“You spent it?” Caron was shouting. “How could you? We agreed you wouldn’t!”
Gareth was completely happy to eavesdrop on the argument and to have a moment to himself inside the manor. Now that he could name Meicol as the master carver and had a more complete perspective on the man himself, he was able to better admire what he’d done here. And it occurred to Gareth that Meicol had done it for Robert, not Alban.
He rubbed his finger along the arm of a chair, carved to look like a paw. It was one of twelve that sat around the long table. All of the edges, legs, and arms were elaborately decorated. He could almost picture the bear that had been the model crouched on the other side of the table. Meicol might not have been deemed reliable anymore and might have been drinking too much, but Sir Robert had seen his worth and employed him at length. It seemed amazing to Gareth that Cadell hadn’t done the same. And now it was too late.
“Do you like the table?” The little girl he’d seen with her nanny earlier stood at the bottom of the stairs, her hand on the railing.
“I do.” Gareth swept his fingers along the smooth finish.
“Uncle Meicol made it.” She made a sad face. “He’s dead now.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
She walked forward. “Can I show you something?”
“Of course.” He reached out a hand and tugged on one of her pigtails. If he wasn’t mistaken, she was going to grow up as beautiful as her mother. The cliché I don’t envy her father passed through his head a heartbeat before he realized someone might say the same thing about him. He had a daughter too, younger than this girl, who was utterly beautiful. And he didn’t think it was just fatherly pride saying so. Woe betide any future young men who attempted to woo her before Gareth had assessed them fully and deemed them worthy.
Meanwhile, the little girl dropped to her knees and crawled under the table. “Come here.”
Half-laughing, he got down on his knees and then his rear and scooted himself after her. Instead of four legs on the corners, the tabletop was supported by two pedestals attached to one another by two thick crossbeams running between them. The little girl put her finger to her lips and then reached up and touched one of the knotholes in a pedestal. With a click, a drawer popped out. She pushed it back in, pressed the knot again, and it popped out again.
Gareth’s eyes were bright. There really was far more to Meicol than met the eye, and they would all be wise to remember it. “Is there anything inside?”
She nodded solemnly and pulled out a carved cat the size of Gareth’s pinky finger “Meicol told me if I ever had something I didn’t want my brothers to steal, to hide it in the drawer. My doll doesn’t fit, or I would leave it here so my brother can’t hurt her.”
“I’m sorry about your doll. I have a little girl too, and she would not be happy if someone hurt her doll.” Children could be—and often were—cruel if left to themselves. He slid out from underneath the table. “Meicol was a good friend to you.”
The girl followed, still holding the carved cat. “Do you think he’d like it if I brought the cat to his funeral?”
“I’m sure he would, but don’t leave it on the grave. He carved it for you because he wanted you to have it.”
She nodded again, the cat clenched in her little fist. By now, the fight in the kitchen had died down, it was time to make himself known to Alban and Caron. Then the front door opened, and Llelo, who again was tagging along, poked in his head. “Remember what Evan said about comparing this house to the barn at Aber?”
Gareth raised his eyebrows. “I do.”
Llelo nodded. “There’s something Gruffydd wants you to see.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Gareth
Alban entered the room before Gareth could leave. “Why are you back?”
Gareth spun around, having just related to Llelo the finding of the secret drawer under the table. He assumed Alban knew of it, even if the little girl thought otherwise. Still, Gareth wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. “We have more questions.”
Alban folded his arms across his chest. “Such as?”
Gareth eyes went to the door, expecting Caron to come through it at any moment, but she didn’t. “Ones that haven’t yet been answered.” He paused. “When was it that you beat Meicol?”
Alban’s jaw dropped. Gareth had deliberately asked the question in such a way that assumed Alban had done it, and he obliged by not denying it. Instead, he let out a puff of air and turned towards the fireplace, putting his forearm on the mantle and leaning into his arm. “The day before he died.” He looked up. “But I didn’t kill him! He didn’t even fight back. The man was so pathetic, after a few blows, I stopped, and what I did to him was hardly enough to kill him.”
Gareth well remembered the bruises on Meicol’s torso, but he also remembered what had transpired in the great hall at Dinefwr. It had been Meicol who had taunted Barri, and also Meicol who’d swung the first—and only—punch. That wasn’t the behavior of a pathetic man who wouldn’t fight back. Then again, Meicol had been drunk, and Barri had been an equal, while Alban was his superior. “What did you confront him about?”
Alban’s chin went rigid, and for a moment Gareth didn’t think he was going to answer, but then he took in a breath and half-laughed. “If you must know, he was behaving in a manner which was too familiar with my wife.”
Gareth managed to keep his face blank. Somehow, from what Evan had said about Caron, he couldn’t see her giving Meicol the time of day. She hadn’t when she’d been a youth. It was bizarre that she would now as a married woman. “She is with child. Did you think the baby was his?”
“No!” Alban scoffed. “I didn’t say she returned his interest.”
“Did he touch her?” Llelo spoke urgently from behind Gareth. They’d already had the conversation about how Llelo, as a man, was larger than almost all women. He needed to monitor his physical proximity to them at all times and to make sure he didn’t use his greater size and strength to intimidate when he didn’t mean to.
Alban glanced at him. “She says no, just that he was too forward. I didn’t like the way he was always snooping around anyway, so I decided to give him a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget.”
Gareth took in a breath through his nose. He couldn’t argue with what Alban had done, if, in fact, Meicol had offended his wife. The fact that Alban hadn’t killed Meicol then and there, however, indicated Alban might even be telling the truth—because why beat a man half to death only to poison him the next day?
“May I speak to Caron about this?”
Alban frowned. “I would rather you didn’t. What with the baby and the death of Sir Robert, she hasn’t been feeling well at all.”
Gareth lifted his chin to point to the kitchen doorway. “I overheard you two arguing just now. Something about spending money—perhaps money you don’t have?”
Alban’s face went completely blank.
Gareth almost rolled his eyes. Alban might be guilty of wrongdoing, but if so, he wasn’t an expert criminal. If he had been, he would have been prepared for questions, rather than acting surprised every time Gareth asked them.
“What was it about?” Gareth urged.
“It was nothing. Just household concerns.” Alban recovered enough to shake his head and smile ruefully. It was a good attempt, but Gareth didn’t believe him for a single heartbeat.
“Are you a gambling man, Alban?”
He shrugged in attempt to convey casualness. “Dice with the men on occasion.” Then he looked fiercely at Gareth. “What passes between me and Caron is a private matter and none of your concern.”
“It is my concern if it pertains to murder.”
“It doesn’t!”
This was the most emotion Alban had shown, far more than he’d displayed at the loss of Sir Robert or any of the people who’d died at the castle. Gareth hadn’t known any of them himself, but he didn’t live here. These were men Alban lived and worked with, and yet he’d mentione
d none of them.
“We spoke with Meleri, your cousin.”
Now it was Alban who rolled his eyes. “I’m amazed she talked to you. She’s simple, you know.”
“We noticed.” Gareth studied Alban for a few heartbeats. Then he said under his breath to Llelo, “Is what you found something Alban can help us with?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Gareth turned back. “My son says we have something to show you. Will you come with us?” Without waiting for a response from Alban, he turned on his heel and followed Llelo out the door. Alban did, in fact, exit the manor too, and when Gareth glanced back, his brow was furrowed. “Where are we going?”
“Over here,” Llelo said mildly. He led them around the back of the house to a narrow cart path, half the width of the one that led to the house. The wheel ruts were evident, however, even if the vegetation overhung the path on both sides. It hadn’t rained in several days, but the ground was still fairly damp under the trees, and boot prints were evident in the dirt. As Gareth’s own men had been down here and back, he didn’t try to read anything into them.
“Really, Sir Gareth. This is absurd,” Alban said from behind him, having come to a halt at the start of the track.
Gareth turned to look at him. “I have the full confidence of King Cadell to follow where this investigation leads me.”
From beside him, Llelo didn’t scoff, though he’d probably had to swallow down his instinctive denial. Still, Gareth hadn’t actually lied. He had been charged with the investigation, but full confidence was something of an overstatement. Gareth deliberately hadn’t told Cadell he’d returned to Alban’s house.
Then Llelo put into words what had been at the back of Gareth’s mind since they’d arrived, though he hadn’t managed to articulate it. “Why aren’t you at the castle seeing to your men, Alban? Here it is noon already, and you haven’t been there since the celebration. Shouldn’t you be with them, especially since your captain is ill as well?”
Alban’s mouth opened, closed, and then opened again. This question, like all the others, had surprised him, maybe especially coming from a fifteen-year-old. But then he shrugged and answered. “Caron was unwell yesterday, and I had Sir Robert’s affairs to attend to. I sent one of my servants to King Cadell to tell him I would come when I was free. When you arrived, I was just about to leave to ride to the castle.”
Gareth accepted the explanation for now, but like practically everything that had come out of Alban’s mouth, it raised Gareth’s hackles.
Llelo knew it too. “It’s still odd,” he said in an undertone.
“You’re not wrong,” Gareth said in the same low voice. He himself was Hywel’s captain and knew intimately that the obligations of a man of Alban’s stature, even if he wasn’t captain of the teulu but second-in-command, as Evan had been, were numerous and daily. As Llelo had pointed out, his obligations should be all the greater with Cadfan ill and unable to see to his men.
In addition, Gareth was landed, having been given an estate by Prince Hywel upon his marriage to Gwen. But even with the honor, rarely had he been given leave to see to his own lands on Anglesey. Gareth had a trustworthy steward who did most of the work, but Alban seemed to run things here himself. The difference couldn’t even be that the manor was close to the castle or that Alban wasn’t often called to leave the vicinity of Dinefwr. Every king moved around the countryside from castle to castle or royal llys. It was how he kept an eye on his people and his land. When he went, his teulu went with him. That meant Alban went with him.
As Llelo had said … odd.
Deciding to leave the matter for now, Gareth and Llelo continued to lead Alban down the path a good quarter of a mile until they reached a ramshackle shed. From its size and the fact that it was still standing, despite the tree that had fallen on it, the shed had once been well built. Even with the tree, the roof was intact, and although the exterior hadn’t been whitewashed in at least a decade, the cracks between the boards had been filled in recently.
As they arrived, Iago pushed open the big double doors, which created an opening large enough to allow a horse and cart to enter. The hinges didn’t squeak. “Come see what we found.”
The cart path continued past the shed and headed off to the right. It had the look of looping behind the manor house before returning to the main road. Gareth would send someone along it in a moment if Gruffydd hadn’t done so already. He probably had, being thorough and committed to his position as leader of the Dragons. In fact, Gruffydd, like Evan, had become far more content, if not happy, since taking on the position. Life wasn’t the same without Rhun, but it could be lived.
The shed proved to be dry storage for hay, and a glance up at the ceiling confirmed Gareth’s initial guess: the roof had not been breached. Iago didn’t stop to inspect the interior but moved between the mounds of hay to the back of the shed where a cart was parked. Aron was sprawled on his stomach underneath it, with the upper half of his body disappearing through a trap door in the floor. At Gareth’s approach, he popped out his head and grinned.
Another pair of doors allowed access to the cart path from this side of the shed, and Gruffydd opened them while Iago and Steffan hauled the cart out of the way of the trap door. Gareth walked to the hole and looked into it.
“We thought you might like to take a look for yourself, seeing how much you like cellars and trap doors.” Aron was trying not to laugh.
“You’re lucky Prince Hywel isn’t here this time. He’d wipe that smirk off your face.” Gareth tried to come off as stern, but he couldn’t maintain it. He laughed along with Aron. The rest of the Dragons looked at him with varying degrees of amusement, pleased with themselves for the joke they thought they were playing on him.
Alban, who’d entered the shed as well, looked from one man to the other, not understanding what they were jesting about. Of course, there was no way he could know about the number of times Gareth had been captive in a cellar. Though it had been more than once, if a man couldn’t laugh about pain, then he shouldn’t have Gareth’s job.
“I don’t know what you’re so concerned about,” Alban said. “Sir Robert used this place as storage, but it’s too close to the river, and everything becomes too damp if left in the cellar for any length of time.”
Gareth glanced back at Alban. “What kind of things did he leave here?”
Alban shrugged, implying unconcern, but his jaw was tight. “I don’t know.
This was before my time, you understand.”
“Who might have been down here recently?”
Alban shrugged again. “How should I know? My duties have kept me busy, and it’s far enough from the house that you can’t hear anyone in the shed or along the track.”
“If you had to guess,” Gareth said.
“Children playing, perhaps. I could ask my farm hands.”
Gareth tipped his head. “Please do.”
Alban folded his arms and leaned against one of the posts that supported the roof, affecting a casual attitude. “I can’t understand why you are suspicious of me. I have nothing to hide.”
Gareth eyed him. “You were Sir Robert’s steward. I would have been neglectful of my duty if I hadn’t questioned you. As it is, I won’t keep you any longer.”
Alban appeared to snort under his breath, though he was quiet about it. He gestured towards the cart, which the Dragons had moved outside. “Please clean up after yourselves before you leave.” He stalked away and didn’t look back.
“He’s hiding something,” Aron said matter-of-factly.
Gareth watched him go, and then he turned to Steffan. “Follow him up the track, will you? I want to make sure he really rides away.”
“Yes, sir.” Steffan headed away after Alban.
Gruffydd rubbed his chin. “It’s hard for me to see the boy Evan describes in the man he is now. What happened to him?”
Iago shrugged. “He’s discovered he will never achieve what he’d hoped. I imagine that wif
e of his isn’t letting him forget it either.”
Gareth studied his men. “Is this really what you had for me? An empty cellar?”
“Someone has been here recently.” Cadoc scraped his foot across the floor, sweeping aside the loose hay. “There’s fresh dirt everywhere.”
Aron copied him, brushing aside more of the hay. “There’s more on the rungs of the ladder. That’s why we didn’t go down it.”
Gruffydd leaned close to Gareth and said in a low voice. “They’re catching the fever, Gareth. If you don’t look lively, they’ll be going off on their own next.”
“They wouldn’t be the first,” Gareth said, though at that point his smile turned a little sad because one of those who’d become so afflicted had been Prince Rhun.
“After you.” Gruffydd lit a lantern that had been resting on a hook by the front door.
Gareth took it and started down the ladder, noting, as Aron had pointed out, the fresh dirt clinging to the rungs. Alban’s denials aside, his men were right that someone had been down here very recently.
However Alban hadn’t lied about the cellar being empty. When Gareth reached the bottom and raised the lantern, he revealed … nothing.
Gruffydd poked his head into the hole. “Anything?”
“Uh … not much.” Gareth beckoned with his hand. “Come on down.” He might have preferred to have Evan at his side, but Gruffydd had done some investigating in his time, and he was an excellent tracker.
A slight tremor crossed Gruffydd’s face. “I don’t like enclosed spaces.” But he turned himself around and came down the ladder anyway.
Meanwhile, Gareth crouched to the floor. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dim light, he could clearly see footprints and tracks in the dirt. “Pretend this is the woods. What does the ground tell you?”
His brow furrowed, Gruffydd began to move carefully around the room, trying not to mar the footprints, though that was difficult because they were everywhere. “I see the prints of many shoes, though—” He bent down and studied what was in front of him. “Alban might not be wrong that children were down here. Roughly half the prints are too small to be a man’s boot.”
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