The Unexpected Ally

A Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mystery

The Unexpected
Ally

by

Copyright © 2016
by Sarah Woodbury

www.sarahwoodbury.com

The Unexpected Ally

March 1147
. Assassination, espionage,
betrayal. King Owain has ridden east to confront King Madog of
Powys with the attempt on the life of his son. Rhys, now abbot of
St. Kentigern’s monastery, hopes for peace and calls both Madog and
Owain to the negotiating table. Peace, however, is the last thing
on Madog’s mind. Recalcitrant, self-righteous, and angry, he sees
King Owain’s recent weakness as his opportunity and knows that
Owain’s own barons are circling like wolves, waiting for the chance
to overthrow him.

With the throne of Gwynedd in the balance,
Abbot Rhys is desperate to broker a deal. And when the body of a
royal spy is found within hours of King Owain’s arrival at St.
Asaph’s, it is up to Gareth and Gwen to find the killer before the
wrong man is hanged—and a country lost.

The Unexpected Ally
is the eighth
Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mystery
.

The Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mysteries:

The Bard’s Daughter (prequel novella)

The Good Knight

The Uninvited Guest

The Fourth Horseman

The Fallen Princess

The Unlikely Spy

The Lost Brother

The Renegade Merchant

The Unexpected Ally

The After Cilmeri Series:

Daughter of Time (prequel)

Footsteps in Time

Winds of Time (novella)

Prince of Time

Crossroads in Time

Children of Time

Exiles in Time

Castaways in Time

Ashes of Time

Warden of Time

Guardians of Time

Masters of Time

The Lion of Wales series:

Cold My Heart

The Oaken Door

Of Men and Dragons

A Long Cloud

Frost Against the Hilt

The Last Pendragon Saga:

The Last Pendragon

The Pendragon’s Blade

Song of the Pendragon

The Pendragon’s Quest

The Pendragon’s Champions

Rise of the Pendragon

The Pendragon’s Challenge

The Paradisi Chronicles:

Erase Me Not

www.sarahwoodbury.com

To Anna

for being there

Owain Gwynedd – King of Gwynedd (North
Wales)

Cadwaladr – Owain’s younger brother, former
Lord of Ceredigion

Cadwallon – Owain’s older brother
(deceased)

Madog—King of Powys

Susanna—Queen of Powys, sister to Owain
Gwynedd

Llywelyn—Prince of Powys

Rhun – Prince of Gwynedd (deceased)

Hywel – Prince of Gwynedd (illegitimate)

Cynan – Prince of Gwynedd (illegitimate)

Madoc – Prince of Gwynedd (illegitimate)

Iorwerth – Prince of Gwynedd (legitimate)

Cadifor—Hywel’s foster father

Gwen – Gareth’s wife, a spy for Hywel

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

Tangwen – daughter of Gareth and Gwen

Meilyr – Gwen’s father

Gwalchmai – Gwen’s brother

Evan – Gareth’s friend

Gruffydd – Rhun’s former captain

Rhys — Abbot of St. Kentigern’s Monastery

Anselm – Prior of St. Kentigern’s
Monastery

Lwc – Abbot Rhys’s Secretary

Conall — agent of the King of Leinster

St. Kentigern’s Monastery, St. Asaph

March 1147

Gwen

A
bbot Rhys,
formerly the prior of St. Kentigern’s monastery but recently
elected to abbot, was dressed for the weather in heavy robes,
cloak, and black boots. Before becoming a monk, Rhys had been a
soldier and a spy for King Henry and Empress Maud. He had also been
associated with several investigations Gareth and Gwen had been
involved in over the years.

When Rhys had greeted them last night, Gwen
had noted the way the gray had taken over what a few years before
had been predominantly brown hair, and that his beard was almost
completely white. His brown eyes were just as thoughtful and kind
as ever, however. Rhys had been leaning against the top rail of a
paddock, adjacent to one of the monastery barns, but at the sight
of Gareth and Gwen coming towards him in the predawn rain, he threw
back his hood, and his face lit with genuine affection.

“I’m glad you’re here, though I regret the
need.”

Gareth lifted his (good) shoulder in a
half-shrug and pushed back his hood too. “We’re staying in your
guesthouse. We might as well be of service.”

The thin man standing next to Rhys wasn’t
nearly as welcoming. As Rhys and Gareth gripped forearms, the man
tugged on the abbot’s sleeve, a motion Rhys ignored at first, but
then as the man did it again, he turned to listen. “Abbot Rhys,
surely it isn’t proper for a woman to be here under these
circumstances.”

“It’s all right.” Gwen gestured to the young
monk in his early twenties whom Abbot Rhys had sent to collect
them. “As Brother Lwc can attest, I was already awake.”

When the man made to protest again, Rhys put
a hand on his upper arm. “All is well, Anselm. Lady Gwen has my
countenance.”

Now that Rhys had named the man, Gwen knew
who he was: this was Prior Anselm, the man who’d replaced Rhys when
he’d been elected abbot. Because Anselm had not risen from his bed
last night to greet them when they’d arrived, Rhys now hastily
introduced them to each other. Anselm was hardly taller than Gwen
herself and had a nose too long for his face.

Gwen tried not to take offense at Anselm’s
objections. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t encountered men like him
before, and she was here only because Rhys himself had asked for
her. At Rhys’s calming words, Anselm subsided, though his
expression remained skeptical, and he looked at Gwen through
narrowed eyes. But since Gwen had earned the right to stand at
Gareth’s side, she decided she could be charitable. Nobody liked
having their strongly held opinions ignored.

“Where’s the dead man?” Gareth spoke
matter-of-factly.

“Over here. I’m sorry, but this isn’t going
to be pleasant.” Rhys pulled open the gate to the paddock. The
ground was mucky under their feet, churned by hooves and made worse
by the rain. They’d had fine weather in Shrewsbury a week ago, but
they had known that it couldn’t last.

A water trough, eight feet long, three feet
wide, and two feet deep, big enough to allow several cows to drink
at once, was positioned on the western side of the enclosure. Lwc
raised his torch, and Gwen put the back of her hand to her mouth at
the sight of what the torch illumined: a man lay at the bottom of
the trough. He was fully submerged in the water and very dead.

The thick piece of buttered bread Gwen had
purloined from the guesthouse kitchen earlier that morning lurched
in her stomach. It was only a quarter of an hour ago that she’d
been returning to her room when Lwc had halted at the top of the
stairs, gawping at the sight of her, and asked her to wake Gareth
and come with him. Fortunately, Gwen had dressed completely upon
rising, not wanting to disturb the sensibilities of any stray monk
who might be wandering the guesthouse at that hour. All the monks
should have been asleep in their dormitory, taking advantage of
whatever time they had left before they were obligated to rise for
Lauds, the monastery’s dawn prayers.

At the time, Gwen had recognized Lwc because
he had brought the travelers bread and wine the previous night,
before showing them to their rooms.

“God be praised that you’re already awake.”
Lwc had halted in front of her. “Abbot Rhys sent me to find you and
your husband.”

“Someone is dead?”

The young monk’s eyes widened. “How did you
know?”

Gwen chose not to explain that there seemed
to be no end to the variety of ways she and Gareth could be
informed of a murder. And yet, every time was exactly the same,
which was how she’d known the reason for the summons before Lwc had
even opened his mouth. “Is it a monk?”

Lwc had shaken his head. “A stranger.”

Gwen had fully expected to be shown a body
in yet another new and awkwardly gruesome position—one perhaps she
and Gareth hadn’t encountered before. In a way, that would have
been normal. What was far more surprising was not only how tidy and
unfussy the scene appeared—if the man hadn’t been underwater, he
could have been sleeping—but that Gwen knew him. More than that,
she and Gareth had suspected him of murder last summer. As she
stared down at Erik, a half-Welsh/half-Danish soldier-spy, who’d
mostly recently been spying for Prince Hywel, Gwen had to wonder
who could possibly have sneaked up on such a large man and killed
him.

Even though Lwc had seen the dead man
earlier, before Abbot Rhys had sent him to fetch Gareth and Gwen,
he gave a low groan of discomfort and ran a hand through his hair,
making it stand on end. The torchlight hardly cut through the murk
and the rain, but its light was enough to show that Lwc’s face was
paler than it had been. Two weeks ago, before Gwen and Gareth had
ridden to Shrewsbury and become embroiled in an investigation
there, Gwen would have reminded herself that a dead man wasn’t a
sight to get used to. Now she knew that for her own protection, the
more quickly she was able to treat the dead with detachment, the
better.

King Owain’s company had arrived at the
monastery only a few hours before, having suffered through a
torrential downpour for the whole journey from Caerhun, where’d
they’d spent the previous night. St. Asaph was some fifteen miles
as the crow flies short of Denbigh Castle, King Owain’s ultimate
destination and his stronghold in eastern Gwynedd. It was from
there that the king had launched his assault on Mold Castle last
winter, and it was from there that he intended to counter the might
of Dinas Bran, the seat of King Madog of Powys.

Or rather, that had been the plan until
Abbot Rhys had insisted that he had a say in the matter. Not
surprisingly, given his former profession as a spy, Rhys had
learned of the events surrounding the current hostility between
Gwynedd and Powys and felt it was his duty to intervene. He’d asked
for both Madog, King of Powys, and Owain, King of Gwynedd, to meet
at St. Asaph to discuss their differences before resorting to
violence. The two kings were brothers-in-law, after all, and Rhys
was concerned about his flock, the people of this region, across
whose lands the war would be fought.

When Gareth and Gwen arrived after midnight
with King Owain’s party, they were wet, cold, and exhausted, but
pleased to have a comfortable place to stay after so many days on
the road. They had changed into dry clothes before falling asleep
on pallets the monks had spread across the floor for them. Thus,
when Gwen had gone to wake Gareth at Lwc’s request, albeit
reluctantly, all he’d had to do was scoop up his sword, boots, and
cloak, which had dried before the fire during the night, and leave
the room with her.

As he’d entered the corridor in front of
her, however, Gwen had noted the pinpoint of blood seeping through
his shirt. He’d been stabbed in the left shoulder a week ago in
Shrewsbury when he and Gwen had been captured by a band of slavers
and held captive in an old mill. The blood was a healthy color, and
so far the wound hadn’t festered. She was almost daring to hope
that it would heal well—if he was able to rest it. To investigate a
murder was the last thing he needed right now.

But Abbot Rhys probably didn’t know about
Gareth’s injury—she certainly hadn’t told him of it in their brief
meeting last night—and Gareth would never do so if someone didn’t
press him. She also knew that Rhys wouldn’t have summoned Gareth if
he wasn’t truly needed. The sight of Erik dead in the trough
verified Rhys’s need.

“Suicide, clearly.”

Gwen’s head came up at Anselm’s words, and
she quickly rearranged her expression so the surprise—and the
completely inappropriate laughter that bubbled up in her
throat—didn’t show.

“Excuse me?” Gareth said.

Anselm gestured towards Erik’s body, his
expression a mix of condescension and satisfaction at his own
intelligence. “That’s the only plausible explanation. Few men could
be strong enough to hold down such a large man, and nobody drowns
accidently in a trough only three feet deep. He has to have killed
himself.”

Gwen’s eyes went to Abbot Rhys’s face before
she quickly looked away lest either openly show their
disbelief.

Gareth was the first to attempt a counter
suggestion. “Perhaps he was simply drunk, fell in the trough, and
didn’t have the wherewithal to rise.”