The Fallen Princess

by Sarah Woodbury

  “Who else?”

  “Even after all this time?” Gareth said.

  “Hallowmas is tomorrow night,” Hywel said. “The discovery of this death will make everyone uneasy. How much worse will it be if my father does nothing to find her killer?” Then Hywel shrugged. “Even if he doesn’t ask, I will insist we try.”

  That was as Gareth had assumed, though he’d felt the need to ask. He rose to his feet too, brushing the sand from his knees. “It’s hard to know where to start.”

  Hywel scowled. “We should treat it no differently from any other murder. If we ask enough questions, eventually we will ask the right ones of the right people, and we will learn things we didn’t know before. All cases can be solved given time and a little luck.”

  “Make that a lot of luck,” Gareth said.

  Hywel looked over at him, his gaze sharpening. “I need to know that you will put your full efforts into this, Gareth. I can’t have you doubting what we do.”

  Gareth tamed his skepticism and reluctance in an instant. “Of course.” At Hywel’s continued hard look, Gareth added, “I apologize, my lord.” He blew out his cheeks. “But I must point out that we will have to reexamine everything we knew about her. She was a princess and your cousin. You might not like what we find.”

  “Knowing the truth is always better than believing a lie,” Hywel said.

  Gareth nodded. It wasn’t the first time Hywel had said those words, and Gareth believed he meant them. “Then I have my first question, and it needs to be put to you: Gwen said that Tegwen married Bran, a prince of Rhos. Why don’t I know of him? Is he a younger son who hasn’t participated in your father’s endeavors?”

  “Was that before your time too?” Hywel said, surprise in his face. And then he shook his head. “No, it couldn’t have been.”

  “Was what before my time?”

  “Bran was the heir to the throne of Rhos,” Hywel said. “His older brother, Marchudd, died after Bran married Tegwen, and then his father died—of old age, mind you—between Marchudd’s death and Tegwen’s disappearance. I can’t remember the specifics at the moment, since Bran had taken charge of the cantref long before that. Then Bran himself was murdered three years ago by an arrow through his heart as he journeyed along the road from Caerhun to Dolwyddelan.”

  Gareth’s brow furrowed as he thought back to three years ago and what he’d been doing at the time. He’d been a member of Hywel’s company for almost two years by that point. “Tegwen was married to that Bran?”

  “Indeed,” Hywel said.

  Gareth looked away, his mind churning. “I remember that he died. In fact, wasn’t he ambushed not far from where Anarawd’s company was ambushed?” At this second mention of Anarawd’s murder, Gareth didn’t look at Hywel and hurriedly continued, “Why wasn’t I among those investigating his death? Where was I? Where were you?”

  “You were with me,” Hywel said. “We spent most of that year in Ireland, remember? I didn’t learn of his death until my father told me of it six months after it happened. By then, with no trail to follow and nothing to investigate, he didn’t see the point in wasting my time with an inquiry.”

  “Who benefited from Bran’s death?” Gareth said.

  Hywel gave him a dark look. “That is the one question that we never ask, and you know it. Bran was the Lord of Rhos and had no sons. Who do you think benefited?”

  “His younger brother. I see, but surely—” Gareth broke off what he’d been about to say: but surely his brother wouldn’t have murdered him? But surely he would have, if it meant gaining the lordship.

  “Bran was the second son of his father, and Tegwen had given him only daughters.” Hywel had gone back to studying the body of his cousin. “The elder brother died, as did many of our men, during the wars in Ceredigion, and upon Bran’s death, the third son, Ifon, inherited.”

  Given that King Owain himself had inherited Gwynedd under identical circumstances—the untimely death in battle of an older brother—it was no wonder that he didn’t want to delve too deeply into Bran’s murder and the subsequent inheritance of the cantref by a third son. How King Owain had for so long tolerated having his younger brother, Prince Cadwaladr, anywhere near him was a mystery to Gareth. All that stood between Cadwaladr and the throne of Gwynedd was Owain himself. Then again, King Owain might think it was better to keep an eye on the treacherous prince than to have him far away doing God knew what.

  Until Prince Hywel had elevated Gareth to the captain of his guard and given him lands of his own, the politics of Gwynedd had concerned him only as far as they concerned Hywel. More recently, Gareth had started paying more attention.

  “I wouldn’t worry too much about the younger brother,” Hywel said. “Ifon hasn’t a violent bone in his body. I can’t see him having anything to do with his brother’s death. Or Tegwen’s, for that matter.”

  Hywel’s comment violated their oft-spoken motto, never assume, but Gareth let it go for now. He’d met Ifon, and Hywel’s assessment was accurate up to a point. Still, while Ifon might not have an impressive intellect or the same skill with a sword as his older brother, Gareth had worked for Hywel long enough to know that the face a person showed to the world often belied his true character. You could never know what was in another’s heart, especially when he rarely talked about himself or put himself forward.

  “My lord, I have news.” Adda finally reappeared with Rhodri and Dewi in tow.

  A look of disdain crossed Hywel’s face at the sound of Adda’s voice, but since Hywel still faced Gareth, Adda didn’t see it. Hywel rolled his eyes at Gareth and then cleared his expression before turning around. “Good. Let’s hear it.”

  “I was unable to find any witnesses to this incident.” Adda held his back straight and gazed at a point to the right of Hywel’s left shoulder. “I did discover tracks that I believe are from a cart. They start twenty yards up the beach from the body and continue past where we left the horses. If I am not mistaken, there are two sets: coming and going.”

  Gareth took a step closer. “Rhodri and Dewi brought a cart when they arrived with Gwen. How can you tell the difference between the tracks?”

  “The other set goes off towards the west,” Adda said. “They are deeper, too, as if the cart carried a load.”

  Gareth nodded. “Excellent work.” Adda’s observations were far more insightful than Gareth would have given him credit for.

  Prince Hywel looked Adda up and down as if seeing him with new eyes too. “What happens after the tracks reach the road?”

  “It is impossible to trace them, my lord,” Adda said, still stiff.

  “Did you stand watch last night?” Prince Hywel said.

  “No, my lord,” Adda said. “Mine was the morning shift.”

  “Find the man you replaced and bring him to me once I return to the castle,” Prince Hywel said. “You are dismissed.”

  “Yes, sir.” Adda saluted and departed with Dewi.

  Rhodri had been hovering on the margins of their conversation and didn’t leave with Adda even though the older soldier shot him a look that indicated he should. While Hywel bent to Tegwen’s body and began wrapping her back up in her cloak, Rhodri stepped towards Gareth. “My lord, if I may have a word?”

  Gareth nodded and moved with Rhodri to one side, out of earshot of Hywel. “What is it?” It wasn’t that he wouldn’t share the information Rhodri was bringing him with Hywel but that there was a solemnity to Hywel’s movements that Gareth didn’t want to disturb.

  “I wanted you to know that I wasn’t on duty either; I was here. I brought my boy to the beach this morning. My family are fishermen, and it’s his heritage, you see.”

  Having seen to Tegwen, Hywel signaled to several of the men to come help him carry Tegwen’s body to the cart. Gareth turned back to Rhodri, who hurriedly continued, “I didn’t notice her until the children pointed her out, seeing how it was still dark when we arrived, and it was at least an hour that she lay on the beach before the
re was enough light to see by. The lanterns don’t shed much light beyond a small circle, you see.”

  “You don’t have to apologize, Rhodri,” Gareth said. “She’d been dead a long while before today.”

  Rhodri ducked his head. “It’s not that. It’s this.” From his pocket, Rhodri brought out a coin pendant with a hole shot through it and strung on a length of leather thong. “Within a few moments of our arrival, my boy found this lying on the path. He picked it up, thinking to keep it, but I reckon that it isn’t his to keep.”

  Gareth took the pendant and held it out flat in the palm of his hand, a cold wave of dismay flooding his chest. It was clearly old and so worn that Gareth couldn’t read the writing on the coin or make out the image on its face. It would have been worn as a necklace and passed through many hands to reach his. “Thank you, Rhodri, for your honesty. I will show this to Prince Hywel.”

  “I thought it might be the dead woman’s, you see,” he said. “I couldn’t by rights keep it.”

  “See to your boy. This can’t have been an easy day for him.” Gareth dismissed Rhodri and returned to Hywel’s side. The prince had by now seen his cousin safely ensconced in the cart. Gareth waited patiently for Hywel to finish adjusting the cloak so it covered Tegwen completely and then caught his lord’s attention, touching his sleeve and stepping away from the group of men who had gathered themselves for the somber journey to Aber Castle.

  Hywel’s expression turned wary at seeing the concern on Gareth’s face, and when Gareth handed him the necklace and explained where it had been found, the muscles in Hywel’s jaw tightened. He turned the coin over in his fingers, licking his lips and as reluctant as Gareth to speak.

  Finally, Hywel said, “You know as well as I do to whom this belongs.”

  “I will name him if you won’t,” Gareth said.

  Hywel shook his head. “Uncle Cadwaladr, what have you done now?”

  Chapter Three

  Hywel

  Uncle Cadwaladr.

  Although Hywel had never liked him, his very existence had been haunting Hywel for over a year now. At first, it had been because he hired a company of Danes from Dublin to ambush and murder King Anarawd of Deheubarth and Hywel had been instrumental in proving his culpability. Since then, Hywel had taken over Cadwaladr’s castle and lands in Ceredigion, and the legacy of his uncle’s every decision had been dogging Hywel’s steps. Cadwaladr had been a bad ruler, alienating the populace and fomenting discontent such that they didn’t trust those foreigners from Gwynedd, of which they viewed Hywel most definitely as one.

  And the worst thing was that Hywel could see Cadwaladr in himself. A few different pieces to his life—and a few different people in his life—and he and Cadwaladr could have been very much alike.

  Long ago, when Gwen and Hywel were no more than eight and nine, Gwen had openly chastised Hywel for his behavior for the first time. Hywel had taken a kitten from the daughter of one of the kitchen staff and hidden it from her in his room. He hadn’t hurt it, but when Gwen learned that the kitten was missing, she’d come to him, all fire and outrage.

  At first he’d tried to brazen it out, but then he’d succumbed to her glare and shown her where he was keeping it and that it wasn’t hurt. Gwen had then asked him, why would you take pleasure in hurting others?

  Such a simple question, and one that he’d at first refused to answer, though his heart had sunk into his boots. He hadn’t known why he’d stolen the kitten. It had been a game to him with no real consequences from his end, since he’d intended to return it eventually. But he’d hated the disappointment he’d seen in Gwen’s eyes. She could see right through him.

  Everyone else he could charm—and he’d charmed Gwen plenty too, he knew—but not when right and wrong were at stake. If not for Gwen—not just that time, but all the times she pointed him in a better direction from the one he was taking, though usually more subtly than in that first instance—Hywel wondered if he wouldn’t have turned out like his uncle.

  Hywel knew himself to be perfectly capable of killing. He’d done it in battle. He’d killed Anarawd, who was to have been his brother-in-law, and not lost more than a night or two of sleep over it. He’d justified his actions, as all men did, by telling himself that what he’d done was right, because to believe anything else would be to undermine his very existence.

  But Cadwaladr was a different animal entirely, and Hywel didn’t think he was just telling himself that in order to feel better about hating his uncle. Cadwaladr really did care only about himself: how he felt, what his position was, how other people viewed him. He’d been spoiled by his mother, or so Hywel understood. Hywel had no idea what that was like, since his own mother had died at his birth, and he’d been raised by a series of nannies and foster mothers.

  Just like Tegwen.

  Until he was seven years old, Hywel hadn’t even lived with his father, who had fostered him and Rhun out to a man named Cadifor, with estates on the Lleyn Peninsula. Hywel’s father had brought the boys to him when Cadifor’s wife died, and he deemed them old enough to take their place at court. Hywel had hoped that Cadifor would bring his sons to Aber to celebrate the harvest, but three years running he’d stayed home, and given the lateness of the hour, Hywel supposed he would do the same this year too.

  Hywel didn’t think it was an estrangement keeping them apart, or at least he hoped it wasn’t. Hywel would have to go to him if many more months passed without them seeing each other. He’d get Rhun to come. If Hywel had offended his foster family in some way, Rhun would help smooth it over.

  Hywel’s men-at-arms clustered together near the cart, and Hywel tried to focus on each one as they spoke to him of what they’d found—or rather, not found—on the beach. He hadn’t put Cadwaladr’s pendant coin away. He wouldn’t keep it himself; when Gareth returned from collecting Llelo, Hywel would give it to Gareth to hold. It wasn’t that Hywel’s scrip was too full but rather that the thought of having something near him that belonged to his uncle turned his stomach, even if that something was evidence against him.

  Hywel clenched his fist around the coin. He could admit that he hated Cadwaladr, and part of him rejoiced at the idea that he’d caught his devious uncle out in more wrongdoing, but Hywel feared it too. The next break between King Owain and Cadwaladr might well be the last, and then there was no telling what Cadwaladr might do. If he were cast out, Hywel’s father would have no more control over him.

  Though, judging from today, the control that King Owain did have was no more than an illusion.

  Unable to contain his body when his thoughts were in turmoil, Hywel spun away from the cart and climbed to the top of the adjacent dune. He could see Aber’s towers from here and, facing the other way, the Lavan Sands, Anglesey, and the Irish Sea stretching into the distance. This was home. He and Gwen had ranged all over the cantref as youngsters. He’d missed the quality of the air and the sea while he’d been away. He’d missed the mountains.

  He’d come back from Ceredigion to breathe this air and see this view. He’d needed to see his wife, Mari, too, and had been looking for a respite from the pressures and the petty conflicts that marked his life. He desperately wanted to bring Mari south with him when he returned. She was smart and capable, and he surely needed every capable hand he could find.

  His father had taken the lordship from Cadwaladr and given it to Hywel as his own and as a test of Hywel’s character. He needed Hywel to hold it, for Hywel’s own sake and as a buffer for Gwynedd against the Normans in Pembroke and the ambitions of King Cadell in Deheubarth. It burned Hywel to admit that within a year of receiving ownership, he was perilously close to losing it. Enemies confronted him on all sides, and while he was gaining experience every day, it wasn’t happening quickly enough.

  Gareth was a good man—a good leader—but he knew even less about governing a people than Hywel did. Ruling a kingdom wasn’t the same as winning it. It was as if his father had sailed with him in a boat halfway to Ireland and th
en shoved him out of it, saying, “Swim.” By God, Hywel was swimming as hard as he could, but Ceregidion wasn’t Gwynedd. The people there had spent far too much time among Normans to understand how true Welshmen lived and acted. The lesser lords plotted and connived, always looking for a weakness.

  Hywel hadn’t known what real leadership was until this year, and it terrified him to think he didn’t have it in him. So far, Hywel’s father hadn’t said anything to him about the men he’d lost or the money he was spending. He had to think that, for now, his father believed that having Hywel in charge of Ceredigion was better than having Cadwaladr, whom he was punishing. But if Hywel didn’t get control of the cantref soon, he might find himself yanked by the neck hairs back to Gwynedd.

  “My lord?” Evan approached the base of the dune and looked up at Hywel with a concerned expression.

  “What is it?” Hywel glanced down at him, hastily rearranging his thoughts and smoothing his expression in case what was going on inside his head showed.

  “We await your orders, my lord.”

  “I’m coming now.” Hywel took a last look at the view and then slid down the dune, holding his arms out for balance so he wouldn’t land ignominiously on his rear. As he reached level ground again, one of the guards who had departed with Gwen returned.

  The man dismounted by the cart and went down on one knee before Hywel, far more formally than was usual for his men, but the occasion seemed to have touched everyone and demanded it. “I am so sorry for your loss, my lord.”

  Hywel looked down at the man’s bowed head and then snapped his fingers, indicating that he should rise. The man was in his middle thirties and had served Hywel’s father before transferring to Hywel’s company. “Thank you, Cynan. How do you know I have experienced a loss?”

  Cynan straightened his back and looked at Hywel, his expression confused. “Isn’t this the body of Princess Tegwen?”

  “Did Gwen tell you that?”

  “No, my lord.” Cynan licked his lips. “I apologize if I shouldn’t have looked at her while you were examining her, but I did look.” He made a helpless gesture with one hand. “She’s wearing Tegwen’s garnet and her cloak.”