The Lost Brother (11 page)

That might be all the apology Gareth was
going to get. The transformation from arrested man to investigator
had been abrupt, but Gareth wasn’t going to rub Morgan’s nose in
his mistake. He didn’t want to make worse the extent to which
Morgan was going to lose face in front of his people for having
made a poor decision, even if at present Einion was the only one to
witness the reversal.

Then Morgan’s expression turned to one of
interest. “You have come a long way from protecting that spoiled
boy you used to mind, Sir Gareth.”

“I can’t disagree,” Gareth said.

“I have not been misled in my understanding
that you and your lady wife uncover the whys and wherefores of
murder, have I?”

It was Gwen who answered. “You have not.
After all, that was why Father Alun came to King Owain’s camp to
fetch us in the first place.”

“Excellent.” Morgan bobbed his head. “Since
you’re here, I have a murder that needs solving, and it seems that
you are the man to do it.”

Gwen reached for Gareth’s hand and squeezed
it. “What’s going on here, Gareth? How can this man look so much
like you?”

“And what terrible crime has he committed
such that rumors of my treason have spread throughout Cilcain,”
Gareth said.

Morgan looked from Gareth to Gwen. “You have
never seen him before, then?”

“He wasn’t my brother, my cousin, nor any
relation to me at all as far as I know,” Gareth said. “What
concerns us is the juxtaposition of your accusation, this body, and
the remains of the woman currently in the chapel in Cilcain.”

Gwen didn’t make Lord Morgan ask what Gareth
meant. “The dead woman there looks like me.”

Morgan’s jaw dropped. “The housekeeper said
a woman had been murdered. Are you saying that we have the body
here of a man who resembles you, Sir Gareth, and in Cilcain is the
body of a woman who resembles Gwen?”

“That is exactly what we’re saying.” Gareth
said.

“Such a circumstance cannot be coincidence,”
Morgan said.

“No,” Gwen said. “They had to have been
together. Nothing else makes sense.”

Gareth licked his lips, hoping he could add
what came next without offending Morgan. “Are you aware that the
woman was buried over the top of your grandfather’s remains?”

If Morgan had been shocked before, now his
face reddened in sudden anger. “I did not know that. Someone
defiled my grandfather’s grave with murder?”

Gareth held up a hand to him in an attempt
at appeasement. “Like the man here, she was buried less than two
feet down. Your grandfather’s body wasn’t disturbed, either by the
burial of the dead woman or by her removal. Father Alun made sure
of it.”

Morgan swallowed hard. “None of my people
reported this.”

Gareth couldn’t blame them for that. None of
Morgan’s men would have wanted to be the one to inform him of the
desecration, though it could also be that only Father Alun, the
gravediggers, and his housekeeper knew the truth. Rumor could
spread quickly in a small town, but not everybody gossiped about
the same things.

“I’m sorry.” Gwen took a step towards
Morgan. “You can see now why we are so deeply concerned about what
has happened here—and what may still be happening. And why any
accusation of treason against my husband must be mistaken—and will
only impede the uncovering of the truth.”

Gareth made another appeasing motion with
one hand. “If it is acceptable to you, my lord, I should inspect
this body before any more time passes.”

“Yes, of course.” Morgan flicked a finger at
Einion. “Some wine wouldn’t go amiss.”

The steward bowed and departed with a
quickness to his step that hadn’t been there earlier, relieved
perhaps to have something to do, and that his lord had been saved
so quickly from a grave mistake.

“May we see the man’s clothing?” Gwen
said.

“Einion had everything laundered,” Morgan
said. “I believe the clothes remain on the washing line.”

Gareth grunted his acceptance of that which
didn’t surprise him.

Correctly interpreting Gareth’s grunt as
muted disapproval, Morgan added, somewhat defensively, “His
clothing had to be stripped from him in order to wash the body. It
reeked of odors. Lady Gwen, if you would follow me?”

“Thank you.” Gwen headed towards the chapel
door with Morgan.

Before they could depart, however, Gareth
said, “Lord Morgan, I would appreciate the return of my sword.”

“Of course, Sir Gareth. I will see to that
as well.”

As Morgan and Gwen disappeared, Gareth took
in a relieved breath. Lord Morgan’s doubts had been dispelled once
he’d seen the body, but without it, Gareth would have spent the
night in a cell or in a back room of the stable. It had been a near
thing—and while it could be no coincidence that the false Gareth
and Gwen had died on the same day, Gareth could bless coincidence
that they’d been found on the same day too.

Gareth moved around the dead man. He wanted
to have most of his examination completed before Gwen returned, for
both their sakes. She’d examined dead men many times, of course,
but if he could spare her the task, he would.

He flipped back the sheet to reveal the full
body, naked except for a loin cloth. Other than an old scar, long
since healed, that ran along the length of his left calf, the man
was undamaged below the waist. Gareth covered the man’s lower half
again and focused on the wound itself.

A sword was an unusual murder weapon because
it implied several things. In particular: first, the murderer
hadn’t tried to get close enough to the victim to kill him with a
knife; second, he possibly hadn’t known the victim well enough to
get that close to him; and third, the murderer possessed a high
enough station in life to have borne a sword.

Most murders were crimes of passion, done on
the spur of the moment to a loved one or to a companion whom the
murderer knew well. Nothing could make a man angrier than the
behavior—or the tongue—of a family member. Those murders were of a
type that Gareth and Gwen rarely investigated because the guilty
party tended to be easily found.

Murders such as those were difficult to
cover up because all paths led directly to the killer. In fact,
much of the time, there were witnesses to the act. And even those
who got away with the crime initially were often beset with guilt
and shame. Murder had that effect on normal people.

The deaths of this woman and man, however,
were of a different type. This culprit had buried the
victims—clumsily, to be sure—but he’d buried them nonetheless.
Gareth hadn’t yet seen the site of the man’s burial, but to have
killed a man with a sword and buried him far out in the woods
implied a degree of organization that put this murder in a
different category from most. And that was before Gareth took into
account that the man looked like him.

In addition, many men-at-arms didn’t bear
swords. Gareth’s own sword was both his livelihood and his most
treasured possession. He’d inherited it from his uncle, who, after
Gareth’s parents had died, had trained him to be a knight. The
sword’s value was greater than that of the whole village of
Cilcain. Gareth had learned to use it as the tool of his trade, but
he wore it proudly because it was his station to do so.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d left
it off when he dressed in the morning, even on days he didn’t wear
armor. He felt naked without it and missed its comforting weight at
his side. Normally, he kept his sword within arm’s reach at all
times, even at night while he slept.

The man who’d murdered Gareth’s lookalike
had done so with a sword, and it meant that the way Gareth himself
lived and everything he knew could be reflected in that man’s life
as well. Unfortunately, while murder by sword limited the range of
murderers to noblemen, knights, and men-at-arms, this region of
Wales was teeming with all three this autumn. Discovering the
killer’s identity wouldn’t be quite like finding a needle in a
haystack, but it wasn’t far off from culling the world of
possibilities from ‘everyone’ to ‘men’.

From the wound in the man’s gut, Gareth
worked upward, examining his skin for old wounds and new. A full
beard covered his neck, and as Gareth tipped the head from one side
to the other, he leaned closer, noticing red marks and bruises—

“Gareth.”

He turned to his wife, who’d reentered the
chapel, a stack of clothing in her arms. As he watched, she laid
out each item on the floor in front of her. Her tone when she’d
spoken had been one of both warning and concern—enough so that he
left the body and crouched beside her.

“What has you so concerned?”

She gestured to the clothing before her.
“These are yours.”

“What do you mean, they’re mine? They can’t
be—” He cut himself off as the individual items came into focus.
That was his shirt. Those were his spare tunic and surcoat with the
crest of Gwynedd emblazoned on it. He’d lost them all in the river
over a month ago when the army had moved from Powys to the current
encampment in eastern Gwynedd.

“Did I hear you say that these were Gareth’s
clothes?” Morgan was back too, thankfully bringing Gareth’s weapons
with him. He was followed by Einion with a carafe of wine and three
cups. “One more surprise in an evening of surprises.”

“A surprise that I, for one, could have done
without.” Gareth accepted his sword from Morgan, unwound the belt
from around the scabbard, and then settled it around his waist.

Morgan’s eyes narrowed as he watched the
practiced movements of Gareth’s hands. “We don’t have to ask why
this man would steal your clothes. The answer is simple: to better
transform himself into you.”

Gwen sat back on her heels. “When I first
saw the body, I thought the man and woman had been killed because
the killer meant to murder Gareth and me, and he killed these two
by mistake.”

That had been Gareth’s first thought as
well. He’d been hoping Gwen’s mind hadn’t yet arrived at that
conclusion, but it had only ever been a faint hope.

“But now that supposition may be wrong. Not
only did this man look like Gareth, he was
trying
to look
like Gareth.”

“Meaning that he meant for me—or someone
like me—to accuse you of his own wrongdoing, Sir Gareth,” Morgan
said. “Either this man impersonated you of his own volition or
because someone paid him to do so.” He paused. “And then that
person killed the false Gareth when he had no more need of
him.”

Gareth hadn’t spoken more than two sentences
to Morgan in conversation all those years ago when they’d first
encountered each other, but he was pleased to realize now that
Morgan had grown into a man of some intelligence and one not
blinded by pride. His conclusion, while premature given the early
state of the investigation, was a terrible and fascinating one
which Gareth hadn’t yet reached.

“Perhaps,” Gareth said. “What wrongdoing is
that, however? In the hall, you accused me of treason, that I’d
conspired with Ranulf. How did you hear of this in the first place,
Lord Morgan?”

“Men were speaking of you in my hall.”
Morgan studied his feet, indicating his reluctance to say more, but
then he looked up and spoke anyway, “Two nights ago, I overheard
several of my men talking around the fire. They were far into their
cups, which, to my mind, made what they were talking about both
less and more likely to be the truth.” He tipped back his head to
look at the ceiling, rather than Gareth’s eyes, and took in a
breath. “They said you’d been bought.”

Gareth didn’t even blink. He’d been
impersonated and accused of treason. It didn’t take a great stretch
of imagination to assume that the false Gareth had been doing
something to which the real Gareth would object. Despite the
inevitability of Morgan’s words, Gareth felt his anger rising. With
effort, he tamped it down, though he didn’t trust himself to reply.
To do so would give credence to his emotions, which he couldn’t
allow himself just yet.

Thankfully, Gwen knew him well enough to
speak instead. “Were they certain it was Earl Ranulf who’d bought
Gareth, and did they say what he’d paid him to do?”

“The men didn’t tell me that,” Morgan said.
“They were drunk at the time, and if they had known specific
details, they might have blurted them out in an unguarded moment.
As it was, when I asked them to elaborate, they couldn’t tell me
anything more.”

Morgan was looking extremely uncomfortable
with the way their conversation had gone, though he had to have
known that once he recanted his original accusation, Gareth and
Gwen would have questions.

“When we return to the hall, can you point
me towards the men in question?” Gareth said.

“Of course,” Morgan said, though both of
them knew that with or without Morgan hovering over them, they were
unlikely to tell Gareth to his face what they knew. If they were
drunk enough two nights ago, they might not even be aware that
they’d said anything about Gareth at all, and that their words had
been the source of Morgan’s accusations against Gareth.

“Thank you for telling me,” Gareth said,
“and I appreciate your willingness to reconsider my arrest.”

“I’m sorry for all of it. Truth be told, if
not for the war and the proximity of King Owain’s forces, I might
have dismissed their words as drunken ramblings. I was a fool to
think that arresting you would bring me favor in King Owain’s
court.”

“We should be grateful you overheard them,”
Gwen said. “In fact, we should count our blessings for the rest of
our lives that all of this has fallen out as it has. Imagine if we
hadn’t found the bodies of the false Gwen and Gareth. Even if
Prince Hywel or those closest to us never believed Gareth had
betrayed them, Gareth could have spent the rest of his life trying
to live down what this man here has done in his name. He still
might, if there are more men like those in your hall.”