The Favored Son

by Sarah Woodbury

  As Gareth listened to these great lords put forth their pledges of men and arms and construct the next phase of the war, he felt a growing respect for Prince Henry—along with a cold fear in his belly of what would happen if the boy really did achieve his aim. King Stephen hadn’t turned his attention to Wales, not just because he was occupied with keeping his crown, but because he was inconstant, unwilling to sustain any campaign for long. He wasn’t interested in taking the necessary steps to conquer each little kingdom of Wales in order to claim the whole as his own. For now, he had been content to let his lords of the March rule their small portions as they saw fit.

  While crowning Henry might be good for England, especially if he was able to provide a steady hand after all these years of war, from the glimmer in Henry’s eyes and the forcefulness of his personality, the day the crown was placed on his head could be a very bad day for Wales. All these lords were men of the March. If they continued their present course, and if Henry did win the throne eventually, they would want to be repaid for their loyalty.

  Most likely in Welsh land and blood.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Llelo

  While they waited for Hamelin to return with a cart, Llelo walked up and down the riverbank, looking for the place the woman had gone in. With the snow and rain of yesterday, he found nothing definitive, not even footprints, but as had been the case on the battlement after Sir Aubrey died, he felt better for having looked.

  Finally, he came to stand beside Cadoc, who was gazing into the slow-moving river, one arm folded across his chest and a fist to his lips. Rose remained on the bank behind them, covered by Llelo’s cloak. He himself was soaked from neck to toe, and while cloaks were expensive, there was no way he was putting on that cloak ever again. He had it in his head that he would leave it in the alms house as a gift for the poor, who would never know to what use it had been put. He was glad he hadn’t been wearing his armor and padding. Not only would he now weigh twice as much, but he would have had to spend this evening polishing each link so it wouldn’t rust.

  “Don’t ever get used to it, Llelo,” Cadoc said. “That’s when you know your soul has gone to a dark place.”

  “My parents are used to it.” Llelo shivered and wrapped his arms around himself, wishing he’d asked Hamelin to bring back a blanket, though it was taking so long he might well be dry by then.

  “Are they?” Cadoc turned slightly to look at him.

  “Aren’t they?”

  “Why do you think they take each death so seriously? Why do they go to bed late and rise early?” Cadoc answered his own questions. “Because each death goes right to the heart of them, and they cannot let it go until they discover the truth. It’s because they still have souls that they continue to care.”

  Llelo blinked back a sudden wetness in his eyes. He could have blamed it on the bright sunshine reflecting off the water, but he knew it was really his own misery and the aching in his heart. “How do they do it?” He didn’t bother to keep the pain out of his voice. Cadoc had read him perfectly.

  “They almost quit, you know. After Shrewsbury.”

  Llelo looked up quickly. “I didn’t know that.”

  “They worried they were harming their family.”

  “If they didn’t lead these investigations, who would? Nobody would ever find the truth!”

  “Exactly.” Cadoc grunted. “And now you understand.”

  Responsibility and duty were ideas Llelo did understand. Last summer his father had asked him if he wanted to be formally apprenticed, and at the time Llelo had eagerly agreed. But over the past few days, he was seeing more clearly the fine line his parents walked. From the outside, to investigate murder a man needed a strong stomach and a hard heart. Cadoc was telling him that to do it right, the first was a necessity but not the second, which would harm both him and his quest for the truth.

  He shivered again.

  “Are you regretting your decision?”

  Despite his newfound realization, Llelo’s response was instant. “No.”

  Cadoc seemed to snort and said under his breath, “Like father, like son.”

  There were few things he could have said that would have done more to stiffen Llelo’s resolve, if not his heart.

  Eventually, Hamelin returned with the boatmen, three soldiers, and a half-dozen workers, all overseen by Charles, the understeward.

  “You brought an army,” Llelo said to Hamelin in an undertone.

  Hamelin shrugged. “I had no choice. I had to give your father fair warning, though he told me not to tell anyone else who this was until he could see her himself. He’s waiting for us in the laying-out room.”

  While Charles hovered around giving unnecessary instructions, the men lifted the body into the back of the cart, and once it was there, Llelo covered it further with a hemp tarp Edgar had brought. With Hamelin’s words, Llelo realized that none of the newcomers knew it was Rose. Underneath the cloak, one body was much like another. He imagined they all thought they’d found Bernard.

  Once they returned to the castle, the same four men maneuvered the dead woman onto a table next to Aelfric, who lay ready for his burial, and Hamelin set off immediately with a few muttered words about finding his brother. Charles hesitated in the doorway for another heartbeat, his expression questioning, but Gareth told him he wasn’t needed, and he left too.

  “It’s bad, I gather?” Gareth was waiting for everyone else to leave before pulling back the coverings.

  “She wasn’t in the water long, but it was long enough,” Llelo said.

  Before their arrival, Gareth had lit six candles and a lantern, which hung on a hook from the ceiling, and had set the sage in its little dish to smoldering. This wasn’t to ward off evil spirits, though Llelo saw one of the guards cross himself as he passed it, but to cover the smell of the dead, which actually wasn’t as bad as it could have been. The woman had possibly been killed the day they’d arrived—two full days ago—but the water appeared to have leached out the worst of the smell, even as it had attacked her tissues.

  Another saving grace was the lateness of the year, which meant the water in the Frome was relatively cold. Llelo knew from his father that sometimes a person’s face could be eaten off by fish and other creatures. That had not happened either.

  Cadoc tipped his head to Llelo. “Your son needs a new cloak.”

  Gareth put a hand on Llelo’s shoulder and squeezed. Llelo fought the return of the tears from beside the river. He didn’t fight them as hard this time, and to his surprise, they subsided just as quickly. Meanwhile, his father dropped his cloak to the ground, revealing Rose’s body, and Llelo forced himself not to look away. Yes, it’s as bad as I remember.

  Hamelin pulled up just outside the doorway, breathing a bit more quickly than usual. “You should know Roger is coming—” He moved so they could see through the door to the young lord approaching, accompanied by Fitzharding and also Prince Cadwaladr, of all people.

  Gareth barked a cynical laugh. “Really?” Then he bent to pick up Llelo’s cloak once again and throw it over the body. “We do not want Cadwaladr and me in an enclosed space together.” Thus, before the oncoming lords could reach the doorway, the three of them filed out of the room.

  But Cadwaladr, Roger, and Fitzharding had already halted a hundred feet away, and the latter two appeared to be arguing.

  “I will see the body!” Roger said.

  “Son—” Fitzharding put out a hand as if to grab Roger’s arm, though he stopped just short of doing so.

  “I am not your son!” His face white to his hairline, Roger spun on his heel and stomped towards the laying-out room.

  Fitzharding, daunted as one might expect, fell back a pace, leaving Cadwaladr to walk beside Roger.

  Roger, however, cleared his throat and said in a calmer tone, directed not at Fitzharding but at Gareth, who filled the doorway of the laying-out room, “Let’s get this over with before I decide whether or not to trouble my brother w
ith it.”

  Nobody mentioned that Hamelin had already gone to do so nor the thundercloud over Gareth’s head, which was so obvious to Llelo he was surprised it hadn’t started raining. Roger didn’t seem to notice, and once he was within closer conversational distance, he tipped his chin in that haughty manner of his. “Quite frankly, you should not have brought him here. He was a suicide. He cannot be buried in consecrated ground.”

  Cadwaladr, continuing his conciliatory ways, hustled to get between Roger and Gareth. Llelo stared at Cadwaladr’s shoulders, stunned that he could be so trusting as to put his back to Gareth.

  Gareth’s hand didn’t go to his belt knife, and Cadwaladr said to Roger, “Prince Henry believes the valet is one of four murders. He has a right to be here until it is determined otherwise.”

  Unmoved by Cadwaladr’s pleading, Roger’s lips thinned, a match to Gareth’s. If six people hadn’t died, Llelo could have seen the scene before him as part of a mummer’s play, and while Cadwaladr was begging for mercy for Bernard, he was really asking for himself.

  Roger’s voice, meanwhile, when he spoke again, had no patience in it. “The sooner this is dispensed with, the sooner we can put these events behind us. We have business, my lord, that should not wait.”

  From behind Cadwaladr, Gareth finally moved, bowing and stepping back into the room to allow everyone else to file inside. “I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. We haven’t found Bernard’s body.”

  Roger sniffed. “I will be the judge of that. You never even met the man.”

  Gareth raised his eyebrows. “As you wish. I have only just glanced at the body myself, my lords, but it is difficult viewing.”

  Despite his own reluctance, Llelo stayed close, his eyes on Roger. With a strange mix of dread and glee, he wanted to see his face when realized the magnitude of his error. His arrogance would have been amusing if Llelo didn’t think the overt display of ignorance was going to make him furious in a moment.

  Gareth pulled the cloak off the body, and they all stared at it, though Llelo less directly than the others this time. He had no fear of being judged a coward.

  “That isn’t Bernard.” Roger sounded genuinely shocked.

  “Bernard drowned. This man drowned. Hence, this man is Bernard.” Fitzharding had been anxious to stop Roger earlier, but once Roger rejected him, he’d kept his distance. Thus, he spoke from the doorway, and from there, with so many people between him and the body, he could see only the shape on the table and not its substance.

  Silence greeted this statement, as it would.

  “Who-who—” Roger swallowed hard. “Is this who I think it is?”

  “Who do you think it is?” Gareth said.

  “The servant. Rose.”

  “What?” Fitzharding swung around the door, gaping. He took two steps into the room, and the others gave way before him.

  “Did you know her?” Gareth said, with what Llelo knew to be a studied innocence, since he’d heard Hamelin’s story about their argument.

  “What?” Fitzharding frowned. “No, of course not. Where’s Bernard?”

  Fitzharding had just lied with fluency. Llelo met Hamelin’s eyes for a moment in joint acknowledgement of that fact before they each looked away.

  “Not here.” Gareth’s voice was steady.

  Fitzharding still seemed to be in shock. His mouth opened and closed like a landed fish. “I don’t understand why this isn’t Bernard.”

  Roger rounded on him. “Why are you going on about Bernard when it’s Rose who’s dead?”

  “Because he owed me money.”

  Llelo just managed to swallow down his involuntary gasp. He’d told Hamelin that murder uncovered secrets, and here was another one.

  In the face of everyone’s stares, Fitzharding put up his hands. “It was nothing.”

  “It doesn’t sound like nothing, my lord. How much money?” Gareth said.

  Fitzharding’s hands were still up, and now he spread them wide. “He needed a loan to cover other, more pressing debts. I thought as Earl Robert’s valet, he would be good for it.”

  “Did you argue with him about it?” Llelo asked.

  Fitzharding looked affronted. “Not argue so much as discuss forcefully his repayment plan.”

  “When was this?” Gareth said.

  “A few days before he died.” Fitzharding shrugged. “I had nothing to do with his death, obviously, since killing him would hardly have allowed me to be repaid, would it?”

  “One of the people we’ve spoken with saw you in an argument with Rose as well,” Gareth said.

  Fitzharding’s expression hardened. “He was mistaken.”

  Gareth had tried to protect Hamelin, but now Hamelin himself cleared his throat. “Was I?”

  Fitzharding folded his arms across his chest in a recognizable gesture of defiance. “If you must know, she had learned that I had developed a bond with Lady Eva, an understanding, even. She was angry about it.”

  Roger barked a laugh of disbelief. “You are a lord, and she a laundress.”

  “She had designs above her station.” Now Fitzharding gestured to Aelfric’s body, which lay next to Rose’s. “Instead of questioning me, we should be considering why it is that we don’t yet have the man responsible in custody. You’ve had another murder on your watch, sir.”

  Llelo was irate for his father, but Gareth answered civilly, “We arrived weeks after the initial deaths, and these two appeared to have died the evening of our arrival. My own efforts have been hindered by the conference, as you know.”

  It was rare to see his father defending his actions in this way. On the whole, he never made excuses, but Fitzharding’s accusation had been absurd—and probably made out of a desire to distract them from his relationship with Bernard.

  Roger, for once, put out a hand placatingly. “We know these deaths are not the fault of anyone in your party. If someone is to blame, it is those of us who live here, who have allowed a murderer to walk free.”

  Llelo cleared his throat. “The murderer is the only one to blame, my lord. He must be very good at hiding in plain sight.” More as a distraction from the fact that he may have just spoken out of turn than because it needed doing, he stooped to pick up the cloak Gareth had cast aside. The move put his head close to the dead woman’s feet. Her shoes were gone, but he noted for the first time that one of her ankles had the remnants of a rope tied around it.

  “Father, look at this.” The end of the rope was frayed as if it had been torn away.

  Roger frowned. “She was tied to something?”

  “A weight, perhaps. The body wasn’t meant to be found. Well done, Llelo.” Gareth took in a breath. “Because of the conference, I have not yet informed the prince of all else that has come to light, but perhaps I should now. We have reason to believe that Aelfric had something to do with the loosening of the stones on the rampart. We found a hammer and chisel among his possessions.”

  Roger stared at him. “He was not an initial suspect, was he?”

  “He was in the guardroom when Sir Aubrey died, so no.” Gareth drew in another breath. “Rose, too, behaved suspiciously in the hours before she died. She spoke privately to my wife and implied that Earl Robert had told William that he was not his son.”

  “What?” Roger’s mouth dropped open. This was an hour for astonishment, it seemed.

  Fitzharding snorted. “Any man with eyes can see that’s a lie.” He was feeling more confident now, perhaps because the truth of his relationships to Rose and Bernard had come to light, and he wasn’t in chains because of it.

  “So we concluded immediately. We have spent the last two days looking for Rose as a result.” Gareth gestured to the two bodies in the room. “They didn’t kill themselves, though, did they?”

  “If I might put forth an idea ...” Initially, Cadoc had stayed outside with Fitzharding, and entered the room only at the tail end of the conversation. “We might consider the possibility that Bernard is not dead. In fac
t, I would suggest that Bernard staged his own death, perhaps for so simple a reason as to avoid these debts he couldn’t repay.”

  Roger wet his lips. “Would you go so far as to say that Bernard is the killer?”

  Cadoc spread his hands wide. “I don’t know what Rose or Aelfric might have done to incur his wrath or why he might want anyone dead at all but himself, but to my eyes, in all of this, he seems to be the one man we’ve not accounted for.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Gwen

  “I’m Adela. We spoke earlier.” The woman appeared to be about Gwen’s height and near to her age, with dark hair pulled back so tightly it had Gwen wincing.

  Gwen had found a bench in the back of the great hall out of everyone’s way to nurse her son. She would have chosen a spot closer to the fire, but she didn’t want to call attention to herself. Sitting in the corner, she could watch and wait. Or so she’d thought.

  “I remember.” And Gwen did, though the specifics of the conversation they’d had were somewhat fuzzy.

  It might be wrong to claim that all English people looked the same, but Gwen felt that way much of the time, in large part because their expressionless faces, all grim and dour, made them similar in appearance and so very difficult to read. The Welsh spoke with their hands, their faces, and their eyes as well as their mouths.

  Though as she’d discovered during the course of this investigation, the English—whether Saxon or Norman—were no less full of emotion on the inside, if one could get them to show it. Gwen was willing to bet this woman felt something too. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

  She’d said it to every person she’d interviewed, but she thought it bore repeating. Adela bent her head in acknowledgement, as had every woman today. But then she went on to add, “Sir Aubrey was my grandfather.”

  “I-I didn’t know.” Gwen found herself stuttering her surprise, and it was on the tip of her tongue to ask why didn’t you say so before?

  But she didn’t have to because Adela said, “It didn’t seem right to claim it in front of Mabs.”