The Unexpected Ally

by Sarah Woodbury

  Pedr pursed his lips, clearly unhappy at the thought of interrupting afternoon prayers, but then Evan raised a hand. “I’ll speak to the abbot. Don’t worry, I’ll be as discreet as I can.”

  Evan’s lifted hand had opened his cloak, which he’d been holding closed against the weather, and at the sight of Evan’s surcoat, Deiniol drew in a breath. “You’re a man of Owain Gwynedd!”

  Evan’s expression turned to one of puzzlement. “Of course I serve Owain Gwynedd, as does everyone here. Where do you think you are?”

  Deiniol’s face paled even more. “Powys.”

  Evan snorted. “St. Asaph hasn’t been part of Powys for years.”

  “But what-what are you doing here, at the monastery?” The stutter seemed uncharacteristic for a man of Deiniol’s bearing, but his shock was genuine.

  Gwen decided she ought to step in, since the two men seemed to be speaking past each other. “We are here for the peace conference that Abbot Rhys has called to reconcile Powys and Gwynedd. If you were looking for room in the guesthouse, it is full.”

  “That’s-that’s not why my abbot sent me. Just after St. Dafydd’s day, our monastery was robbed and burned by a party of Owain Gwynedd’s men. It’s the theft of our relics and a safe haven for our brothers that I’m about.”

  Brother Pedr made a hasty sign of the cross. “That is troubling news indeed. You are sure they were King Owain’s men?”

  “We have no doubt of it. The yellow and red lion standard was plain on the chests of every one of them.” Deiniol’s eyes strayed again to Evan’s chest, and then he shook his head and averted his eyes as if looking directly at Evan pained him. “To think that men in the service of the king could sink so low.”

  Gwen had a hand to her mouth. She wanted to protest, to deny that what Deiniol said could be true, but he seemed beyond appeasement. Instead, Brother Pedr put a hand on Deiniol’s arm. “The world is a dangerous place. Know that you have come to a safe haven, regardless of who else is here. The Church is neutral ground and provides sanctuary and hospitality to all.” As he finished speaking, his eyes went to Evan, who nodded and headed out into the rain to fetch the abbot.

  Though Deiniol’s eyes never left Evan’s back as he loped away from them across the courtyard, he also nodded weakly, taking in a breath and letting it out. Some of his anxiety faded to be replaced by relief that he was no longer in the presence of a soldier from Gwynedd.

  Pedr turned his attention to Gwen as if he felt it was now his job to appease her. “The lawlessness along the border between Wales and England is well known.”

  “It is.” Now that she’d had time to absorb Deiniol’s news, Gwen’s expression turned thoughtful. “In fact, before he joined Prince Hywel’s retinue, Gareth learned to read as payment for protecting a convent from exactly this kind of banditry.”

  “Surely that villainy wasn’t perpetrated by the men of the King of Gwynedd too?” Deiniol said.

  Gwen let out an exasperated sigh that she immediately swallowed and turned into a smile. “No.”

  She still wanted to say more, but she decided not to. Deiniol was not to be persuaded, at least not now and not by her, that the men who’d sacked his monastery couldn’t have been sent by Owain Gwynedd. Only household knights and men-at-arms in the retinue of a man of the royal house wore the colors of the House of Aberffraw. That meant that if Deiniol was correct in their identity, the men involved belonged either to the king, to Hywel, or to one of Hywel’s younger brothers, Cynan or Madoc.

  Gwen knew for certain that the men hadn’t been sent by Hywel. King Owain had been in mourning on St. Dafydd’s Day and in no condition to be sending men anywhere, much less to sack a monastery. That left Madoc and Cynan, except their hands had been completely full—first with the preparations for, and then with the actual taking of, Mold Castle. To think that either of them would have ordered men to Wrexham to sack a monastery on the side was laughable.

  Furthermore, what better way for a group of bandits operating in Powys to deceive the populace than to disguise themselves as men of Gwynedd? Everybody would be looking at their surcoats and not their faces, and Gwynedd and Powys had been at odds for long enough—forever almost—that most Powysians distrusted men of Gwynedd as a matter of course.

  Pedr met Gwen’s eyes, and he made a rueful face. He was a monk and secluded from the world, but he wasn’t a fool. It had occurred to him too that Deiniol’s assumptions about what had gone on in Wrexham weren’t necessarily the real facts.

  Because they both continued to smile gently at Deiniol, he knew nothing of their disbelief, and he said, “I am relieved to know that the king has come to the monastery in peace. The Church can call him to account for what his men have done, rebuild our monastery, and return our wealth to us.”

  Pedr patted Deiniol on the shoulder. “Meanwhile, we will find a bed in the dormitory for you.”

  Deiniol managed a genuine smile, and the act transformed his face from a fairly weathered and severe visage to one far more open. “If not, I am not above sleeping in a stable. If it was good enough for our Lord, I can hardly argue.”

  More as a distraction while they waited for Evan to return with Abbot Rhys than because she thought she might learn something from him, Gwen pulled out the sketch of Erik. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Deiniol’s brow furrowed as he took the paper from her, looking from Erik’s picture to her face. “Does this have anything to do with what happened to my brothers?”

  “I didn’t learn of the destruction of your monastery until you told us. This is a different matter.”

  Deiniol returned his attention to the image. Like many men of his age, his eyes troubled him, and he stretched his arm out as far as it would go in order to better see what Gareth had drawn. “My goodness, I think I do recognize him. I saw him on the road a few days ago. I had stopped to rest at a village well in order to slake my thirst, and he came following after. It was only a quarter of an hour before he was heading west again at a rate far faster than my old nag could travel.”

  “You spoke to him?” Gwen’s heart sped up.

  “Very briefly. I can’t say I know anything about him.” He paused, hesitating.

  “What is it?” Pedr urged.

  Deiniol licked his lips. “I hate to speak ill of any man, but—”

  Deiniol hadn’t had a problem speaking ill of the men of Gwynedd, but as he was from Powys, that prejudice would have been instilled from birth. Gwen let the gross untruth pass without comment and said instead, “We really do need to know anything you can tell us about your encounter with him.”

  Deiniol gave a curt nod and handed the paper back to her. “He was very gruff, unpleasant even. He wouldn’t look me in the eye when I spoke to him and had no interest in conversing. He left in a hurry, as if someone was chasing him.”

  Gwen could have said, or as if he had urgent news to deliver, but again held her tongue. That was information she didn’t need to share with anyone but Gareth, Hywel, and Conall.

  Then Evan appeared out of a side door of the church, Brother Anselm rather than Abbot Rhys in tow. She didn’t know Anselm at all, he didn’t like her, and thus she didn’t want to question Deiniol in front of him. So she had time for only one more question. “Where did this sighting take place?”

  “In a little village north of Llangollen.”

  As Deiniol spoke, Evan reached the shelter of the gatehouse. Taking in the sketch of Erik in Gwen’s hand and her intent expression, he said, “Llangollen did you say? That is the seat of King Madog’s power. My king will want to speak to you of what you saw along the way.”

  He couldn’t have forgotten Deiniol’s fear of him, but he was as dismissive of the idea that men of Gwynedd were responsible for the sacking of Wrexham as Gwen was. Deiniol, however, held up his hands in a gesture that implied both ignorance and that he wanted to keep Evan away from him. “I know nothing of this war and want nothing to do with it.”

  Evan’s eyes narrowed, but
Gwen sighed. “You forget that Gwynedd is here looking for peace.”

  “So you say.” Deiniol let out a breath. “You cannot blame me for being distrustful.”

  “Surely any further conversation need not be had in the rain.” Anselm shot Evan an irritated look. From what Gwen had gleaned about Anselm so far, it was a common expression for him. To his credit, Anselm was right. It had been rude of her to keep Deiniol outside all this time rather than inviting him inside to warm his hands at Pedr’s grate or in the guesthouse common room.

  Deiniol turned to Anselm. “I would be most grateful to shed these wet robes and warm myself at a fire—and if someone could care for my horse? He has come a long way.”

  “I’m surprised you had a horse to ride if these bandits destroyed everything as you say,” Evan said.

  Deiniol’s breath quickened in the face of Evan’s renewed skepticism. “He was the only one not taken by the marauders. They saw him for what he was—an old fellow who’d been put out to pasture and was no longer useful even for riding. It has taken me so long to get here because he needed to rest—and truth be told, I fell ill and had to take shelter in a village for over a week. It might have been better to have walked directly here, but once he and I started out, I couldn’t abandon him, nor he me, no matter how urgent my task.”

  The bell in the tower tolled, indicating that afternoon prayers were finally over. As soon as one of the younger monks, who served as a stable boy, left the church, Anselm snapped his fingers at him, and he changed direction to answer Anselm’s summons. Then Anselm held out an arm to Deiniol in a welcoming gesture. “This way, brother, if you will.”

  Deiniol set out into the rain, but then he hesitated in midstride before he’d gone more than three or four paces and turned back. “Oh—another thing—” he retraced his steps, “—that man you asked me about wasn’t alone. Another rode with him.”

  Chapter Seven

  Gareth

  The near drowning aside, being thrown on the ground had not done Gareth’s shoulder any favors, and he was trying very hard not to think about how much pain he was in, which was why he hadn’t said anything to Gwen about it. Not that she didn’t know, of course, but he felt as if talking about it would only make what he was feeling more real—and force him to address the pain rather than ignore it.

  Besides, it was only pain. The wound was bandaged again and not bleeding (much), and while the damage he’d sustained today might have set his progress back a few days, his heart was still beating. As long as he could breathe, he could work. Working was better, in fact, than lying in bed feeling sorry for himself.

  Of all the people in St. Asaph, Conall was the one person who understood intimately how he was feeling, so it was with some camaraderie that the two of them walked (rather stiffly) side by side in the rain. Although they didn’t have far to go initially, because of the ground they had to cover today and their various ailments, they had saddled their horses and now led them through the monastery gardens.

  Once outside the back gate, they mounted and rode towards the barn. They’d spent all morning canvassing the village for anyone who’d seen Erik, and they’d spoken to the miller regarding his whereabouts the previous night. So far nobody had witnessed anything unusual or, if they had, they weren’t talking about it. They’d had no luck so far with any witnesses, and now Abbot Rhys—in Gareth’s mind he would always be Prior Rhys—had arranged for the brother who served as a milkman to meet them at the barn where he’d found Erik’s body.

  “Are you sure about not returning to Ireland?” Gareth said to Conall. They were keeping their horses to a walk so as not to jar any of their injuries. “Is your king really so sanguine about where you go and what you do?”

  Conall laughed and instantly sucked in a breath at the pain. “The king gives me free rein to serve him as I see fit. Given that the issue of the slave ring is resolved, my immediate return home seems less necessary. The king will find that no more women are being taken from Ireland, and that was the point of the entire endeavor.”

  “And you see nothing wrong with establishing a relationship between Leinster and Gwynedd.”

  Conall raised his eyebrows. “Would you?”

  “Not at all. Owain and Diarmait are cousins, both descended from Brian Boru, but I don’t think they’ve met for many years, and certainly not since Owain took the throne of Gwynedd.”

  “Men of power can always use a friend though.”

  “As can less elevated men.”

  Conall grunted his assent. “Yes, they can.”

  Gareth was liking this Irish spy more and more, and he truly hoped he could trust him. So far, Conall had given him no reason not to. Gareth had taken a similar risk four years ago in befriending Godfrid, one of the princes of Dublin, and he’d had no cause to regret it. Still, he would be fighting on Godfrid’s behalf sometime in the near future, at the behest of both Hywel and Owain. If the relationship with Leinster developed through Conall, he wondered if someday he could expect to do the same for Diarmait.

  Ireland had always been a source of strength for Gwynedd’s kings. Over the years, many had retreated there when pressed, using it as a place to gather support or even an army with which to return to Gwynedd. Cadwaladr had done exactly as had his father before him—three times. However, while King Gruffydd had put his mercenaries to work overthrowing Norman control of Gwynedd, Cadwaladr had brought an army of Danes to pressure his brother into absolving him of murder.

  But Gwynedd had not often returned the favor, for reasons that were not clear to Gareth, unless it was simply that Ireland was a quagmire of shifting political alliances. Despite what Hywel said about needing allies should things go awry in Gwynedd, beyond what was strictly necessary, he should not allow himself to become involved in what went on there. Ruling a kingdom adjacent to England was bad enough without being caught in the middle among warring Irish clans and Danes.

  As had been the case for King Owain, the unexpected death of Diarmait’s older brother had raised Diarmait, the second son, to the throne. Unlike King Owain, however, Leinster was subject to a greater lord, Tairrdelbach, the King of Connaught and the high king of Ireland, who did not approve of Diarmait’s ascension and who’d sent his armies rampaging through Leinster rather than accept it. Hywel believed Tairrdelbach feared Diarmait and saw him as a rival for the high kingship. Which he probably was.

  Further complicating matters for Gwynedd’s loyalties, both Tairrdelbach and Diarmait believed themselves to be the rightful rulers of Dublin and its Danish citizens. Ottar had gone on bended knee to Diarmait and paid tribute for his kingship. Once Brodar and Godfrid overthrew Ottar, as they planned to, they would have to bow to Leinster as well.

  “Who are you to King Diarmait, really, such that he trusts you so completely?” Gareth said.

  “I am his sister’s son, which could be a reason not to trust me, I admit,” Conall laughed under his breath, “but I saved his life once. For all that King Diarmait is—” here Conall paused, searching for the right word, “—thought to be cold, even heartless at times in his dealings with his people, he sees through his own eyes and makes his own judgments.”

  “Any man who does so deserves respect.” Gareth canted his head. “I didn’t know you were a nobleman. I apologize for my familiarity.”

  Conall made a dismissive gesture. “You earned your knighthood on the field of battle. There is no difference between us.” He glanced at Gareth. “I am fortunate that Diarmait trusts me enough to give me freedom of action few kings allow. It is something like the freedom you have, it seems, and you are not noble.”

  “Thank goodness!” Gareth laughed.

  Conall nodded. “Even better to be trusted for the man you are. In my experience, it is a rare man who values his own conscience above his lord’s.”

  Gareth tsked through his teeth. “It isn’t like that.”

  “Actually, I think it is.”

  Gareth hadn’t told Conall anything of his wanderings as a
younger man, and he wondered where he had heard of them. Evan, perhaps, who was known for having a too loose tongue where Gareth was concerned. Regardless, Gareth made no reply because they had arrived at the barn. As arranged in advance, not only was the monk who’d found Erik’s body waiting for them, but two young soldiers as well—and very welcome ones at that. Llelo and Dai, Gareth’s adopted sons, grinned at him as he dismounted, and then Dai broke ranks and wrapped his arms around his father’s waist.

  Gareth rocked backwards as he took Dai’s weight and let out a whuf of air. “Easy now.” He patted Dai’s back and distanced himself somewhat gingerly.

  “Sorry!” Dai looked his father up and down, glaring at him. “I heard you were injured in Shrewsbury. You should have brought us with you.”

  “Maybe I should have, but you were needed at Mold, and I didn’t anticipate trouble.”

  “You should know by now, Father, that if you don’t find trouble, it finds you,” Llelo said.

  Gareth smiled as he reached out his good arm to pull Llelo into a hug as well. “I’ve missed you both.”

  The boys had been ten and almost twelve when Gareth and Gwen had encountered them stranded in England. Three years on, they were learning to be soldiers under the tutelage of Cynan, Hywel’s younger brother, who oversaw these lands from Denbigh. Both had grown a foot since they’d come to him. At nearly fifteen, Llelo could look Gareth in the eye, and even though he was two years younger, Dai wasn’t far behind.

  Gareth introduced the boys to Conall and then all of them to the milkman. His name was Mathonwy, a fine old name that belonged to the great Welsh god-hero and father of all Gwynedd.

  Llelo and Dai pulled the horses into the barn out of the rain. In the daylight, the barn was revealed—surprising to Gareth, given how orderly everything else at the monastery was kept—in a sad state of disrepair. While the floor was swept clean, the tools were tidied away, and the roof was solid, as would be necessary to keep out the weather and prevent the hay in the loft from getting wet, the walls allowed plenty of daylight to enter the interior. They hadn’t been filled in with wattle and daub in some time. Maybe since St. Kentigern founded the monastery.