The Unlikely Spy

by Sarah Woodbury

  “The serving boy found that not half an hour ago,” the cook said. “The abbot hasn’t risen yet, and I was going to show it to him, but I’m thinking that this might be what you were looking for.”

  “Do you know to whom it belongs?” Hywel’s hand formed a fist around the ring. It had to be burning a hole in his palm.

  “Of course, my lord,” the cook said.

  Hywel nodded and took Gwen’s elbow, guiding her out of the pantry, through the kitchen, and back into the courtyard.

  She walked with him in a daze. “Do you think Iolo knows Gryff took the ring as well as the cross?”

  “I’m certain he does,” Hywel said.

  “If Gryff found out what Iolo was doing and confronted him—” Gwen said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.” Hywel kept walking.

  They reached Prince Rhun and the others, and Hywel silently handed the ring to his brother.

  Rhun took it, stared at the signet for a moment, and then looked at Hywel. “What if the letters don’t stand for Cadell ap Gruffydd at all—” Like Gwen, he seemed to have trouble finishing his sentences.

  “—but for Cadwaladr ap Gruffydd,” Hywel said.

  “If Uncle Cadwaladr was conspiring with Cadell to take Ceredigion from you,” Rhun said, “he wouldn’t want any hint of a connection between the two of them to come to light any more than Cadell would.”

  Hywel nodded. “Gryff could have died because he was willing to stand up and say there was one.”

  “And he had proof,” Gwen said.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Gareth

  Gareth raced towards the fairgrounds, feeling as if the hounds of hell were at his heels. To know that Iolo had pulled the wool over their eyes so completely—told them lie after lie, probably laughing to himself all the while—burned in his gut. He could stand being wrong. He could even admit it when he was. But he hated being played the fool. And Iolo had played them.

  “Almost there, Gareth,” Evan said.

  Gareth nodded. His friend knew what he was thinking. He might even have been thinking it himself, except that he’d joined the investigation only yesterday, so he hadn’t experienced the particular joy of interviewing Iolo or Madlen. Gareth ground his teeth as they splashed across the ford of the Ystwyth River.

  Dawn had come and gone, and people were stirring, though fewer than would have been if this were a regular market fair instead of a music festival. Like most of the festival-goers, Gareth had found his bed after midnight. That was fewer than six hours ago. Even merchants whose livelihood depended on an open stall were reluctant to rise.

  Rhodri’s stomach growled, causing both Gareth and Evan to look at him. Rhodri shrugged. “I can’t help it.”

  “Rhodri has more need to eat than a fifteen-year-old,” Evan said to Gareth. “We’ve grown used to it.”

  Gareth barked a laugh, and then he slowed his horse to a trot as they approached the entrance to the market fair. He was pleased to see that the men on duty were upright and alert as they should be. The guard would have changed two hours ago in the gray of first light.

  They stopped at the entrance and dismounted.

  “All quiet here, my lord,” one of the guards said. Gareth didn’t know his name, but he wore the livery of King Owain.

  “Have you seen Iolo this morning?” Gareth said.

  “He slept in his stall last night and has not come out,” the man said.

  “Good,” Gareth said. “We’ll go check on h—”

  A scream split the air—not of joy but of pain and shock. It went on, long and caterwauling.

  Gareth pointed at the guards. “Stay there! It could be a diversion.”

  They had started moving but immediately subsided at Gareth’s command. Gareth, Rhodri, and Evan raced down the aisle towards the sound, which had abruptly cut off. They pulled up, having arrived at the aisle that led to Iolo’s tent. Gareth didn’t see the two guards who were meant to watch the tent itself. Everyone had been so diligent this week, knowing how important the festival was to Prince Hywel, that their absence stood out starkly.

  They could be responding to the scream except Gareth was pretty sure the scream had come from somewhere near here, maybe even from Iolo’s tent. The air around them still rang with the force of it, even though it had ceased.

  “My lord?” Evan whispered. “Where is everyone?”

  “That is a very good question,” Gareth said.

  The food stalls were closer to the market entrance. Back here, nothing moved but a tent flap in the morning breeze. None of the merchants had even made the attempt to open this early. Yesterday their tables had been out at dawn. But again, it had been a late night.

  A tent flap flipped up to Gareth’s right, and the face of a frightened man looked out. “What was that—?”

  Gareth put a finger to his lips, and the man stopped talking. Evan made a soothing gesture with one hand. “Go back inside. We’ll take care of it.”

  “Yes, sir.” The tent flap dropped back.

  They reached Iolo’s stall, and Gareth made a circling motion in the air with his finger to indicate that the three of them should surround Iolo’s tent on all sides. As the others moved away to do his bidding, he approached the entrance. It was closed. The grass under his feet made him completely silent, which for some reason he urgently felt he should remain. A crack had opened between the two pieces of fabric that made up the door, and he peered inside.

  Iolo lay on the ground near the entrance, his face turned away from Gareth. It was hard to see what was wrong with him in the dim light that came through the fabric of the tent, but Gareth had a pretty good notion that he was dead, especially given who else occupied the tent: a large, blond man lay on his back on the ground. He was wrestling with Madlen, who was on top of him, wielding a knife, her screams having settled into a low grunting as she fought to stab him. With the name, Erik, exploding in the forefront of his mind, Gareth launched himself through the tent opening, caught Madlen around the shoulders, and rolled with her off of Erik.

  Unfortunately, the tent was a very confined space. Rather than rolling all the way over, which would have brought Gareth on top of Madlen, their roll was impeded by a stack of crates, and Madlen ended up on top of Gareth, still with the knife in her hand and murder in her eye.

  “No!” she said as he grasped her right wrist with both hands to stop her from skewering him. “He killed my uncle!”

  Gareth managed to shout Evan’s name, even as he took a surprisingly strong left cross to the jaw from Madlen’s other fist, which he hadn’t been paying attention to. Fortunately, that one punch was all Madlen had in her. Just as Rhodri and Evan invaded the tent from opposite directions, Rhodri having half-ripped his side of the tent open, Gareth managed to twist his leg around both of Madlen’s and flip her over.

  Rhodri and Evan converged on Gareth’s position while Madlen continued to buck and twist beneath him. Evan removed the knife from her hand, and then Gareth and Rhodri flipped her onto her front and pulled her arms behind her back to tie them at the wrists.

  “I didn’t do anything.” Madlen gasped the words into the grass. “You don’t understand.”

  Rubbing at his jaw, knowing that Rhodri and Evan were smirking at him for allowing a woman to get the better of him, Gareth stood up. Erik was sitting up too and holding his left bicep in his right hand as blood seeped between his fingers.

  “What are you doing here?” Gareth said.

  Erik gave him an exasperated look. “It was a mistake to come, obviously.”

  “The men meant to watch the stall are down, unconscious but not dead,” Rhodri said.

  “Held around the neck from behind, I’d guess,” Evan said. “We would have come inside whether or not you called.”

  Gareth looked at Erik. Only a strong man could have subdued those men.

  Erik shrugged. “My doing. Sorry, but I had to see Iolo.”

  “How did you get past the guards at the
entrance to the market grounds?” Gareth said.

  “I have a stall owner who’s a friend. I spent the night in the market.”

  Erik was being surprisingly talkative, which made Gareth very wary. Breathing more easily now, though his jaw throbbed and would surely bruise and swell shortly, Gareth bent to where Iolo lay sprawled on the grass and put his fingers to the merchant’s throat, feeling for a beat. It wasn’t there, which Gareth had known would be the case before he touched him. Iolo wasn’t breathing, and the residue of vomit around his mouth and on the ground beside him told Gareth the cause of death. He’d been poisoned.

  Gareth looked back to Evan, who held out the knife.

  Somehow Gareth wasn’t surprised to see a notch in the narrow blade, which had been worn thin from repeated sharpening.

  Gareth squatted in front of Madlen. “This is the knife that murdered Gryff. Would you care to tell me why you took his life?”

  “What did you say?” Madlen gaped at him.

  Now it was Gareth’s turn to be surprised. “Didn’t your uncle tell you?”

  “No! No! Gryff drowned!” Still on her belly, Madlen was in near hysterics.

  Gareth swiveled on the ball of his foot and held up the knife up to Erik’s eyes. “I’m surprised a warrior such as yourself wouldn’t have exchanged this for a newer blade long ago.”

  “It isn’t mine either.” Erik pointed to the leather sheath at Iolo’s waist, which was ancient, weathered, and worn. And empty. Gareth handed the knife back to Evan. “Treat this as the murder weapon.”

  Rhodri had pulled Madlen to her knees, and she knelt in the grass, shaking her head back and forth, much as Carys had done when she’d learned of Gryff’s death. “No, no, no. He couldn’t have.”

  “I assure you Gryff was murdered,” Gareth said.

  “My uncle couldn’t have done it,” Madlen said.

  Gareth didn’t really have anything to say to that, so he turned back to Erik. “What about you? You admit to subduing my guards. Why shouldn’t I arrest you for murder too?”

  “I needed to speak to Iolo in private. I arrived to find him already dead.” Erik pointed at Madlen. “She tried to murder me. I fought back in self-defense.”

  Erik outweighed Madlen by a hundred pounds, but Gareth himself could testify to her determined strength. He looked from Madlen to Erik, uncertain all of a sudden because it felt like both could be telling the truth of what they knew. After all the lies he’d heard so far, it was disconcerting.

  Erik indicated his bleeding arm. “Do you think I could get some help here?”

  * * * * *

  Gareth ordered Evan and Rhodri to truss Erik and Madlen and take them to the castle. Both continued to protest their innocence. Fortunately, the two guards had regained consciousness before Gareth left the tent, with no obvious ill effects. Unfortunately, both Gryff and Iolo were still dead and the problem of determining who’d murdered them remained.

  While Gareth sent a rider to fetch Gwen from the monastery, Evan found a cart to transport the body to a place where Gareth could examine it. Once presented with Iolo’s death, both Gwen and the castle’s healer concurred that Iolo had been poisoned, probably by monkshood delivered in his wine.

  “Any fool knows not to touch it,” the healer said.

  “A few grains are all that would have been needed in the whole bottle, and he’d have been dead,” Gwen said. “Anyone who drank with him would have been dead too."

  Even though Gareth hadn’t dragged anything more about either Gryff’s death or Iolo’s out of Erik, he allowed the healer to bind Erik’s wound, thinking he might get as much out of him with honey as with fists. And then, in the hope that he would learn something that would give him leverage with Erik, Gareth decided to hear Madlen’s side of the story first.

  To that end, the interested parties crowded into Hywel’s office, having evicted the castellan of Cardigan Castle and his large family, who’d been its residents the previous night.

  Hywel placed a stool in the middle of the room and then sat in his chair behind his desk. The sleeping pallets that had been spread across the floor were stacked against one wall, and Gwen found a soft seat there. Gruffydd posted himself by the door. Declaring that he’d been in on this from the beginning and wasn’t about to miss the end, Prince Rhun brought a stool in from the hall to sit on, and Gareth leaned against the wall to one side. He wanted to be able to see Hywel’s face and Madlen’s too. He expected her to lie to them again.

  “Why don’t you start from the beginning, Madlen?” Prince Hywel said.

  “What do you know already?” Her hands worked in her lap, nervous and with the appearance that all the fight had gone from her.

  “I think I know a great deal,” Hywel said, “none of which I’m going to share with you. You lied to me. Your uncle lied to me, God rest his soul. I know more now than I did then.” He leaned forward. “I suggest you choose your words carefully.”

  Madlen put her hands up to her lips as if in prayer. “I didn’t kill Gryff.”

  Hywel sat back. “Go on.”

  “Uncle Iolo didn’t either,” she said.

  Hywel’s expression was stony. “Tell us what he did do.”

  “He was a spy!” Madlen threw out the words in a sudden burst of anger that was much more like the Madlen they’d been dealing with up until now. “Is that what you wanted me to say?”

  “For whom did he spy?” Hywel said.

  Madlen’s shoulders hunched, and even after all this, Gareth thought she wasn’t going to speak, but then she said, “King Cadell of Deheubarth.”

  “Let’s talk about the cross,” Hywel said, “the one you claim is etched with your grandparents’ initials. That isn’t the case, is it?”

  “No.” Madlen remained slumped. Gareth almost preferred her defiant because at least then she wasn’t looking at the floor.

  “And Gryff?” Hywel said. “What was his role?”

  “He carried messages for my uncle,” Madlen said. “People were used to seeing him and ignoring him.”

  “Like you did?” Rhun said.

  Hywel shot his brother a quelling look. Rhun nodded his understanding. It was better not to antagonize Madlen now that she was talking. But Gwen either didn’t see the look or had a different agenda. She leaned forward. “You didn’t love Gryff, did you? That too was a lie.”

  Madlen jerked her head to the left to look at Gwen. “You’re right. I didn’t.”

  “Talk us through what happened at the chapel when you claimed to be his wife,” Gwen said.

  Madlen seemed to prefer hearing the questions from Gwen, because she answered readily enough. “It seemed to be the easiest way to gain access to the body. We’d only just discovered the cross was missing, and my uncle was sure that Gryff had taken it.”

  “Why would Gryff have done that?” Gareth said in a gentle voice.

  “Uncle Iolo thought he might have been thinking of going to you.” Madlen looked directly at Hywel and then returned her eyes to the floor. “We thought we still had time, because no soldiers had confronted us. We didn’t know where he’d put it, so one of us needed to get his purse before anyone opened it and found the cross on him.”

  “But you didn’t tell your uncle what you’d planned until you’d already done it, did you?” Gwen said. “He was genuinely surprised when Gareth and Prince Rhun mentioned that you were married.”

  “I went to the monastery hoping to see Gryff and ended up needing to improvise,” Madlen said. “It should have been easy.”

  “But it wasn’t easy because Gryff had been murdered, which I gather your uncle didn’t tell you before you went,” Gwen said. “In truth, Iolo should have checked Gryff’s purse before he put him in the millpond. It was stupid of him not to.”

  “My uncle didn’t murder Gryff! He drowned. We had nothing to do with it!”

  Gwen pressed her lips together in a quick smile. She’d goaded Madlen on purpose by calling her uncle stupid. Iolo had prided hims
elf on his intelligence and his ability to live a secret life. Still, with her uncle dead, it would have been convenient for Madlen to blame him for Gryff’s murder.

  Madlen calmed herself. “We didn’t realize the cross was missing until after he was dead, and it was too late.”

  “What is the significance of the cross?” Hywel said, bringing Madlen’s attention back to himself. “The ‘C’ and ‘G’ stand for—”

  Madlen sneered. “Cadell ap Gruffydd. I can’t believe you didn’t figure that out for yourselves. You should have known it the first moment you laid eyes on it. No peasant like Gryff could have afforded it.”

  Which was why Carys thought Gryff had stolen it—though Gareth didn’t say that.

  Hywel rested his elbow on the arm of his chair and tapped a finger to his lips, studying Madlen. “What would have been the plan for dealing with Gryff if not to kill him?”

  “I don’t know,” Madlen said. “Gryff didn’t show up at the stall, and then my uncle discovered the cross was missing and feared the worst. And then we learned that a body had been found in the millpond.”

  “And you assumed it was Gryff?” Gareth said.

  “He was missing, wasn’t he?” Madlen said.

  Gareth pursed his lips. She had a point. The miller had expressed the same concern to Prince Rhun when he’d learned of the body, and he’d been relieved to learn it wasn’t his missing apprentice.

  “What about Erik?” Gwen spoke again from her seat to Madlen’s left. “Where does he come into it?”

  And to Gareth’s astonishment, Madlen flushed pink.

  Gwen saw it too and pounced. “He was your lover, wasn’t he? Since you obviously didn’t go to Borth as your uncle told us last night, was your uncle covering for you when we questioned him?”

  Madlen pouted and didn’t answer.

  “You do realize that you were seen trying to murder Erik,” Gareth said. “You really should be talking.”

  Gwen made to speak again, but Hywel held up his hand, telling her to wait. Most people were incapable of maintaining silence. It was the natural instinct to fill it.