The Fallen Princess (10 page)

“Why is that?” Brychan’s expression became
wary. “We haven’t spoken since Ceredigion.”

“Seeing you in the hall brought back
memories to me of that time. You served Prince Cadwaladr during the
year my father sang in his hall.”

“You do remember me, then?” Brychan gave a
mocking laugh. “I can’t say I’m surprised it took you this long to
notice me. I recognized you the moment I set foot in Aber. I hadn’t
realized before yesterday that you’d returned to Gwynedd too.” The
corners of his mouth turned down.

Gwen shifted from one foot to the other,
more than a little uncomfortable with the direction the
conversation had taken. “Yes, well …” She cleared her throat. “I
was hoping you would answer a few questions about Tegwen.”

“So that’s it, is it?” Brychan took a step
backwards, his eyes flicking from left to right as if he was
looking for an escape route.

Gwen put out a hand to him. “Please believe
me when I say that I mean you no harm. You must have heard that
Tegwen’s body was left on the beach this morning. What you may not
know is that she was murdered.”

Brychan had been retreating backwards and
now froze, one foot on the bottom step to the barracks behind him.
“You’re sure?”

Gwen nodded. “Prince Hywel has been charged
with uncovering the truth of her death. You knew her well. The more
we learn of her last days, the more likely it is that we will
discover who killed her.”

Brychan scoffed. “I know how royalty think.
The king doesn’t really want to know who killed his niece. He wants
a scapegoat. If I speak to you, I’ll lose my position. Again.” He
backed up the steps, his hand already reaching for the latch to the
door that would allow him to enter the barracks. “I have nothing to
say to you.”

Gwen scurried up the steps after him and
reached for his arm to stop him from disappearing through the
doorway. Speaking to a man who wasn’t her husband was tolerable in
the castle’s courtyard or hall, but she couldn’t follow him into
the barracks, even if Tegwen’s body was only a few feet away and
could provide her an excuse to be there. She could feel the
watching eyes of some of the men-at-arms on duty. She needed to
stop him here. “You loved her.”

Brychan hesitated, halfway through the
barracks’ door. “I was warned never to speak of it.”

“Who warned you?”

Brychan’s lips twisted.

“Was it Bran? Or King Owain? Please know
that it was King Owain himself who pointed you out to me and
suggested that I speak with you.”

Brychan stared past Gwen, one hand still on
the latch. “I wasn’t there for her. She died, and I wasn’t there.”
Then he surprised Gwen by crumpling up right there in a heap on the
top step, folding himself in half with his knees up and his face in
his hands.

Gwen wavered, uncertain what her response
should be. She glanced around the courtyard as those same
men-at-arms who’d been watching them with interest a moment ago
looked hastily away. Brychan had come undone, and no man wanted to
witness his undoing. Gwen was tempted to put a hand on Brychan’s
shoulder and sit beside him, but his resentful attitude of earlier
made her think that he might take offense.

Then Brychan spoke again, his voice choking
with grief. “Tegwen is dead, and it’s my fault.”

Gwen moved down the steps, back to the dirt
of the courtyard, in order to stand in front of him. She leaned
forward to whisper to him, “How is it your fault?”

“She came to me and begged me to take her
away from Gwynedd, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.” Brychan put his
face back in his hands.

Brychan’s tears were making Gwen even more
uncomfortable than his earlier frankness about the fact that she
hadn’t noticed him. She wanted to get him out from under the eyes
of everyone else in the courtyard but felt equally awkward about
dragging him towards a more private location. Finally, she gave in
to instinct and sat beside him on the step, turning resolutely away
from the two men crossing the courtyard from the postern gate. They
had been heading towards the barracks, but at the sight of
Brychan’s tears and Gwen patting his shoulder, they abruptly
changed direction. She felt like crying too, just witnessing
Brychan’s despair.

Fortunately, before anyone else could come
out of the barracks or enter them, Brychan gathered himself, wiping
at his cheeks with the heels of his hands and clearing his throat.
“I’d best be off.” He stood abruptly.

Gwen rose to her feet with him. “Oh no, you
don’t. You can’t leave it like that.”

Brychan’s grief had been tumultuous, but now
he looked mutinous, with his chin sticking out and defiance in his
eyes. Gwen had a moment of panic that he really was going to leave
it like that because she didn’t know what else she could say to him
to convince him to keep talking to her. She understood that he was
embarrassed to have been seen crying. Many men would have been,
even if Welshmen allowed their emotions to show more than other
peoples, like the Normans or Danes. On the other hand, Irishmen, in
Gwen’s experience, cried openly and often with no compunction about
it whatsoever.

Whether he saw the understanding in Gwen’s
face or simply decided that Gwen was going to hound him until he
talked, Brychan’s expression softened. As Gwen gazed up at him, he
wiped at his cheeks one more time and tipped his head towards the
stables, striding away without waiting to see if Gwen would follow.
Gwen lifted the hem of her skirt and scuttled after him.

Once inside the door, Brychan stopped. He
peered around the darkened stables. What little light to see by
filtered through the four open doorways. At night, a man had to
bring a lantern inside in order to see, but the danger of fire was
ever present, and everyone made do without real light the best they
could during the day.

“No one can hear us now,” Gwen said.

Brychan grunted his agreement. They did
appear to be out of earshot of the handful of stable boys hard at
work cleaning out horse stalls, as well as out of sight of anyone
in the courtyard. Brychan ran his hands through his hair and then
paced three times around the little space by the doorway between a
mound of hay and the first stall. “I loved her. I did. And she
loved me. She was only fifteen—Christ, I can’t believe that was
nearly ten years ago—and we had only a few weeks together before
her grandfather promised her to another man.”

“To Bran, son of the Lord of Rhos,” Gwen
said.

“Yes,” Brychan said. “It was a fine match,
of course, appropriate for her station. She should never have even
looked at me.”

“How did you meet?” Gwen said. “She was a
princess—”

“—and I was a lowly man-at-arms?” Brychan
nodded. “She was a wild one, that girl. She loved horses, and it
always seemed that I was in the stables when she was there. I’d
been sent to Dolwyddelan by the king, you see, stationed there as
part of Gwynedd’s defenses. It’s a small castle, and there’s not
much besides herding sheep to entertain a young girl. I see now
that her interest in me was all my fault. I should never have let
her know how I felt about her. When I learned that she was to marry
Bran—”

“That must have been hard,” Gwen said. This
was an old story but no less heartbreaking in the telling.

“It split me apart to let her go.”

“But you did let her go?” Gwen said.

Brychan nodded. “I told her that I couldn’t
be with her anymore and that I was leaving so she could marry Bran
with honor. We never lay together then; I swear it.”

“What did she say in return?”

“When she found out about the wedding and to
whom she’d been promised, she asked me to run away with her. But I
couldn’t, could I? She was fifteen; I was twenty, with no money or
land. I was a poor soldier serving King Owain’s father and lucky to
have the position. It didn’t matter that her father had died and
that Owain was now the heir to Gwynedd. She was still a
princess.”

“What happened then?” Gwen found herself
hanging on his words, envisioning a stable much like this one and a
young girl being told she couldn’t have the man she loved. Gwen had
been that girl. She knew what Tegwen had felt.

Brychan shrugged. “Nothing happened. She
married Bran. I served King Gruffydd as I had since I was fourteen.
My life and hers went on apart from one another. I know her
grandfather thought he was doing right by her, giving her to
Bran.”

“It would have seemed a good match,” Gwen
said.

“Nobody cared that she didn’t love him.
Nobody expected her to love him when they married. Her grandfather
even told her that love was for herders and peasants, not
princesses.”

“I imagine that everyone else told her she
would grow to love him,” Gwen said.

Brychan looked down at his feet. “Why
wouldn’t she have? He was rich and handsome.”

“And did she grow to love him?” Gwen
said.

“She did, or as much as he would let
her.”

Mari had said as much, but Gwen was glad to
have it confirmed—and since it was Brychan saying it, likely it was
true.

“She was full of love, that girl. She forgot
me, as I hoped she would, and gave the love she’d had for me to
him. But it wasn’t returned. He was rich and spoiled as these men
often are. When she didn’t bear him a son, he lost whatever
interest in her he’d had up until that point. Two daughters in
three years she gave him …” Brychan’s voice faded away.

“When did you find her again?” Gwen
said.

“I didn’t,” Brychan said. “After I left
Cadwaladr’s service—” He gave Gwen a sharp look. “You do remember
me leaving?”

“I do,” Gwen said. “You left not long after
Gareth had been sent off. I didn’t ever find out why, though.”

Brychan waved a hand. “Ach. It’s water under
the bridge now. I was one of the ones who obeyed when Gareth did
not, but every man has a soul, even if it takes him a long while to
discover it. I left Ceredigion and came back to Aber in hopes that
I could serve a different lord, even King Owain, now that his
father was dead. I hoped that enough time had passed that my
transgressions could be forgiven.”

“And were they? He found a place for you?”
Gwen said.

“He did,” Brychan said. “Since Tegwen had
been several years married by then, the past seemed of little
importance to anyone but me.”

Gwen eyed him as he stopped his story again.
“And Tegwen, perhaps?” she said.

“She sought me out.”

“When was this?” Gwen said.

“Some three years after her marriage? That
would have been after the wars in Ceredigion and the death of the
old king. King Owain sat on the throne. Only a few had known about
us the first time, and we did everything we could not to cause
gossip now.”

“Except not see each other,” Gwen said.

“Except that,” Brychan said.

Gwen had vivid memories of that time. Gareth
had been dismissed in early summer of that year, and Brychan had
left before winter closed the roads. She had another question to
ask but couldn’t figure out how to ask it delicately, so she just
said, “You became lovers?”

“I never touched her before her marriage.
She went to Bran’s bed a maiden. But she had grown into a woman, a
very unhappy one, and I was weak.” He looked away. “We met when we
could in a little house to the west of here. Prince Cadwaladr’s it
was, but as he was in Ceredigion, I didn’t much worry that anyone
would find us. Cadwaladr used it for his own trysts. I saw no
reason not to use it for mine.”

Gwen didn’t want to interrupt the flow of
his conversation, but the mention of the house had her pulse
racing. “What house was this?”

Brychan threw out his hand to indicate
beyond the Aber River. “It lies to the south of the road to
Penrhyn. A strange one, built right into the side of a hill.”

“I’m sorry, but did you say that Cadwaladr
used it for trysts?” Gwen said.

Brychan lifted one shoulder. “He could be
found there in the evenings whenever he left his wife in Ceredigion
and came north. It was common knowledge among the men because some
of us had to accompany him and then escort the girl home
afterwards.”

That was more about Cadwaladr’s activities
than Gwen had ever wanted to know, but she was sure that Hywel and
Gareth would be interested to learn of it. Gwen knew the hut in
question, though it had belonged to someone else when she was a
girl. “Back to Tegwen. When was the last time you saw her?” Gwen
said.

“She came to me, two weeks before she
disappeared, and told me that she was with child and it was mine,”
Brychan said. “Her husband had been absent for much of the spring
and had sported more with other women than with her. He would know
that the child wasn’t his.”

“She was sure it was yours?” Gwen said.

“We were sure. She asked again for me to
take her away. I wanted to.” Brychan clenched his hands into fists.
“But I was a coward. I needed more time to think about where to go
and how we would live. She’d caught me at a bad time for making any
decision too. I had come to Aber only because my lord was one of
King Owain’s captains, and he sent me home with a message for Lord
Taran. The war in England was newly started, and King Owain decided
to gain himself some territory at the expense of a few Marcher
barons he thought needed reining in. I put Tegwen off with excuses
and told her that I would come to Rhos before the end of the month.
That would have been April.”

“But you didn’t,” Gwen said.

Brychan eyes skated away and didn’t return
to Gwen’s face. “I never intended to, and I never saw Tegwen again.
I visited Aber a few months later, but she’d already run off with
that Dane.”

“What did you think about that?” Gwen
said.

“I assumed that since I’d refused her, she’d
found another man to take her away,” Brychan said. “It made perfect
sense. I was happy to believe it because it meant that she had a
better man than I or Bran to care for her.”