The Unexpected Ally (13 page)

Gwen didn’t think Meilyr would be terribly
fond of that description of the course of events that had
transpired between him and King Owain. But even if unflattering, it
wasn’t far off from the truth. Still, in the end both men had
managed to come to terms to their mutual satisfaction and with
their pride intact—in part because Meilyr
was
an
accomplished bard and Gwalchmai might well prove to be better.
Since that day, her father had learned to say not only
I’m
sorry
but also
I love you
.

As if he was aware he was being discussed,
Meilyr chose that moment to leave the guesthouse, heading across
the courtyard towards the stable with purposeful steps. But at the
sight of Gwen with Tangwen in her arms, he changed direction and
strode towards them. He had a pipe-horn in his hand and was
frowning at it more than truly looking at them. “Gwen, when is
Gareth to return—” he broke off, gaping at Saran, having not
recognized her until he actually stopped in front of her.

“Hello, Meilyr,” Saran said. “You look
well.”

Meilyr recovered his voice. “What are you
doing here?”

“I am looking for my sister and nephew.”

“Derwena and Rhodri are here?”

“I have hope they might be in Gwynedd’s
encampment.” Saran lifted her chin to indicate Gwen. “From what
Gwen said, that is where the bulk of King Owain’s men have
gathered.”

“Yes, it is.” Meilyr cocked his head.
“Perhaps I can escort you? I was just heading there myself.” He
looked at Gwen. “Llelo mentioned hearing one of the soldiers
singing and believes he’s been trained as a bard. I must find
him.”

Gwen smiled, but her father had already
stuck out his elbow to Saran. “Shall we?”

“We shall.” Saran took Meilyr’s arm and
smiled over her shoulder at Gwen.

Gwen shook her head, laughing as she watched
them walk away. The pair were similar in age, and she had no doubt
that by the time her father returned to the monastery, Saran would
have elicited everything that could be gotten out of him regarding
what they’d been doing since they left Carreg Cennan. Her father
had always been gruff, but the very fact that he had offered Saran
his arm indicated that his desire to escort her was genuine. In his
old age, her father liked intelligent women, ones who didn’t fuss
and could be relied upon in a crisis. Saran was all of those
things.

Gwen’s duties at the moment were far more
prosaic and had nothing to do with the investigation. Tangwen
needed to be fed, never mind that dinner would be served in another
hour. But the pair had just sat down at the table in the guesthouse
dining room, having found the monk in the kitchen obliging to
Tangwen’s needs, when Gareth entered the room, Conall in tow.

“Erik’s body has been returned to us.”

Gwen scooted back her bench, intending to
rise, but Gareth put a heavy hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t. This is one body I’m not going to
let you see.” He pulled out the other end of the bench and sat.

“Why would that be?” Gwen glanced up at
Conall, but he was giving nothing away. Instead, he gave her a
quick bow and departed, his boots echoing loudly on the floorboards
on the way to the door of the guesthouse, a clear indication that
he didn’t want to be part of this conversation if he could help
it.

Gwen watched him go, her eyes narrowing, and
then she returned her gaze to her husband’s face. With Tangwen
eating happily at the table, the words they could use to describe
what had passed in the hours since they’d seen each other were
going to be limited. In addition, Gwalchmai had disappeared, so she
couldn’t call upon him to mind his niece, and Gwen hadn’t seen Evan
since they’d spoken under the gatehouse.

Gareth pursed his lips, and she could see
him casting around in his mind for the right way to phrase what he
wanted to say. “Erik is not in a condition that I want you to see.
The people who took him from me—” his eyes skated to Tangwen and
then back to Gwen’s face, “—cut him open.”

That was not what Gwen had been expecting to
hear. She raised her eyebrows, but didn’t repeat the words as might
have been her natural response if Tangwen had not been present.
“Why would they do that?”

“Our working theory is that they were
looking for a token Prince Hywel might have given to him. As you
saw at the barn, they’d already taken all of Erik’s possessions
away with them, but it could be that when the item they were
looking for wasn’t on his body—” again the glance at Tangwen, whose
eyes were fixed on her father’s face. Gareth smiled and bent
forward to chuck her under the chin. “Is that good,
cariad
?”

Tangwen nodded.

Gwen smiled at her daughter and spoke to
Gareth out of the side of her mouth. “It occurred to them only
after they’d left him at the barn that he might have swallowed it?
Have you spoken with Hywel? Did he give Erik a signet or another
token?

Gareth pulled Tangwen into his lap. “I don’t
know yet. He hasn’t returned from the encampment. I did, however,
find five silver coins near the water trough.” Gareth kissed the
side of his daughter’s head. “What did you find?”

“Puddles,” Tangwen said, thinking he was
speaking to her.

Gareth’s eyes widened dramatically. “Did you
stomp in them?”

“Gwalchmai and I did. We got wet.”

Gareth sat Tangwen at her place again and
then motioned with his head to Gwen that they might confer a few
feet away. One eye on Tangwen in case she protested her mother’s
departure, even if it was only a few feet, Gwen stood.

Gareth put his arm around her shoulders and
kissed her temple as he’d kissed Tangwen’s. “Anything from your
end?”

“A monk, Brother Deiniol, who claims that
his monastery was sacked by men wearing Gwynedd’s colors, has
arrived from Wrexham.”

“What?” Gareth gawked at her. “You’re not
serious?”

“I am perfectly serious, or at least he is.
He arrived during mid-afternoon prayers, and Anselm took him away
to wait for Abbot Rhys’s return.”

Gareth paced around the small space between
the dining room table and the door. “It can’t have been our
men.”

“Of course it wasn’t, but I’m inclined to
believe Deiniol that they wore Gwynedd’s colors.”

Gareth stopped his pacing. “This is a
complication we didn’t need today. The peace conference begins
tomorrow morning. How will Madog feel to learn that men from
Gwynedd raided a monastery in his kingdom?”

“Since he is clearly in the wrong regarding
Prince Hywel, it will give his own grievances some weight.” Gwen
wrinkled her nose “I have more news, and maybe you’ll like this
better: Deiniol met Erik on the road.”

Gareth reared back. “Where?”

“In a village north of Llangollen. Erik had
a companion with him, a tall lanky fellow.” As she spoke, Gwen
frowned, because the description of Erik’s friend wasn’t far off
from the way Saran had described Rhodri, and she said as much to
Gareth.

Gareth made a
huh
sound under his
breath. “That ruins our theory that Erik had just returned from
Ireland, since he was coming to St. Asaph from the wrong
direction.” He shook his head. “We need to find this friend—and
anyone else who might have seen them together. I need to question
that monk.”

“He’s not going to like that. You should
have seen the look on his face when Evan was talking to him. It was
all he could do to avert his eyes from Evan’s surcoat.”

A boot scraped on the threshold. Conall was
back. “Perhaps this Rhodri fellow has unusually large hands and a
missing finger, and he was the one who killed Erik.” Conall shot a
glance at Gwen and put up a hand, asking her pardon for speaking
about murder when Tangwen was present. “A falling out between
friends, if you will.”

Gwen glanced at her daughter, who
fortunately was intent on her slice of apple. Gwen lifted one
shoulder in unspoken acceptance of his apology. She hoped, too,
that Conall wasn’t right about Rhodri, for to learn that her nephew
was a murderer would break Saran’s heart.

Conall gestured back the way he’d come.
“Abbot Rhys would speak to us now.” He looked at Gwen. “Including
you, if you will come.”

Gareth

S
ince Gwen had
resolved not to leave Tangwen behind if she could help it, and
since Rhys had asked for Gwen specifically, Gareth carried his
daughter into Rhys’s office, with the caveat that Gwen would take
her away if the conversation involved too much of what she
shouldn’t hear. Abbot Rhys’s eyes lit at the sight of the little
girl, however, and in a moment Tangwen was playing at Gareth’s feet
with a set of wooden blocks that Rhys had pulled out of a chest in
the corner. The man had hidden depths—and Gareth had thought he was
deep before.

A second monk, one Gareth hadn’t yet met,
stood off to one side by the window. A good ten years older than
Gareth, he was long and lean and far fitter-looking than most men,
regardless of their age, without the round belly that often
afflicted older men. Gareth didn’t have to work hard to guess his
identity: this was Deiniol, the stranger, whom Gwen had already
encountered and who had arrived at the monastery earlier that
day.

While Gareth and Gwen took seats near Rhys’s
desk, Conall crossed his arms and leaned a shoulder against the
inner wall. Gareth could just see him out of the corner of his eye,
which Conall had probably intended. The man calculated every angle,
and he would know that Gareth would feel uncomfortable having
someone standing behind him, even if he was a friend. Gareth also
suspected that Conall wasn’t standing to be intimidating, but to
disguise the fact that his ribs hurt more when he sat than when he
stood.

For Gareth’s part, he was afraid that if he
sat, he might never rise again, but he sat anyway. He let out an
involuntary sigh at the pain in his shoulder and stretched out his
legs in front of him.

Rhys politely ignored Gareth’s discomfort
and gestured to the newcomer. “I have asked Brother Deiniol to join
us. As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, he met Erik on the road, and
I’m hoping that he has some insight into our larger problem.”

Gareth focused on the abbot, his brow
furrowing. “We have a larger problem?”

Rhys folded his hands on the desk in front
of him. “His monastery was sacked by men wearing Gwynedd’s
colors.”

“They
were
men of Gwynedd.” Deiniol’s
hands were tucked into the sleeves of his robe, the right in his
left and vice versa, a familiar stance among monks, and his chin
stuck out obstinately.

Gareth looked at him for a moment and then
returned his attention to Rhys, who gazed back at Gareth with an
unreadable expression. At another time, Deiniol’s certainty might
have been somewhat amusing, but Rhys was the one who had called the
peace conference between Powys and Gwynedd. Deiniol was a man of
Powys, and Wrexham monastery was located in Powys. Deiniol’s
assertion that Gwynedd was responsible for the banditry had now put
Rhys in an awkward position. If he outright denied the possibility
of Gwynedd’s involvement, Madog—when he found out about the theft,
which he would soon if he didn’t know already—would see any
assumption of Gwynedd’s innocence as taking sides.

That meant the necessary denial was up to
Gareth. “Men of Gwynedd didn’t do this—or at least not any in the
king’s service.”

“How do you know?” Deiniol said.

“I am the captain of Prince Hywel’s
teulu
, so I know my own men, and King Owain’s men have been
preoccupied either with the recent conquest of Mold Castle or in
preparation for the coming war against Powys.”

“You’re telling me that you can account for
the movement of every man in the royal guard over the last few
weeks?” Deiniol said.

Gareth’s jaw clenched.
He
couldn’t.
He’d spent the last few weeks either in Shrewsbury or traveling
between Aber and Shrewsbury with a small complement of men. He’d
left Prince Hywel’s
teulu
in the charge of staunch
companions, however, Evan among them, and their whereabouts could
be accounted for. “Perhaps not every man, but I can tell you that
no large company has been absent long enough to ride to Wrexham,
rob your monastery, and return.”

Deiniol let out a
humph
and then
turned to Abbot Rhys. “I stand by what I saw.”

Rhys put out a calming hand. “I believe
you.”

Gareth decided that he might as well gather
what information he could from Deiniol while he was here, which was
surely what Rhys had intended in bringing them all together. “Your
monastery employed no soldiers to protect you?”

“The favor of King Madog of Powys has always
been sufficient, but he marches for war. Any man who patrolled the
roads has been withdrawn from his duty. Madog looks to England, and
it is because of that war that our monastery was vulnerable to a
raid from Gwynedd.”

Gareth didn’t rise to the bait and deny the
accusation again. He realized by now that it would do no good.
Deiniol was fixed in his opinion, and Gareth could hardly blame
him. If his home was attacked by men wearing Chester’s colors, it
would take a great deal to convince him that he was being
deliberately deceived. Though it was considered unchivalrous, this
would hardly be the first time that men used the surcoats of an
enemy lord to disguise their identity. That didn’t mean, however,
that the disguise wasn’t effective.

Deiniol frowned in concentration. “While
travelers do bring news from England and Wales, and of course we
are well acquainted with the war between Stephen and Maud, it is
the nature of our order to be a retreat from the world, to be of it
but not in it.” He paused to check the comprehension of his
audience. Nobody was having any trouble understanding what he
meant.