were again, in a monastery, facing the body of a man who’d died by another’s hand.
Then the monk straightened, and the moment passed. Other than the robe he wore, the hood of which he pushed back as he turned to look at Gareth and Gwen, the monk looked nothing like Rhys except for the age he’d achieved and his station. In his middle fifties, Abbot Mathew was short, slender, and completely bald. Gareth had met him briefly when they’d arrived at Dinefwr, but then Mathew had left them in the hands of the hospitaler, and Gareth hadn’t seen the abbot since.
“Deliver me from workers of iniquity and bloody men,” Abbot Mathew said by way of a greeting. He’d quoted a psalm, and not one Gareth often—not to say ever—had heard a churchman recite.
Gareth’s first impression of the abbot had been that he was scholarly, but also officious and not a man of the world. He’d been prepared to be gracious, but at the same time determined that Abbot Mathew leave them to themselves to take care of the investigation without interference. Now, however, Gareth revised his initial impression. Mathew might not be the soldier and spy Rhys had once been, but the abbot’s wry tone had carried the echo of Gareth’s friend, so he added the next line. “For lo, they lie in wait for my soul.”
Mathew pressed his lips together, his eyes on Gareth’s own. “You have studied.”
“I was taught to read by a community of nuns, and the psalms were among my most memorable lessons.”
“Your prince implied I might benefit from your assistance in this matter.” Abbot Mathew’s eyes glinted as he studied Gareth. “I confess I am quite out of my depth.”
“That is no crime,” Gareth said. “There was a time when I would have been too.”
Mathew looked down at the body, his expression rueful. “I have thought often of the words of that psalm of late. These are troubled times.”
“I suspect Sir Robert would agree with you.” Gareth crouched beside the body.
Mathew looked on from above him. “I checked to see if he was dead, but otherwise did not move him.”
Sir Robert lay face down in the grass. He wore the garments of a soldier, including full armor, rather than the festival clothes he’d been wearing in the great hall. He’d changed sometime between leaving the hall and being murdered, which indicated to Gareth that he might not have trusted the person he was meeting in the graveyard, if that in fact was what he’d been doing here. The cause of death seemed plain, even at first glance: the iron-gray hair at the back of his head was matted with blood. He’d been bashed on the back of the head with enough force to break his skull.
He’d never had a chance.
The grass beneath the body was smashed down flat, and though head wounds often bled profusely, there was very little blood on the ground. Either the body had been moved or he’d died nearly instantly, since, of course, once the heart stopped beating, a body no longer bled.
“How did you know not to move him, Father?” Gwen asked the abbot. Without needing Gareth to instruct her, she began to move around the body, looking for anything the murderer might have dropped. In particular, Gareth would like the blunt weapon that had felled him from behind. Llelo copied her, except that he followed a line a few paces farther away from the body, but circling it too.
Gareth glanced up in time to see Mathew direct a sad smile in Gwen’s direction. “I was in Aberystwyth for Prince Hywel’s eisteddfod last summer. The music was wonderful—the murders less so. But in the course of the week, I became acquainted with Prior Rhys from St. Kentigern’s monastery in St. Asaph.”
As Rhys had been much in Gareth’s thoughts since he’d arrived, he nodded his head. “He’s abbot now.”
Mathew’s eyes lit. “I didn’t know. You must congratulate him for me when you see him next.”
“I’m not so sure he’d say congratulations were in order,” Gwen said.
Abbot Mathew gave a single bark of a laugh before clasping his hands before him and sobering once again. “Sir Robert will be much missed. I k
now the king is much troubled by the poisoning, and he will be even more so now.”
“I understand Sir Robert was serving the Earl of Pembroke these days,” Gwen said.
“Earl Gilbert asked him to instruct his eldest son, Richard.”
Gareth bobbed his chin in acknowledgement. “I met him.”
“He is a credit to his sire,” Abbot Mathew said, though his voice was curiously neutral.
Gareth glanced up at him, but when Mathew didn’t elaborate on his observation, Gareth sat back on his heels. “I was hoping to speak to Robert today of Meicol, the first of the men to fall last night. Robert trained him too.”
Llelo spoke for the first time. “If that’s the case, it is in my mind that someone didn’t want you to speak to him.”
Gareth’s brow furrowed. “Nobody knew of my intent but Richard, and he would hardly have suggested I speak to Robert if he was only going to murder him later.” He shook his head. “Robert had to have known something, however.”
“It’s hard to imagine otherwise, given that he’s dead,” Evan said.
Gareth motioned with his head towards the body, so Evan approached, and the two men carefully rolled Robert onto his back.
Evan bent to put his hand to the flattened grass that had been beneath the body. “It’s dry.”
Abbot Mathew looked on with interest. “What does that mean?”
“It means he died before the grass was wet with dew.” Llelo had certainly been paying attention the last few years.
Gareth lifted Robert’s arm and gently set it down again. Here at nine hours or so into the new day, the man’s body was warm but stiff—so stiff Gareth had difficulty moving the arm at all.
“Can you tell when he died?” Abbot Mathew asked, showing that he too knew something about death, if not murder.
“I saw him in the hall yesterday evening, after Meicol fell,” Gareth said. “Was he there afterwards?”
“I did not seem him,” Evan said thoughtfully. “Perhaps he left with Lord Maurice’s men.”
“That would be before the dessert was served.” Gwen frowned. “Surely he couldn’t be the poisoner and have been … running away?”
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