The Worthy Soldier

by Sarah Woodbury

  He shrugged.

  “Is it your brother?”

  “I don’t trust anyone.” He glanced at Hywel, who was watching them closely. “That’s the first lesson you learn as a younger son, is it not?”

  Hywel gave a low laugh, but then he sobered and leaned forward, his eyes intent on Rhys’s face. “You have to trust somebody sometime.” He glanced at Gwen out of the corner of his eye. “Believe me when I say it can make all the difference.”

  Once back at the little steading, they dismounted: Hywel, Rhys, Gwen, Gareth, Llelo, Aron, Iago, and Cadoc, though the archer instantly headed into the woods. In turn, Iago nodded at Gareth and set off in the opposite direction with Aron. “We’ll establish a perimeter.”

  Gareth looked at Gwen. “Would you like to start with the garden?”

  “The three of you go on,” she said, referring to him, Llelo, and Prince Hywel. “I’ll stay with Prince Rhys.”

  Gareth gave her a look not unlike the one she’d received from Abbot Mathew earlier in the day, but he nodded and strode towards the garden door.

  Rhys remained where he was, and she turned to him. “What is your gut telling you?”

  “Why are you asking me? You were the one who realized that the treasure could be buried in Old Nan’s garden. Nobody else had got that far.”

  “But you are the one who brought us here.”

  “I did. I hope I’m not wasting our time.” Rhys pushed open the door into Meicol’s house ahead of Gwen—and pulled up on the threshold. Meicol’s tools were scattered all over the floor. The figures and carvings had been knocked over, and his mattress had been pulled apart, so there were feathers everywhere.

  “If we needed proof that someone else was involved, we have it now,” Gwen said.

  Rhys made a rumbling sound deep in his chest. “Someone obviously had the same idea we did, and he’s none too happy about not finding what he was looking for.”

  A boot scraped behind them, and both she and Rhys jumped. Anselm leaned against the frame of the door. “You’re right about that at least.”

  Gwen glared at him. She despised him on principle, and nothing he’d done—not even getting Barri to confess—could make her think well of him.

  Anselm put up both hands, palms out. “I’m just trying to find the truth, same as you.” He gestured to the ransacked house. “The treasure isn’t here.”

  “We can see that.” Rhys spoke through gritted teeth. “How do I know you didn’t find some of the treasure and keep it for yourself?”

  Anselm grinned. “Would I have made myself known to you if I had? I’d be halfway to Bristol by now.”

  He had a point, though Gwen had learned not to trust a man who answered a question with a question. Anselm was unpredictable. She didn’t understand him—and really didn’t want to.

  Rhys snorted and gestured with his head. “Be on your way.”

  Anselm’s smile was just short of insubordinate. “Yes, my prince.” He bowed. “As always, I am at your service.” He left.

  Gwen started to move about the room, discontent rumbling in her own chest at what Anselm had said and done.

  “We might as well go, Gwen,” Rhys said from behind her. “He’s right that there’s nothing here.”

  Gwen looked back at the prince. “Is he really gone?”

  Rhys poked his head out of the door and then pulled back in, nodding as he did so.

  “Shut the door.”

  He obeyed with a click of the latch. “What is it?”

  “There are bits of this investigation Anselm doesn’t know about.”

  Rhys’s expression lit. “Good to know.”

  “From the start I thought the bed was far too grand for a man of Meicol’s station, but of course he made it himself, so he could do what he liked.” She touched one of the posts, which had been carved as if real vines snaked up it.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Meicol had more work than perhaps the men up at the castle knew. For starters, he did all the woodwork in Sir Robert’s house. That includes a great table in his hall. Alban’s daughter showed Gareth a secret drawer underneath it, hidden in one of the table’s pedestals.”

  Rhys took a step forward. “You think that he made one for the bed?”

  “If so, Gareth couldn’t find it.” She began running her hands along the headboard. It looked and felt solid to her, as it should. She pressed every knothole, but there was no accompanying click.

  Rhys joined her enthusiastically at first, but after he too found nothing, his interest began to wane. Gwen harrumphed and sat on the edge of the bedframe.

  Rhys sat down beside her. “I was really hoping we had something here.”

  “Me too.” She put her chin in her hand, her eyes scanning the room. A nearly life-sized cat lay on the floor close to her foot. On impulse, she picked it up and shook it, but nothing rattled. It was as solid as the bed. Still, she turned the cat over in her hands. “Who inherits all of Meicol’s animals, my lord?”

  “My brother, naturally, as Meicol’s liege lord.”

  “What will he do with them?”

  Rhys shrugged. “They’re beautiful. He could sell some, but he has spoken with admiration of Meicol’s handiwork, and more likely he will eventually give them away as gifts.” He pointed with his chin to a cluster of several more. “The dragon has always been his favorite.”

  “As well it should be.” Handing the cat to Rhys, Gwen darted forward to pick up the dragon. It too appeared solid, but she began running her hands all over the creature anyway.

  “There’s nothing here, Gwen.”

  “I’m sure you’re right—” She broke off at the click that sounded in response to a hard thumb on the dragon’s eye. At first she didn’t know what she’d accomplished, but she held the neck tightly and twisted, and the whole head turned and came off. A seam had been hidden by the dragon’s collar. Wool was stuffed into the neck and body, and she pulled out one tuft after another. Inside each little ball Meicol had place a gem, and one by one she dropped them into Rhys’s lap.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Gareth

  “Sir Gareth!”

  Gareth turned, interested to see Prince Rhys coming towards him across the monastery courtyard. As had been the case last night, Rhys had no guard, and the way his hair stood up on end indicated he might have just woken up.

  Gareth left the adjusting of his stirrups to Llelo, and walked towards the gatehouse to intercept Rhys. “May I help you, my lord?”

  “Walk with me, if you will.”

  “Of course.”

  The young prince had the long legs and short torso of a man who hadn’t quite reached his full height and weight, which was unsurprising in that he was fifteen. The two men headed across the courtyard towards the graveyard, which wouldn’t have been Gareth’s first choice as a place to talk, but it seemed Rhys was yet another resident of Deheubarth who viewed it as the perfect spot. As they walked, Rhys kept his head down, as if he was still thinking about what he wanted to say.

  Once near the oak tree behind which Gareth had hidden to witness Anselm’s questioning of Barri, Rhys put out a hand to stop him. Then, all alone, he did a circuit of the perimeter, making sure nobody was hiding behind any tree or gravestone, before coming back to stand in front of Gareth.

  “I have a favor to ask of you.” And then, even before getting confirmation from Gareth that he would actually do this favor, he reached into an inner pocket of his jacket and came out with a small bag, which he held out to Gareth. “I want you to keep these for me.”

  Gareth stopped himself from taking a step back, and he didn’t take the bag. “What are you asking of me?”

  “Please do not be offended.” Rhys reached for Gareth’s wrist, forcing his hand up and the bag into it. “This is not a payment for services rendered now or in the future. I genuinely am asking you to hold these for me until the day I need them.” Rhys wrapped Gareth’s fingers around the bag before releasing him and steppin
g back himself.

  Gareth weighed the bag in his hand, his eyes on Rhys. “I don’t understand.”

  “I cannot trust my brother or anyone in his court, and there may come a day when I will have to face him. Wealth of my own will help towards that.”

  Gareth opened the bag and dumped the contents into his hand. Sixteen gems of various sizes and weights lay in his palm. “Did your brother give you these?”

  “I removed them from the collection before we gave it to him.”

  They’d loaded all of Meicol’s carvings into garden sacks and carried them up to the castle. The find had included coins as well as gems, and Cadell had actually been generous, giving out shares of the wealth to Maurice, William, and Hywel, as the three lords who’d brought men to fight against FitzWizo. All three had already received some spoils from the sacking of Wiston Castle, and the haul was more than enough to have made the conquest extremely profitable for everyone.

  Hywel had accepted his bag of coins and gems with a complete absence of guilt, for which Gareth couldn’t blame him. Like Rhys, he knew his alliance with King Cadell could not last, and he had every intention of making the most of it while it did.

  Gareth poured the gems back into the bag. “A devious man might give these to me so you could later accuse me of theft.”

  “You mean someone like my half-brother. Or Anselm.”

  “I didn’t say it.”

  “But you thought it. That’s not why I’m asking this of you.”

  “I will have to speak of it to Prince Hywel.”

  “I would expect no less. It is not my intent to buy your loyalty.”

  Gareth tipped his head. “What is it, then, that you think you’ve bought?”

  “Time.”

  Gareth grunted. He’d been impressed with Rhys’s intelligence from the first day they’d met, but the boy had grown up in the intervening weeks. Murder and intrigue had the tendency to do that to a man.

  “I have no place to put these where they cannot be found,” Rhys continued, “and there is nobody in Wales with more honor than you. If Sir Robert were still alive, I might have entrusted them to him, but he is not.”

  A vision of Hywel’s bag of gold flashed before Gareth’s eyes but he blinked it away. “I will keep these safe for you.” He tucked the bag inside his coat.

  Rhys watched him, but didn’t move to leave.

  Gareth looked at him sideways. “Was there something else?”

  “You aren’t asking for anything in return? A gem for yourself, perhaps?”

  Gareth laughed. “Does it make you uncomfortable that I would do this for you without reward?”

  Rhys swallowed. “I said you were honorable, and so you are, but—” He looked down at the ground and didn’t say more. Gareth waited through a count of ten, uncertain if the audience was over or what he should say or do. He had accepted the gems out of compassion and instinct, not because it was a sane request.

  Finally, Rhys looked up again. “When my brother decides his alliance with Prince Hywel is at an end, I will attempt to give you fair warning.”

  Gareth studied him. “I would not ask that of you.”

  “But I will do it anyway.” Rhys chewed on his lower lip. “Will you want to give the gems back to me at that point?”

  “Not if you aren’t ready for them.”

  Rhys looked away. “My brother, my cousins, or an outsider might think me mad to be trusting a man of Gwynedd.”

  “Why are you?”

  “As your prince mentioned last night, a man in my position has no friends and few allies. Men like Barri or Alban are far more common than men like you.” He shrugged. “I don’t know any men like you.”

  “Rhys.” Gareth put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Your world seems that way right now, but when you become king, I want you to remember that it doesn’t have to be.” He paused. “You might look to Abbot Mathew for help when you need it. I think he is a good man too.”

  Rhys gave him the kind of look Gareth had come to expect from him: mature for his age, but not yet weathered and hardened. Then he surprised Gareth by bending slightly in a bow, before turning and walking away.

  Gareth felt the sack against his breast. He didn’t know what he was going to do with the gems, and their weight was far greater than their actual number. Still, he was glad he hadn’t said no. He gave Rhys time to disappear around the corner of the church, and was about to head back to the stable himself when Llelo appeared in the gateway.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Yes.” It seemed to be the day for conversation with young men of a certain age.

  “Why did you send me to search for Jane?”

  Gareth studied his son. Though Llelo’s expression was mild, he was looking for an answer, and Gareth wasn’t quite sure what it was. So he felt him out a bit first. “I knew you were the right man for the job.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are smart and capable, and I trust you. And you wouldn’t be missed from the funeral rites.”

  Llelo wrinkled his chin. “You trust Evan. You could have sent him.”

  “I could have. I chose you.” Gareth looked at him a bit sideways as he’d looked at Rhys a moment ago. “What’s this about?”

  Llelo waggled his head back and forth. He wasn’t upset, but it was clear he wasn’t sure how to continue. “You sent me only because I’m your son.”

  “Only?”

  “How many other fifteen-year-olds would you even think to send on a task like that? How many would you trust with finding out something so important?”

  Gareth put his hand on the gate and carefully closed it to block the view of the men in the monastery’s courtyard. Nobody else needed to see this, even if this question was something every son who followed in his father’s shoes eventually asked.

  “One.”

  Llelo blinked. His back was to the monastery wall now, and he leaned his head against it. While Gareth wasn’t looking, the boy had grown that last inch, and the two of them now stood eye to eye.

  “You’re asking if I am playing favorites? Do you actually think you didn’t earn the task I set you, but I gave it to you, as you said, only because you are my son?” Gareth canted his head. “Maybe I did it because I felt pity for you? Or maybe you’ve decided I thought the task was unimportant, and it was only after you returned successful that I realized how important it had been all along?”

  Llelo bit his lip.

  Gareth put his hands on his son’s shoulders. The knowledge that he had to say the right thing here and the fear that he might not be able to were almost tangible. “Three things. First, I wasn’t present at your birth or for the first twelve years of your life, but that matters only because I wish I could have been. I’m grateful to you and to Dai for choosing Gwen and me as parents and for treating me like a father.”

  “You are my father.” Llelo blurted out the words in such a way that implied he couldn’t help but say them.

  Gareth smiled gently. “And you are my son. Second, because you are my son, I trust you like I trust few men. That means there will be times when I give you tasks that are sensitive. This was one of those times. This is a family business, and you will always have a leg up over other men because of the trust inherent in being part of this family. Families can keep secrets within themselves in a way no other group can.”

  Llelo opened his mouth to speak but Gareth shushed him before he could. “Third, I meant what I said about you being smart, capable, and completely reliable. Would I have sent Gwalchmai on that journey you undertook?”

  Llelo gave a tentative shake of his head.

  “No, I would not have. Gwalchmai is neither a soldier nor trained as you are. He has not been following me around in the same way you have done these last three years. Do you know why I brought you south with me?”

  “Because Hywel needed men he could trust.”

  “Yes, that. But also because I needed men I could trust. More to the point, you an
d your brother are not just in training to be knights, in case you hadn’t noticed. You are in training to follow in my shoes, in a way that only my sons can do. Why do you think I let you tag along behind your mother and me solving murders?”

  “So …” The light was dawning on Llelo. “So I could learn?”

  “So you could learn.” Gareth nodded. “And what did you learn from that task I set you?”

  “How to talk to people. How to get people to talk.”

  “A task I would not have set you if I didn’t think you could do it.” Gareth smiled at his son. “And now I have a question for you: do you want to continue?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Investigating death is not for everyone. I’m not sure it is for Dai, for all his enthusiasm. Or maybe because of it. I’m not sure being a soldier is right for him either, though I may not know that for certain until he’s a little older.” Gareth looked at his son gravely. “The fact that you are mature enough to ask me this question only affirms my decision to keep you beside me. You are a man now, and because I am a knight and a prince’s companion, you have the right to choose your own destiny. So I ask you again … do you want to continue?”

  The tentativeness of the last quarter-hour was gone, and Llelo’s eyes cleared, revealing an almost breathless anticipation. That told Gareth as much or more about what Llelo really thought as his answer.

  “Yes!”

  The End

  Historical Background

  The Worthy Soldier was inspired by actual events of 1147 Wales. With Robert of Gloucester in the last year of his life, the war between Empress Maud and King Stephen had reached a new stage involving complex machinations among the lords who served them rather than pitched battles.

  Earlier in the year, King Stephen had seized Gilbert de Clare, the Earl of Hertford, and refused to release him until he surrendered all of his castles. Gilbert did so, but as soon as he was released, he joined the rebellion of his uncle Ranulf, Earl of Chester, who had reached a point where he was serving himself more than Empress Maud. Gilbert’s other uncle, also named Gilbert de Clare, who was the Earl of Pembroke, demanded that Stephen give him his nephew’s castles as his hereditary right. Stephen refused, and immediately this Gilbert joined Ranulf’s rebellion too, meaning that Stephen had lost control of almost the whole of western England.