The Renegade Merchant

by Sarah Woodbury

  Hywel didn’t see how it was possible for Cadifor to know about the role he’d played in disrupting his sister’s marriage to the King of Deheubarth, but somehow he seemed to. Or he’d been guessing, and Hywel had just given himself away. Hywel would have laughed right then and there at his foster father’s audacity in bringing up the issue in this moment, but they’d reached the high table at the far end of the hall, and King Madog had risen to his feet, requiring Hywel to make the necessary obeisance.

  “Uncle.”

  “Nephew.”

  Then Aunt Susanna left her seat and came around the table to embrace him and speak in his ear, “I am so sorry about Rhun.”

  Hywel found himself squeezing his aunt tightly. “Thank you.”

  She was slender and blonde, much the same in appearance as Hywel’s sister, Elen. Hywel thought Elen was happier, however, having recently married a lord from Lleyn instead of the king for whom she’d been originally intended. At one point, there had been talk about marrying her to Cadell, the current King of Deheubarth, but nothing had ever come of it.

  Susanna released him and stepped back, a small smile on her lips. “We are all proud of the man you’ve become.”

  Hywel felt himself undone. His aunt might be the Queen of Powys, but she was a mother too, and understood his heart almost as well as Hywel himself, whose own mother had died at his birth.

  Susanna patted his hand. “We’ll talk later.”

  Hywel returned his gaze to Madog. “Uncle, we have taken Mold from Ranulf.”

  Madog was a man of middle age and middle stature, ten years older at least than his wife, with dark hair shot with gray and shaved clean like a noble Norman. He had several sons, though Hywel didn’t see any of his cousins in the hall tonight.

  Madog had a stare, too, that was hard both to look at and to look away from. Not for the first time, Hywel wondered how his aunt had made the best of a bad situation, and if she loved her husband at all. He hoped, for her sake, that her marriage was like that of many nobles, meaning a bit of both.

  “I am honored that you would have ridden all this way to tell me this,” Madog said.

  “It seemed the proper thing to do, seeing as how Gwynedd now occupies your northern border,” Hywel said, and then hurried on because his choice of words hadn’t been the most politic. “I assure you my father has no intention of bringing his forces any farther south.”

  “Today, anyway,” Madog said dryly.

  Hywel didn’t try to deny it. “As you say. I ask for your hospitality for tonight only. We will be off early tomorrow.”

  “Again, I thank you for bringing the news of the fall of Mold to me in person,” Madog said, “but surely the news could have been sent by a messenger?”

  Hywel could have lied outright, but in the end, chose not to. He wore Rhun’s shoes now, and his brother would not have lied. “We journey south.”

  A flash of irritation appeared in his uncle’s eyes. “May I ask to what end?”

  “Shrewsbury, my lord,” Hywel said, “on business for my father.”

  That was a lie, and Hywel mentally shrugged off the admonition he heard in his head in Rhun’s voice, telling himself he wasn’t going to fill his brother’s shoes overnight.

  His foster father stirred beside him, recognizing as Hywel had, the animosity in Madog’s expression, but then he settled back on his heels.

  Hywel was careful to keep his hand away from the hilt of his sword. He clasped his hands behind his back to make sure they wouldn’t stray accidently in that direction and bowed again. “Do we have your countenance, my lord?” He hoped that this speedy conclusion to the audience wouldn’t make him appear rude, but he didn’t think prolonging this conversation was going to end well for anyone.

  His uncle didn’t speak for a count of five, which was a terribly long time when one was standing before a lord in his completely silent hall. Then Madog pressed his lips together in an almost-smile. “Of course, nephew. I am delighted you are here and honored that you have given us a chance to provide you with hospitality. Let me say also, now that I have you here in person, that I am sorry for the loss of your brother. He was a valiant warrior. We have been much grieved here.”

  It was his uncle who was lying this time. Hywel was a hundred miles away from Aber, however, and was backed by too few men to call him on it. Lying was part of what lords did. Hywel was generally very good at it and, in the past, had taken pleasure from a verbal back and forth with an adversary.

  Somehow, tonight, the interplay wasn’t nearly as enjoyable. If his father ever woke from his stupor, he might turn his attention to Powys, and Hywel wasn’t looking forward to bringing his men to besiege his uncle’s fort. And yet, he knew that his father couldn’t be sad forever and, when he stopped mourning, it would be anger he would be feeling. That anger would have to find a direction. It was as likely as not that he would direct it outside Gwynedd’s borders.

  Thus, his uncle wasn’t mourning Rhun, not really, because he would know this too. And he would know that Rhun would have been sent against him eventually, just as they both knew that it would be Hywel who would be sent in Rhun’s place.

  “Thank you,” Hywel said.

  “I would hope you might sing later, after you’ve dined,” Madog said. “My people would view me as much remiss if I didn’t ask you.”

  Hywel almost said no, but a quick look at the eager expressions on the faces of the people seated on either side of his uncle, all of whom were looking at him, had him reconsidering. It was the least he could do, especially given the suddenness of his appearance tonight. If nothing else, it might well-dispose his uncle’s people to him. There might come a time when he was glad he’d done his uncle’s bidding.

  Again, Hywel bent his neck to Madog. “Thank you for asking. I would be honored to sing.”

  To Hywel’s relief, he was dismissed.

  “I will ask about Cadwaladr among your uncle’s guardsmen,” Cadifor said in an undertone before he went to his seat next to Cadell at one of the lower tables. “Discreetly. As for you, my lord, don’t let the name pass your lips. Now that you’ve started down this path, better not to give the game away.”

  “Thank you.” Hywel then went to join his aunt and uncle at the high table for what was bound to be an uncomfortable meal, especially since they’d be watching him eat, having already eaten themselves.

  His aunt was gracious, however, sending for more wine and fruit tarts for everyone to enjoy. Hywel had been here often enough in his younger days to know that she didn’t condone a rowdy hall and would ration the wine most evenings, making available only very watered down mead that couldn’t get a four-year-old drunk.

  “How is Mari?” Aunt Susanna said as Hywel sat down next to her.

  “She is well, aunt,” Hywel said. “We have two sons now, who keep her busy.”

  “When did you see her last?” Susanna said, understanding, as she could, being a wife of a king, the long separations of a noble marriage.

  “It has been a mere two weeks,” Hywel said. “She had been in Ceredigion, but she and the boys now reside at my castle at Dolwyddelan.”

  Susanna laughed. “I hope it’s in better condition than when I last saw it!”

  “Rhun saw to that,” Hywel said.

  Susanna pressed her lips together. Their shared grief was just below the surface, and there was no need to comment on it. “Not … Aber?”

  Hywel could tell that his aunt had tried to phrase this question delicately, not asking outright, as she could have, how it was that the wife of the edling of Gwynedd didn’t reside in the same household as the king.

  “She likes being the mistress of her own house,” he said.

  “Understandable,” Susanna said, without asking for a better reason.

  Hywel didn’t know if rumors of the full extent of his father’s current malaise had reached this far east. He had to assume they had—that and the fact that his stepmother, Cristina, ruled Aber with an iron fist. The lat
ter, at least, was well known to the whole of Gwynedd.

  As to his father’s illness, it was very much their luck that Gwynedd’s Norman enemies were otherwise occupied, or else Hywel’s forces would have been retreating from Mold rather than taking it. Up until now, Gwynedd’s Welsh allies—namely Cadell of Deheubarth and Susanna’s husband—had been respectful of their grief. Hywel didn’t suppose that was going to last very much longer.

  Susanna shot a look at her husband, who was deep in conference with his steward, so she took the opportunity to lean closer to Hywel. “Cadwaladr came here, but he left again, before we knew what he had done. I cannot tell you his whereabouts now.”

  As Susanna started speaking, Hywel had taken in a breath of surprise, but now he eased it out. Cannot did not mean that she didn’t know, but he understood that if her husband had ordered her not to speak of Cadwaladr to Hywel, she would not disobey. Hywel would expect no less of Mari.

  “Thank you, aunt,” he said. “We have heard little but rumor as to where he has gone. Alice, his wife, claims not to know.”

  “But you seek him,” she said, not as a question.

  Hywel opted for the truth, and not even against his better judgement. “I can do nothing else until my brother’s death is avenged.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Gareth

  “What are you doing—” Gwen closed her lips on her protest before it was fully realized, and allowed Gareth to tug her out of the street and around a corner.

  Gareth stopped a little way down the alley, keeping his arm around her and his head bowed in the darkness until Luke passed. The wall behind him felt cold at his back, and he tried to ignore the rank smell in the alley. As he held Gwen, his overriding need was to protect her from where this investigation was heading. More than when they’d gone to Newcastle-under-Lyme and found themselves saving the life of Prince Henry, he felt out of his depth in this English town.

  After Luke had gone by, Gareth stayed where he was through another count of ten, and then he finally released Gwen.

  She looked up into his face. “Am I to guess what this is about, or do I already know?”

  “You said it earlier,” Gareth said. “That’s the brothel, the one that goes with the coin we found in Conall’s room. According to John Fletcher’s information, if I show it to the man at the door, it will gain me entrance.”

  Both of them peered around the corner of the alley again, looking towards the house where the doorman still stood in shadow, watching the street and obviously on guard.

  “We aren’t far from where the girl died,” Gwen said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I sincerely hope not and fear to ask,” Gareth said.

  “What if nobody will admit to knowing the girl because she worked at this brothel?” Gwen gestured towards the house. “How many of the townspeople with whom we spoke would willingly admit they knew her from there?”

  “Not many,” Gareth said. “The town council and the good citizens of Shrewsbury tolerate whores out of necessity, but they don’t like them.”

  “If she was a whore, and she escaped, why kill her? Why not simply bring her back to the brothel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And why the bruising?”

  Gareth didn’t want to answer, but it wasn’t information he felt he could keep to himself. “From what I understand, not from experience but from what others have told me, that guard we see there in the doorway is employed by the brothel to keep the girls who work there in line.”

  Gwen contemplated that piece of information for a few heartbeats. “In case any decide they want to earn their living another way?”

  “Yes. Beating would not be outside his purview,” Gareth said. “Such men also are called upon to control unruly patrons.”

  “Oh.” Gwen nodded. “They probably serve mead in there, don’t they.”

  “Wine and beer, rather, since we’re in England.” Out of a desire to fleece the men who patronized them to the fullest extent, brothels served alcohol as well as women, but too much beer in a violent man could be dangerous to a woman, a fact which Gwen would have seen for herself often enough.

  Gareth closed his eyes briefly, forced for honesty’s sake to add a final comment to the conversation. “It isn’t uncommon for girls to be forced into this life, Gwen, and once in it, they have no means of getting out. They’re whores. Who’s going to marry them?”

  Gwen chewed on her lower lip as she studied the house in front of her.

  Except for the guard, the brothel looked nothing out of the ordinary. This was probably on purpose, so the worthies of Shrewsbury could walk by without having to think about what went on inside.

  “Here in England, a child produced out of wedlock is such a shame that it might leave a girl without a home,” Gareth said. “Or the child herself might be abandoned. Alternatively, a father might be so in debt that he sells his daughter to free himself of it.”

  Gwen drew in a breath. “I feel like a child who’s just discovered that the puppets at an Easter fair aren’t real but hang on strings pulled by men.”

  “I don’t see it that way, Gwen,” Gareth said. “It’s just that you have no experience with a town like Shrewsbury, with all the darkness that goes on beneath the surface here.”

  “I investigate murder!” she said. “How could I not have known any of this before?”

  Gareth put his arm across her shoulders and turned her away from the brothel, heading back towards the east gate and the monastery. “We have done what we came to do tonight. I will speak to John Fletcher in the morning.”

  “And it will be with John that you visit the brothel—in daylight,” she said. “Without me.”

  “Without you, cariad,” he said to her. “I cannot express to you how unwilling John was to take you in there. I confess, I’m starting to share his opinion.”

  To Gareth’s relief, Gwen gave way. “I will not argue. Is it possible, however, to discover how many girls don’t want to be there? Is there any way to free them?”

  “You can’t save them, Gwen,” Gareth said. “We are strangers here, and those are questions I cannot ask, not even for you.”

  Gwen looked down at her feet as she walked. While a Welsh woman could divorce her husband if he beat her, in English law, women had no rights at all. These women weren’t wives, but at one time they might have been. Certainly they’d been daughters. The dilemma preoccupied them both for the whole of the walk back to the east gatehouse.

  As they passed through the wicket gate, Gareth said to the guardsman on duty, the same one they’d spoken to earlier on their way into the town, “I’m going to walk my wife to the monastery, and then I intend to return. I need to speak to John Fletcher at the castle.”

  “Of course, my lord.”

  “You’re going back to speak to John?” Gwen said as they headed across the bridge towards the monastery. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

  “I don’t think so. Spare me that long.” Gareth lifted a hand to Gwalchmai, who was hovering in the entrance to the monastery. At the sight of them, he hurried out.

  “Tangwen’s asleep,” he said before Gwen could ask where her daughter was. “I’ve been waiting for hours!”

  “Hardly,” Gwen said. “We weren’t gone that long.”

  “What did you find?” Gwalchmai’s expression was eager.

  Gwen looked at Gareth, and then she put her arm around her brother’s shoulder and turned him underneath the archway. “Let’s get inside, and I’ll tell you everything.” She glanced back over her shoulder at Gareth.

  “A quick word with John, and then I’ll come home to sleep. I promise,” he said.

  Gwen let go of Gwalchmai and came back to her husband, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Do what you must. I will be waiting.” She disappeared into the darkness of the courtyard.

  With a lighter heart, Gareth turned on his heel and paced along the road back to the bridge. The guards admitted him withou
t argument, and soon the imposing bulk of Shrewsbury Castle rose up before him. Even at this late hour, the gate was open and the portcullis was up, and the guards, seemingly recognizing Gareth, waved him through.

  As he approached John’s quarters, however, Gareth heard the bark of an angry voice coming through an open doorway. It cut off almost immediately as if the owner had thought better of his words.

  Gareth quickened his pace, and as he turned into the last corridor, he came face-to-face with Martin Carter.

  Both men pulled up short, and then Martin ducked his head. “Excuse me, my lord.” He brushed past Gareth and disappeared around the corner Gareth had just turned.

  Curious, Gareth stepped back in time to see Martin disappearing into the courtyard. With concern furrowing his brow, he continued onto John’s rooms, where he found the deputy sheriff seated behind a table, his feet sprawled out in front of him, staring at the fire.

  “What was that about?” Gareth said.

  John released a low groan. “Martin Carter came here asking for details of the investigation, and he was angry that I wouldn’t give them to him. I don’t blame him for that.”

  “He had to have known you couldn’t tell him much,” Gareth said.

  “Apparently not.”

  John had a rumpled look to him that made Gareth think the investigation was getting the better of him—and it had been only one day.

  “Never mind him. Tell me what you’ve discovered.” John straightened in his seat. “I know you’ve discovered something, else you wouldn’t have come.”

  Gareth eased onto a cushioned bench near the fire. The stone walls of the castle kept the interior far colder than if they’d been wood. A chill hung in the air that had Gareth tucking his cloak closer around himself, glad he’d worn it, for all that the day itself had been warmer than normal.

  “I’ve just come from the brothel.” Gareth held up the coin, which he’d been carrying around in his purse since they’d discovered it. If he hadn’t been with Gwen just now, he probably would have presented it to the guard in the doorway of The Lady’s Slipper. “Gwen and I followed two merchants, who are staying at the monastery guest house. They went directly there and, as they entered, your watchman Luke was coming out.”