The Fourth Horseman

A Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mystery

The Fourth
Horseman

by

Sarah Woodbury

Copyright © 2013
by Sarah Woodbury

Cover image by Christine DeMaio-Rice at Flip
City Books

The Fourth
Horseman

May 1144. Newly wedded, Gareth and Gwen
travel across the border into England on a diplomatic mission with
Prince Hywel of Wales. Within moments of their arrival, however,
the mission goes awry and a murder case drops (literally) at their
feet. Hindered at every turn by a climate of civil war and
constantly shifting political alliances, Gareth and Gwen race to
solve the murder and expose a plot that threatens not only their
lives, but the life of the future King of England himself.

Murder, intrigue, and
treachery take center stage in
The Fourth
Horseman
, the third Gareth and Gwen
medieval mystery.

To my mom

The Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mysteries:

The Bard’s Daughter (prequel)

The Good Knight

The Uninvited Guest

The Fourth Horseman

The Fallen Princess

The Unlikely Spy

The Lost Brother

The Renegade Merchant

The After Cilmeri Series:

Daughter of Time (prequel)

Footsteps in Time (Book One)

Winds of Time

Prince of Time (Book Two)

Crossroads in Time (Book Three)

Children of Time (Book Four)

Exiles in Time

Castaways in Time

Ashes of Time

Warden of Time

Guardians of Time

The Lion of Wales Series:

Cold My Heart

The Oaken Door

Of Men and Dragons

A Long Cloud

The Last Pendragon Saga:

The Last Pendragon

The Pendragon’s Quest

The Paradisi Chronicles:

Erase Me Not

www.sarahwoodbury.com

A Brief Guide to Welsh
Pronunciation

c
a hard ‘c’ sound (Cadfael)

ch
a non-English sound as in Scottish ‘ch’ in ‘loch’
(Fychan)

dd
a buzzy ‘th’ sound, as in ‘there’ (Ddu; Gwynedd)

f
as in ‘of’ (Cadfael)

ff
as in ‘off’ (Gruffydd)

g
a hard ‘g’ sound, as in ‘gas’ (Goronwy)

l
as in ‘lamp’ (Llywelyn)

ll
a breathy ‘shl’ sound that does not occur in English
(Llywelyn)

rh
a breathy mix between ‘r’ and ‘rh’ that does not occur in
English (Rhys)

th
a softer sound than for ‘dd,’ as in ‘thick’
(Arthur)

u
a short ‘ih’ sound (Gruffydd), or a long ‘ee’ sound
(Cymru—pronounced ‘kumree’)

w
as a consonant, it’s an English ‘w’ (Llywelyn); as a vowel,
an ‘oo’ sound (Bwlch)

y
the only letter in which Welsh is not phonetic. It can be an
‘ih’ sound, as in ‘Gwyn,’ is often an ‘uh’ sound (Cymru), and at
the end of the word is an ‘ee’ sound (thus, both Cymru—the modern
word for Wales—and Cymry—the word for Wales in the Dark Ages—are
pronounced ‘kumree’)

Cast of
Characters

Owain Gwynedd – King of Gwynedd (North
Wales)

Rhun – Prince of Gwynedd

Hywel – Prince of Gwynedd

Gwen – spy for Hywel, Gareth’s wife

Gareth – Gwen’s husband, Captain of Hywel’s
guard

Mari – Gwen’s friend

Rhys – Prior of St. Kentigern’s Abbey (St.
Asaph)

Evan – Gareth’s friend

Gruffydd – Prince Rhun’s captain

Empress Maud – daughter of King Henry
(deceased), claimant to the throne of England

King Stephen – nephew of King Henry
(deceased), King of England

Robert – Earl of Gloucester, illegitimate
half-brother to Empress Maud

Prince Henry – Maud’s son

William of Ypres – Stephen’s
right-hand-man

Ranulf – Earl of Chester

Amaury – Norman knight

Stephen de Blois came to London,

and the people received him

and hallowed him to king on midwinter
day.

But in this king's time was all dissension,
and evil, and rapine;

for against him rose soon the rich men who
were traitors.

Then was England very much divided.

Some held with the king and some with the
empress;

for when the king was in prison,

the earls and the rich men supposed that he
would never more come out,

and they settled with the empress,

and when the king was out,

he heard of this, and took his force,

and beset her in the tower.

By such things, and more than we can
say,

we suffered nineteen winters for our
sins.

To till the ground was to plough the
sea:

the earth bore no corn,

for the land was all laid waste by such
deeds;

they said openly that Christ and his saints
slept …

–
The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicle

And this time shall be known to history as …
the Anarchy.

Chapter One

May 1144

Gwen

“Y
ou two keep your ears and eyes open,” Hywel said. “Earl Robert
may be courting friendship with Wales, but I want everyone to
remain on their guard nonetheless. I don’t trust these
Normans.”

Gwen glanced at Gareth, who laughed. “Of
course,” they said together.

Gareth’s eyes glinted, and if Gwen hadn’t
been married to him for five months already, she would have
blushed. It wasn’t the first time they’d spoken in unison.

Hywel mumbled something Gwen didn’t
catch—half-laughing too—and led the way into the bailey of the
enormous Norman castle at Newcastle-under-Lyme. In its shadow lay a
prosperous village which, according to Hywel, had grown in recent
years. What had once been a few huts planted in the lower bailey of
the original timber castle was now a thriving market town beyond
the new castle’s stone walls.

The castle bailey teemed with soldiers, and
Gwen knew why: the war between King Stephen and Empress Maud was in
its ninth year. The man they had come to see, Robert, Earl of
Gloucester, was Maud’s brother and led her armies. Although most
men agreed that Robert would have made a better king than either
Stephen or Maud, he was a bastard, so he could never claim the
English throne for himself.

The steps up to the stone keep, which had
replaced the original motte and bailey castle, lay two hundred feet
in front of them, on low lying ground to the north of the Lyme
Brook. Hywel and his brother, Prince Rhun, urged their horses
through the crowd. Gareth and Gwen followed, along with their other
companions: Evan, Gareth’s second-in-command; Gruffydd, Rhun’s
captain; and Rhys, the prior of St. Kentigern’s monastery in St.
Asaph, who had befriended Gareth last winter.

Three Normans waited for them on the
flagstone pathway that ran from the gatehouse to the keep. The men
stood with their hands behind their backs and bowed at the princes’
approach. Then one stepped forward and spoke in French. “Welcome to
Newcastle. Earl Robert sends his greetings. Please dismount, my
lords.” He caught sight of Gwen. “Madam.”

Gwen waited for Gareth to get down first so
he could help her. He always wanted her to wait for him, even when
she didn’t need his help. When he held her a moment longer than was
strictly necessary, once she was on the ground, she smiled up at
him. She would have kissed him, too, but for the large audience
around them.

After a long look, he let her go, and Gwen
swished her skirt into place. She was wearing finery today, as were
they all. They had dressed well and deliberately that morning in
their camp, located less than a mile from Newcastle, in order to
present the Welsh cause to Robert in the best light possible.

Hywel, with his deep blue eyes, broad
shoulders, and handsome face, would do well wherever he went. Rhun,
with his thick shoulders and shock of blond hair, looked more like
a Dublin Dane than a Welsh prince. As the Normans were themselves
descended from the same Viking ancestors as the Danes, his visage
was one the Normans could respect. King Owain of Gwynedd, the
princes’ father, knew what he was doing when he sent his sons to
foster diplomacy between the two kingdoms.

The stable boys led the horses away, and the
companions turned towards the keep. Built into the curtain wall of
the castle, it had towers on every corner and loomed above them.
“Here comes Earl Ranulf himself,” Hywel said, leaning in to speak
to Gareth and Gwen.

“
Sir Amaury de
Granville
walks with him, my lord,” Gareth
said. “I told you about him. He is Ranulf’s man at Chester
Castle.”

“
I remember,” Hywel
said.

It was good news that Ranulf had come to
greet the Welsh princes. He wasn’t Earl Robert himself, of course,
but he was Robert’s son-in-law and the Earl of Chester. Maybe Earl
Robert truly had invited the princes to visit Newcastle out of
goodwill and a genuine interest in an alliance with Wales, not as a
ploy to put the Welsh at a disadvantage and intimidate them with
Norman power.

Gwen tried to watch Ranulf without staring
at him. He appeared slightly unkempt. The brooch holding his cloak
closed at the neck had drifted towards his left shoulder, he had
mud on his boots, and a dark stain marred his brown breeches. Then
a ray of sunlight shot over the castle wall, forcing Gwen to blink
and turn her head away.

She put up one hand to block the light and
nudged Gareth. “I can’t see. Let’s move over here.” She tugged him
to the right of the steps that flared out from the keep and into
the long shadow cast by the castle’s old motte, which rose up on
the east side of the bailey.

Several men who’d been milling about in the
courtyard pressed forward, eagerly filling the space which Gwen and
Gareth had vacated. These onlookers seemed to want to hear the
princes’ exchange with Ranulf, or maybe they were Ranulf’s men and
had been waiting for him to appear from the keep.

“
Thank you.” Gwen squeezed
Gareth’s hand, glad she was with him, even if visiting a Norman
castle had never been something she’d wanted to do.

A dozen yards away, Rhun and Hywel bowed
slightly, as did Ranulf in return. “Welcome,” Ranulf said, in
French.

From where she stood with Gareth, Gwen
couldn’t hear Hywel’s response, though she could see his lips move.
She stepped closer, trying to make out what the men were saying,
but then a movement on the tower at the top of the keep distracted
her. She glanced up and saw two men, their faces clearly visible in
the sunlight.

They looked down on the Welsh party for a
heartbeat, one man clutching the other’s shoulders. Then they
separated: one to disappear from view, and the other to fall head
first over the battlement and land flat on his back at Gwen’s
feet.

Chapter Two

Gareth

W
hen Gwen had squeezed Gareth’s arm, drawing his attention away
from the princes and up to the battlement, he’d seen two men, one
with hair blonder even than Rhun’s and a beak for a nose, and the
other with dark hair, a pale face, and blank eyes. While he
watched, the first man reached down and flipped his companion over
the battlement.

Time didn’t stand still and
Gareth, choking on his own breath, had been helpless to stop the
headlong plunge or the nauseating
thud!
that followed. The man’s body
hit the hard-packed earth of the bailey like a cabbage thrown
against a stone wall.
Sickening.

Last winter, Gareth had
saved King Owain from a murderer’s knife. He’d seen the danger
and
moved
. But
Gareth hadn’t the power to stop this murder. Gareth stared at the
body and then looked to Prince Hywel. The princes had been
exchanging pleasantries with Ranulf. Now, all three men looked
Gareth’s way, disbelief and horror on their faces. Gareth brought
his gaze back to the dead man at his feet.

Gwen stood with her hand to her mouth, not
saying anything. Gareth had killed men and seen them killed, but
he’d never seen a man murdered right in front of him. Gareth’s
immobility lasted long enough for him to breathe in and out three
times, and then he wrapped his arms around Gwen and pulled her to
him.