by Candace Robb
‘Forgive me,’ Owen said. ‘My coming here was ill advised on such a day.’
Gruffydd pressed his fingers to his temples as if weary. ‘You are not to blame. It takes little to trouble my wife.’
From the solar came a child’s laughter, low and throaty. Owen raised his head in the direction of the sound, thinking how like his daughter Gwenllian it sounded. Eleri appeared once more, called to Awena to assist her.
Gruffydd rose with Awena, put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Keep the child up above, Awena,’ he said quietly.
But Eleri had already begun to descend the narrow steps with a child in her arms. When she set him on his feet in the hall, the plump boy ran directly to the table to stare up at Gruffydd.
He was fair haired and blue eyed, a child to make a father’s heart swell with pride. Owen glanced from the lad to Gruffydd, who made an apologetic face.
Eleri now took the boy’s hand and guided him round the table to Owen. ‘His name is Hedyn,’ Eleri said. ‘Do you not think Father Edern would be proud of him?’
‘Eleri,’ Gruffydd said sharply.
But she ignored him. ‘Can you believe that my daughter’s English husband rejected this angel? Tangwystl should be reunited with her true husband.’
God’s blood, Owen thought, was that it? The child was Edern’s? No wonder the vicar’s name was denied in the house.
Gruffydd ran his hand through his hair. ‘She does not know what she says. She would shame Tangwystl with such a tale.’
Eleri crouched beside the boy on the rushes. Hedyn clutched her hand tightly and stared up at Owen.
Owen reached out to the child, missing his own. His fingers were firmly grasped. ‘He has a grasp like my daughter Gwenllian’s. How old is this fine lad?’
Eleri turned on Owen a radiant smile. ‘Two in early summer. He is the image of his father.’
Gruffydd rose. ‘It is best that you go now, Captain. I cannot quiet her when she behaves like this.’
Pale hair, full lips, Owen supposed one could see a resemblance to Edern, but no more so than to any fair man. Owen knelt to the boy, met his eye, was pleased when the child let go Eleri and grabbed for Owen’s eye-patch with a gleeful shout. Some children feared his appearance. ‘God go with you, Hedyn, and may your father have a chance to see what a fine lad you are.’
‘Come,’ Gruffydd said, ‘I shall walk out with you.’
Awena wished Owen a safe journey and bent to take the child. Eleri rose and stood clutching her elbows and rocking slightly from side to side.
Poor woman. What had brought her to such a state? One thing was certain, Owen no longer wondered why Gruffydd came alone to the castle.
Out in the yard, Gruffydd stopped beneath a tree that provided shelter from the drizzle. He apologised for his wife’s behaviour, for the tales she spun out of air.
‘The boy is yours, not Mistress Lascelles’s?’
Gruffydd wagged his head back and forth, not denying it, but suggesting that things were not so simple to explain. ‘It is true that my daughter had a child before she was betrothed to John Lascelles. But I assure you the vicar Edern is not Hedyn’s father. You see how my Eleri takes some truth and then weaves lies through it.’
‘She seems devoted to the boy.’
‘Devoted. Yes.’ Emotion shone in Gruffydd’s blue eyes. ‘Out of adversity came some joy. It was Eleri who offered to take the child when my son-in-law said he must be fostered up.’
‘Forgive me, but is she––’
‘Trustworthy?’ Gruffydd shook his head. ‘Not so much as she was. Awena watches over the boy.’
‘Then your wife has not long been so afflicted?’
Gruffydd turned away, walked out from beneath the tree. ‘Ah. The rain has ceased.’ Still he kept his back to Owen. His voice was less steady as he said, ‘My dear wife was brought low by our troubles in Tenby. Taking her from her home – it is as if she was robbed of her soul.’
‘You must count yourself and your family ill used,’ Owen said quietly. A tragedy indeed if the accusation were unjustified.
The lad who had helped Awena in the hall now brought Owen’s horse to him.
Gruffydd turned round. If he had been hiding emotion, he was now composed, though as he spoke he looked aside and spoke in a halting manner. ‘It has been difficult for all of us, Tangwystl perhaps most of all. She believes she sacrificed her son for our welfare and fears he will grow to resent her. She expected Sir John to accept Hedyn as if he were his own, in the Welsh way. It is hard for her to hear the boy called a bastard. But she is now the wife of an Englishman and she must accept his ways. I have assured her that Sir John will do well by Hedyn, as he did by John de Reine. And meanwhile the boy is at least with his kin, if not his mother.’
And thus were two good people made miserable by their union. Was it any wonder Tangwystl sought an escape from her marriage? As Owen mounted, he looked down on Gruffydd and asked, ‘Why did she not marry Hedyn’s father?’
With a dark look, Gruffydd lifted a hand as if about to slap Owen’s horse into a canter, but he checked the motion and instead rubbed his forehead. ‘Of course you would ask. Forgive my temper. He abandoned her when Lady Pembroke accused me of treason. Suddenly my daughter had no dowry, a tarnished name. There could be no official marriage because I could no longer pay.’
Owen well remembered that a traditional Welsh marriage was costly, with the marriage portion, a wedding feast for the witnesses, a fee for the parson, and an amobr for the lord. The Marcher lords encouraged the traditions because they pocketed the fees. But would a man with such a son as Hedyn, such a wife in deed, abandon such happiness for her father’s lack of money? ‘Surely to our people such an accusation would not necessarily tarnish her name? I should think many support Owain ap Thomas ap Rhodri in their hearts, if not openly.’
Gruffydd said only, ‘In the end she found a better man in John Lascelles.’
One of more use to the family. ‘Where do you think your daughter has gone?’
‘Tangwystl is a passionate young woman. No doubt she and Sir John quarrelled and she means to teach him a lesson. I am confident all will be well.’ So seemingly passionate about all else concerning his family, Gruffydd’s indifference about his daughter’s disappearance came as a surprise.
‘Did the earlier messenger from the castle tell you about Father Francis?’
Gruffydd bowed his head and crossed himself. ‘May God grant him peace.’
‘Does it not worry you that your daughter disappeared on the day of such a violent attack?’
The dark eyes widened in surprise. ‘Do you think the priest died defending her?’
Owen had not thought of that. ‘I mean that it is believed she left with Father Edern.’
‘Why would she be with him?’
‘Your wife––’
‘My wife is as you saw her, Captain, confused. I am confident that Sir John will find my daughter.’
‘I pray you are right.’
‘I am glad I was able to find your brother for you, Captain. And now, forgive my haste, but I must return to my wife.’
With that, Gruffydd turned back towards the house, dismissing Owen, who sat astride his horse staring at the man’s retreating back until the groom asked whether anything was wrong. The young man watched Owen ride away, poised as if ready to sound an alarm if Owen turned back.
Owen saw little of the countryside as he rode back to Cydweli. The image of the pale, gaunt Eleri haunted him, as did her husband. He thought much of the poor woman. God’s purpose in robbing the woman of her wits eluded Owen. Might it be a punishment? Because she had encouraged Tangwystl in the liaison that had produced Hedyn? She had spoken of Hedyn’s father as Tangwystl’s true husband – did God not recognise the oath between a couple? Many a Welsh marriage had been based on merely that. But if her state were truly the result of Pembroke’s accusation, how might a God-fearing man understand it? He would add her to his prayers. She seemed a gentle woman.
A movement up ahead, beneath a tree beside the track, caught Owen’s attention and drew him from his thoughts. A young boy had risen abruptly from a crouch and spun round. Now he greeted Owen with a cheerful blessing, one hand behind his back.
Poaching, Owen thought. And fearful lest Owen saw his catch and would comment, so he thought to disarm him with his bold greeting. ‘You are welcome to whatever it is you hide behind your back, lad. I shall not be informing on you.’
‘God bless you, sir, and all your children, and your children’s children.’
‘You wear your guilt on your face, lad. Learn to disappear into the shadows.’
A bit of Gruffydd ap Goronwy in the lad, Owen thought as he rode on. Sweet heaven, that was it. He was a gift from God, that lad by the roadside. For that was indeed what Owen had sensed but could not put his finger on – Gruffydd behaved as if he were indifferent, but he was not. He would have done better to have torn his hair and beat his breast than to feign indifference. What was he hiding? Was he involved in Tangwystl’s disappearance?
Was it possible? Was Tangwystl there at the farm, even now? Had she gone there not to be with an ailing mother, but with her son? Was that why Awena and Gruffydd watched Eleri so closely? Fearful she might reveal the secret?
But then what had become of the vicar? It seemed unlikely the man would just depart, not without the bishop’s retainers. For surely Edern would go nowhere but back to St David’s – he had undertaken this mission to please the bishop. Yet he was gone, and the two retainers remained.
Owen wished Lucie were here. He needed someone to talk to, someone who would listen and ask the right questions to help him see what he knew, what he needed to know, and to whom he ought to talk. Geoffrey seemed unable to perform the role for him; he saw everything that was happening in terms of how it affected him and their mission. There was no sense returning to confront Gruffydd. Owen had no way to motivate the man to confide in him.
Where had it all begun? With the accusation against Gruffydd? With Lascelles’s first sight of Tangwystl? With Tangwystl and the father of her son?
Or were those events merely ripples that had led up to the death of John de Reine? Why had Burley’s men gone to St David’s? Who knew the truth about the theft of the exchequer?
His heart pounding, his mind racing, Owen urged his horse to a gallop. He had much to do, and, God help him, that filled him with joy.
Fifteen
THE DUKE’S RECEIVER
A fresh wind cooled Owen as he rode towards Cydweli. Below him on his left the marshes shimmered in the afternoon sun, the winter-browned grasses shivering in the wind. In a few months it would be a green sea of grasses loud with birdsong.
Near the mill outside the town, Owen dismounted, ran his fingers through his tangled hair, and tucked his weapons into the pack on his saddle, remembering the gatekeeper’s concern about armed strangers in the town. He felt guilty to have ridden his horse so hard and then to have left him standing in the cold shadow by the south gate, but Owen wished to stop in the tavern before he returned to the castle. And if fortune smiled on him and he won the taverner’s confidence, he would tarry even longer in the town. He hoped to be directed to the house of Roger Aylward, the Duke’s receiver who had been injured defending the exchequer. He wished to hear the man’s own account of the incident that had sent four armed men off to St David’s, John de Reine’s destination. Though it was possible that Aylward, too, would tell a tale to hide the truth, Owen hoped that would not be so.
But first he wished to learn all he could about the receiver. At home, when Owen needed information about townspeople, he slipped next door to the York Tavern. Bess and Tom Merchet heard much while pouring ales and feeding wayfarers. The midwife Magda Digby was also a dependable source of information, as, too, was Owen’s wife Lucie, who heard much – and intuited more – in her apothecary shop. He sorely felt the lack of the four of them at present.
The inn looked much like any other, far less imposing than the York Tavern, but the stone threshold had been polished by the feet of many patrons. Owen ducked through the open doorway, and then beneath beams blackened by years of smoky fires, one of which now burned dully under a rancid-smelling stew. The fare in this tavern was not up to Bess Merchet’s standards, that was certain.
Barefoot, skirt tucked up into her girdle, a young woman knelt on the floor scrubbing a long board that likely served as the top of a trestle table. She glanced up at Owen’s greeting, then scurried up and disappeared into another doorway.
A thin, sour-faced man appeared soon enough, eyeing Owen with cautious curiosity as he set down a tray full of drinking bowls. His sleeves were stained with food and drink.
‘Would you be the taverner?’ Owen asked in Welsh.
‘From the castle, are you?’ the man said in English.
Owen was disappointed. He thought a Welsh taverner might be more co-operative. But perhaps this one would be more impressed by his being one of the Duke’s emissaries. ‘Aye. I am recruiting archers for the Duke.’
The man screwed up his face, nodded. ‘I remember now. Captain of the old Duke’s archers, they say, and from these parts.’ He tilted his head, looked Owen up and down. ‘I should think they have made you welcome at the castle. What would you be wanting in my humble tavern?’
‘I want some of your best ale, and a bit of conversation that has nothing to do with archers or France.’
‘Or the disappearance of the steward’s lady?’
So the news had spread to the town. ‘None of that, either.’
‘Good. He is better off without her, her father a traitor and her mother witless.’
The taverner did indeed seem knowledgeable. ‘Will you drink with me?’
The man turned round, shouted for a pitcher of ale and two bowls, then led Owen to a small table in the thick of the smoke, scratching himself as he walked.
Owen did not like a smoky place – he did not like losing the sharp sight in his good eye when it watered, but this was not the time to argue. He did wonder whether the taverner had chosen the table to put him at a disadvantage.
‘Beeker’s the name,’ the taverner said as he settled himself. He grunted at the young woman who set a pitcher and two bowls before him and hurried away. ‘They tell me you are Black Rhodri’s son.’
‘I am Owain ap Rhodri ap Maredudd.’
‘Aye, Rhodri ap Maredudd – that was Black Rhodri.’
‘I never heard him called that.’
‘Well, you were gone when the lightning struck, eh?’ Beeker’s nasty grin revealed teeth blackened by rot.
Owen poured himself a bowl of the ale and swallowed it down. It was thick and surprisingly tasty, though way below Tom Merchet’s standards. ‘Is it your custom to insult the man who buys you ale?’ He held the taverner’s unwilling gaze.
‘I meant no offence,’ Beeker muttered, ‘thought you would know.’
In the end Owen bullied the man into telling him what he wanted, and threatened that part of his anatomy he was so fond of scratching if he informed Burley of his visit.
The receiver’s town house stood two storeys and boasted glazing in the window of the jettied second storey, a fine oak door, a stone path leading down the side to a walled garden and a stone stairway leading up to the side door opening on to the second storey. According to Beeker, Roger Aylward had another, larger house in the country. Made his money importing wine. A prosperous merchant. He would think twice before accepting the ‘honour’ of the receivership again no doubt. What need had he of such trouble?
A barefoot serving girl opened the street-level door to Owen, then made him wait without while she hurried up the stairway to ‘ask whether her master was at home’. Amusingly clumsy – for surely Roger Aylward must be at home, bedridden as he was said to be since the incident. Owen had a long wait – long enough to become well acquainted with a ginger cat who thought him likely to be hiding milk or meat on his person. His thoughts went once again to York:
Jasper had a cat much like this; Crowder would sit on a sill watching the lad work in the apothecary, drowsing in the sun. At night he was one of the best mousers in York – he had the belly to prove it.
‘Master Aylward will see you now,’ the young woman called from halfway up the stairs, waking Owen from his homely reverie. As he reached her level she bowed her head and said softly, ‘I am sorry you had to wait without.’
‘It is no fors. I had a quiet moment with the cat.’
The master lay in state in a great oak bed, wearing a linen shift with voluminous pleated sleeves and a tidy linen cap tied beneath his chin. Lamplight revealed a fleshy man of sanguine complexion looking delighted to have a visitor.
‘Forgive me for not rising to welcome you,’ he said in Welsh, ‘but my head still feels as if it is being ground to flour when I stand. I hope you understood why I did not invite you to our house when you arrived – that you had heard of the theft, my attack . . . ?’ The gap in his teeth was evident when he spoke – in truth, the only visible evidence of his having been assaulted.
Why should the man apologise for neglecting what had never been expected? ‘I had heard about your misfortune, Master Aylward.’
‘But I am glad you came. I love to think about your father, my old friend Rhodri ap Maredudd. Please, sit. The girl will bring cider as soon as she has time.’
Old friend? The unexpected connection was Owen’s second gift this day. And why not speak of his family – it would make the rest all the easier. He took a seat on a comfortably cushioned bench at his host’s bedside. ‘I did hope to hear of him, and my mother.’
‘You have been to Morgan’s house?’
‘Aye.’
‘Then you know that they are both with God.’
‘My brother saw no need to delay the telling,’ Owen said. If the man knew his family, he knew Morgan’s character.
‘Indeed. My wife thought perhaps we should do the telling, but I thought it best coming from your kin. Of course your ma’s going was a peaceful one, went to bed and did not wake. But Rhodri’s––’ Roger bowed his head and crossed himself. ‘I confess I did not wish to be the one to describe it to you.’ He clapped his hands as the serving girl backed into the room with a tray. ‘Now I shall show you some hospitality and we can talk of your father’s joys.’
