The Fallen Princess (12 page)

“Who cares for it now?” Gareth said. “I
can’t imagine it’s Prince Cadwaladr himself.”

“Oh no,” Nan said. “That would be old Wynn.
I heard you speaking to Ceri about a cart and a horse. They’re old
Wynn’s, and he stables them there; he lives in the village with his
daughter. She keeps an eye on him since his wife died.”

Hywel rose to his feet. “Thank you for
seeing us, Nan. I will send someone to help Ceri fix your cottage
and make sure you have enough food. You should have let us know
sooner of your needs.”

“My neighbors take care of us.” Nan smiled
at Ceri. “And Ceri is a good boy.”

“We can do better.” Hywel gave Nan a
respectful nod and then headed for the door. Once outside, he
tipped back his head and breathed deeply. “Christ, I hate to see
that.”

“From the looks, she suffers from a wasting
disease,” Gareth said.

“I would say you’re right,” Hywel said.

“Upon our return to Aber, I will direct
workmen from the castle to come here. It shouldn’t take long to fix
the roof and make the house more secure,” Gareth said. “Winter is
coming.”

“Winter is getting closer with every
breath,” Hywel said, referring to the celebration of Calan Gaeaf,
which marked the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, even if
cold weather didn’t always show itself exactly on that day. Hywel
slapped his gloves into his palm. “At least we have some
answers.”

Gareth snorted. “And thus more questions
than we did before.”

Hywel’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “We
wouldn’t want it any other way, would we? Shall we find this
haunted house?”

Llelo had followed them outside, and now his
eyes grew large; Gareth dropped a hand onto the top of his head.
“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

Llelo shook his head. “I’m not afraid.”

Gareth just managed not to smile at such a
transparently untrue statement. He gave the boy credit for
attempting to work through his fear, however. While their Saxon and
Norman neighbors might view Welshmen as embarrassingly emotional, a
man learned to hide from the world what he didn’t want it to
see.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts, boy.”
Hywel swung himself into the saddle. “No more than Wena was a
witch.”

Llelo grabbed at Gareth’s arm before he
could mount too. “Could be the ghost isn’t of Wena but of
Tegwen.”

Gareth looked up at Hywel, hoping Llelo
hadn’t offended the prince, but Hywel misread the look, because he
said, “Don’t tell me Hallowmas is getting to you too, Sir
Gareth?”

“Of course not. Even if Tegwen does haunt
us, she didn’t leave her own body on the beach,” Gareth said. “A
man did that.”

Hywel nodded. “You and I will assume a
mortal is at the heart of any wrongdoing until proven otherwise.
Men cause quite enough trouble without bringing the world of the
spirits into it.”

Llelo mumbled from beside Gareth, “It could
be her.”

Gareth grasped his chin and forced Llelo to
look at him. “I have seen enough death to know that it leaves a
mark, sometimes on the place the person died but more often on the
soul of the man who kills. That is our only concern today.” His
expression softened. “Tegwen can’t hurt you, son.”

Hywel chewed on his lower lip as he
contemplated the path they would be taking. “Five years ago, a boy
such as Llelo could have overheard Tegwen’s murder if it happened
at the house or near to it. That would have been enough to turn any
boy’s blood cold and make him and his friends warn others to stay
clear ever since. The people need little more than that to start a
rumor that Wena’s hut is haunted.”

Gareth mounted his horse, bringing him level
with Hywel. He leaned close and lowered his voice so Llelo, who was
occupied with clambering onto the horse’s back behind Gareth,
couldn’t hear. “If Cadwaladr killed Tegwen in that house—”

“Don’t say it. Don’t even think it,” Hywel
said. “I know we have his pendant, but as much as I despise my
uncle, more treachery from him—another murder by his hand or at his
order—will rip Gwynedd and my father apart. I don’t want to see
that happen today.”

Gareth gave way, and they left the road a
few hundred yards west of Ceri’s house, taking a narrow path that
was barely wide enough for a cart. “I didn’t even know there was a
farmhouse back here or I might have rested in it last winter after
Tomos hit me on the head,” Gareth said.

Hywel shot him an amused glance. “You were
making for Aber and Gwen; you wouldn’t have stopped for anything or
anyone.”

Gareth gave a half-laugh. “You’re probably
right. Besides, the last thing we needed that day was to find
another body, if Tegwen’s body was there to be found.”

Sooner than Gareth expected, though still
well back from the road to Penrhyn, they reached the house in
question. It was set back in a hollow, protected from the elements
on three sides by hills that stretched north out of the mountains
of Snowdonia. Hywel halted at the paddock fence and dismounted,
winding his horse’s reins around a rail. An old cart horse ambled
over to greet him, and Hywel stroked his forehead. “Hey, old
fellow.” He looked at Gareth. “This looks like the one. What do you
think, Llelo?”

Llelo slid off Gareth’s horse. “I have been
here before, though the horse is usually in the paddock over
there.” He waved a hand, indicating a fence line that began a
hundred feet away, across the clearing to the east of where they
were standing.

Gareth dismounted and walked to the rickety
barn to their left. He peered inside. It was just big enough for a
cart and a single horse stall. For all that it was a lean-to, the
roof was well maintained—better than Ceri’s house—and the horse’s
stall had been cleaned recently. Everything smelled of new hay. The
old horse had the opportunity to come in out of the rain if he
wanted, and judging from the gloss in his coat, somebody obviously
groomed him often. Hywel had remained by the horse, and Gareth
waved a hand to get his attention. “This fellow has a nice
life.”

“That’s our cart, then?” Hywel peered into
the darkness of the barn. “Let’s have it out.”

Llelo had wandered after Hywel, and now he
and Gareth helped Hywel roll the cart out of the lean-to and into
the sunshine. With four-foot wheels and a plank bench seat, it was
constructed exactly the same as a thousand carts found all over
Wales. One such cart had carried Tegwen from the beach only this
morning. Scraps of straw lay in the bed, and since the loft above
the stall was full of hay, it was easy to guess where they’d come
from. The cart contained nothing else.

Hywel clambered up onto the bed and crouched
close to the planks, his nose practically to the wood, inspecting
each one in turn. Then he spun slowly on the ball of his foot,
shaking his head. “Just our luck. Give me a scrap of cloth caught
on a nail. Give me something!”

His adamancy caught Gareth by surprise,
though it shouldn’t have. Guilt and frustration were a potent mix,
and Hywel had to be feeling both—and probably had been since he
identified the body as Tegwen’s. After another full rotation, Hywel
jumped down from the cart bed. “We’ll do a circuit of the steading
later. For now, let’s see what the house has to offer us.”

Gareth looked across the paddock. From
Ceri’s brief description, he had expected nothing other than a
standard peasant’s hut: wattle and daub construction, thatched
roof, no windows, with a hole in the roof to let out the smoke and
let in the only light when the door was closed, which wouldn’t be
often.

That wasn’t what faced them. The house,
built in a mix of stone and wood with a substantial, whole roof,
sat on a small rise at the foot of an overhanging cliff. The cliff
face formed the back wall of the house and was an outpost of the
range from which the Aber River sprang. If Gareth listened hard, he
thought he could hear Aber Falls cascading out of sight beyond the
eastern ridge. The house faced northeast so was further protected
from the weather, which usually blew in from the southwest, and the
overhang of the cliff was such that Gareth would have been
surprised if a raindrop had ever touched the roof.

A ray of sunlight shot from between the
clouds and shone on the nearby neglected garden, which an untamed
blackberry bramble had taken over. Though the same sun shone on
Llelo’s shoulders, he shivered and wrapped his cloak closer around
himself. “Are you going to go inside?”

This was a new side of Llelo. When they’d
first met at the monastery in England, Llelo had been the less
assertive of the two brothers, albeit the elder. He’d felt himself
responsible for Dai, though, and as the eldest son, he’d forged a
path for them, caring for his younger brother when they were
orphaned and reining in Dai’s more outrageous exploits. What Gareth
hadn’t ever seen in Llelo, however, was fear.

“We have to.” Gareth gestured to the house.
“You have nothing to be afraid of.”

Llelo’s expression told Gareth he doubted
the truth of that statement, but he managed a nod and allowed
Gareth to urge him towards the door.

“It’s just as I remembered when Wena lived
in it.” Hywel tapped out the rhythm to an inner song with three
fingers on his pant leg as he examined the house. “Serene. Just
like Wena.”

“Leave it to you to become friends with a
witch,” Gareth said. “Did Gwen visit her with you?”

“From whom do you think Gwen first learned
of herbs and healing?” Hywel said. “This was before her mother died
birthing Gwalchmai, mind you. Her girlhood ended that day. After
Gwen left Aber with her father, I ceased my visits too. My father
was determined that I take my place at his side with Rhun. I had no
more time for wandering.” Hywel’s tone revealed a remembered
loneliness. Since Gareth couldn’t live without Gwen, he didn’t
question the effect of her loss on Hywel.

“Someone has maintained the house since Wena
died, if not the garden,” Hywel said. “Probably old Wynn.”

“I wonder why Cadwaladr didn’t let the house
to someone else,” Gareth said.

“Nobody lives here because the house is
haunted.” Llelo held his shoulders stiff and braced for flight.

“Come along, Llelo.” Gareth motioned his
young charge forward. “Time to face your fear and see it for what
it is.”

“A fancy, nothing more.” Hywel went to the
closed wooden door and unhooked the latch with a flick of his
finger. The door swung wide on squeaking hinges.

Llelo started at the sound, his already
finely tuned senses telling him to run. “Da—” At least he had the
courage to stay put and hadn’t actually screamed.

Prince Hywel raised his eyebrows. “By such
means are legends made.”

“Remember the forest surrounding the
farmhouse that belonged to Empress Maud’s spies?” Gareth said.
“They kept everyone away with wind chimes in the trees. No ghosts
walked there any more than they do here.”

“Or if they do, they are those of our own
making,” Hywel said.

Stiff-legged and wary, Llelo kept close to
Gareth’s side. Being watchful wasn’t necessarily a bad thing when
walking into an unknown situation, and Gareth reminded himself
again that death was very real to the boy. Llelo rarely talked
about his parents and certainly hadn’t ever said he feared their
ghosts. But this would be the first Hallowmas since his father
died, and perhaps Tegwen’s death was bringing his own loss a little
too close for comfort.

Once inside the door, the three companions
stood listening to the wind in the trees on the edge of the
clearing and the shifting of the horses outside. The house, on the
other hand, was completely silent. ‘Gravelike’, Gareth might have
said, if the thought wouldn’t have sent Llelo fleeing for the
road.

The back wall and the floor were composed of
packed earth, and it was dark inside, with the only light coming
through the open door. A half-burnt candle sat in a dish on the
table. Gareth went to it and lit it with the tools he carried in
his scrip. The candle flared, casting their shadows against the
wall, and then a sudden gust of wind blew through the room. The
candle went out at the same moment that the door slammed shut.

Llelo shrieked into the darkness and
scrabbled for the door latch. Gareth found the boy by sound alone
and grabbed him around the waist with his left arm. “Hush, Llelo.”
Feeling for the door with his free hand, Gareth lifted the latch.
He pushed the door open, and light streamed into the room once
again. Gareth set Llelo on the other side of the threshold. “Stay
here and prop the door open with your shoulder.”

“Yes, sir.” Llelo looked down at his
feet.

Gareth put his head close to Llelo’s. “I
won’t mention this to anyone if you don’t.”

“Thank you, Da.” The color slowly returned
to Llelo’s face.

Hywel shot Gareth a sliver of a smile and
tipped his head towards the boy. “Is he all right?”

“He will be,” Gareth said, “once he calms
down and his courage returns.”

Hywel had lit the candle again and now
proceeded around the room with it, surveying the contents of the
house: a bed in the far corner, a table with two stools tucked
underneath it, and a shelf holding platters and cups. A broom
leaned against the wall by the cupboard.

“Warm and dry, as I said.” Hywel gestured to
the beams that supported the plank board ceiling. “Wena hung her
herbs here. They never grew mold, not even during the worst of the
winter rains.”

“How did she manage that?” Gareth said.

Hywel shrugged. “She always said it was in
the house’s nature, though she did keep a fire burning in that
brazier.” Hywel pointed to a grate that Gareth hadn’t noticed
earlier, located in the back of the room at the front of a
hollowed-out section of the wall a foot above the ground.

His brow furrowed, Gareth looked around the
room for a chimney, but there wasn’t one. Nor was there a hole in
the roof.