“Of course.” Ottar turned away, though not quickly enough that Godfrid couldn’t see the flash of relief that crossed his face. Sturla, as always, had read his lord’s mind and rescued him.
But Holm put out a hand. “Before we go, my lord, I would ask for the continued assistance of Prince Godfrid. We have a great deal of ground to cover, and I feel that time is of the essence.”
Ottar turned back. “That is acceptable to me if it is acceptable to him.” He raised his eyebrows at Godfrid.
Godfrid canted his head graciously. “I am pleased to continue if the sheriff thinks I can be helpful.”
Then Ottar looked at Conall. “Does Leinster have an interest in Rikard’s death, my lord?”
Conall dipped his head. “It does. Rikard had many trading interests in Leinster. My king will be concerned that the man responsible for his death be brought to justice.”
A smile quirked at Ottar’s lips. “I am not unaware that you and Prince Godfrid have not always been on the most cordial of terms, but I’m sure you can put aside your differences for the good of discovering what happened this morning.” Ottar looked directly at Godfrid.
He didn’t flinch, but he did protest, “My lord, I really think—”
Ottar cut him off. “Couldn’t you?”
Godfrid smoothed his expression to one of grim acceptance. “Of course, my lord.” He stuck out his arm to Conall, who gripped it a little too hard. “I seek only to be of service.”
“As do I.” Conall released him and stepped back. “It has been suggested that Godfrid and I inspect Rikard’s body, but as a more urgent first step, we will speak to the widow. I believe Holm intends to pursue his inquiries in the area around the warehouse.”
“This is what you wish, as well, Holm?” Ottar asked the sheriff.
Holm bowed deeply. “Yes, my lord.”
Ottar’s eyes narrowed as he took in all of their faces. “So be it. Keep me informed.”
Chapter Seven
Day One
Godfrid
Feigning a stiff cordiality, Godfrid and Conall left the palace for Rikard’s house. Told that Sanne was still at Arno’s home, they then inquired for her there, at which point they were directed back to the warehouse. Finn accompanied them to both initial stops, and now he forged ahead, anxious to speak to his stepmother.
By now it was past noon and, for Godfrid, the shine was beginning to wear off the day. “I’m remembering some of the more tedious aspects of investigating.”
“And admiring Gareth and Gwen more and more for what they do.” Conall’s boots scuffed in the dirt of the road. “They saved my life.”
Godfrid himself had never been a captive, but he could well imagine the fear, anger, and frustration that Conall still felt at his near-death experience.
“I’d heard good things about Shrewsbury’s sheriff, but he was mustered to fight for King Stephen. Gareth and Gwen just happened to be in the town. If they had arrived a few days later, or had been less able investigators ...” Conall’s voice trailed off as he shook his head.
“But they did come, and they were able.”
“I have never been one to spend overmuch time on my knees, but I prayed for deliverance, for me and for the women I was captive with, and—” Again, Conall was unable to finish his sentence, this time swallowing around a closing throat.
“And He sent them.” Godfrid put a hand on Conall’s shoulder and squeezed. In all the time they’d spent together this year, they’d never talked about Shrewsbury except lightly, even jestingly, in passing. It was the way men usually dealt with hardship, except perhaps late at night when they were deep in their cups of mead.
A pig burst from a nearby yard, nearly running Conall and Godfrid over, followed by two boys whose job it was to corral it. The whole lot of them had passed before either man could assist, but it ended the moment of intimacy. With lighter hearts and higher heads, they hastened to catch up to Finn, if, for no other reason, than to protect Cait from him—or perhaps vice versa.
They still had a few blocks to go, however, so Godfrid ventured to ask, “Was this your plan all along, by the way?”
Conall shot him a wicked grin, understanding immediately what Godfrid was asking. “It came to me on the walk to Ottar’s palace that if I could arrange things so our partnership would look like someone else’s idea, it would be best for everyone. I knew you’d play along without giving the game away.” He smiled more broadly. “Ottar paired you with me to annoy you. It is always gratifying when other people behave exactly as you think they might.”
Then they were at the warehouse. With a nod to the guard, Godfrid entered to find the widow and her daughter a few feet away, pale-faced and weepy, with Finn’s arms wrapped around them both. Looking past them, Godfrid noted that the trapdoor remained closed, and Cait was standing twenty feet from it with her hands clasped in front of her. Their eyes met, and she nodded. He knew without her telling him outright that all continued to be well down in the vault. Cait’s hair remained around her shoulders, and she was wearing a deep green overdress that distracted the eye from the original brown dress with which she’d started the day.
“Oh my poor Rikard!” At the sight of Godfrid, Sanne abandoned Finn and ran to him, and he had no choice but to put his arms around her and hold her as she sobbed. She was tall enough that the top of her head came right up to his chin. She clutched at his cloak, and as he patted her back, he couldn’t help but remember Holm’s comment about her eligibility as a wife.
The others looked on, and while Conall’s expression showed sympathy, it was soon replaced by impatience. Godfrid was feeling impatient too, not so much with Sanne, who had the right to her grief, but with the circumstances that required him to question a widow about the death of her husband within hours of its discovery.
But then again, she was a suspect, and what better way to disguise her guilt than to drown him in tears?
His face ashen, Finn still held his eight-year-old sister, whose name Godfrid suddenly couldn’t remember, despite having attended her christening and seen her dozens of times since then. The girl had her arms around Finn’s waist and her face buried in his stomach.
Nearby on the floor was a cloth doll, and Conall bent to pick it up before going down on one knee before her. With as gentle a voice as Godfrid had ever heard him use, he got her to look at him. “Shall someone take you home, little one? You shouldn’t be here.”
The little girl shook her head emphatically. “My father is dead. It is my duty to mourn him.”
She wasn’t wrong, and at the sound of her daughter’s voice, Sanne finally pulled away from Godfrid, as if realizing only now the impact that bringing her daughter to the scene of her father’s death would have on the child. And as she turned away from him, Godfrid was genuinely surprised to see that her eyes held no evident tears, nor were they red from weeping.
His eyes narrowed at the widow’s back before he glanced again towards Cait, who gave him a sardonic smile. She appeared to have known already that some element of Sanne’s grief was feigned, whereas Godfrid had been totally fooled. In retrospect, that Sanne didn’t love her husband shouldn’t have been a surprise to him: Rikard was thirty years older than she, and their difference in age meant they would not have been natural cohorts.
While Godfrid himself had avoided marriage until it could be for love, few women had that luxury. When Rikard had offered for Sanne, she’d had a duty to her family to accept. The marriage had united two wealthy merchant families, and merchants could be as clear-eyed about the necessity of alliances as noblemen.
Sanne had been born into wealth and shouldn’t have been desperate for a husband, but she might have desired status on her own terms, out from underneath her parents’ wings. A loveless marriage to a wealthy older man had given her that, as well as a child, albeit not a son. Rikard had already been fifty when they’d married, so the odds had been better than good that he would die long before she did and at thirty Sanne could find herself a wealthy wido
w with an enviable degree of independence and a real say over her future, much like Cait.
And how could Godfrid argue with her decisions and her deception when he himself had lived a lie for the last five years? Who was he to judge another for deciding that her best course of action was to get along?
Grunting to himself at these revelations, he caught Sanne’s elbow—perhaps more gently than he might have done a moment ago when he had been judging her harshly—and guided her towards a seat at a long table set near the southern side wall, one of several tables in the hall but the only one currently not turned on its side.
He dragged a chair out from underneath a fallen cabinet. “Please, sit.”
Then he turned to Cait, eyebrows raised, and mimed drinking from a cup. Mostly Danes drank ale or mead, which were the most common drinks in Ireland, not just in Dublin. But Rikard’s contacts allowed him full access to the best wines from Europe, and as one of Rikard’s slaves, Cait would know where to find some.
From where Godfrid stood, he could see three metal goblets and two pitchers underneath a stack of shelves, but Cait immediately set off towards the back of the warehouse, returning a moment later with a carafe and three different goblets on a tray. He fleetingly hoped that she wasn’t bringing the same kind of wine that had been poured onto the floor, but then dismissed the thought as pointless to worry about. Sanne was unlikely to know or care.
Godfrid poured the wine into a goblet for Sanne and then into a second one for Cait. With a tip of his head, he indicated that she should take it and the chair set next to Sanne’s. It was a not-so-subtle reminder that, although he’d asked her out of necessity to fetch the wine for him, she was no longer a servant.
After a moment of hesitation, Cait accepted the chair. “Thank you, my lord.”
Sanne took a sip, and then a longer one. When she put it down, her eyes were slightly unfocused, and he wondered if this was perhaps not the first portion of wine she’d drunk today.
Godfrid found a stool to sit on that put his head approximately even with hers. His aim was to appear as unthreatening as possible. But before he could ask a question, Sanne said, “I can’t think of anything I know that could be of help to you. Finn told me about the meeting with the king. I have nothing to add.”
“Please understand that I need to ask anyway.”
Sanne dabbed at the corners of each eye with a handkerchief. “I don’t know why. My husband didn’t talk to me about his business.”
“I can attest to the truth of that.” Even as he spoke, Finn prowled around the warehouse, touching items here and there but otherwise not disturbing them. The young man had an intensity which Godfrid hadn’t seen in him two years earlier. It boded well for the future of Rikard’s business. Then again, his inability to stay still could be the result of nervousness.
To include him in the conversation, Godfrid poured wine into the third goblet, and while Finn accepted it, he didn’t drink. Conall, meanwhile, produced a sweet cake from a hidden pocket in his robe to give to Sanne’s daughter. She bit into it, and her eyes went wide. “Thank you, my lord!”
“It was my favorite when I was a child.” He straightened from his crouch, a little stiffly, Godfrid thought, and took the girl’s free hand in his to guide her to the table.
Sanne herself was drinking again and didn’t even look at her daughter, so Cait gestured the little girl closer and took her onto her lap. The ease with which the pair interacted told Godfrid that they knew each other well.
Neither Finn nor Sanne had yet remarked on Cait’s transition from slave to noblewoman, but it could be that Cait’s presence in his warehouse was a piece of business Rikard had discussed with his wife. Finn, of course, had seen Godfrid remove her collar. Given that he’d shouted at her a moment before that, and knowing now that she was Conall’s sister, left him no room to question Cait’s continued presence in the warehouse.
“Anything you can tell us would be helpful.” Free of the little girl, Conall gently eased into a chair across from Sanne. Her chair was angled towards Godfrid, who remained on his stool, with his back to the front door of the warehouse. “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm your husband?”
Sanne looked rueful. “No! Nobody! He had business rivals, of course. I would tell you if I knew anything at all.”
“So you don’t know with whom he was meeting last night?” Godfrid asked.
“No, my lord. He said nothing about it to me.” As she spoke, her eyes briefly skated away from him before returning to his face.
“Did he seem normal to you?”
“In what way?”
Cait leaned forward, requiring Sanne to turn in her seat to look at her. “I think my lord Godfrid is asking if he was showing unusual emotion. Was he nervous? Excited? Worried?”
Sanne bobbed her chin, finally understanding what they were asking. “He was definitely worried, but he was excited too. He paced around the house for an hour, snapping at the servants like he never did, before escorting me to Arno’s house. I made an attempt to inquire what was preoccupying him, but he told me that it was business, and I wasn’t to concern myself with it.”
“And you didn’t?” Godfrid said.
She made a noncommittal motion with her head. “As I said, he never told me anything about his business. He didn’t think it was something I should be concerned about. The warehouse was his domain, and the household was mine.” She scoffed slightly under her breath. “He never talked to me about anything he thought was important.” But then she canted her head towards Cait. “Except for you, my lady. With you, he actually came to me, asking for my advice.”
Godfrid felt he was finally hearing from the real Sanne. “What did you tell him?”
“That he would be a fool to refuse to bring Lady Caitriona into his household. Leinster rules Dublin, whether or not we like to admit it.” Again, Sanne looked at Cait. “I have not commented on the loss of your collar but, of course, I noted it. I hope you won’t take offense when I say that I was confounded to learn what your king intended you to do. Please forgive any behavior on my part since your arrival in which you were not treated with the utmost respect.”
Cait waved her hand dismissively. “You couldn’t give away with word or deed who I was. I took no offense.”
Still, Sanne wet her lips, by appearances a little nervous. “And to think Rikard made me ask you to teach Marta to weave!”
Godfrid was pleased to have learned Sanne’s daughter’s name without having to reveal his ignorance, and Cait smiled. “It was my pleasure, and Marta is a quick learner. You should be very proud.” Then she leaned closer and took Sanne’s hand. “I realize that this is a painful time, but I would ask that you continue to keep my secret. From now on, I must be only Lord Conall’s sister with no connection to your former slave.”
Sanne gave a tsk. “You have no need to worry on that score, my lady. What you did is simply too shocking to be believed. It is still astounding to me that your king and your brother allowed it.” Then she paused and lowered her voice. “I am not a gossip. Your secret is safe with me.”
“Thank you,” Cait said. “Please know that while my husband was not murdered, I am also a widow and have sat where you sit now. I am sorry for your loss.”
Sanne nodded, appearing to blink back tears, but then she swallowed hard and seemed to regain her equilibrium. “Rikard was gleeful about pulling the wool over Ottar’s eyes. I think he hated Ottar almost as much as you do, my lord.” She bobbed her head in Godfrid’s direction.
Godfrid wasn’t pleased to have her speaking of his feelings out loud, even if in safe company, so he changed the subject. “Did he often have meetings late at night at his warehouse?”
“Not to my knowledge, but I often retire before he does. If he went out after I went to sleep, I wouldn’t know about it.” She gazed away from him again, and her eyes were less focused than before.
“You sleep soundly enough that you don’t notice when he comes to bed?”
They were skating towards territory that Godfrid found uncomfortable, but with neither Conall nor Cait jumping in, he felt he had no choice but to be the one to continue to ask the questions.
“I sleep with Marta.”
Godfrid’s parents had always shared a bed, but separate pallets were not an uncommon arrangement for a married couple, especially during the years when a child needed her mother at all hours of the night.
While she’d been speaking to Cait, Sanne appeared to have her attention drawn by something in the back of the warehouse. Godfrid was sitting on her other side, so he couldn’t see her face, though he wondered if she knew about the trap door. And then Conall drew her attention to him again. “Rikard must have entertained his business associates in your home with you at his side.”
“Of course he did, but I would always retire to my quarters before the serious discussions began.”
“Was that also true when you met with Arno and his family?” Godfrid asked.
Sanne nodded. “Arno’s wife is older than I am.” She was invested enough in the conversation by now that her grief, feigned or otherwise, was put aside. “And he tells her more than my husband told me. Rikard insisted that I had nothing to do with money or trade. Why do you think he took such pains to build his manor where he did? He wanted to keep his family as far away from the docks as possible.”
“You said that Rikard escorted you to Arno’s house before leaving for the warehouse. Did you not miss him when you returned home later?”
“We never went home. Marta and I were at the coming of age celebration of Arno’s thirteen-year-old daughter. You know how those go on all night.” She looked at Godfrid for confirmation, and then to Finn, as the other Danes present, since they would understand.
But it was Cait who nodded. “We celebrate for our daughters too. Is it usual for men to attend?”
Sanne shook her head. “Not for the ceremony itself, but very often husbands, fathers, and brothers are part of the event. Arno welcomed Marta and me to his house and then oversaw the roasting of the pig in the yard. I saw him later holding court with the other men at tables set up outside for them.”
The Viking Prince Page 7