The Fallen Princess (7 page)

“I suppose,” Mari said. “Come to think on
it, I could have shared her fate as well, except that it was I who
was impoverished, not the man I loved.”

“And now you’re married to a prince!”

The two friends clasped hands.

“I will do my best by Tegwen,” Gwen said. “I
promise.”

Gareth

A
s he trudged up
the beach beside his young charge, Gareth eyed the small sack Llelo
had slung over his shoulder. “Are we having clams for
breakfast?”

Llelo shot him a woeful look. “I didn’t have
time to dig up very many. It’s not enough to share with more than a
few people. I should give them to the king, shouldn’t I?”

“Lucky for you, King Owain doesn’t eat clams
for breakfast,” Gareth said. “Bring them to the kitchen for boiling
and you can eat them at the cook’s table. I know you spend half
your life at it already.”

“That’s because I’m always hungry!”

Gareth shook Llelo’s shoulder. “I saw you
huddled with the children. I would think that there might be a few
nightmares among them over the next day or two.”

“Is it true that the body is that of the
king’s niece?” Llelo said.

“You heard that, did you?” Gareth said. “I
can’t say for sure. Prince Hywel thinks so.”

“How could she come to look like that?”
Llelo said. “If she drowned, her body would have been bloated, but
if she died a long time ago, wouldn’t her body have rotted
away?”

“How would you know about that?” Gareth
said.

Llelo shrugged. “I’ve seen plenty of dead
animals. I found the remains of sheep we lost during a previous
winter. Usually they’re just bones by the time I get to them.”

“Right. Of course.” Gareth nodded,
acknowledging that his thirteen-year-old self would have known as
much, which was why it always stumped him when he came across
adults who had no experience with dead bodies. Common folk who
lived off the land or worked it had a very different perspective on
life and death than the nobility. “Regardless of how recently she
died, whether last month or years ago, her body was kept in a dry
place and all the moisture leached from her before she could
rot.”

“Like if you leave a dead frog in the sun?”
Llelo said.

“Even so,” Gareth said.

Llelo’s brow furrowed. “I came upon a cave
once with a dead sheep inside. The body was all brown and dried out
like this body. The wool was still soft!”

Gareth nodded. “That sounds like the right
kind of place. You probably don’t remember since you were so young,
but we had a dry spring and summer the year Tegwen may have died.
Crops failed, even on Anglesey, because of it.” Herders had found
the high pastures in the mountains parched along with the lowlands.
Creeks and pools that had never failed in living memory had lacked
water. Gareth had suffered himself in his trek to Dolwyddelan,
finding places to fill his water skins in short supply.

The boy driving the cart that would carry
Tegwen’s body to Aber Castle had turned the horse around so it
faced away from the beach, and Prince Hywel stood by the cart bed.
Evan nodded at Gareth as he approached and stepped closer. “I have
given a report to Prince Hywel.”

“I will hear it from him and then from you,”
Gareth said. “Good work.”

While Gareth moved to stand beside Prince
Hywel, the men formed up behind them. Everyone would walk back to
the castle behind the cart to honor the burden it was carrying.
“Tegwen will receive the ceremony due her, even if five years too
late,” Hywel said.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” Gareth said. “I wish
there was something I could say to make this easier.”

“We can find out who murdered her,” Hywel
said. “It’s the least I can do. I failed her in life; I refuse to
fail her in death.”

“How did you fail her?” Gareth said. “It’s
hardly your fault that she’s dead.”

Hywel sighed. “She told me she didn’t want
to marry Bran, and I didn’t help her talk to my father. I knew Bran
had little regard for her and was marrying her because she was
Cadwallon’s daughter, but—” The muscles around his eyes
tightened.

“Marrying for love is rare among noblemen,”
Gareth said.

“Not in my family,” Hywel said. “We all
marry for love. Why do you think my father sacrificed the Church’s
regard to marry Cristina?”

“He wanted to unite the last remnants of his
family—”

“He loves her,” Hywel said simply. “I love
Mari. Rhun will find a wife soon too, and if he chooses a woman he
doesn’t love, my father will not accede to his request.”

Gareth loved Gwen more than life itself, so
he could understand what Hywel was saying. And it was certainly
true that a Welsh woman of whatever status generally had more say
in whom she married than a Norman noble woman. A couple’s ability
to elope was codified into Welsh law. King Owain’s own sister had
eloped with the much older King of Deheubarth, which was how
Gwynedd had become involved in Ceredigion in the first place. While
her husband was absent, negotiating a treaty in Gwynedd, a Norman
force attacked her castle and killed her by hanging her from the
battlement.

“So why didn’t your father discourage
Tegwen’s union with Bran?” Gareth said.

“I don’t know. Maybe her marriage is what
made him think about his own unions differently,” Hywel said. “I
didn’t know my father as well then as I do now. It’s hard to think
of him as ever being wrong about anything.”

Gareth didn’t know what to say to that. King
Owain had thrown Gareth into a cell a year ago, having accused him
of a murder he didn’t commit. Hywel must have guessed what he was
thinking, because he shot him a sardonic glance. “Except when he’s
angry, my father is usually a good judge of character.”

“Was Bran a good man?” Gareth said. “I’m
getting the sense that he wasn’t.”

“I didn’t know him well.” Hywel shrugged.
“Many would say that my character leaves much to be desired, and
yet my father trusts me, and I have ever sought to serve him.
Perhaps the same could be said of Bran.”

Gareth bowed his head, granting Hywel his
point. “Given that Bran is dead, he cannot be our immediate
concern. He was not the one who left Tegwen’s body on the
beach.”

“We know who left her body on the beach,”
Hywel said.

“Cadwaladr,” Gareth said.

Hywel scowled. “The question now is what
drove my uncle to do so five years after Tegwen’s
disappearance.”

“Five years after he killed her,” Gareth
said.

Hywel held up one finger. “We don’t know
that. We don’t know anything about the circumstances of her death,
and until we do, we will not speculate.”

“Yes, my lord.” Gareth acknowledged Hywel’s
authority in this matter, but just because they weren’t going to
talk about it didn’t mean Gareth couldn’t think it.

The cart started rolling forward, and after
a pause for it to get a few yards ahead, Hywel lifted his horse’s
reins to get him moving. Gareth did the same.

“My lord, if I may, you were only fifteen
when Tegwen married Bran,” Gareth said, changing the subject in
order to abide by his prince’s wish. Maybe they didn’t have to talk
about Cadwaladr now, but they would have to face his involvement
eventually. Gareth knew it was petty of him, but he couldn’t be
happier to learn of Cadwaladr’s culpability. The man was a
menace—to himself and to his country. King Owain was going to have
to face his treachery eventually, and to Gareth’s mind it was
better to do so sooner rather than later, before he betrayed them
more completely than he already had.

“I was a man,” Hywel said. “That should have
been enough.”

Gareth shook his head. Even if Hywel was
chastising himself for his failure now, the man he was then would
never have interfered in the marriage of his cousin, no matter how
much he loved her. Hywel’s concern for Tegwen did shed new light on
his intervention in his sister’s marriage to Anarawd, who by all
accounts hadn’t been a good man either. In fact, it might explain
everything.

Llelo tugged on Gareth’s sleeve. “Da.” Llelo
had started calling him that in the last week since Gareth had
returned from Ceredigion. It was a familiarity that warmed Gareth’s
heart, and he hoped their coming baby wouldn’t put Llelo off or
make him jealous. Every child needed an older brother—two in this
case—though Dai, for all his youthful enthusiasm, was taking longer
to warm up. “I found out one more thing. One of the boys I talked
to lives to the west of the beach. He—Ceri—heard a cart pass by as
he was returning from the latrine in the middle of the night. Carts
never pass by at that hour, so he ran after it to see who it
was.”

Hywel came out of his reverie and looked
past Gareth to Llelo. “Did Ceri recognize the driver?”

“It was too dark to make out the features of
either the driver or a second man who walked ahead of the cart.
Both were well-wrapped in cloak and hood. But he knew the
horse.”

That was the kind of news Gareth lived for.
“Go on.”

Llelo’s eyes were bright. “The horse
pastures on a steading west of the Aber River and just south of the
road to Penrhyn.”

Gareth looked at Prince Hywel. “Do we know
who lives there?”

Hywel’s brow furrowed. “I’m trying to think.
I should know.” He looked at Llelo. “Once we get Tegwen settled at
Aber, we’ll want to speak to the boy and his parents. Do you know
where they live?”

Llelo nodded. “Yes, my lord.”

Which was only as Gareth would have
expected. He and Gwen had taken on Llelo and Dai out of charity, as
two boys lost in the expanse of England, but it was the boys who’d
added joy to their lives. Llelo had turned out to be thoughtful,
responsible, and mature beyond his years. He was also curious and
energetic, and combining all those qualities together had produced
a boy who dug clams in the early hours of the morning and knew
every farm and homestead—and their inhabitants—from here to
Bangor.

Although Gareth had been absent all summer
in Ceredigion and hadn’t witnessed it himself, Gwen reported that
Llelo and Dai had ranged all over the region since they’d come
home. At Aber, they’d joined the pack of boys that included
Gwalchmai, Gwen’s brother, and Iorwerth, the king’s eldest son by
his first wife, Gwladys. Under Cristina’s rule, the boys had found
Aber Castle less hospitable than before her tenure. Particularly
now that she was pregnant, she had shown resentment towards King
Owain’s sons by other women, and the boys had learned very quickly
that life went more smoothly when they stayed out of her way.

“Stay close so I don’t have to hunt you down
later. And don’t speak of this to anyone else. I believe this
investigation will be one of the more—” Gareth glanced at Hywel,
who’d gone back to ruminating on his failings, “—delicate ones
we’ve undertaken.”

“Yes, Da,” Llelo said and fell back to walk
behind Gareth with the other soldiers.

It was only a half-mile from the beach to
Aber Castle: a short walk, if somber. The driver brought the cart
to a halt before entering the castle, and King Owain came out from
underneath the gatehouse to greet them. He paced towards Prince
Hywel, who bowed along with everyone else at his approach. Gareth
and the other men held that position until Hywel raised his
head.

“Sire,” Hywel said.

“I’d like to see her for myself before you
take her inside,” King Owain said.

Hywel stepped to the cart bed and gently
peeled back the hood that covered Tegwen’s face.

King Owain reached out a hand, hovering it
over her hair and hesitating. “Do you really think this is she,
son? Her features are unrecognizable, and her hair has more red in
it than I remember.”

“Perhaps. But you haven’t yet seen the whole
of her.” With two fingers, Hywel carefully opened the cloak at her
throat and lifted up the garnet ring that rested on its chain.
“This was hers, as was the cloak.” He pointed to the embroidery on
the hem.

King Owain recoiled slightly but recovered
after a moment and moved closer again. This time, he rested a hand
on the top of her head. “What became of you that your life ended
here?”

As a kinswoman, Tegwen’s welfare had been
King Owain’s responsibility more than Hywel’s. King Owain’s father,
also named Gruffydd like Tegwen’s grandfather, had been king at the
time, but Owain had already shouldered much of the responsibility
for the kingdom by the time Tegwen married Bran. Her death was made
all the worse by the fact that he’d pictured her happy, far away in
another land. They’d mourned her at the time as they would have
mourned any similar loss, but this was a different kind of
grief.

Pain was etched into the king’s face as he
turned to his son. “Gwen says Tegwen was murdered.”

“It seems so, Father.”

King Owain touched the side of Tegwen’s
head, feeling at her scalp as they all had. Hywel didn’t stop him.
A crowd of people had followed the king out of the castle,
gathering around the cart and the soldiers who’d accompanied it
from the beach. Gareth didn’t know that he’d ever seen a people as
silent as they, not even at chapel, as they watched their king
stand over the fallen princess. Finally, King Owain sighed and
covered Tegwen’s face again. “You will find out who did this.”

“Yes, Father.”

And with those simple words, King Owain once
again delegated a sensitive and difficult task to this younger son.
With a wave from King Owain, the driver of the cart urged his horse
through the gate and into the courtyard of the castle. Hywel hung
back to confer with Gareth, allowing his father the opportunity to
walk behind the cart alone. “We need to move quickly. Hallowmas is
only a day away. My father will want to see real progress between
now and then.”

Gareth didn’t know how that was going to be
possible, but he would certainly try. He didn’t say as much to
Hywel, however, merely nodded. Once inside the castle, he signaled
that his men should see to their duties. They dispersed, and Gareth
tossed the reins of his horse to one of the stable boys who came
forward to take them.