The Fourth Horseman (23 page)

Gareth was already almost through the hour
that Hywel had given him, but it was worth the extra time to find
where this horse might have left his master. Gareth swung himself
into the saddle and directed the horse’s head back down the road in
the direction from which it had just come. Two hundred yards on, as
the road curved west from Gareth’s initial position, which was now
hidden behind him, Gareth found a dead man. He lay in the brush
beside the road, his throat cut.

Damn
was the mildest curse Gareth spit out as he dismounted and
crouched by the body. Blood still trickled from the man’s neck,
indicating he’d been killed very recently, and Gareth swiveled on
his toes, wondering if he was in danger too. The road was empty of
movement, however, and Gareth decided he should just get to
work.

He studied the dead man, noting his slender
build, well-worn clothing, and cheap leather armor. Then he picked
up the man’s left hand. The bruising at the wrist indicated that
someone had grasped it tightly, even wrenched it. The man’s other
wrist was undamaged, but something wasn’t right with his fingers.
Gareth didn’t realize what it was until he compared the dead man’s
fingers to his own. Gareth didn’t shoot his bow often, but despite
the finger tabs he always wore when shooting, his right hand had
callouses from pulling at the bowstring. This man’s fingers did
not.

Gareth ran his hand through his hair,
wondering what the hell it meant. Questions mounted in his mind,
not the least of which was whether or not this man was even the
archer Gareth had been seeking. The lack of callouses said he
wasn’t, but the bow on the horse’s back said that he was.
Furthermore, whatever the man’s identity, Gareth wanted to know who
had sent him, why had he sent him, and who had killed him. Gareth
glanced back the way he’d come, imagining the series of events that
had resulted in this death:

The archer fails to kill Ralph, shooting
Amaury instead, and without a good angle of fire, gives up and
flees to the edge of the woods where he left his horse. He rides
south and west (back to Newcastle?) where he encounters another
man, perhaps his superior, perhaps someone sent to silence him. One
of the men dies but cannot control the horse, which races away. The
killer hears Gareth calling to the horse, realizes he is out of
time, and flees himself.

Gareth rummaged through the saddle bags,
looking for something he could wrap the body with, and came up with
a cloak. It was finer than he would have liked to waste on a dead
man, but it wasn’t his, and he felt that he was out of time and too
exposed out here on the road. Although the killer could be a mile
away from here by now, he could also be watching Gareth from the
trees, waiting for his chance to strike. In the dusk, he would then
have all the time he might need to hide both both bodies.

Gareth laid the cloak on the ground and
rolled the body into it, all the while trying to look in every
direction at once. The blood had mostly stopped seeping from the
dead man’s wound when he’d lain in the ditch, but as soon as Gareth
moved him, the bleeding started again. He’d leave a trail behind
him that a blind man could follow.

After untying the quiver and bow from the
saddle bags and slinging them on his own back, Gareth threw the
body over the horse. Then he took the reins and began walking, not
back the way he’d come but towards Newcastle. Fifty yards on, he
left the road for the woods. Because he had the newly risen moon to
guide him by its light and location, he decided that he was better
off finding his way back to the chapel by dead reckoning than
taking the road to wherever it led.

After a quarter of a mile, Gareth reached a
narrow track. He was about to turn onto it when he heard voices
coming towards him. A moment later, a cart creaked into view, along
with a number of other people on foot. Among them, Gareth
recognized his wife.

Gareth lifted a hand in greeting and Hywel,
who’d been walking beside one of the monks, quickened his steps to
outpace the cart. “Your hour was up long since,” said the prince.
“Gwen would have had my head if something had happened to you.”

“
I apologize, my lord, but
I couldn’t leave him in the road.” Gareth gestured to the body on
the back of the horse.

Hywel eyed the dead man and then the bow on
Gareth’s back. “I gather that’s what remains of our archer?”

“
I don’t know who he is,”
Gareth said, not ready to draw any firm conclusion yet.

“
Did you kill
him?”

Gareth barked a laugh, unoffended by Hywel’s
question. “Not I. Someone else killed him moments before I found
him, but I didn’t see who it was.”

Hywel swept a hand through his hair. “The
dead are going to be stacked up like firewood in the chapel before
we’re through.”

“
Gareth!” Gwen hopped down
from the cart when it reached him, and he caught her up in his
arms.

“
I’m all right,” he
said.

“
I had to trust that you
would be,” Gwen said.

“
How is Amaury?”

The cart carrying the Norman knight passed
them by. He lay in the bed, the arrow still rising from his left
shoulder. The prior sat in the cart with Amaury, while Mari perched
beside him on the rail.

“
He’s alive,” Gwen said.
“The healer, Matthias, says the wound isn’t as serious as all that,
even though it has bled heavily. Even Prior Rhys is reluctantly
optimistic.”

“
We’ll take care of him,”
said a man in monk’s robes, walking behind the cart.

“
Mari keeps saying that
this is her fault because she agreed to meet with her father,” Gwen
said.

“
It is Rhys who should have
known better,” Gareth said.

Hywel scoffed. “As if he could have done
anything else. Mari was going to see her father, with or without
him.”

“
Any luck finding Ralph, my
lord?” Gareth said.

“
No,” Hywel said. “He took
to horseback within a dozen yards of the chapel. I couldn’t follow
him.”

“
So he’s lost to us, too,
until he chooses to come in,” Gareth said.

“
He could be going to the
farmhouse,” Gwen said.

“
He could, but I don’t see
us waiting for him there on the off-chance he decides to appear,”
Gareth said. “Unless it was Ralph himself who killed our dead
friend, here.”

“
Possible,” Hywel said,
“but how likely?”

“
I have no idea,” Gareth
said.

“
All we know of him is what
he has chosen to tell us, much like Alard,” Gwen said.

“
We have yet another killer
to chase,” Gareth said. “We can’t afford to hunt for Ralph and
Alard, not when they clearly don’t want to be found.”

“
Which reminds me,” Hywel
said, “you’ve not yet told me all that you learned from
Alard.”

As the three companions followed the cart
towards the friary, Gareth relayed the gist of their conversation
with the empress’s horseman. When he’d finished, Hywel came to a
halt, standing with one arm across his chest and a finger tapping
his chin. “I’m inclined to believe Alard when he says that he
killed David in self-defense.”

“
Alard told the truth about
not killing John, too,” Gwen said.

Gareth scoffed. “He told the truth, which is
to say that Ralph killed him before Alard could get to him.”

“
We heard all sorts of
truths today,” Hywel said. “It may even be true that David didn’t
steal that emerald; he may be a traitor—one of several,
apparently—and was given it.”

“
I would say so, too,”
Gareth said. “To my mind, however, we’ve cleared Alard’s
name.”

“
Given that both John and
David are dead, is the threat to Prince Henry over?” Gwen
said.

“
I wouldn’t assume that,”
Gareth said. “We have three emeralds unaccounted for.”

“
My guess, and you know how
much I hate guessing,” Hywel said, “is that once David was dead,
our culprit didn’t want anyone to find the emerald among his
possessions. He took the body from the chapel so he could retrieve
it at his leisure.”

Hywel gazed down the road that led to the
friary, lost in thought. The cart had disappeared, and Gareth
shifted, hoping the movement would prod his prince into action. The
dead man hung over the horse, which continued to calmly crop the
grass. But the body was cooling, and Gareth wanted to get it inside
before it stiffened.

“
I wish my father were
here,” Hywel said. “He would know how to talk to Earl Robert—and
whether we should talk to him at all.”

“
I think you have no choice
but to speak to him,” Gwen said. “None of what we have discovered
will matter if Prince Henry dies.”

Chapter
Nineteen

Hywel

“W
hat do we do now, my lord?” Gareth said as they entered
Newcastle’s bailey, which was nearly deserted for the first time
since the day they arrived.

“
I feel honor-bound to
speak to the earl and to tell him what we know,” Hywel said,
dismounting from his borrowed horse and then reaching up to help
Mari down from hers. “Immediately.”

“
Hywel, you cannot. It’s
past midnight; it’s too late to meet with him tonight,” she
said.

“
My father would want to be
woken.”

“
Earl Robert is not your
father, my lord,” Gareth said.

Which was only too true. Hywel had hoped to
keep the emerald. It would make a fine addition to his father’s
treasury—and his father would have remembered always that Hywel had
brought it to him. But events had overtaken them, and they could no
longer keep it a secret.

Gareth was right, however, that it was very
late. Hywel would have spoken to Philippe back at the friary if the
old spy hadn’t taken to his bed and given instructions that he
wasn’t to be disturbed, even for something as important as this.
Speaking to the steward of Newcastle wasn’t going to be sufficient
either. It was Earl Robert or nobody. Hywel would have to wait
until morning.

“
You should sleep while you
can, my lord,” Mari said.

He patted her hand as it rested on his arm.
“Of course.” Hywel just wished Mari would be sleeping beside him
instead of Rhun.

Evan came down the steps to the keep to meet
them. “I’m very glad to see you, my lord.”

“
Where’s my
brother?”

“
In your rooms, my lord.
Gruffydd is with him.”

“
Good.” Hywel turned to
Gareth. “I assume your plan is to return to the friary
tonight?”

“
Yes, my lord,” Gareth
said. “I left Gwen asleep in their guest hall. I will speak to
Philippe first thing in the morning and then report to
you.”

“
Try to get some sleep
yourself,” Hywel said, and at the skeptical look that crossed
Gareth’s face, added, “That’s an order.”

“
Yes, my lord.”

* * * * *

The next morning, Hywel and Rhun appeared in
the great hall well before the time most of the inhabitants of the
castle chose to rise and asked for an audience with the earl.
Perhaps Philippe had already sent a message with some of the
details of the events of the previous night, because the steward
showed them immediately into his receiving room.

As they entered, the earl sat with his elbow
on the arm of his chair, a finger to his lips. The table in front
of him was clear of documents. No fire burned in the grate, even on
this cool morning, which Hywel took to be a sign of Earl Robert’s
celebrated toughness. He was a warrior who didn’t need to be
coddled.

Hywel and Rhun hadn’t spoken at length with
Earl Robert since that first morning. They’d assumed others had
been keeping him apprised of the progress of the investigation, but
they still told him everything they’d learned in the hours since
David’s body had fallen at Gwen’s feet. The earl seemed to accept
it all with equanimity, even the resurrection of Ralph and Prior
Rhys. But when they mentioned the gems, the Earl leaned forward and
began tapping his fingers on the table in irritation.

“
The emeralds were meant
for Alard, clearly,” Earl Robert said.

Earl Robert’s instant assumption set Hywel
back on his heels, since it went against everything Hywel had just
relayed. “Alard insists that he remains loyal to the empress.”

Earl Robert’s eyes narrowed. “Your man
should have arrested him so he could have been questioned.”

“
Gareth was at something of
a disadvantage at the time,” Hywel said. “Alard came upon him when
Gareth was with his wife. He could not both protect her and capture
Alard.”

Earl Robert pulled on his lower lip.
“Philippe says Alard is the traitor, and I trust his instincts. He
has been with the empress longer than Alard—almost as long as I
have, in point of fact.”

“
Long acquaintance is no
barrier to animosity,” Rhun said.

Hywel agreed with Rhun and
could have said,
look at my Uncle
Cadwaladr
.

“
Is that an accusation of
Philippe?” Earl Robert said. “I’m shocked that you would even think
it. He’s dying. What would he gain by switching camps
now?”

“
I cannot answer that. I
tried to speak to him after we brought Amaury to the friary, but he
was indisposed,” Hywel said. “But I must point out that Philippe is
a spy. He lives and breathes lies as much as Alard
does.”