The Fallen Princess

by Sarah Woodbury

  “Your lady wife did very well,” the midwife said. “Both she and the child are strong and healthy.”

  “Thank you,” Gareth said. “Thank you for everything.”

  With a knowing smile at Gareth’s near incoherence, Gwen reached for the baby, who’d begun to root around. “Let me feed her before she cries.”

  Gareth settled beside Gwen with his back against the headboard. A servant finished bundling together the used linens and departed, leaving the door half-open.

  “Is it safe to see her?” Hywel’s voice came from the corridor.

  “Yes, my lord,” the servant answered.

  Hywel appeared in the doorway, bracing his shoulder against the frame and smiling. “Have you chosen a name? My father waits in the hall.”

  Gareth gently stroked the back of his daughter’s head. “Tangwen.”

  “The king won’t mind that we want to honor Tegwen with a piece of her name?” Gwen said, looking quickly up at Hywel. “Given all that happened, we didn’t feel right about taking it entirely.” Both names—as well as Gwen’s own—had the same root, which meant ‘pure’ or ‘white’, but while Teg meant beautiful, Tang was the word for peace.

  Hywel blinked, and then he bowed. When he looked up again, Gareth thought he saw tears on his cheeks too. “Tegwen was beautiful, and so is your daughter. But I would choose peace too.”

  As Hywel departed, Gwen leaned against Gareth. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Gareth kissed his daughter and then his wife. “I swear to you now that I always will be.”

  The End

  Historical Note

  I am often asked what parts of my books are ‘true’ and what are not. I jokingly say that my stories are as historically accurate as I can make them except when they aren’t, but the research that goes into them is extensive in order for them to represent medieval Wales as accurately as possible. While Gareth and Gwen themselves are fictional characters, the court of Owain Gwynedd, his sons, wives, and their circumstances, really existed.

  The problem with researching this era is that so few contemporary documents remain.

  We do know, for example, that Kells was sacked by the Dublin Danes in the summer of 1144. We know that Hywel burned Cardigan that same summer. We also know that Cristina gave birth to a son, Dafydd, very shortly after her marriage to King Owain. What we don’t have access to is the rest of the story. Imagining what might have been is why I write these books.

  Gilbert de Clare, the Earl of Pembroke, had to wait a little longer for the chance to invade Ireland, and in the end, it was his son, Richard, who accomplished it. The deposed King of Leinster sought help regaining his kingdom and invited the Normans in. As Gwen pointed out in The Fallen Princess, however, once the Normans laid eyes on the prize, it was all but impossible to get them to leave.

  As a side note, Calan Gaeaf (or All Saints’ Day) and Nos Galan Gaeaf (or Hallowmas), which take center stage in The Fallen Princess, are just two of many traditions that were incorporated into the Church as Christianity made inroads into Wales. Nos Galan Gaeaf is the Welsh equivalent of Samhain, which has become our Halloween, a traditional day within Celtic societies when the veil between the human world and the Otherworld thins. The Church in the medieval era was ever-present and laid its own traditions over the top of older traditions that it inherited.

  Calan Gaeaf is one of those traditions. See my post here for more information: http://www.sarahwoodbury.com/calan-gaeaf/

  ____________

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  Keep reading for the first chapter of the next Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery, The Unlikely Spy, available wherever ebooks are sold.

  The Unlikely Spy

  August 1146. Prince Hywel has called all the bards of Wales to him for a music festival to mark the third anniversary of his rule over Ceredigion. He has invited all the lords of Wales too, including his father, his uncle, and his neighbor to the south, King Cadell. But with the highborn also come the low: thieves, spies, and other hangers-on. And when a murderer strikes as the festival starts, Gareth and Gwen are charged with discovering his identity—before the death of a peasant shakes the throne of a king.

  Chapter One

  Late August 1146

  Gwen

  Gwen peered into the courtyard of the monastery before venturing across the hot cobbles into the mid-afternoon sun, which shone out of a rare deep blue sky, unhampered by even a single cloud. Heat radiated off the stones, and Gwen moved in the direction of the gardens, desperate for a taste of the breeze coming off the brook that flowed through the monastery. She’d swept up her brown hair into a chignon, but sweat clung to the tendrils of hair at the back of her neck.

  The guest house lay to one side of the large square, which was fronted on the road by a gatehouse and a long stone wall that blocked her view of the fields beyond. The monks’ quarters, church, and college of priests were opposite, as far from the guest house as it was possible while still remaining in the same compound. Given her hour-long struggle to get her daughter to go to sleep, Gwen had to admit the genius of that decision.

  In point of fact, that distance was not because the monks feared to hear a crying child but was left over from when Norman monks had occupied the monastery. Now that Hywel (and to be fair, Cadwaladr before him) ruled Ceredigion, the monastery had been restored to the native Welsh Church, which viewed women and their children with less hostility than the Norman religious orders. Still, the presence of young women and children in the guest quarters made some of the older monks uncomfortable, and Gwen had been trying as best she could to keep Tangwen relatively quiet and out of the way. She’d failed utterly at both today.

  For the moment, however, Tangwen was asleep and Gwen’s fourteen-year-old maid, extravagantly named Elspeth, remained with her. Gwen hoped her daughter would sleep for at least two hours. To say she was overtired after all the activity of the last few days was an understatement.

  Unfortunately for the monks’ peace of mind, Gwen’s adorable baby girl was the least of the monks’ problems this week. An increasing number of guests had filled the guesthouse, with more coming every hour. At Prince Hywel’s request, the abbot had agreed to suffer through the presence of whatever women came to stay with them, regardless of their seductive beauty.

  It wasn’t just the guest quarters at the monastery that were filling up. Aberystwyth castle, the villages of Aberystwyth and Llanbadarn Fawr, and the entire surrounding area were full to bursting with travelers who had arrived at Prince Hywel’s invitation. He’d put out a call to every corner of Wales for bards to travel to Ceredigion for a music festival with him as the host. Even King Owain—along with Gwen’s father, Meilyr, and brother, Gwalchmai—were journeying from Aber for the celebration.

  Gwen (and Prince Hywel too) had hoped they would have arrived already, since the festival had opened that morning. Given the distances involved and the number of people traveling, however, it was hard to judge how long any journey would take. Regardless of when they arrived, they would stay for a week afterwards, which was some consolation. Gwen had missed her father and brother in the two months she’d lived in Ceredigion.

  As Gwen stood in the shadows of the guesthouse, a party of riders entered through the monastery gate and halted on the cobbles. Gwen stood on tiptoe to look past them, hoping Gareth might be among them if he’d had a momentary pause in his duties to Prince Hywel. But he wasn’t, and Gwen sighed in disappointment. A frazzled stable boy ran to hold the bridle of the lead horse. The hosteler, a fat, balding monk in charge of the wellbeing of guests, waddled out of the chapter house to greet them.

  Although Gareth had not come, Gwen smiled when she recognized Prior Rhys riding at the tail end of the group. His soldierly bearing was unmistakable even underneath his bulky monk�
��s robe. He wasn’t in Aberystwyth for the festival but had come because his abbot had sent him to St. Padarn’s to consult with the members of the college of priests on a spiritual matter. Gwen hadn’t seen him since the evening meal the night before, and at the sight of him, she lifted her hand and finally stepped into the hot sun so she could greet him.

  But instead of allowing her to come to him, Prior Rhys dismounted and ran to her, hitching up his robe to reveal the breeches and boots he wore underneath. Just looking at the weight of his clothing made Gwen hotter. His behavior was unusual enough to turn her expression turning from a smile of greeting to a frown of concern.

  “Where might I find your husband?” Rhys said when he reached her. He was of the same generation as Gwen’s father, but unlike Meilyr, Rhys’s age was revealed not in a burgeoning paunch but in the lines on his face, evidence of many years spent outdoors in the wind and sun. At the moment, his bushy eyebrows had drawn together, making the lines on his forehead more pronounced than ever.

  “He was at the castle last I heard.” Gwen sidled back to the guesthouse wall so she could stand in the shade. She also wanted to put a few more feet between Rhys and the new arrivals, who were shooting curious glances at the prior. She didn’t want him to be the subject of anyone’s entertainment, and, had they known him at all, they would have realized that something was very much wrong for him to behave with anything less than absolute dignity.

  “I already checked. Both he and the prince were absent. I had hoped to find them here.”

  Gwen shook her head. “I haven’t seen Gareth since this morning. What’s wrong?”

  “Do you have someone to keep an eye on Tangwen?” Rhys said.

  “Elspeth is sitting with—”

  “Good. You must come with me.” He took her elbow and urged her across the cobbles to his horse without waiting for her to finish her sentence. He paid no attention at all to the guests, who were now openly staring as they passed. Hoisting himself into his saddle, he held out his elbow for Gwen so she could mount behind him.

  She didn’t question him, merely took his proffered arm.

  The hosteler, however, gazed up at both of them, open-mouthed. “Whatever is the matter? Where are you taking Lady Gwen? What should I tell the abbot?”

  Rhys made an exasperated sound at the back of his throat. Glancing at the guests, none of whom were making any pretense of minding any doings but his, he leaned down to speak to the hosteler so nobody else could hear. “The body of a man has been found in the millpond.”

  “He’s dead?”

  Generally ‘body’ implied ‘dead’, and Rhys didn’t deign to answer in words but simply nodded.

  The hosteler stepped back, shocked and sputtering. “But-but—”

  “Just tell him,” Prior Rhys said.

  Then, as Gwen clutched Rhys around the waist, the prior turned the horse towards the exit. Once underneath the gatehouse, however, Gwen said, “Wait.”

  Rhys slowed to allow Gwen to lean down to the gatekeeper, who had come out of his small room next to the gate in response to all the commotion. He was an aged man with white hair and hunched shoulders. “Sion, would you please tell my husband or Prince Hywel if he arrives that I have left with Prior Rhys on an urgent matter?”

  “Where am I to say you’ve gone?” Sion said.

  Gwen glanced at Rhys, who spoke for her. “The millpond.”

  “Of course, Prior Rhys,” Sion said. Gwen didn’t know that he could actually see the prior at that distance, but Rhys had a distinctive gravelly voice that the gatekeeper would have recognized. “Go with God’s blessing.”

  “Thank you,” Rhys said and then continued under his breath as he spurred his horse out onto the road, “We’re going to need it.”

  The millpond had been carved out of the north bank of the Rheidol River, southeast of the monastery. Everyone in the region brought their grain there to grind, though it was most often used by the castle and the monastery, since the monks and the castle had the most land planted in grain.

  Once on the road, they were forced to skirt another group of travelers, some walking, one driving a cart, and two on horseback. This party was bypassing the monastery in favor of continuing south to the castle and the festival grounds.

  Instead of following them, Gwen and Prior Rhys turned east at the crossroads towards the mountains. A half mile farther on, they turned into a clearing in front of the mill, a stone building built on the edge of its pond. Several empty carts were parked by the entrance, and the giant water wheel spun as the water flowed past. A small group of people had gathered near the edge of the millpond, some hundred feet from the mill itself.

  At Rhys’s and Gwen’s appearance, the man in the center, who’d been crouching low over something on the ground looked over his shoulder. It was Prince Rhun, Hywel’s brother and the eldest prince of Gwynedd. His bright blond hair was lit by the afternoon sunlight that filtered through the green leaves overhanging the pond. Even with a dead body at his feet, Rhun’s blue eyes remained bright. Gwen had seen this prince somber, but not often. Prince Rhun had been in Aberystwyth longer than Gwen, escaping (he said) his stepmother’s matchmaking.

  Prince Rhun had confessed to Gwen upon her arrival that circumstances had reached such a dire point in Gwynedd that his father had decided to become involved. He’d warned Rhun before he left that if he didn’t find a wife for himself by the Christmas feast, King Owain was going to allow Cristina to choose one for him.

  Recognizing Gwen, Rhun stood. “Thank the Lord the prior found you.”

  Two monks, instantly recognizable in their undyed cloaks, and two men wearing the breeches and sweat-stained shirts of laborers surrounded the body. The monks had kilted their robes and were soaked to the waist, implying that they’d waded in to retrieve the body. Although some monasteries employed day laborers or lay brothers—peasant members of the order who were restricted to agricultural work—this monastery required everyone to work and made no distinctions among types of labor.

  Rhys and Gwen dismounted, and Gwen studied the dead man from a few feet away before approaching Prince Rhun and the others. The body lay in the dirt and grass beside the pond out of which he’d been dragged, far enough away from the water that it didn’t lap at his feet. At other murder scenes, how and when the body was moved could make a difference between solving a murder and allowing the murderer to walk free. Today it didn’t, since this wasn’t the spot where he’d died. Nobody had yet said the word murder, but Prior Rhys had to know the man’s death wasn’t an accident, or else he wouldn’t have come to fetch her.

  Gwen hadn’t been involved in an unexplained death since before Tangwen’s birth. Men had died in Gwynedd since then, but none mysteriously, not so far as she knew. And she would have known: while Prince Hywel was absent and living in Ceredigion, she’d served as a liaison between Hywel’s spies and King Owain. Gareth had sworn more than once that he would protect her from these investigations. But since he wasn’t here, Gwen was fully capable of stepping into his place, even if she couldn’t be pleased that a dead man had been found in the millpond.

  “What happened?” she said.

  One of the men, larger than most with thick muscled arms characteristic of heavy labor, scoffed. “He drowned.”

  Rhun pinned the man with a gaze that would have shot right through him had it been an arrow. “Start at the beginning. Tell Lady Gwen what you know.”

  Gwen hadn’t been surprised at the man’s dismissal of her question. Until they learned more of her, most men treated her that way. Rhun, however, was a prince, and the man’s face flushed red to be chastised by him. He didn’t defend himself but merely ducked his head in apology. “Yes, my lord.”

  “What is your name?” Gwen said.

  “My name is Bran. I work the mill,” the man said. “I’m the journeyman, though I know more about milling than the miller.” He made a motion as if to spit on the ground but stopped himself at the last moment.

  “So
you’ve been here all day?” Gwen said.

  “Since early morning,” Bran said. “I had a short break at noon, but I’ve been grinding since just after dawn.”

  “That means you’ve been inside all day?” Gwen said.

  Bran nodded. “You have to pay attention all the time in case something goes wrong. I didn’t notice anything amiss out here until young Teilo came running in to tell me that he’d seen a body in the water. I don’t know how long it’d been there. I didn’t notice anything this morning or after my noon meal, but I didn’t look hard either.”

  “Thank you.” Gwen looked at Teilo, the other laborer not dressed as a monk. His brown hair was cropped close to his head, and like everyone else, sweat beaded in his hairline. He wore a filthy shirt that might have once been the color of cream, brown breeches cut off at the knees, and bare feet. In regards to the heat, he had to be the most comfortable of all of them. “What did you see?”

  Teilo looked as if answering the question physically hurt his throat, but he cleared it and said in a low whisper, “I was coming by like I always do—”

  “From where?” Prior Rhys said.

  Teilo swallowed, and his eye skated from Gwen to Prior Rhys and back again. As with Prince Rhun, Prior Rhys’s authority was unmistakable. “From swimming in the river with my friends. We’ve all worked in the fields since dawn.” He said these last words somewhat defensively.

  Gwen didn’t care if he was avoiding work and didn’t blame him for wanting to cool off in the river. “We passed a water hole on our way here full of caterwauling local boys. You’d been among them?”

  Teilo nodded.

  “My boys would have loved it.” Gwen gave a rueful smile at the thought. Gareth had formally adopted their two wayward charges, Llelo and Dai, who were now fifteen and twelve. Their change of status had meant they were sons of a knight and no longer destined to be herders like their grandfather or a trader like their father. Consequently, their training to be soldiers had begun.