The Unexpected Ally

by Sarah Woodbury

  Finally, Hywel stepped to the fore again. His expression was somber, and his hands were clasped behind his back, but Gareth knew him well enough after all these years to know what the tightness in his shoulders meant. He wasn’t fearful—he was excited, and if he’d allowed himself to show it, he would have been bouncing on the balls of his feet.

  Hywel looked down at the floor while the room quieted, and then he let the silence lengthen. Gareth reminded himself that Hywel had begun performing for audiences larger than this, testing the temperature of a room and his effect on the people gathered before him, from when he was nine years old when his incredible voice had manifested itself. He’d become expert at reading a crowd before he’d become a man. Gareth let out a breathless sigh, forcing his shoulders to relax and telling himself that he needed to trust his prince. If anyone knew what he was doing in such circumstances, it was Hywel.

  The prince looked up. “For the moment, I am willing to put aside Gwynedd’s accusation against Powys that King Madog ordered his men to kill me just over a week ago. It is an accusation that Powys hasn’t even bothered to deny. But if dispensing with the current matter of the treachery of the captain of my guard, Sir Gareth, is necessary before we can discuss the true matter at hand, then so be it.” He turned to Abbot Rhys. “First, I want to make clear that Gareth was in no way involved in the payment of these men, Rhodri among them. If I prove that, I believe that it will go a long way towards proving that Rhodri was paid by a third party with the intent to impugn Gareth’s—and my father’s—name. Are we agreed?”

  Rhys lifted both hands to the conclave. “I am agreed. What say you?”

  General murmurs of approval swept around the room with many nodded heads, even among the men of Powys. A waft of cool air swept across Gareth’s neck, and he glanced behind him to the door to see Conall slip in late and find a place among Hywel’s men. He met Gareth’s eyes and made a fist, implying that all was well, or so Gareth hoped that’s what the signal meant in Irish. He turned back to face the front.

  Rhys looked at Madog. “What says Powys?”

  Madog was looking murderous, but he nodded jerkily. “Agreed, if the logic is sound.”

  Hywel clenched his hands into fists down at his sides, and then relaxed them. “I call first Lord Bergam of Dyffryn Ceiriog!”

  Gareth blinked as his old employer rose to his feet and made his way down to where Hywel waited. He stopped beside Hywel, clearly puzzled at being called forward. “My lord?”

  “Lord Bergam, you employed Sir Gareth for a time some years ago. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, my lord, for a short while.”

  “I understand that he left your service after an incident involving your son.”

  Bergam wasn’t liking where this was going, but the truth was required in court, not to mention on holy ground, and he told it. “Yes.”

  “Did Gareth tell you why he was leaving?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell us?”

  Now Bergam canted his head to one side, as it dawned on him what he was expected to say, but again, he didn’t balk at saying it. “Gareth told me that honor wasn’t lost in a day. It was lost over weeks and years of taking the path that was easy rather than the one that was right. He said he hadn’t left Prince Cadwaladr’s service only to find himself beholden to another man who didn’t know the difference between right and wrong, and while he didn’t claim to have God’s ear, he knew enough of the difference to know that he couldn’t stomach another moment in my son’s presence. If he had to starve, so be it. He’d go to hell for his own deeds, not for standing by while another man paved the way.”

  While Bergam was speaking, Gareth kept his eyes on the floor. When he’d left Cadwaladr’s service, he’d been afraid. The day he’d left Bergam’s, however, he’d been angrier than he’d ever been in his life, and he’d allowed his temper to get the better of him. He’d known he was going to be on his own again, but he’d felt he’d had no choice.

  Evan laughed low in Gareth’s ear. “By God, I do believe he’s telling the truth.”

  “What did you reply?” Hywel said.

  “I told him he was a smarmy, self-righteous son-of-a-bitch and he could take his holier-than-thou attitude and get out of my sight.” Bergam immediately put out a hand to Abbot Rhys and bowed. “My apologies, Father.”

  “Will you tell the conclave what your son did that Gareth wouldn’t countenance?” Hywel said.

  “He took a girl against her will before her wedding day.”

  The silence in the room was so profound, Gareth himself couldn’t breathe or swallow. He hadn’t told more than a handful of people what had made him leave, less not to shame Bergam and his son, but because he was ashamed to have ever stood at the son’s side. God knows he wasn’t a saint, but truth be told, leaving Cadwaladr and Bergam hadn’t been all that hard once he saw what he had to do. Standing up to outright sin was easy. It was standing up to it when it was far subtler that was the challenge—and not a challenge that Gareth felt he always adequately met.

  “Where is your son now?” Hywel said.

  “He died at the retreat from Lincoln, in the service of Empress Maud.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Conall

  Gruffydd bumped Conall’s shoulder. “Good that you’re here. Gareth might need you.”

  Conall coughed. “I’m not bored yet.”

  “You’re never bored.”

  Conall smirked, since what Gruffydd said was most likely true. Conall found the poor behavior of people endlessly fascinating. His time in Wales had so far been an education. And peace conference or legal court, the conclave was something Conall recognized, because his people had a similar system of settling disputes. In his duties for Diarmait, even though he hadn’t been the one to do the actual investigating, he’d testified against murderers before and expected to do so again. This was the first Welsh court he’d been in, but he understood their laws to be not far off in principle from his own.

  Having gained his audience’s attention with Bergam’s riveting testimony, Hywel moved on to his next witness. “I call Lord Morgan and Father Alun to the floor.”

  Gruffydd tilted his chin to look up at the ceiling, a slight smile on his lips. “This will be good. Just watch.”

  “I believe you.” Conall so far had had no trouble watching. He’d known from his first meeting with Gareth that here was a man who couldn’t be bought. He might be tested, as all men were tested, but in the end he could be relied upon. Madog never should have chosen him as the man against whom his case should be made. But then, Madog had been shocked by Hywel’s questioning of Bergam. Maybe he didn’t know Gareth at all. Maybe the choice of Gareth for the man to take the fall for Wrexham had not been his decision.

  Instead of watching Hywel as he began his questioning of the two men he’d brought to the front, Conall kept his eyes alternately on Madog and his wife, Susanna, who sat in the row behind him. If Gareth’s foster son was right that it had been she who had met Derwena last night, then her testimony might be the key to everything. Chances were, however, that she would not testify against her husband, if the conversation ever turned to the attempted murder of Hywel—or the slave ring in Shrewsbury. Even if Conall had known her once, he knew her no longer, and she had no reason to tell him what she knew about Erik’s death.

  Then again, he hadn’t asked either.

  To the conclave’s silent witness, Alun and Morgan related a tale of mistaken identity and false trails, preposterous on the surface but relentless in the telling. It left the listeners with no doubt that the man who’d met with Rhodri in November in Corwen was the imposter, not Gareth himself.

  Throughout the tale, Madog’s expression grew more ruddy, as if he was holding his breath, though more likely it was his temper that he was reining in. Meanwhile, Susanna’s expression grew more serene. It was only as Hywel reached the end of his questioning and Morgan and Alun drew their tale to its conclusion that it dawned not
only on Conall but on even the daftest listener where this was leading.

  The man who’d looked like Gareth had been hired by Prince Cadwaladr, whose name Conall was already sick of hearing, as a ruse in his negotiations with the Earl of Chester. It was no leap at all to wonder if it had been Prince Cadwaladr who’d paid that same imposter to hire Rhodri and the other men to sack Wrexham—all in an attempt to bring down his brother and gather to himself a sack of silver while he was at it.

  “For my next witness, I call Conall, nephew to Diarmait mac Murchada, King of Leinster.”

  That caused a buzz in the room. Conall pulled on his ear as he made his way to the front. “Lords.” He bowed to the audience and then looked expectantly at Hywel. This was a new side to the prince, and he could only marvel that Hywel had his audience eating out of the palm of his hand like a tamed horse.

  “Can you tell me where Gareth was on the fifteenth of March?”

  Conall didn’t hesitate to answer. “He was tied up with me in an old mill in Shrewsbury.”

  That was news to almost everyone. Those involved had kept their mouths closed about both their adventures and their injuries, and that discretion was paying off now.

  “What were you doing in Shrewsbury?” Hywel asked.

  Conall gave an involuntary rumble deep in his chest. This was not going to be what Madog, for one, wanted to hear. “I had been sent by my king to track down a band of slavers who’d been stealing women from Leinster. Instead I found a conspiracy run by men of Powys, incited by King Madog and Prince Cadwaladr, selling women from Powys as a means of generating silver quickly.”

  Conall’s words rang around the room, and the silence couldn’t have been more complete. Hywel’s eyes were alight with triumph, though he had so far managed to keep the emotion out of his face as a whole. Then everyone started talking at once. Madog was on his feet, shouting, his face so red Conall was afraid he would expire on the spot. Rhys had his hands raised, trying to quiet everyone down.

  Then, into the uproar rose Susanna, Queen of Powys. Chin high, she left her seat and walked to stand in front of Hywel. Her voice rang out, and if the men in the room missed the first few words, they didn’t miss the conclusion.

  “You need to stop this, Hywel. If the time for telling the truth is here, then here it is: this is all my doing. Madog didn’t have a hand in any of these things of which he is accused. To allow you to think it for a moment longer would be to perpetuate a lie.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Hywel

  Hywel looked at his aunt with what he hoped was an unreadable expression. He never had any intention of calling her as a witness, because he would never ask her to testify against her own husband—or in Hywel’s favor, which might well have been worse. He would never betray her trust that way.

  As it was, she was standing before him, and he made a welcoming gesture with one hand. “By all means, aunt. The floor is yours.” He backed away, moving not behind her, however, but more towards the semi-circle of seats so that he could watch her face. The tension in the room was such that one misstep because he misunderstood the situation could ruin all.

  Susanna gave him a piercing look before turning to face the other men in the room. Every one of them, including her own husband, was staring at her with a stricken expression.

  “Susanna!” Madog had been on his feet already, and now he took a step towards his wife. But if it had been a blade, the look Susanna gave him would have sliced him in half. Hywel had not found Susanna to be an assertive wife, but in this she was unbending. Madog put up both hands and tipped his head as if to say, “All right. Do what you must.” He sat down again, and with his capitulation, the entire delegation from Powys sat too.

  After that, the room quieted quickly, without Rhys needing to do or say anything. When she had the full attention of her audience, Susanna lifted her chin and began to speak. “You have heard testimony today that has shocked you.” She nodded. “I understand your dismay at the events of the last few months. But what you think you know—” she gestured to Hywel, “—what has been revealed here is only part of the truth. The missing piece to this puzzle is that I, and I alone, am responsible for not only the sacking of Wrexham but the slave ring as well.”

  An indrawn breath of shocked silence followed this announcement. Hywel might have expected a clamor, but everyone just stared at Susanna instead while she looked back with calm eyes and an easy assurance. For his part, Hywel couldn’t stay silent and moved closer. “Aunt, surely you can’t expect us to believe—”

  She whirled on him, her finger pointing, and shook it in his face. “Be quiet, Hywel. You don’t know everything.”

  This time in the face of her ire, when he stepped back, he held up both hands, like he might if he was showing an enemy he was unarmed. “Yes, aunt. But please don’t do this.”

  His aunt glared at him. “Father Rhys, if Hywel interrupts again, the law dictates that he should be removed from the room, is that right?”

  Rhys glided closer. “Yes, my lady.”

  “See to it.” She bit off the last word.

  Hywel backed away far enough that he was within arm’s length of his father, who reached out a hand to him. “Let her be, son. You’ve done all that you can.”

  As the little drama among the family members of Gwynedd’s royal house had gone on, Madog had remained in his seat, his expression blank. As Hywel looked at his uncle, he realized that Madog hadn’t expected this from Susanna either. He had thought she was going to betray him, and instead she was prepared to take the blame for everything he had done.

  Which she proceeded to do. “You must understand that what I did, I did for love of my husband and my brother, Cadwaladr.”

  At the mention of the prince’s name, a murmur, louder than any before, swept around the room. Susanna was making a woman’s argument, which was somewhat disappointing to Hywel, but it was one that the men in the room were predisposed to believe.

  “Even though Cadwaladr is my older brother, I have felt much of the time like a mother to him. I am not in any way going to apologize for Cadwaladr’s crimes, of which he has committed many. I know that my brother, Owain, has overlooked Cadwaladr’s misdeeds many times, and when presented with his exile, I could do no less.”

  Hywel felt his father stir beside him, but he didn’t speak. Susanna was right, of course, and if Owain had known that his overlarge heart would lead to this, he might have reconsidered his treatment of his brother. Hywel could be thankful that while she claimed responsibility for the slave ring and the thefts, she didn’t say that it was she who’d found the man to impersonate Gareth or had anything to do with Rhun’s death. Even she couldn’t come up with a convincing argument as to how she’d managed that.

  “I know my brother well—” and here again she was referring to Owain, not Cadwaladr, “—and he loathed the need to choose between Cadwaladr and his kingdom. He did what was necessary in exiling him. I understand that—” she shot Owain a look of apology, “—but with nobody to turn to Cadwaladr came to me. I could not refuse to help him, especially when the men he might go to for help might be so very much worse.”

  Hywel knew without her needing to articulate who those men might be: men like Ranulf, Earl of Chester, his wife’s uncle, to whom Cadwaladr had gone so often in the past; and the earls of Lincoln, Pembroke, and Hertford, siblings or close relations of his wife, Alice, and powerful Norman magnates in their own right. Or even the son of Robert of Gloucester, the most powerful man in England aside from King Stephen. Robert’s body and, more importantly, his mind, were fading. Ranulf, who was married to Robert’s daughter, had wormed his way back into his good graces, which would never have happened if he were well.

  “I could not put all Wales at risk because of Cadwaladr’s ambition.” Again, she threw a look of apology at her brother. So far, she hadn’t looked at Madog once, not even with a flick of the eyes—and Hywel had been watching for it. “It is I who must do penance for these crimes
that have been enumerated here. It is I who arranged for my husband’s men to murder Hywel rather than allow my nephew to uncover what I was helping Cadwaladr do in Shrewsbury. It is I who am to blame for the sacking at Wrexham, which was another attempt to fund my brother’s exile.” She turned fully to face King Owain. “Madog would go to war rather than let me be exposed and shamed, but I cannot see the two men I love the most kill each other over something I have done. Owain, you know I am equally in a position to do all these things of which you have accused my husband. It is I who deserve your anger, not Madog. It is I who must beg forgiveness and pay sarhad. Please be at peace, Madog and Owain.”

  Complete silence greeted this statement. Even Abbot Rhys seemed struck dumb by her confession. Hywel, for once, had nothing to say. His aunt had swept all arguments from the table.

  And so it was that Hywel’s father was the first man to rise to his feet—as in truth he should have been, and as was his right. He moved to stand in front of Susanna, blocking the view of most of the men in the room, though still not of Hywel, who sat a few seats to one side of center.

  The king looked down at his sister for a long moment, and then he reached for her and pulled her into his arms.

  After that, there was no more talk of war. There couldn’t be. But that didn’t mean that every question had been answered. In fact, as far as Hywel was concerned, no questions had been answered. By taking the blame for her husband’s actions, Susanna had brought peace to Wales and cut short the conference, but Hywel still had a dead spy whose murderer was either lying alongside him or remained at large. And that didn’t even touch upon the theft of St. Asaph’s treasury, which Hywel believed now had been spawned by the sacking of Wrexham.