The Unexpected Ally

by Sarah Woodbury

  “How can you say you didn’t kill Erik when you have his things?”

  “Because I didn’t kill him. I witnessed his murder. To his credit, Erik fought back. He managed to stab his companion, but not before he himself was so weakened, he couldn’t fight anymore. While they were arguing, I took the bag.”

  The calm way he denied the murder but confessed to thievery was disconcerting. She also didn’t know that she believed him. Jerome could have been stabbed in the back in a fight with Erik, but she found it equally likely that Anselm had done it himself, either in defense of Erik or so he could take the bag without resistance. Regardless of whether or not Anselm was telling her the truth, she was determined to continue asking questions, to keep him here as long as possible and to distract him. “Why would his companion kill him?”

  “Why does any man kill another?” Anselm tsked through his teeth. “Greed. They were arguing about money, or the apportionment of money that was yet to be made. Erik’s friend wanted more, and Erik wanted out. He’d fallen in with a common thief and lost his life because of it. He used to be smarter.”

  Gwen didn’t know about that, but the Erik she’d known had had a strong sense of self-preservation. Not enough of one, apparently. “Why were you there at all?”

  “Erik and I had arranged to meet in the barn, so he could give me the letter to King Cadell. Before I could show myself, Erik’s killer surprised him.”

  “Why didn’t you bury the bodies, or hide them, or … or something? You could have disappeared, and nobody would ever have been the wiser.”

  Anselm scoffed. “Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a body on short notice? Really get rid of it?” He shook his head. “Better to leave things as they were.” He eyed her sourly. “I didn’t know about your husband—or you—at the time. I left Erik in the trough where he died and piled hay on the other fellow, who’d managed to crawl back into the barn to nurse his wound, but then bled out where he lay. You’ll have to find someone else to blame for the fire. Your husband neglected to leave a watch in case the culprit returned to the scene of his crime.” He cocked his head at her. “I imagine he won’t make that mistake again.”

  Then he stepped closer, true menace emanating from him for the first time. He held out his hand. “I need my letters back.”

  Without arguing, Gwen handed him the bundle of letters. He quickly went through them, taking out the ones he wanted and tossing the rest onto the bed. Then, he grabbed the bag from where it lay beside her and stuffed his bundle into it.

  Gwen kept both hands up, knowing she couldn’t keep him any longer. He knew better than to stay when Hywel and Gareth, not to mention Abbot Rhys, could return at any time.

  He backed towards the door. “It was a pleasure doing business with you, Gwen. I haven’t met many women quite like you. Give my regards to your lord.” Anselm saluted her with a hand to his temple—and then was gone.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Gareth

  Gareth, Hywel, and Abbot Rhys found Gwen still in Anselm’s room a quarter of an hour later. She was sitting on the bed, looking forlorn, a pile of letters in her lap.

  “Cariad, what happened?”

  Gwen looked up and her eyes widened. Gareth looked down at himself and for the first time realized he was covered in blood. “It’s all right, love. It isn’t mine.” He tugged the surcoat off over his head, exposing his mail armor, and dropped the bloody fabric to the floor. Then he knelt in front of her and took her hands in his. “What are you doing in Anselm’s room? Something—something else—has gone wrong?”

  Gwen let out a breath and looked down, and Gareth knew her well enough to know that she was fighting tears. “Gone wrong, yes. Though I suppose in a way it’s gone right too.” She raised her head, and when she looked at him, and then past him to Hywel, her eyes were clear. “You lost a man?”

  Gareth nodded wearily and told her what had befallen them at the bandits’ hideout. “Lwc and the other survivors are being taken to King Owain’s camp. It’s better that we keep no more criminals here.”

  “The last few days haven’t been good for my flock.” Rhys gestured to indicate the room. “Though I’m thinking what you’ve discovered won’t be either. I almost hate to ask what you are doing in Anselm’s room.”

  Gwen sighed. “It’s the last piece of the puzzle.” Then she related her conversation with Anselm.

  As she told the men about giving up the letters that proved who Anselm was, Gareth pulled her into his arms. “You couldn’t do anything else, cariad. He claimed not to have murdered Jerome, but I don’t believe him. He could have killed you too.”

  “I know. I knew it at the time—” she pulled away enough to reach into her purse and pull out Hywel’s ring. “You’ll want this back, my lord.”

  Hywel took the ring and clenched it in his fist. He held the packet of letters in his other hand.

  “I’m tempted to ask you to throw those in the fire,” Rhys said. “The last thing we need is more disunity.”

  Hywel held them out to the abbot. “Do it.”

  Rhys put up a hand, his expression rueful. “I have kept secrets and lived lies for most of my life, but I am not that man anymore. Gwen is right that you need to keep them. Your father’s rule is precarious because of Cadwaladr’s actions. King Owain needs to know who his enemies are.”

  “They circle round him, nipping at his heels like wild dogs.” Gareth moved to sit beside Gwen on Anselm’s bed and kept his arm around her.

  Meanwhile, Hywel weighed the packet of letters in his hand. “Cadwaladr implicates these lords simply by writing to them. Some of them were here at the peace conference, ostensibly on my father’s side.”

  “Is our final conclusion that Erik betrayed you, my lord?” Gareth said.

  “I don’t think so,” Hywel said. “He may have been involved with the sacking at Wrexham, but Lwc also said that he was angry about the bandits turning their sights on St. Kentigern’s, and I’m convinced now more than ever that Aunt Susanna meant for me to find them at her farm. She couldn’t tell me outright about her husband’s misdeeds, but she could help me stop them.”

  “You believe Lwc that it was Jerome who was working for Madog, not Erik?” Gwen said.

  “Erik was working for Susanna, and now that I think back to my conversation with her, more to the point, he was working for Alice. And perhaps it was Alice all along to whom he gave his allegiance. Just because Cadwaladr let him go does not mean that he turned his back on her.”

  “He shouldn’t have accepted your patronage,” Gareth said.

  “He certainly shouldn’t have,” Hywel said, “but again, looking back, I can see how he thought he might serve me and her at the same time. Alice would have wanted to know Cadwaladr’s whereabouts too, and who’s to say she herself wasn’t looking to Ireland for support for Cadwaladr’s cause, as Cadwaladr did four years ago.”

  “What are you going to do about the letters?” Gwen said.

  “Now that war with Powys is averted for a time, I think I will go to Anglesey. I’d like to know that my aunt is settled comfortably.”

  “Which aunt?” Gareth said.

  “Both.” Hywel held up the letters. “I will personally deliver Alice’s to her.”

  “What about Anselm and King Cadell?” Gwen said.

  Prince Hywel shook his head. “I am perturbed to learn that King Cadell has been meddling in Gwynedd’s affairs. I had said that I wanted you to go to Dolwyddelan, Gwen, and I do, but now I think that after Anglesey, Gareth and I will join you—and from there we will all go on to Ceredigion.”

  “You think there’s more to Anselm’s story than he told me, don’t you?” Gwen said.

  “Oh yes,” Hywel said. “Of that I have no doubt.”

  The End

  Thank you for reading The Unexpected Ally! It is readers like you who make my job the best in the world. For more information about medieval Wales, my other books, or to sign up to be notified whenever I have a new re
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  Continue reading for the opening of The Last Pendragon, the first novella in The Last Pendragon Saga, set in dark age Wales.

  The Last Pendragon

  Rhiann knows that demons walk the night. She has been taught to fear them. But from the moment Cade is dragged before her father's throne, beaten and having lost all of his men to her father's treachery, he stirs something inside her that she has never felt before. When Cade is revealed to be not only Arthur's heir but touched by the sidhe, Rhiann must choose between the life she left behind and the one before her--and how much she is willing to risk to follow her heart.

  Kingdom of Gwynedd

  655 AD

  Rhiann

  The smell of smoke and sweat filled the hall, mingling with the overlay of roast pig and boiled vegetables. More soldiers than usual sat at the long tables, here to celebrate their victory. The mood was subdued, however, not the wild jubilation that sometimes accompanied triumph and caused Rhiann’s father to lock her in her room in case he couldn’t control the men.

  Today, the drinking had begun in earnest the moment the men had returned from the fight and settled into a steady rhythm Rhiann had never quite seen before. Here and there, a hand clenched a cross hung around the neck or an amulet against the powers of darkness, that should her father see, might mean death for that soldier. For a man to ask the gods for protection instead of the Christ meant he was less afraid of the King of Gwynedd than someone, or perhaps something, else. Rhiann had been afraid of her father her whole life and couldn’t imagine fearing another more, not even the demons that were said to walk the night, hungering for men’s souls.

  Perspiration trickled down the back of Rhiann’s dress, made of the finest blue wool that her father had gotten in trade from merchants on the continent. Welsh wool, while plentiful, was courser than that of sheep raised in warmer climates. The Saxon threat was enough to keep the Cymry within their own borders, but the sailors still took to the western seas, bringing in trade goods of wine, finely wrought cloth, metalwork, and pottery.

  For once, Rhiann’s father, King Cadfael of Gwynedd, had eaten little and drunk less. For her own preservation, Rhiann had always been sensitive to his moods and noted the exact instant his disposition changed. He shifted in his seat and rolled his shoulders, like a man preparing for a battle instead of the next course of his meal. A moment later, the big, double doors to the hall creaked open, pushed inward by two of the men who always guarded them. The rain puddled in the courtyard behind them, and Rhiann wished she were out in it instead of here—anywhere but here.

  She kept her place, standing behind and to the left of her father’s chair. It was her duty to tend to his needs at dinner as punishment for her refusal to marry the man he’d chosen for her. Rhiann hadn’t turned the man down because he didn’t love her, or she him; she knew better than to wish for that. It was a hope for mutual respect for which she was holding out. But even this seemed too much to ask for an unloved, bastard daughter. Consequently, Rhiann spent her days as a maidservant, albeit one who worked above stairs. She didn’t regret her station. As the months passed, she’d come to prefer it to sharing space at the table with her father and his increasingly belligerent allies.

  Silence descended on the hall as two of King Cadfael’s men-at-arms entered, dragging between them a young man whose head fell so far forward that no one could see his face. He was visibly collapsed, with his arms dangling over the guards’ shoulders and his feet trailing behind him. As the trio progressed along the aisle between the tables toward the king’s seat, the youth seemed to recover somewhat, getting his feet under him and managing to keep up with their strides. As he came more to himself, he straightened further.

  By the time he reached the dais on which Rhiann’s father sat, he was using the men-at-arms as crutches on either side of him. Because he was significantly taller than they, it was even as if he was hammering them into the ground with his weight. His footsteps rang out more firmly with every stride, echoing from floor to ceiling, matching the drumming of Rhiann’s heart. The closer he got to her father, the harder it became to swallow her tears. By the souls of all the Saints, Cadwaladr, why did you come?

  Rhiann had been her father’s prisoner her whole life, unable to escape his iron hand. The high, wooden palisade that circled Aberffraw had always signified prison walls to her, rather than a means to protect her from the darkness beyond. This young man had grown up on the other side of that wall. He’d not had to enter here. He’d had a choice, but had recklessly thrown that choice away and was now captive, just as she was. She felt herself dying a little inside with every step he took as he approached Cadfael.

  The young man, Cadwaladr, the last of the Pendragons, fixed his eyes on those of the woman sitting beside the King. She was Alcfrith, Cadfael’s wife, taken as bride after the death of Cadwaladr’s father. Rhiann couldn’t see her face, but from the back, the tension was a rod up her spine, and her shoulders were frozen as if in ice.

  “Hello, Mother.” Cadwaladr’s lips were cracked and bleeding, puffy from the beating that had bruised the whole length of him. Rhiann had heard they’d close to killed him, but from the look of him now, he wasn’t yet at death’s door.

  “Son.” Alcfrith’s voice was as stiff as her body.

  Rhiann’s father ranged back in his chair, legs crossed at the ankles to project his calm and deny the importance of the moment. “Foolish whelp. I’d thought you’d put up more of a fight, not that I regret the ease of your defeat. This will allow me to reinforce my eastern border more quickly than I’d thought. Penda will be pleased.”

  “You and I both know why my company was not prepared for battle today,” Cadwaladr said.

  Cadfael shrugged. “Your men are dead and you a shell of a man. What did you think? That the people would welcome you? That I would let you take my lands?”

  “My lands,” Cadwaladr said.

  Rhiann’s father sneered his contempt. He reached out an arm to Alcfrith and massaged the back of her neck. She didn’t bend to him. If anything, the tension in her increased. “You meet your death tomorrow, as proof of your ignobility.”

  Cadfael waved his hand to Rhiann, signaling her to refill his cup of wine and that the interview was over. She obeyed, of course, stepping forward with her carafe. The guards tugged on Cadwaladr, but as he moved, Rhiann glanced up and met his eyes. It was only for a heartbeat, but in that space it seemed to Rhiann that they were the only ones in the room. She expected to see desperation and fear in him, or at the very least, pain. Instead, she saw understanding. She could hardly credit it. When had she ever known that?

  “You’re wrong, Father,” Rhiann said, as the guards hauled Cadwaladr away. “Cadwaladr comes to us as a defeated prisoner, and yet, he has more honor, more nobility, than any other man in this room.”

  “He is the Pendragon,” Alcfrith said, with more starch in her voice than Rhiann had heard in many years. “Cadfael can’t change that, even by killing him.”

  Rhiann’s father snorted a laugh into his cup before draining it. He didn’t even slap the women down, so sure was he of his own omnipotence. “You may keep your dreams.” He pushed himself to his feet and turned to leave. “The dragon is chained; the prophecy dead.”

  Rhiann had heard about Cadwaladr her whole life. As a child, men in Cadfael’s court had spoken of him as if he were a demon from the Underworld, or worse, a Saxon, coming to steal their home like a thief in the night. Later on, as she began to piece the story together, she realized that he was only a little older than she was, twenty-two now to her twenty, and their words said more about their own fears than Cadwaladr’s power.

  Rhiann’s father had married Cadwaladr’s mother after Cadwallon’s death in battle, many miles from Aberffraw. The High Council of Wales had wanted peace in Gwynedd, in order to focus the c
oncerted attention of all the native British rulers on the threat of the encroaching Saxons. Throughout Rhiann’s life, the Saxon kingdoms had been growing in number and power. Two centuries before, the British kings had invited them in, but once here, could not control them. The Saxons had overrun nearly all of what had been British lands only a few generations before.

  By now, everyone knew that the Saxons wouldn’t ever return to their ancestral lands across the water. Her father, Cadfael, and Cadwallon before him, had allied with Penda of Mercia, but it had left a sour taste in the collective mouth of their people. All the Cymry knew that it was only a matter of time before the Saxons turned their gaze covetously on Wales.

  The Council had settled upon Cadfael as the man to impose peace amid the chaos of constant war, provided Alcfrith agreed to the marriage. Rhiann suspected that agreed was too generous a word, and like most noble women, Alcfrith had had little choice in the matter. While the High Kingship had never materialized, and he didn’t even rule all Gwynedd like Cadwallon before him, Cadfael did control a significant piece of it: Cadwaladr’s birthright, as he’d said.

  What Alcfrith had not done upon her marriage was give up her son, instead sending him away to be raised by another. Rhiann’s father had raged at Alcfrith time and again, demanding to know to whom she’d given him. Alcfrith had refused to say, and perhaps that was the bargain she’d made—safety for her son, in exchange for her allegiance.

  And now Cadwaladr was here, walking into the lion’s den, although not quite of his own accord. Cadfael had spies everywhere and had known of his coming. The story he’d put out was that Cadwaladr’s small band had forded the Menai Strait and met Cadfael’s army just shy of Bryn Celliddu. Cadfael hadn’t even bothered to meet the force himself, instead delegating the task to lesser men.