The Unexpected Ally

by Sarah Woodbury

  The monk noticed where he was looking and nodded. “Father Abbot says—and I concur—that the rot in the timbers cannot be repaired. We will use the barn until it falls down, but we’ve just finished a new one a quarter-mile down the road. Only the cows return here now, as they are creatures of habit and are most unsettled by changes in their routine. The pigs and chickens are already in their new homes.”

  “Good to know.” Gareth crossed the floor to reach the rear door, which gave easy access to the enclosure where Mathonwy had found Erik.

  Mathonwy gestured helplessly to the trough. “He was just there. I’d come for the cows. As soon as I saw him and realized what I was seeing—and that it wasn’t my brain addled from lack of sleep—I ran to wake Prior Anselm.”

  “Given that he’d been prior for only a week, I’m surprised that you went to him and not Abbot Rhys, who has more—” Gareth paused as he tried to think of how to phrase what he was asking, “—experience in these matters.” The question put Mathonwy on the spot, but Gareth had his tricks as an investigator, and he genuinely wanted to know what Mathonwy thought of his new prior, since Gareth’s first and second impression hadn’t been positive.

  Mathonwy wiped the smirk from his face almost the instant it appeared, but Gareth saw it and acknowledged that he’d guessed right about what was behind it. He wouldn’t be surprised if Mathonwy wasn’t the only longtime member of St. Kentigern’s who was less than impressed with the new prior the bishop had foisted on them. “He hasn’t been with us long and isn’t the type to have steady hands when they’re needed. But it was his right to be woken first, so I did so. I’ve been at the monastery a while now, and until recently it’s always been Prior Rhys to whom we went.”

  Gareth smiled. “In my head too.”

  “But then Anselm showed that he had some good sense and woke the abbot immediately, so all’s well that ends well.”

  Gareth could understand Mathonwy’s satisfaction. He’d followed the rules, done the right thing, and been rewarded for his faith.

  “I understand that your previous abbot was elderly?” Conall knew something about investigations too. Now that rapport had been established, it was time for questions before Mathonwy remembered that he had duties elsewhere.

  “Yes. Prior Rhys had taken over many of his tasks even before he became abbot.”

  “When were you last at the barn?” Gareth said.

  “I was here for the evening milking. The cows know to come to the barn as the sun is setting. I rarely attend Vespers, though sometimes I manage to slip in at the end.”

  It was standard practice in any place within hailing distance of a chapel—in other words, all through Wales and England—to keep time by the cycle of prayers and the ringing of church bells. The first prayer of the day was Matins, the night office, at midnight. The morning was marked by dawn prayers, called Lauds, Terce at mid-morning, Sext at noon, Nones at midafternoon, Vespers at sunset, and Compline or evening prayers before retiring to bed. These hours were managed by a water clock in the monastery courtyard and a candle clock in the church itself, though the exact moment of the prayers was less important than the keeping of them.

  “Did you see anyone or remember anyone in the area yesterday evening?” Gareth said.

  “I’m sorry. I noticed nothing. It was raining and cold, and I confess I was looking forward to my dinner after Vespers.”

  Gareth put up his good hand. “I understand. Had you ever seen Erik before—not necessarily here but anywhere?”

  Mathonwy shook his head regretfully.

  “Where are the cows now?” Gareth said.

  “In one of the pastures.” Mathonwy indicated east with a bob of his chin, and his eyes twinkled as he said, “I’m afraid you won’t get much out of them.”

  Gareth coughed a laugh and went to the door of the barn to poke out his head. A stone wall protected the pasture to the east of the barn. A style and gate that allowed access through it lay just across the cart way from where Gareth stood. Gareth had seen enough of St. Asaph in the times he’d come through here to know that the monastery’s pasture lands were extensive, and this nearby field was one of dozens within hailing distance of the barn. The sheep and cattle would be moved from field to field to give the grass in each pasture time to grow.

  Then Gareth returned to Conall’s side. “Do you have any more questions for Mathonwy?”

  Conall pursed his lips. “I assume you don’t manage the barn by yourself? How many helpers do you have?”

  “I have two most days at the new barn and one who helps with the cows. But he was in the infirmary yesterday with a fever,” Mathonwy said. “I didn’t see him all day and had to do the work myself.”

  “His name?” Gareth said.

  “Roger.”

  “He’s Norman?” Gareth said, surprised to learn of a Norman monk in a Welsh monastery.

  “A Norman father who didn’t acknowledge him and a mother who died shortly after his birth, though she lived long enough to saddle him with a Norman name,” Mathonwy said.

  Gareth frowned. “I hear Prior Anselm has been ill on and off too. Did you go to the infirmary to wake him?”

  “No, he was in his cell this morning, though now that I think on it, he was in the infirmary at the start of Matins because I went to check on Roger before the prayers to see how he was faring and Anselm was in a nearby bed.” He rubbed his chin. “I suppose I went to his cell out of habit after finding the body.”

  “We’ll speak to Roger and Anselm later if they’re well enough,” Gareth said. “Thank you for your assistance.”

  Mathonwy bowed and departed, presumably to his other duties. That left Conall and Gareth at the scene of the crime, along with their young guards, who’d spent the conversation patrolling the exterior of the barn, rain or no rain. Dai and Llelo took their responsibilities very seriously. Still, while Gareth wanted his foster sons trained to be knights, he hoped that Cynan wouldn’t pound Dai’s natural effervescence out of him. The boy had always been a spark of sunshine, no matter how rainy the day, and Gareth would hate to see him lose it.

  Gareth went to the door of the barn, reluctant to enter the rain. “A great deal can happen between Vespers and Lauds.”

  “I never saw the body,” Conall reminded Gareth. “Does the timeline Mathonwy report coincide with the condition Erik was in when you examined him?”

  “I didn’t get enough time with him to call it an examination,” Gareth said dryly. “We were waylaid so quickly, but the body was cold and somewhat stiff, which normally would tell me that he’d been dead since yesterday evening, possibly since just after Vespers, but the fact that he’d been submerged in water throws the timeline completely off.”

  Conall had moved to stand beside Gareth, but now he stepped into the rain and turned to face him in order to look up at the door to the hayloft. Reminding himself that if a man avoided work because it was raining, he would never do any work at all, Gareth moved out of the shelter of the barn’s roof to look with Conall. Raindrops pattered on his face to the point that he couldn’t just squint against them but had to hold up a hand to block the fall of water from the sky. The hayloft door had been left ajar. “What are you thinking?”

  “Nothing definitive, but I was wondering again what Erik was doing here. He had to have come to the barn for a reason that made sense to him, and not because he was planning on being murdered.”

  Gareth barked a laugh. “I would assume not.”

  “Which means he came to the barn to meet someone or to rest. He could have preferred not to pay for a room for the night—”

  “Or he decided to sleep in the barn because he didn’t want anyone to know he was in St. Asaph.”

  “All indications are that he managed that part just fine.” Conall tugged his hood closer around his head.

  “It’s also within the realm of possibility that he was killed elsewhere and the body was dumped in the trough after the fact,” Gareth said. “Admittedly, moving Erik’s
body requires at least two people, if not four.”

  “Why would anyone do such a thing? How could it not be better to leave him where he died?” Conall narrowed his eyes at Gareth.

  “Because where he died was not a place he could be left, and by its very location would incriminate the killer.”

  Conall’s expression lit. “Such as would be the case if he died in someone’s home, perhaps? We could be looking for an unfaithful wife and an angry husband.”

  Gareth laughed under his breath. “That would have been my first thought if we were discussing Prince Hywel in his younger days, but I don’t know Erik well enough to tell how likely such a scenario might be.”

  “From your description of him, he was a large and powerful man. Many women find that attractive.” Conall spoke matter-of-factly, even as he headed for the ladder that would take him up to where the hay was stored. “I’ll check the loft. If he was as large as you say, then it would have been all the more difficult for him to remain hidden.”

  It was just as well Conall had taken that task for himself because Gareth was having trouble raising his left arm. Pulling himself hand over hand up a straight ladder would be uncomfortable. Not for the first time, he regretted his injuries and cursed under his breath at the men who’d caused them. Most of the culprits in Shrewsbury were either dead or awaiting the justice of the sheriff when he returned from serving King Stephen, but the men who’d hurt Gareth here had yet to pay. Gareth wasn’t a vengeful man normally, but he wouldn’t be sorry to see justice meted out to them too.

  With Conall in the loft, Gareth could turn his attention to the tedious task of searching the area around the trough for a sign of whom Erik might have been with the previous night. The only thing Gareth knew for certain out of this entire investigation so far was that Erik didn’t commit suicide as Anselm had suggested. It was just too bad that the prior had smallish and undamaged hands, as befitted the prior of a monastery, or Gareth would have been happy to wrap up this investigation today. As it was, Anselm’s hands would not fit around Erik’s neck, so they must look elsewhere for their killer.

  When Gareth stood in the barn’s back doorway that led to the paddock, the trough lay to his left. When Erik had been in the trough, his bulk had displaced a significant amount of water, such that once they’d taken him out of it, the trough had been left half full. Now, thanks to the unending rain, it was near to overflowing again.

  Gareth’s head came up, and he rubbed his chin as he turned in a circle, feeling like he was being watched but unable to pinpoint where the impression was coming from. Neither he nor Conall was quite up for charging off in a random direction to see if he could surprise an observer. And maybe Gareth was wrong anyway, and the watcher was merely a curious cow that had slipped through the gate.

  The ground all around the trough was thick with mud, churned by cows’ hooves and men’s boots. Although Abbot Rhys had tried to preserve the scene before Gareth and Gwen had arrived, the men who’d pulled Erik from the trough had stomped all around the paddock. At the time, they’d had no choice. Gareth hadn’t noticed anything useful on the ground or in the trough then—and a more detailed inspection didn’t reveal anything of interest now either.

  Gareth turned to look up at the hayloft door and projected his voice so Conall could hear him. “Anything up there?”

  Conall poked his head out over the lower half of the door, which was latched while the upper half swung free. “Someone has been up here all right. He left muddy footprints.”

  “Do you have a piece of rope handy? I’d like to know the length of the shoeprint in case we ever see Erik again. If I know how long the prints are, I might be able to match them to his boots and determine if he was up there.” Gareth was glad now that Hywel had asked about Conall’s investigative experience—or lack thereof. He didn’t feel now that he was telling Conall something that he should already know or how to do his job. “We’ll test the rope against Mathonwy’s feet too, since they could just as easily be his.”

  Conall grunted his understanding. “I’ll see what I can do.” He disappeared for a count of ten and then returned to the door. “There’s also an indentation in the hay that indicates someone settled down for a time to sleep or to wait.”

  “So, we might wonder if that man was Erik or if it was the man who killed him, knowing he was coming.”

  “Or a third man whom one or the other was coming here to meet,” Conall said, “or followed them to spy upon them, or one who could have been sleeping in the barn and happened upon their meeting unexpectedly.”

  Gareth let out an exasperated puff of air. “Exactly. We’re speculating with far too little to go on.”

  Conall nodded. “I’ll measure the footprint.” He disappeared again.

  Gareth paced around the trough, seeing nothing of interest, getting progressively wetter, and thinking that—injury or no injury—he might do well to climb into the loft to see what Conall had found. Then a glint of silver caught his eye, and he frowned. His first instinct was to pass it off as a few bits of hay, but then he crouched to the ground and brushed aside the clod of dirt that covered the glint. Five silver pennies, each the width of the tip of his pinky finger, lay in a cluster in the mud.

  Gareth wasn’t surprised they’d missed the coins in the dark last night. As he crouched in the mud and the rain, the question before him was if the pennies belonged to Erik, to the murderer, or to a third person whose identity they’d just fruitlessly speculated upon. Regardless, their loss to their owner would be grievous—unless, of course, he was Erik. The coins might be small and only five, but sixty could buy a man a cow. A typical peasant in Wales might not possess a single coin even once in his entire life, since goods were bought with services rendered, or services rendered were paid for with goods.

  Another man might have been tempted to say nothing in hopes of keeping them for himself, but Gareth didn’t have a single heartbeat of greed. He’d sinned enough in his life that he wasn’t even tempted to add such a gross addition to his collection. With the trust of his lord and a wife who loved him, Gareth was already the richest man in Wales.

  Chapter Eight

  Hywel

  Hywel couldn’t help feeling pride at riding towards the encampment at his father’s side. He would never, ever get over Rhun’s death, but he was growing used to being the edling, the son his father trusted and relied upon above all others. He couldn’t think of anything that could have pleased him more than arriving at Aber Castle three days ago to find his father not only on his feet, but welcoming him with open arms. When Hywel had left Owain last to ride to Mold Castle, he’d had no expectation that his father would ever be happy to see him again because he could never forgive Hywel for being the son who lived.

  “I gather you knew the dead man?”

  Hywel shot a startled look at his father. King Owain hardly ever involved himself in Hywel’s investigations beyond ordering him to see to them. He didn’t want to know, because he understood that Hywel sometimes walked on the darker side of running the kingdom. Owain had certainly kept Rhun from involvement, though Rhun had involved himself anyway, at times without his father’s knowledge.

  Resigned to having this conversation, even though he would have preferred to keep his father entirely out of his doings—and not remind him of the past, which any discussion of Erik would have to—Hywel gave a slight jerk of his head in assent and took the crwth by the fingerboard: “Uncle Cadwaladr used Erik as a spy for a time, and when he abandoned Erik in Ceredigion, I took him on.” He braced himself for his father’s reaction to what he was going to say next. “This was before we took Mold.”

  “Before Rhun’s death, you mean.”

  “Yes, Father.” Hywel took in a breath. He didn’t regret bringing Erik into his service, but he felt in his heart that Rhun wouldn’t have done it, or if he had, it would have been for entirely different reasons—because he would have thought it a mercy, rather than because he wanted to use Erik as a weapon. �
��I sent Erik to Ireland in case Cadwaladr had retreated there again. It is only since we took Mold that we learned that he’d gone to England, but it had already been months, and I had no means to call Erik back. I did not know that Erik had returned to Wales until this morning when he turned up dead.”

  Hywel’s father made a huh sound deep in his chest. “I want to know everything you’ve learned about Cadwaladr’s movements since Rhun’s death.”

  Hywel stared at his father, somewhat taken aback. “You do?”

  Owain turned on his son. “Of course I do!” Then he calmed, taking a deep breath through his mouth and letting it out his nose as he often did when he knew he needed to rein in his temper. “I feel somehow that this feud with Madog is a distraction from the main issue, which is the whereabouts of my brother and his latest treacherous plot.”

  Hywel cleared his throat. “May I ask a question? Several actually?”

  “You want to know why I haven’t deprived Cadwaladr of all of his holdings—why his wife sits as she does at Aberffraw,” Owain said, not as a question. “You want to understand why I have acted as I have, knowing full well Cadwaladr’s misdeeds.”

  “Yes,” Hywel said. “I want to know that.”

  “You think that I have behaved unjustly—not only to you, who loved Rhun so well, but to Cadwaladr himself. You know that the manner in which I have punished Cadwaladr up until now is a far cry from what he truly deserves, and that if I allow him to roam free in England while Alice oversees his lands on Anglesey, it sets a poor precedent.” Owain laughed harshly. “You believe that the way I forgave him earlier, for the death of King Anarawd in particular, sent him the wrong message. He saw my mercy as weakness and that made him behave worse.”