The Good Knight

by Sarah Woodbury

  Chapter Twenty

  “I don’t understand it.” Gareth paced around the confined space of his cell, intentionally kicking at the wooden bucket in the corner as he passed it. Pace, pace, pace, kick; pace, pace, pace, kick. If he kept it up much longer, Hywel would have his head, but the crunch of the wood under Gareth’s boot was eminently satisfying just now. “I knew it wasn’t like her to keep herself away from me all day, despite what I told her. Has nobody seen her?”

  Hywel braced his shoulder against the wall just inside the door to Gareth’s cell and folded his arms across his chest. He watched Gareth pace with what looked like amusement on his face—perhaps at Gareth’s admission of his and Gwen’s friendship—though, admittedly, that was Hywel’s usual expression. Hywel rarely showed his true thoughts to anyone, much less to Gareth.

  “Nobody,” Hywel said. “I didn’t see her at breakfast, though I didn’t notice that I hadn’t until later. My men and I rode out before noon, and we didn’t return until just before the evening meal when I went looking for her.”

  “And you’ve questioned the garrison?” Gareth said, knowing that it wasn’t his place to tell Hywel his job but unable to help himself. “Nobody saw her leave?”

  “No,” Hywel said.

  “The castle isn’t very big; she can’t have gone far. Is she in the bath? Could she have slipped and fallen?”

  “It’s not running today,” Hywel said. “But yes, I looked there.”

  Gareth pursed his lips, taking that as Hywel meant it: he, himself, along with his men and squires, had looked thoroughly throughout the castle. None had found her and if Hywel hadn’t found her, she wasn’t here to be found. Gareth cursed himself for his blindness, for not seeing that something like this could happen if Gwen continued to pursue the murderer without him. “This tells me she got close to the culprit without knowing it.”

  “I would have to agree,” Hywel said. “Although you have to admit that she could have left on her own, without telling anyone.”

  “Gwen wouldn’t—” Gareth stopped. He and Hywel studied each other and Gareth guessed Hywel’s thoughts mirrored his: She wouldn’t leave Aber without telling me, would she?

  Hywel nodded. “We are in agreement that she could have left without telling one of us—even both of us—but I don’t think she would have left her family overnight without their knowledge.”

  Gareth eased back against the wall, mirroring Hywel. “She cares too much about Gwalchmai to want him to worry. She might have lied, but she would have told him something.”

  “And she did not.” Hywel stepped to the open doorway, looked through it, and motioned to someone beyond that Gareth couldn’t see.

  “Yes, sir?” Evan.

  “We’re done here.” Hywel held out his hand for the key.

  With a wary expression on his face, Evan handed it to Hywel, who pulled the door shut behind him, locked it, and handed it back. He strode away. Gareth poked his nose through the small window in the door.

  “You’re not the only one who’s angry, Gareth,” Evan said, his voice low. “Your friends are with you. You’ve done no more than your duty, as we all have.”

  “I know that,” Gareth said. “I don’t blame you. I’ve been as much blindsided by these events as anyone.”

  Evan stepped closer, so their faces were a foot apart, albeit separated by the door. “That’s the problem isn’t it? Nobody could have foreseen Gwen’s abduction.” He gestured helplessly. “Nobody but the killer.”

  Gareth nodded to appease his friend, even though Gareth knew the truth was far more complicated than that. It wasn’t as if he’d forgotten that someone could hurt Gwen. He hadn’t considered it at all, which made the whole situation far worse. It was one thing for the killer to attack Gareth—to poison him. It was quite another for him to abduct her. And for Gwen herself… Gareth’s mind shied away from what might be happening to her.

  “King Owain’s anger has lost its fire,” Evan said. “He’s gone cold—cold even to Cristina.”

  “You think that’s better?” Gareth said with a laugh. “It doesn’t sound like it.”

  Even snorted. “To my mind, the King is much more manageable when he’s hot. Frozen as he is, he’s likely to hang you at dawn because he can.”

  Gareth stared at Evan, waiting for his assurance that Hywel wouldn’t let that happen. It didn’t come. Instead, Evan said, “If I find Gwen, I’ll let you know.”

  “Thank you,” Gareth said. Let me out of here! Unconsciously, Gareth’s hands fisted, and his body coiled to launch himself at Evan’s throat. He would have, too, if the window hadn’t been too small to admit him.

  Evan gave no sign that he’d read Gareth’s thoughts. He shrugged, turned away, and settled onto a stool beside the door with his arms folded across his chest and his legs stretched out in front of him. Gradually, the noise from the courtyard died down and the castle quieted. Horses shifted in their stalls, easing into more comfortable stances for sleep. One whickered. Then nothing.

  Gareth leaned against the far wall of his cell, watching the play of light and shadow coming through the crack he’d made in the side wall. He was studying the damaged board, contemplating kicking all the way through it and taking his chances in the courtyard, when Hywel came back.

  Praise be to God!

  “Come,” Hywel said, as if he’d been gone only a moment instead of hours. He unlocked the door and pushed it open. “My men have Braith and extra provisions for you.” He held out a cloak to Gareth who took it and swung it around his shoulders.

  “Do you have my sword?”

  “Here.” Hywel handed it to him.

  Without haste, though his hands trembled, Gareth buckled the belt around his waist and loosened the sword in its sheath. Hywel hadn’t brought his knives, but Gareth wasn’t going to test his luck by asking for them. He could overlook their absence as the price to pay for freedom. Silently, Gareth followed Hywel from the stables. He didn’t ask why or wherefore, just accepted that Hywel had made a move in his so-called game.

  Nobody guarded the postern gate, which told Gareth that Hywel had used his considerable influence to arrange things the way he wanted them. The door didn’t even creak when Hywel opened it. They filed silently through it, walked alongside the curtain wall until they reached the southern corner, and then headed across the cleared space that surrounded Aber.

  No shout came from the walls, though that might have had less to do with Hywel’s planning and more to do with the pitch-black night and heavy cloud cover. It had rained while he’d been in the cell—he’d known of it because of the dripping in the corner, and thus the need for the bucket that Gareth had enjoyed kicking.

  Now, the grass and dirt in the field squished under his boots, and he trod carefully so as not to slip. Once through the field, they entered the trees to the west of the castle. It was even darker than before, if that was possible, and he struggled to keep up with the still silent Hywel. Soon, they reached a trail that led northwest.

  And at last, Hywel began to talk. “After I left you, I circled the wall, looking for any sign that a member of the garrison, rather than simply workman, had left the castle on foot. We found boot prints outside the postern gate—the one we just came through. One pair of shoes had sunk so heavily into the mud that the man either weighed double me or carried something heavy.”

  “You’re thinking it was a man carrying Gwen?” Gareth said.

  “Could be,” Hywel said. “The guards on the wall had no answers for me, nor did the men working on the wall, as they don’t use the postern gate. Nobody saw anything amiss, and I had no one left to question.”

  “So you talked to Madog,” Gareth said. That’s what he would have done, every time.

  “Of course,” Hywel said. “It just so happened that I found him in the presence of my father, who swore that he’d given none of the lords permission to leave Aber and that it was inconceivable that any of them would have defied him.”

>   Even in the darkness, Gareth recognized the tone Hywel’s voice took on when he knew something that others didn’t and that he’d accompanied the knowledge with a smirk.

  “Go on,” Gareth said.

  “Madog begged to differ—and begged is not too strong a word in this case as my father’s sentiments are well known. He hates being contradicted or proved wrong. Anyway, Madog told my father that Prince Cadwaladr had left before dawn with all of his men.”

  Gareth halted abruptly, stunned. “And nobody noticed? King Owain didn’t notice?”

  Hywel had walked another pace before realizing that Gareth had stopped. He paused and turned back. “The next Council meeting isn’t until tomorrow—or rather, today,” Hywel said, with a quick check for the moon, which the clouds still veiled. Gareth, for his part, had no idea what time it was. “Too many people are staying at Aber right now to keep track of them all. Apparently Cadwaladr told Madog he would return before the evening meal, which, of course, he did not.”

  “How did your father take this information?”

  Hywel paused, choosing his words carefully. “Not well. Coming hard on my assertions of my faith in you—and Cristina’s admissions—it made him fear that his trust in Cadwaladr has been misplaced.” He continued walking. “It does not please my father to find himself in error.”

  Gareth fell in beside him. “I can imagine.”

  “Did you know that Gwen cursed Cadwaladr when he ordered your imprisonment?” Hywel said. “I warned her to stay away from him.”

  “You should have warned him to stay away from her.” Gareth’s sudden anger threw him off his stride, and he took a deep breath to calm himself.

  “Cadwaladr wouldn’t have listened to me,” Hywel said. “If he spirited her out of Aber without anyone seeing, it implicates him in Anarawd’s death far more than anything else he could have done.”

  “I have no doubts, now,” Gareth said.

  “But you are biased,” Hywel said, matter-of-factly. “I still think Cadell is good for it.”

  “Is that because you don’t want him marrying your sister?” Gareth had seen the disgust in Hywel’s face when he’d looked at Cadell, and Cadell’s excessive effusiveness had rubbed Gareth the wrong way too.

  Hywel didn’t dignify that with a response. “Be that as it may, I’m coming around to your way of thinking.” He put a hand on Gareth’s arm. “You have to be prepared for what he might have done to Gwen, Gareth.”

  Gareth clenched his fists. Rape? Murder? “She’s not dead. I would know it.”

  Hywel didn’t contradict him. “It may have been her dead body that got carried through the postern gate, but somehow I doubt it. It would have been far easier for her to die in any of number of ways—even smothered in her sleep—than for Cadwaladr to kill her and hide the body.”

  “We’ve one missing body as it is,” Gareth said. “Surely that’s enough.”

  “Anarawd,” Hywel said. “But he was dead to start with.”

  Gareth nodded, glad to move on from Gwen’s demise as a topic. “Does your father—”

  “—know I’ve released you?” Hywel said. “No.”

  “Was that wise?”

  “Who cares for Gwen more than you?” Hywel continued walking up the trail. “Besides, you know how to track and fight. And you know Cadwaladr, perhaps better than I do.”

  “I’ve fought with him, or rather, for him,” Gareth said.

  Hywel smirked. “Never did much fighting himself, did he? Much like Anarawd. That ambush must have been a shock.”

  “What did you say?” Gareth said, confused. “Anarawd didn’t like to fi—”

  “Never mind,” Hywel said, interrupting and changing tack again. “We’ll leave it that King Owain tasked me with finding Gwen and that I will do, using whatever means I believe necessary.”

  Gareth nodded to himself. That was the metal that lay beneath Hywel’s open-hearted façade—and the part of him he’d inherited from his father.

  “When I tracked the footprints from the postern gate, they entered the woods just as we did,” Hywel said. “Then they disappeared, replaced by dozens of hoof prints. My guess is that whoever took Gwen met up with the rest of his company.”

  “Just as, I hope, we will?” Gareth said.

  “Ahead,” Hywel said.

  Good as his word, after another quarter-mile of walking, the trail came out on the road that headed west from Aber to Bangor and Caernarfon. When they reached it, half a dozen of Hywel’s men stood in a clearing to the side of the road. Relieved to know they wouldn’t be doing this alone, Gareth clasped Evan’s forearm in greeting.

  “They’ve been waiting for you,” Hywel said. “These were the ones who most objected to seeing you locked up in the first place.”

  “In truth, a dozen more wanted to ride with us, but my brother settled for six.” Rhun grinned, his bright hair gleaming gold in the torchlight.

  Evan laughed. “Madog told me if our young prince here didn’t break you out before the king hanged you, he’d do it himself. He’ll be glad that he didn’t have to test his resolve.”

  “I told Evan it’d be good for you, being locked up,” another man piped up, this one named Alun. Like Evan, he was of an age with Gareth, in his late twenties, though he’d been part of Hywel’s guard since Hywel became a man ten years before. “Teach you patience.”

  Gareth laughed. “Thanks, gentlemen … my lords,” he said, touched by their concern. “I’m none the worse for the experience. I am worried about Gwen.”

  Immediately, everyone sobered. Here they were, past midnight, on the road half-way between Aber and the village of Bangor, and Gwen had been missing since before dawn.

  “We have every reason to believe that she’s alive,” Hywel said. “Perhaps he thinks he can use her as a bargaining chip.”

  Hywel didn’t say who he was, but they all were thinking Cadwaladr. The evilness of the deed made Gareth sick to his stomach. As long as Cadwaladr believed Gwen to be useful to him, she would be safe. At the same time, while she meant something to Gareth himself, he still didn’t see why Cadwaladr would place value on her life. He obviously thought she knew enough to indict him, thus the abduction. But why not simply kill her? Gareth kept his fears to himself. Better for his friends to view this as a rescue rather than as a quest for revenge.

  Since he’d left Cadwaladr’s service, he hadn’t often had cause to think about the man himself—had, in fact, avoided thinking about him and what he’d done for him—but even after his dismissal, Gareth wouldn’t have guessed Cadwaladr would go as far as this. Still, a man never knew what was in another man’s heart, even his own brother’s. It seemed clear now that Gareth’s milk brother, Bran, had betrayed Anarawd. At Cadwaladr’s behest? It sickened Gareth to think on it.