The Fallen Princess

by Sarah Woodbury

  “It’s been five years since anyone has seen her,” Hywel said. “How is it that you remember what she wore?”

  Color rose in Cynan’s face. “She was beautiful, my lord, and full of life.”

  Evan had been listening to their exchange, and now he stepped closer, bowing his head as Cynan had. When he looked up, his face wore a stunned expression. “My lord, please. I couldn’t help but overhear that you believe this is Tegwen. But it can’t be. She ran away with a Dane.”

  “Apparently, she didn’t.” Hywel studied the faces of his men, acknowledging that the body’s identity was no longer a secret and he shouldn’t pretend his men didn’t know. “Does anyone remember who it was that saw her sail away?”

  Dewi, the driver of the cart, raised his hand. “I believe it was her maid.”

  Cynan’s brow furrowed. “I thought it was a guard on duty at Bryn Euryn.”

  That was as Hywel remembered too. “Did you speak of this to anyone at Aber just now, Cynan?”

  “No, my lord.” Cynan shook his head. “It was my understanding that it was Gwen’s task to inform the king. I delivered her to the castle and said nothing to anyone before returning. It was what I thought you expected of me.”

  “Good man.” Hywel rested a hand briefly on Cynan’s shoulder. “I would appreciate it if you would keep her identity to yourselves until my father announces it in the hall.”

  There were nods all around, and then Hywel turned to see Gareth hiking up the beach with his foster son. Gareth glanced up and saw Hywel looking at him. He raised one shoulder in a half-shrug, his expression showing the same resignation and acceptance of his fate that Hywel himself felt.

  “We came home looking for a respite from our troubles, my lord,” Evan said, “only to have trouble find us instead.”

  Hywel allowed himself a slight laugh. “You would think we’d have learned by now to expect it.”

  Chapter Four

  Gwen

  The early morning activity in the castle came to a sudden halt the moment Gwen rode underneath the portcullis and reined in before the gate. Her brother, Gwalchmai, appeared at her side to help her down from her horse. Because he often entertained the hall late into the night, it was rare that he was awake at this hour, so he had to have been watching for her. A moment later, her father, Meilyr, hurried from a side doorway, puffing with every step. His belly had expanded into a paunch in the last year since they’d returned to Aber, and of late his shortness of breath had her worrying about his health.

  “Well? Can you tell me what’s happened?” Gwalchmai had grown over the summer too, undoubtedly trying to keep up with Llelo, and was now tall enough to look into Gwen’s eyes. “We heard that a woman’s body has washed up on the beach.”

  “It didn’t wash up, but that’s all I can tell you right now. Prince Hywel sent me back to Aber to speak to the king. Father—” Gwen broke off as she greeted Meilyr with a kiss on the cheek. They had come a long way since the cold silences, sometimes lasting a week, that had haunted their relationship before her marriage to Gareth. She’d grown up, and if her father’s heart had expanded along with his belly, she couldn’t begrudge him the long, mellow evenings that had caused the change. “I can’t say anything about it until I see him.”

  “You should speak to Taran first,” Meilyr said. Lord Taran was the king’s steward and closest confidant. “I will accompany you.” He pinned his gaze on his son. “Gwalchmai, you stay here.”

  Gwalchmai opened his mouth to protest, but Gwen put a hand on his arm. “This is serious. I will tell you all about what has happened afterwards, though you may hear rumors before I get to you. It’s not going to be a secret for long.”

  Gwalchmai settled back on his heels with a suppressed sigh but didn’t protest again. Gwen left her horse with him and entered the keep with her father, who held the door for her. The keep housed the great hall and had two wings leading off of it, guarded by stone towers at each corner. Taran’s room was the door closest to the great hall in the east wing, while the king’s rooms were further along the corridor.

  Unlike in past years, Gwen wasn’t resentful of her father’s presence. In fact, she was grateful for it. He might be accompanying her because he wanted to know what was going on as much as because he was worried for her, but telling the king that his long-lost niece was dead was not a task she relished taking on all by herself.

  “Someone is dead?” Meilyr stopped outside Taran’s door.

  “I’m afraid so. It’s someone he cared about,” Gwen said.

  “He was in a mellow mood last night when he retired,” Meilyr said.

  “I’m sure it was in part because you and Gwalchmai sang so well.”

  Meilyr bowed his head in silent thanks. “I suspect tonight’s entertainment will be more in the way of forgetting our troubles than to celebrate the harvest.”

  Gwen’s father was right that the king’s good humor at seeing all of his people gathered in his hall wasn’t going to last beyond the next few moments. “Better that than not to have any music at all. This is not a message I would ever choose to bring to the king.”

  Meilyr straightened his tunic. “Are you ready?”

  At Gwen’s yes, he reached up to knock on Taran’s door, but it opened before his knuckles hit the wood so that Meilyr almost rapped on the steward’s nose.

  “Meilyr! Gwen! What are you doing here? I heard voices outside my door and wondered who it might be.”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you,” Gwen said.

  “How may I help you?” When he’d opened the door, Taran had still been adjusting his sleeves inside his coat, and now he pulled them straight with quick jerks.

  Gwen licked her lips and glanced quickly at her father, who gave her a slight nod. “One of the guards woke me earlier to tell me that a body had been found on the beach,” she said. “He was looking for Gareth, but since Gareth and Prince Hywel were on patrol, I went to see it in their place. Once they returned, the prince recognized who it was and sent me to inform the king before he could hear about it from someone else.”

  Taran smoothed his mustache, his eyes on Gwen’s. “Just say what you have to say, child. I can tell that you are bringing bad news.”

  Gwen glanced right and left to make sure they were still alone in the corridor. “Hywel believes the body to be that of Tegwen, the king’s niece.”

  Taran took a step back, his heel bumping the bottom of the door behind him. “That’s not possible. She’s been gone these five years. She ran away.”

  “She may have done so,” Gwen said, “but it seems she didn’t get far.”

  Meilyr, too, was staring at Gwen. “She ran away with a Dane. She was seen getting into a boat with him.”

  “I know that was what we were all told,” Gwen said. “As I said, it may have been true. But somehow she has ended up on Aber’s beach five years later.”

  Taran was standing with a hand pressed to the top of his head. “You are sure it’s Tegwen?”

  “Hywel is certain or he wouldn’t have sent me.” Gwen took Taran’s free hand and squeezed it. “It’s more complicated than that, too, because it’s obvious that she’s been dead a long while. Her body is all dried out like—” Gwen cleared her throat, “—pardon me for saying it, but like an old apple.”

  “Then how do you know it is she?” Taran said.

  “Hywel is sure, my lord,” Gwen said. “I am only doing as I was bidden.”

  “How did she die?” Meilyr said.

  “Someone bashed her skull in,” Gwen said, and at Taran’s horrified look, added, “I know. It’s awful. Here we’ve spent the last five years believing that even if she ran away with a Dane, it was her choice, when all the while she’s been dead in Gwynedd with her murderer walking free among us.”

  Taran closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose, letting the air out through his mouth. Then he opened his eyes, his usual manner of quiet competence returning. Releasing Gwen’s hand, he said, “Come. We s
hould go to the king. He won’t like being disturbed, but he would prefer it to not being woken.”

  That had been Gareth’s reasoning too, and Gwen was glad now that she had come, even if it was one of the worst tasks she’d ever been set. She tugged her cloak closer around her, chilled even though the corridor wasn’t cold. In her mind’s eye, she kept seeing the dent in Tegwen’s skull and the blood. Death came to everyone, of course. Each person lived with it every day, but it was hard to know that it had come by murder to Tegwen. As Taran had said, they’d all imagined her happy with her Dane. The truth was going to be like a bucket of cold water thrown over Aber.

  As they walked down the corridor to King Owain’s quarters, Gwen was glad she had the two older men to buttress her on either side. During the short ride from the beach, she’d been dreading knocking on King Owain’s door, especially if Cristina was beside him. Unlike Gwen and Gareth, the queen and king didn’t always share a bed. Cristina had her own room on the floor above, and she slept there roughly half the time. Gwen had overheard Cristina telling one of her ladies-in-waiting that the king snored. Cristina could endure it less well now that she was heavily pregnant with their first child and not sleeping well herself.

  It was Cristina, more than King Owain, who would resent an unexpected visitor outside her door. Gwen suspected the reason was less that she didn’t like being woken than that she didn’t like anyone to see her before her maid had dressed her and fixed her hair. Coupled with her difficulty sleeping and her pregnancy, Cristina was all the more to be avoided in the morning.

  Taran rapped his knuckles on the door. “My lord? May I have a word?”

  Gwen heard the thud of King Owain’s feet hitting the floor and his lumbering tread to the door, which opened to reveal his burly form, wild golden hair going gray, and heavy-lidded eyes. With so many visitors at Aber for the celebration of Hallowmas and Calan Gaeaf, the king had experienced a succession of late evenings and had consumed more mead than was his usual custom. He enjoyed his comforts, but Cristina and he retired early most nights, especially since she’d fallen pregnant.

  Gwen knew what that was like. Some days, she could barely keep her eyes open during the evening meal, and she would have slept until noon if her duties hadn’t called to her.

  “What is it?” King Owain hung on to the doorframe, one arm above his head.

  Gwen tried not to wilt under the king’s glare. He didn’t have the look of a man with a full measure of patience. Swallowing hard, she braced herself to tell him straight out. “A body was found on the beach this morning. I have seen it, and Gareth and Prince Hywel are examining it now. The prince believes it to be the body of Tegwen, your niece, whom we believed ran away with a Dane five years ago.”

  There. That had been as succinct a statement as she could make.

  King Owain, for his part, stared at Gwen through several breaths without responding. Then he looked to Taran, who nodded, his jaw tight, and then back to Gwen. “You found a body on the beach that Hywel believes to be Tegwen’s? How is that possible?”

  “My lord, Hywel recognized her.”

  “Did she drown?” King Owain said.

  “No, my lord. From the condition of the body, Hywel judges that she has been dead many years.” Gwen knew she was a coward for not owning that estimate herself, but King Owain would accept Hywel’s authority more than hers in this instance.

  “Then how could he possibly recognize her? She would be nothing but bones.”

  There it was again, the point that they would be addressing over and over again. In Wales, it rained all the time. The ground was moist year round, and anything and everything that spent any time outside rotted away, even items still in use. Clothing, rope, wooden posts that held up a roof. Gwen herself was still having trouble accepting the strange condition of the body. Not to mention the disturbing fact that someone had found it and then left it on the beach.

  Gwen bowed, loath to explain further but knowing that she must. “Her form is dried and desiccated. But even I, who didn’t know Tegwen well, can recognize her now that Hywel has named her. She was wrapped in the cloak you gave her upon her betrothal to Lord Bran.”

  King Owain wasn’t buying it. “If she has been dead for years, how is it that she lies on the beach?”

  “That is something we cannot yet explain,” Gwen said.

  The king ran a hand through his hair and looked behind him to Cristina. She’d been listening to their exchange, sitting up in bed with the blankets pulled up to her chin.

  “It could be another girl dressed in Tegwen’s cloak,” Cristina said.

  King Owain’s eyes flicked back to Gwen’s, and then he returned them to his wife’s face. “Yes, of course, my dear. Don’t upset yourself. Whatever happened to this girl, Tegwen or not, it happened a long time ago.” He’d taken a step towards Cristina as he’d spoken to her but now turned back, moving into the doorway, closer to Gwen. He pulled the door nearly closed behind him, with only a sliver of empty space between the door and the frame. He didn’t want Cristina to hear him. “Do you have any indication as to how she died?”

  Gwen found her gaze dropping to her shoes so she wouldn’t have to see King Owain’s expression when she told him. “My lord, her hair is matted with blood and her skull crushed.”

  “So on top of everything else, this is murder,” King Owain said.

  “The location of the wound makes a fall from a horse unlikely but not impossible,” Gwen said. “Hywel may already have discovered more about it, but he sent me to find you so you wouldn’t learn of this from someone else.”

  King Owain pursed his lips. “Wait for me in the hall. I would speak to you further.”

  Gwen curtseyed. “Yes, my lord.”

  The king looked at Taran. “We’ll have to inform Gruffydd.”

  “He and Sioned should be arriving at Aber this afternoon.” Taran’s mouth turned down. “They’ll be bringing Tegwen’s daughters with them.” After Bran’s murder, Tegwen’s grandparents had taken her two daughters in to raise, as they’d raised Tegwen upon Ilar’s death.

  “That is a conversation I am not looking forward to.” King Owain went back into his room and shut the door.

  The three companions in the corridor heaved a mutual sigh of relief. “That went better than I had any right to expect,” Taran said.

  But as they turned away to head to the great hall to wait for the king as he’d requested, a crash resounded from within King Owain’s bedroom. “A chair has met its demise, I would say,” Meilyr said.

  Taran walked steadily down the hall. “Cristina will see to him.”

  “Coward,” Meilyr said.

  Turning his head to look back at them, Taran shot Gwen and her father a grin. “Definitely.” Then he sobered and stopped a few feet from the end of the corridor. “Putting entirely aside the matter of Tegwen’s death and that we’ve been deceived all these years as to the manner in which she left us, why would someone remove her from her grave and leave her on the beach?”

  “I do not know, my lord. I don’t even know if that’s what has happened,” Gwen said. “I think we won’t know until Gareth and I—and Prince Hywel, of course—start asking questions. It may be difficult to discover the sequence of events, however, given how long ago she disappeared.”

  “I will give you any assistance I can—” Taran turned to look towards the doorway to the great hall.

  Gwen waited a beat. “What is it?”

  Taran cleared his throat, and it was only when he wiped at the corner of his eye that she saw the tears on his cheeks. “She was a dear girl. I liked the thought of her in the arms of some mighty Dane. She deserved to be loved and protected.”

  “What about Bran—?” But Gwen had asked the question to Taran’s back. Two strides had taken him into the hall where he was immediately besieged by men wanting to know what had happened.

  Meilyr rested a hand on Gwen’s shoulder. “Let him go. He’ll speak to you again when he’s ready.”

>   Gwen swung around. “Do you know what he’s talking about? Obviously if everyone accepted that she ran away with a Dane, something was wrong with Tegwen’s marriage to Bran.”

  Meilyr’s mouth thinned. “I do not know the details.”

  “I don’t need the details as much as I need to know what you’re thinking,” Gwen said. “I can fill those in later from someone who knew her better.”

  “You may recall that I played at the wedding?” Meilyr said. At Gwen’s nod, he continued, “She was not a happy bride.”

  When her father didn’t elaborate further, Gwen said, “Is that all?”

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t inquire at the time. It was none of my business. Gwalchmai wasn’t even four. I had my own troubles.”

  “We all did.” She fixed her father with a look. “So you can’t tell me any more than that?”

  Her father was silent for a moment and then said, “Let’s just say there were rumors that Tegwen didn’t come to the marriage bed a maiden.”

  Gwen raised her eyebrows. Her father did think she had grown up if he was willing to speak so openly to her. “Such is the case with many girls, or so I understand, but it isn’t usually something the rest of Gwynedd knows about.”

  Meilyr’s lips pressed together. “Taran believed that Tegwen was a sweet girl, but I never got that impression. Maybe she was quiet, but still waters can run deep. Of course, I didn’t know her as well as Taran did, and we left Gwynedd not long after her wedding.”

  For all that she and Tegwen had been close in age, Tegwen had never befriended Gwen, having friends of her own of a nobler class, and it hadn’t been Gwen’s place to join them. In fact, until today, Gwen hadn’t thought anything much about Tegwen at all and struggled to recall a substantial memory with Tegwen in it. Hywel had known her better, but then, Hywel had always made it his business to acquaint himself with every girl, eligible or not, cousin or not, within a hundred mile radius of wherever he was living at the time.