The Viking Prince

by Sarah Woodbury

  “Us?” Conall gave a sharp shake of his head. “Not you. Ottar.”

  Godfrid drew in a breath. “Didn’t you just tell me that King Diarmait isn’t going to openly support Brodar?”

  Conall expression turned regretful. “For now, he sees no need to do so. However, he wanted to know the full story of what was going on in Dublin under the surface before making a decision. It was Cait’s job to give him that insight.”

  That appeared to be all the apology Godfrid was going to get. And it was possible that none of this was Conall’s idea, not just Cait’s role in the deception. Conall and Godfrid knew enough of each other by now that he deserved the benefit of the doubt. “Rikard owed Diarmait that much?”

  Conall’s expression turned wry. “Who do you think Rikard’s biggest trading partner is? Rikard’s ships travel the seas, but far better and less risky to trade closer to home. Rikard needs Diarmait’s good graces and, in recent months, my king has been deeply concerned about the decline of his revenue from Dublin.”

  Godfrid’s eyes widened, finally understanding what this was about. “King Diarmait thought Ottar was skimming.” And at a curt nod from Conall, he continued, “And that’s also why he is willing to look the other way when my brother overthrows him. Even if King Diarmait won’t say, he is interested in the wealth my brother might bring in.”

  “Enough to give him a chance,” Conall said.

  Godfrid let out a sigh. “Why didn’t Rikard tell me any of this? Why didn’t you?”

  Conall shrugged. “My king insisted on absolute secrecy. Spy rings are most effective when the spies involved don’t all know each other and don’t necessarily share with one another the information they discover.”

  Godfrid ground his teeth at that, but again, he couldn’t argue. As his mother once told him when his father was being particularly stubborn, A king does what a king does, and lesser men have no right to complain. “To tell you the truth, I had wondered in recent weeks if I had lost Rikard’s support.”

  Conall shook his head. “I assure you the opposite was true. Rikard needed to keep you at arm’s length to make Ottar trust him. Besides, if that had been the case, Rikard would have sold you to Ottar, and you would be in chains today rather than Ottar’s errand boy.”

  Godfrid chewed on his lower lip. “And perhaps Diarmait was willing to consider the possibility that I was the traitor—maybe not to Ottar but to another kingdom within Ireland? One that might support my brother outright in exchange for transfer of authority over Dublin from Leinster to them?”

  The silence from Cait and Conall gave him all the confirmation he needed.

  Conall lifted a hand apologetically. “I tried to tell him otherwise, but—”

  “You must do his bidding. I understand.” Godfrid made a dismissive motion of his own. “But does Rikard’s death mean that Ottar discovered Rikard was working for you?”

  Cait gasped. “Oh no! Could it be?”

  Godfrid put out a hand to her. “Rikard was a grown man. Whatever is going on here cannot be your fault.”

  Her face was pale, reflecting the horror within her. “You can’t know that, my lord. I could have done something to give him away.”

  Conall cleared his throat from Godfrid’s other side. “From the quality of the messages that have come through Rikard’s hands on behalf of Ottar in the last week, I would say that he knew nothing of either your friendship with Rikard or ours. The messages are too inflammatory.”

  “You sound very certain,” Godfrid said. “You’ve seen them?”

  Conall gestured to Cait. “She has seen them. I would have found a way to alert you soon enough if there was anything that needed your immediate attention. In fact, Rikard demanded it and was upset that he couldn’t share what he knew with you personally.”

  Mollified, Godfrid gave Cait a slight bow. “You must tell me.”

  Cait’s expression turned grim, transforming her face yet again. He could imagine her as a Valkyrie, beautiful yet deadly. “I will, but not here.”

  Godfrid studied her. “Did Holm question you before I arrived?”

  She laughed, which gave him his answer before she spoke. “Me? A woman and a slave? He didn’t even see me.” She paused. “Just as you didn’t.”

  “I noted you, but you turned away before I could see your face, and then the blood distracted me.” Godfrid was uncertain as to why he was justifying his behavior to the Irish woman but felt compelled to do so anyway.

  And then he mocked himself because he knew the reason. Caitriona was a beautiful, intelligent, foreign woman. Why he couldn’t settle down with a good Danish girl, he didn’t know. But he hadn’t, and he was long past believing that he would find one who suited him.

  “You would tell me if you saw anything last night or this morning that would help us, though, wouldn’t you?” he asked Cait.

  “Of course, I would, but I was blessedly asleep all night in the slave barracks.” As was customary in Dublin, Rikard housed his slaves near the warehouse rather than among the residents of the city. “I heard nothing until Arno stormed into our quarters this morning, demanding to know what had become of Rikard.”

  Because most people were killed by loved ones or friends, if Rikard was, in fact, dead, Arno would be the next most likely suspect after Sanne. And even if Rikard’s disappearance wasn’t down to Arno, Godfrid couldn’t help but wonder if Arno had done a little destruction of his own before waking the slaves.

  As far as Godfrid knew, the two men had been close companions the whole of their lives, but Arno was only the business partner, not the wife or child. With Rikard’s death, there could be some question as to ownership of the contents of the warehouse, and he could be concerned about having to split the wealth with Sanne—or the king, who would be most interested in whatever wealth he could gain in taxes from the death.

  Conall pursed his lips. “This is the center of Rikard’s operations. How could nobody have noticed a culprit entering? And why did nobody arrive sooner than at dawn this morning? Surely Rikard had guards to protect against theft?”

  Cait put up both hands, warding off her lord’s implied accusations. “Certainly he did. I think he was more concerned about theft than any threat to himself or even one of his slaves escaping. The fact that no guards were on duty last night was Rikard’s own doing, not ours. He sent everyone away because he had a private meeting and wanted no witnesses to it.”

  Finally they were getting somewhere. “All night long?” Godfrid asked.

  Cait shrugged. “Apparently. We were told not to go anywhere near the warehouse last night lest we interfere, and Rikard specifically commanded us not to enter the warehouse this morning until summoned. I was looking forward to a rare chance to sleep late. It seems obvious to me that whoever he was meeting with in secret was the one who killed him.”

  Conall met Godfrid’s eyes. “So he knew the man who came. I think that’s good news, actually.” Then Conall looked at Cait. “What isn’t good news is the reason he didn’t tell you what he was doing. That was the entire point of you being here.”

  “I don’t know why he didn’t.” She shook her head.

  “I’d like to know if he told Arno.” Godfrid’s eyes narrowed at the thought. “Speaking to him will be my first order of business.”

  “If Holm hasn’t already poisoned that well,” Cait said.

  Both men looked questioningly at her, and again, she raised her hands. “Neither Arno nor Rikard respected Holm. I believe they had a different candidate in mind for sheriff.”

  “I certainly did,” Godfrid said, “but my brother and I had no say in the matter, and Ottar chose loyalty to him over experience.”

  Conall barked a laugh. “Ironic, isn’t it? Because of that inexperience, when he has an actual murder in need of investigation, Ottar has to bring in you.”

  Godfrid rubbed his forehead, wishing for a large mug of mead to stave off the headache he felt coming on. “And look at you two! Your presence here today, C
onall, is rather ironic, don’t you think, given what you were doing in Shrewsbury? Chasing slave girls then too, weren’t you, though none were spies, that I recall. And from what you told me, that adventure also began with a puddle of blood and no body.”

  “For Gareth it began that way. I was already in captivity.” Conall bent forward to study the floorboards. “Thankfully, the blood wasn’t mine. The girl who died was later found in the River Severn.”

  “We may never find Rikard if he’s in the Liffey,” Cait said.

  She had a mischievous glint in her eyes and a healthy sheen to her skin that should have told anyone who looked at her that she hadn’t been a slave long. But as she’d pointed out, slaves were ignored until they were needed. For Godfrid’s part, he could have looked at her quite a while longer. But then—while mocking himself for being distracted by a woman—he remembered what he was here for and returned his attention to the pool, which appeared yet again definitively smaller.

  “As I said to Holm, it would have been difficult to get out of the city last night unnoticed. Dead or alive, Rikard should still be within the city walls.”

  Straightening, he looked around for a likely tool and latched upon a flat piece of metal that was lying on the floor a few feet away, amidst the fallen papers and spools of thread. Approximately two feet long and an inch wide, it curved upwards on one end. He hefted it, studying its carvings.

  “What is that?” Conall asked.

  Godfrid shrugged. “I’ve never seen anything like it before. It isn’t Danish.”

  “It’s a prize Rikard’s men brought back from the Isle of Man,” Cait said. “I have no idea what it’s for.”

  “I believe I do.” Godfrid stuck one end of the tool into a narrow slit between two floorboards—through which he’d finally realized the wine had been draining one drop at a time while they’d been talking—and pushed down. Expending less effort than he’d expected, he raised up a square of floor, revealing a trapdoor with recessed hinges and stairs leading downwards into darkness. The first three treads were stained with wine.

  Cait peered into the vault below and said somewhat breathily, “Is that—is that Rikard lying at the bottom of the stairs?”

  Chapter Four

  Day One

  Conall

  Conall grabbed a lantern off a nearby table and held it high as he and Godfrid descended the steps in a hurry. Cait didn’t follow immediately, showing an uncharacteristic squeamishness, which Conall wasn’t going to argue with. Conall himself stopped abruptly on the bottom step, but Godfrid was already hovering over Rikard’s body, which lay a few feet from the stairs.

  Rikard was turned on his left side with his left arm stretched above his head, his upper arm pillowing his cheek, and his right hand near his face. In death, his expression was peaceful, and his eyes were closed. From this distance, Conall could see no obvious wounds on the body.

  “Is there any way he’s alive?” Cait said from the top of the stairs.

  “No. He’s dead.” Conall said.

  Godfrid had put his fingers first to Rikard’s neck and then to his lips, shaking his head all the while. “The body is still warm, so he can’t have died very long ago at all, maybe even within the last few hours.”

  “While we were standing around talking, he was dying down there in the dark?” There was horror in Cait’s voice, and Conall’s glance upwards revealed that her hand was to her throat.

  Having made one last check for a beat at Rikard’s wrist, Godfrid looked towards the top of the stairs too. “I don’t believe that to be the case, Cait. He’s been dead longer than we’ve been here.”

  “He doesn’t appear to have a mark on him.” Conall came down the last step, his lantern light illuminating the body.

  “The blood and overturned chair upstairs indicate torture, but—” Godfrid frowned, “The only damage on him I can see are a few broken fingernails from scrabbling in the dirt. The blood under the chair remains unexplained.”

  Conall pursed his lips to study the body. Reflecting their warlike antecedents, most Danes wore tunics with tight pants tucked into their boots, but Rikard had been dressed formally, in a merchant’s robe with a heavy gold chain around his neck. “He is fully clothed. Perhaps his abdomen is bruised.”

  Godfrid sat back on his heels. “Could someone have dumped the body here to hide it?”

  “Why not leave him on the floor of the warehouse? It isn’t as if we weren’t going to notice the wine.” Conall stretched out a hand to the chain, lifting the emblem on the end to feel its weight.

  “Whatever the man who came after him wanted, it wasn’t his wealth, or at least not easy wealth,” Godfrid said, watching him.

  Conall dropped the pendant. “And then there’s something odd here.” He crouched by Rikard’s right hand. The floor of the vault was simple dirt, and Rikard’s fingers had become claw-like as they clenched the ground in death. “He’s etched letters into the earth. G O D.” He named each letter separately. “It’s Danish, yes?”

  “Yes, of course. It means, ‘good’. But why would Rikard write such a thing on the ground?”

  “I can’t begin to guess, unless he meant to write your name, Godfrid.”

  Godfrid blanched, straightening from his crouch and watching as Conall carefully lifted up Rikard’s right wrist so they both could read the letters beneath it more clearly. The man’s wrist was warm enough that Conall felt he should be able to feel a beat, but none was forthcoming.

  Godfrid glared down at the writing, his hands on his hips. “I don’t understand.”

  Cait finally came down the stairs, stopping one step up from the ground where Conall had stood earlier. “Likely he knew he was dying. You should be honored, my lord, that his last thoughts were of you. He clearly wanted to tell you something.”

  “In death, all ruses tend to fade away,” Conall admitted. “It was more important to get a message to you than to keep Ottar convinced he was loyal to him.”

  Godfrid shook his head. “If only I knew what he was trying to say.” He looked up, encompassing both Cait and Conall in his gaze. “This last hour has been a revelation to me, and I find myself wondering what else I missed or know too little about. I am not cut out for intrigue.”

  “You’ve done well enough these last five years on your own,” Conall said bracingly and went to lay Rikard’s hand back on the ground.

  Before he dropped Rikard’s wrist, however, Cait stopped him and, with a sweep of her foot, wiped away the writing. “I think it would be best if we kept this piece of evidence between the three of us.”

  Conall didn’t argue and backed away from Rikard, trying to look at the scene with fresh eyes, wanting it to look natural to Holm when he arrived.

  Godfrid swallowed, but then he nodded, accepting, as Conall silently had, what needed to be done, even if his sense of rightness was affronted.

  Conall would have been surprised to learn that Gareth had ever destroyed evidence in this way. Though, on second thought, Gareth generally investigated murder at the behest of his own lord, not for a rival one, and Conall knew for certain that if Hywel needed evidence to disappear, Gareth would be the one to make sure it never saw the light of day. He might walk away from his service to Hywel afterwards, but Gareth would never betray his prince. Hywel was not King Owain Gwynedd’s traitorous brother, Cadwaladr.

  Cait also took a step back. Whatever fear or shock had held her at the top of the stairs during the initial discovery of Rikard’s body was gone, replaced by a calm practicality that was a hallmark of the way she lived. Cait had never been one for drama or hysterics.

  “Am I blind, or is Rikard indicating that chest?” She pointed to one of many set against the northern wall of the cellar.

  Godfrid moved Rikard’s other hand, the one pillowing his head. A line with an arrowhead on the end had been sketched in the dirt underneath it. “You could be right.”

  This time, it was Conall who bent to smooth the surface of the floor, as Cait had
done earlier, and adjust the position of Rikard’s left hand. “Another thing nobody need wonder about.”

  Cait took in a breath. “I’m thinking that if we spend any more time alone in the warehouse, it will begin to look suspicious, even to someone as inexperienced as Holm. He might even begin to wonder if you two are getting along. Perhaps I should climb back up the stairs and scream.”

  Godfrid guffawed, the sound echoing around the small space. “I can’t wait to see what Holm makes of you.”

  “He won’t even mark me. Just you watch.” She shot him a grin, hiked her skirts, and trotted up the stairs.

  “You want to cover your ears for this,” Conall said.

  Eyebrows raised, Godfrid did as Conall bid, and then Cait opened her mouth to release the most agonizing, grief-laden scream Conall had ever heard, and he’d heard her scream before. To add to the authenticity, she fell to her knees on the edge of the trapdoor—careful to avoid the residue of wine that remained on the floor—and bent over, her arms wrapped around her waist, sobbing.

  Conall left Godfrid going through Rikard’s pockets in a quest for more information and headed up the stairs himself. One of them should greet whoever came first through the front door and prepare him for what they’d found. A moment later, he was glad he had thought to do so because he was twenty feet from the vault when the big double doors were pulled wide, and Holm charged into the warehouse.

  Conall waved a hand to catch Holm’s attention and then again in an impatient gesture at Cait, telling her to move out of the way and to stop sobbing. She shot him a smirking glance, which thankfully Holm was too distracted to notice, before doing his bidding, fading towards the far wall of the warehouse where the lantern light shone less brightly.

  Because managing Holm’s understanding of the situation was the first priority, Conall put his hand on Holm’s upper arm and guided him towards the trapdoor. “We found Rikard. Let me warn you that he’s dead.”