The Fallen Princess (17 page)

“I’m sorry also to have to speak about her
death at a time like this,” Gareth said, moving to stand beside
Gruffydd at the foot of the table on which Tegwen lay, “but we need
to ask some questions about Tegwen’s last days.”

“You mean the same questions you should have
asked five years ago when she disappeared? After her husband killed
her?” Gruffydd was no longer the affable castellan of Dolwyddelan
but an angry, grieving grandfather.

“Why do you say that her husband killed
her?”

“He beat her, didn’t he?” Gruffydd said. “It
was only a matter of time.”

Gareth blinked. Gruffydd’s certainty that
Bran was at fault was the same as Brychan’s, though Brychan hadn’t
mentioned physical abuse and neither had Mari. “If so, why didn’t
you do something about it?” In Wales, a woman could leave her
husband if he physically harmed her, and her family would support
her. Tegwen could have left Bran if she was afraid of his
fists.

“She refused to admit that he hurt her,”
Gruffydd said.

Gareth looked at Hywel, who raised his
eyebrows and nodded to indicate that he should leave it for
now.

“When did you last see Tegwen?” Gareth
said.

“We were with her for most of Epiphany,”
Gruffydd said, “through the funeral of the old king and the
ascension of Bran to rule of the cantref. But once the winter thaw
set in, travel became difficult. It’s twenty-five miles from
Dolwyddelan to Bryn Euryn. We wanted to see her—”

At these words, Sioned cried all the louder,
her shoulders shaking.

Gruffydd glanced at his wife and finished,
“—but whenever we visited, Bran made us as uncomfortable as he
could.”

“What do you mean by that?” Gareth said.

“He would complain about the expense of
housing us and our men or indicate that our chamber would be needed
shortly for a more important guest,” Gruffydd said.

Sioned took in great hiccups of air and
wiped at her eyes.

“We didn’t want to appeal to Tegwen,”
Gruffydd said, “since it would put her in the difficult situation
of having to choose between her husband and us, so we never stayed
long. And Bran made it difficult for her to visit us too.”

“Tegwen—wouldn’t leave—the girls at Bryn
Euryn,” Sioned said, speaking through gasping breaths as she tried
to control her tears, “and Bran claimed the journey would be too
taxing for them, being so young.”

Gruffydd finally bent to Sioned, holding her
hands and whispering words Gareth couldn’t hear.

“Bran sounds like a delightful fellow,”
Gareth said in an aside to Hywel.

“Two have named him now,” Hywel said. “We
will have to look at him more closely.”

“How?” Gareth said. “He’s dead.”

“So is Tegwen—and look what we’ve learned of
her in a day,” Hywel said.

Gareth gave a slight cough to regain
Gruffydd’s attention. “When did you first learn of your
granddaughter’s disappearance?”

“Ten days afterwards!” Gruffydd spun around,
his face once again flushed red with anger. “She disappeared at the
Feast of St. Bueno, and we didn’t know of it until the first of
May.”

“Bran didn’t send for you when it happened?”
Gareth said.

“He did not!”

“Is that why you accuse him of her murder?”
Gareth said.

Gruffydd glared at Gareth and didn’t address
his question. “The trail was cold before we even started
looking.”

“It does seem odd that Bran didn’t tell you
of her disappearance,” Hywel said. “All the same, how can you
accuse Bran of murder when he was in Powys at the time with the
king and most of the lords of Gwynedd?”

“Come to think on it, why weren’t you in
Powys too?” Gareth said.

Gruffydd snorted his disgust. “I’d broken my
leg.” He pointed at Gareth with his chin. “You remember—I was still
recovering when you came to Dolwyddelan that summer.”

“I remember,” Gareth said.

“Damn knee has never been right since,”
Gruffydd said.

“So you couldn’t personally have searched
for her, regardless of when you heard the news,” Gareth said. “Did
Bran know of your injury?”

“Know of it?” Gruffydd said. “He was riding
right behind me when it happened. I was on my way to Aber for the
gathering of the troops for the march on Powys. The horse stepped
into a hole. My boot was caught in the stirrup, and I went down
under the horse.”

Gareth winced. “You were lucky to live.”

Gruffydd ran a hand through his hair, still
thick with almost no gray at all in the brown. “After Tegwen
disappeared, I almost didn’t want to. It was only Sioned—” He
gestured to his wife, “—who kept me going. And then after Bran’s
death, we took in Tegwen’s daughters.”

If the girls had been boys, Ifon might have
kept them in Rhos, but a girl was of little interest beyond
diplomacy. Tegwen’s marriage to Bran had been intended to further
an already well-established relationship with Rhos. Ultimately, if
he’d lived, Bran would have arranged for a similar marriage for his
daughters.

“I loved her.” Sioned spoke again, renewed
sobs choking her throat. “I miss her every day.”

Gruffydd rested a hand on his wife’s
shoulder. “Come,
cariad
. She is gone from us. Let’s leave
her to these men, who will see to her.”

The pair departed. Hywel gazed after them
for a moment. “What if I have a daughter?” He shook his head. “You
and I are in for it, aren’t we?”

“Is everything all right between you and
Mari?” Gareth said, not looking at his lord—and not sure he should
be asking this in the first place.

“I didn’t mean that. You know my feelings
for Mari.”

It was Hywel’s desire to see his wife that
had prompted him to ride north in August for a three-day visit
because he couldn’t bear to be parted from her any longer. Gareth
had ridden with him and been glad to see Gwen too. Before he left
again, Gwen had begged to come south with him, though they both
knew her condition prevented it. Gareth wouldn’t have wanted her to
be a part of what he’d had to do anyway. When Hywel had returned to
Ceredigion, he’d burned Cardigan Castle to the ground.

Gareth didn’t want to think about the death
he’d seen on that day or its possible repercussions, so he drew
back the cloak that covered Tegwen. He restrained his instinctive
recoil at the sight of her mummified remains. Tegwen’s body hadn’t
so much rotted as dried out. Wena’s cottage, with its constantly
moving dry air, had provided an unusual environment for a corpse.
Gareth glanced at Hywel, who was standing in his usual position
with his hands on his hips, studying her.

“If she was pregnant when she died, we have
no way to tell,” Hywel said.

“She might not have been far enough along to
show,” Gareth said. “I suppose if her tissues had disappeared, the
baby’s bones might have remained among her own. Impossible now to
know.”

“How did she get from Rhos to Wena’s
cottage?” Hywel said. “Gwen was right to see that as the most
pressing question.”

“That’s because you’re looking at this all
wrong.” The door to the room swung open. Cadwaladr’s wife, Alice,
stood in the doorway. “It disturbs me that you are trusted by your
father to see to this when you have no idea how go about to
investigating wrongful deaths.”

Gwen, who’d come through the door after
Alice, closed it gently. Behind Alice’s back, Gwen put a finger to
her lips. Hywel had been opening his mouth to protest Alice’s
slight and now snapped it shut. He rubbed his chin, his eyes
flicking from Alice to Gwen, who remained a pace behind the older
woman. Gareth focused on covering Tegwen’s body with the cloak.
Although Alice had already received an eyeful, none of them needed
to see Tegwen’s remains while they talked.

“Alice has some important information for us
regarding the circumstances surrounding Tegwen before her
disappearance,” Gwen said.

“Anything you have to say might be helpful,”
Gareth said into the silence that nobody else was filling.

“Right.” Alice marched to the stool upon
which Sioned had been sitting and sat herself down. “First of all,
I know that I can rely on you not to let anything I say leave this
room. My husband must never hear that I spoke to you. I will deny
all rumor of it.”

“Certainly,” Hywel said.

“You may not tell your father either,” Alice
said.

Hywel looked at her carefully. “If it must
be kept so secret, are you sure you want to tell us at all,
Aunt?”

“My husband is under suspicion for yet
another crime. He has committed enough on his own without adding
false accusations,” she said. “I could not bear it if he lost his
lands in Merionydd. My children must have some inheritance.”

Gareth could accept that.

As the lord who had taken Ceredigion from
Cadwaladr and who had fought all summer to maintain his grip on it,
that was something Hywel could understand too. “You have my word,”
Hywel said. “Please tell us what you know.”

“My father died eight years ago, ambushed
during a return journey to Ceredigion. Upon his death, Cadwaladr
and Owain took the lands my father had carved out for himself. My
family lost all of our lands in Wales, and my mother retreated to
England. After his wife died in childbirth two years later,
Cadwaladr came to England to ask my mother for my hand in marriage,
to make peace from war. My mother accepted on my behalf, and I
returned to Ceredigion as Cadwaladr’s wife.”

Gareth had to give credit to Alice for
treating Cadfan, the son of Cadwaladr’s first wife, as her own. For
the rest, Alice hadn’t said enough as yet to know where this was
leading. Hywel was watching Alice, a finger to his lips. He didn’t
interrupt or ask what this was about either.

Alice continued, “Cadwaladr spent the spring
of Tegwen’s disappearance in the east, having been called upon by
his brother to fight. He left me at Aber with Gwladys, King Owain’s
wife.”

“I remember,” Hywel said.

“Lord Bran was often with us as well.” Alice
primly folded her hands in her lap, looking pleased with
herself.

Silence fell among the companions. Gareth
was lost but didn’t want to say so. Then Gwen stepped forward. “You
can’t leave it there, my lady. As you said, we aren’t as clever as
you and need more to understand what was going on five years
ago.”

Alice sighed, irritation crossing her face.
Gareth had admired Alice’s fortitude when he’d encountered her in
Ceredigion, but she’d been the lady of her own castle then, even if
Hywel soon burned it down. This Alice seemed pettier and angrier.
Maybe she always had been. But then, she was the Norman wife of a
dishonored Welsh prince, living in exile in Gwynedd—not the refined
Norman life she was born to. He could see how that could wear on
her.

“Gwladys and Bran were lovers, of course,”
Alice said.

“No!” Hywel gaped at his aunt. “They can’t
have been. Gwladys never would have betrayed my father.”

“She could have and she did,” Alice said
primly. “I was the only one who knew. She confided in me, loath to
send Bran away but terrified of the king and sure that he would
discover all when he returned from the east.”

“Wait a moment,” Gareth said. “All along
we’ve been saying that Bran was fighting in Powys with everyone
else. Are you saying that he wasn’t?”

Alice sent him a look of disdain. “I wasn’t
in Powys, of course, but I heard about that little war. It was
chaos: lords fighting here and there, practically at each other’s
throats as much as at the Earl of Chester’s, raids from Shrewsbury
all the way up to Chester itself, and nobody was ever where he said
he would be.” Her brow furrowed. “Didn’t you know?”

Gareth looked from Gwen to Hywel, both of
whom seemed stunned speechless by the revelation about Gwladys.
Gareth had been guarding his convent during that ‘little war’ and
had been on the receiving end, so to speak, of the fighting. He
rubbed his forehead. “You’re saying that Bran wasn’t reliably in
Powys that spring?”

“That is it exactly.”

“How is that possible? Surely the residents
of Aber would have noticed if Bran returned frequently to consort
with their queen,” Gareth said.

“She didn’t meet him at Aber. They held
their trysts at that little house where Cadwaladr says you found
Tegwen’s body,” Alice said.

Satisfaction flooded through Gareth. Since
Hywel’s tongue appeared frozen to the roof of his mouth, he spoke
for him. “How long did the affair last, do you know?”

“A few months, no more. She broke it
off—before Tegwen’s disappearance, mind you.”

Finally, Hywel pulled up a second stool to
sit beside his aunt; he took her hand. “You’re sure about
this?”

“I’m sure.”

Gwen stepped to Gareth’s side. “I don’t
remember Gwladys having such a compelling character that she would
attract someone like Bran. She was a mouse, especially in
comparison to Cristina.”

Alice had overheard Gwen’s comment. “He
didn’t woo her for her looks.”

Hywel looked up at Gwen. “Though I know
little of Bran, his desire was probably less for Gwladys herself
than for what he thought he could gain from her.”

“You mean he wanted a good word from Gwladys
in King Owain’s ear?” Gwen said. “Why would he need that? He’d
already married Tegwen, a princess, and ruled Rhos.”

“A man can never have enough land, Gwen,”
Hywel said.

“I assume I’m not the only who’s noticed
that nearly everyone involved in Tegwen’s disappearance is already
dead themselves. Is that a little too convenient?” Gwen said.

“I am
not
investigating Gwladys’s
death,” Hywel said. “She died of a fever just before Christmas that
year. My father was distraught.”

“That was a momentous year for Gwynedd,”
Gwen said. “Tegwen disappeared, Gwladys died, war in England and
the March—”

“I came to Gwynedd that summer. Clearly the
most momentous event of all,” Gareth said, trying to lighten the
atmosphere in the room.