Cedric actually looked disappointed that his news had caused neither surprise nor consternation—but simply resignation at the inevitable. But then, like the good soldier he was, he hustled after them to lead them to the body.
Gareth had figured it was only a matter of time until they found the body associated with the pool of blood. As he kept insisting, and murderers kept not realizing until it was too late, bodies weren’t so easy to get rid of.
For one thing, they were heavy. Once a person was dead, his body made a very awkward burden for a single man, no matter how strong that man was or how small the body. Two, there were few good places to leave a corpse where it wouldn’t ever be found and the murder discovered.
In his time, Gareth had seen murderers try to get rid of bodies by, among other things, burying them, dropping them in a pond, and leaving them to desiccate inside an abandoned house, just to name a few instances. Eventually the bodies were found, and the murderer caught. Maybe it was hubris on Gareth’s part to think he was good at his job, and perhaps dozens of people whose bodies hadn’t ever been discovered had gone missing in Gwynedd in recent years, but Gareth didn’t think so.
To Gareth’s mind, making a body difficult to dispose of was God’s way of allowing justice to be done, even if it was many years after the fact.
When they arrived at the riverbank to the south of the town, two watchmen were in the process of wading in the shallows off the north bank of the Severn River, soaking themselves to the waist. At a nod from John, they grasped the body and lifted it. With the slow meander here, once the body had begun to float, it had caught on a branch hidden just below the surface of the water and hung there.
All dead bodies had a nasty tendency to float to the surface eventually. Given the blood in the alley, this girl had been dead before she went in and chances were she’d never sunk at all. The river hadn’t been the easy place to dispose of the body that the murderer had thought it.
“Look at all the blood on her skirt, Gareth,” Gwen said.
Gareth breathed deeply through his nose and let it out. The murder of a woman set Gareth’s teeth on edge—though the murder of a child would have been far worse. He was grateful he’d so far been spared such a death.
Gwen seemed far more matter-of-fact about the dead woman than Gareth, and even made a motion as if to move down the bank towards the men carrying the body. Gareth put out a hand to stop her. “Stay back, Gwen.”
If nothing else, he didn’t want her to slip on the wet grass and mud and land on her back. She was with child, and sometimes she acted before she thought. Earlier, Gwen’s arrival in the alley had raised some eyebrows among John’s men, but they hadn’t balked at her presence, and they weren’t now either. Maybe they thought women investigators were an odd peculiarity of the Welsh. Gareth himself didn’t care what they thought, but John’s authority was tenuous enough without having additional questions asked about his judgement. Gareth had brought Gwen because he wanted her there, but he didn’t have to flaunt that fact in front of these Englishmen.
She glanced at him and nodded, stepping behind him and allowing him to be the one to haul the body up the bank instead of her.
Gareth glanced at Cedric. “Who found her?”
“One of the town boys we sent to look along the river,” Cedric said. “Someone would have seen her soon enough, seeing how she was bobbing up and down in the shallows.”
Gareth was impressed. “That was a clever idea. Good for you to have the foresight to send them.”
Cedric gestured to John. “It wasn’t my idea. It was his.”
“Here we all grow up with the river. It’s the lifeblood of the town, and these boys are in and out of the river all day long.” John shrugged, though Gareth could tell he was pleased with Gareth’s praise. “Especially with the warm spring we’ve been having, they can’t stay away. I remembered our conversation from this winter about disposing of dead bodies and thought that if the murderer tried to get rid of the body from the alley that way, we might find her quickly if we looked hard enough. Though—” he amended, “I didn’t know it was a her then.”
Gareth put his hands on his knees and bent to look more closely at the woman, who the watchmen had settled face up in the grass. Gwen looked with him, and said, after a moment, “Back at the inn, I wondered if Roger’s murderer could be a local man because of how the body was oriented east to west. This implies local knowledge too.”
“We have no indication that this girl is connected to Roger,” John said.
Gwen shot him a wry look. “When was the last murder you had in Shrewsbury?”
John rubbed his nose with his palm. “Adeline, I suppose, though she didn’t die here. Before that—it’s been a year at least.”
“In that case, it’s hard to believe that two in one day could be a coincidence,” Gwen said.
“We should assume nothing as yet,” Gareth said, feeling like he was mediating between them again.
John glanced around somewhat furtively. The two watchmen who’d removed the body from the river had been dismissed to find dry clothes, and the others who’d come to watch had moved away to control the few onlookers—or simply because they felt uncomfortable with a dead woman on the ground. At the moment, there was nobody within hearing distance but Cedric, Gareth, and Gwen. “Perhaps we have a third murder to consider. We can’t be sure that this girl is connected to the blood either.”
“I grant you that we can’t be sure yet about her connection to Roger, not without even knowing her name, but—” With a heavy heart, Gareth moved into a crouch beside the girl’s body. It wasn’t that she looked like anyone he knew—praise the Lord—but simply that now he was really looking at her, he saw how young she was. From her unlined face and hands, she was more a girl than a woman. “—we can determine easily if the blood was hers by finding a wound.”
The girl’s skirt was stained with blood, but even more, it had been jaggedly ripped, as had the girl’s underskirt. Pulling the fabric aside revealed a gruesome gash in her upper thigh, the tissue mangled and torn, with the remains of splintered wood still in it. It gave Gareth the shivers just looking at it. “I don’t think you need to concern yourself that there’s been a third murder, John.”
John moved closer to Gareth, his expression pained. “The crate slat from the alley—”
Gareth nodded. “A major avenue for blood flows just below the surface right where she was wounded. When a cart overturned in a river last year and I lost my belongings, one of the men went with it. He fell on the rough corner of the cart bed as it splintered on hidden stones beneath the water’s surface and bled out before we could get to him.”
“That’s horrible.” Gwen’s shoulders convulsed with the same shiver that had gone through Gareth, and her eyes were sad. “No wonder she bled so much.”
“That means that whoever killed her and dumped her in the river knows something about the human body,” John said.
Gareth put a hand on Gwen’s shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll find him.”
“I almost don’t want to.” Gwen shook her head. “He must be as cold as Cadwaladr inside.”
“We should get her to the monastery,” John said. “She can lie in the room with Roger until her burial. Hopefully, we will have a name for her by then.”
Gwen felt at the cloth of the girl’s dress. “Her dress might have been pretty before the river water spoiled it and leached the color.”
“She was a pretty girl.” Gareth stood and looked north, his hand shading his eyes as he inspected the course of the river. The Severn River meandered as it flowed, such that it passed the west gate going south, looped around Shrewsbury and the fields adjacent to the town—common land for the production of fruits and vegetables in small plots, each worked by a family in the town—and then turned north.
At that point, it flowed under the east gate bridge and past the castle on its eastern side, before finally turning east again. After leaving Shrewsbury, the Severn continued to
meander north and south in long circular loops for many miles until it straightened out somewhat in its ultimate journey south to the sea.
“If the girl ended up here, near the southernmost point of the river,” Gareth said, “she would have gone in the water somewhere upstream, likely near the west gate, which wasn’t far from where the pool of blood was found.”
“I will make sure my men pay special heed to activity or footprints by the river along that side,” John said.
“I don’t understand how the murderer got her out of the town,” Gwen said. “What did he do—throw the body over the wall?”
“Oh—you don’t know.” Gareth looked down at her. “Many of the houses abut the river and have access to it through narrow doorways and gates.”
Gwen frowned. “Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the wall? What kind of protection can it provide if just anybody can walk through it?”
Gwen had been speaking in Welsh, which John understood, and he made a maybe motion with his head. “People need access to the river. They do their washing in it, they cook with it, the town boys swim in it. Besides, the private gates are inspected annually for their security and sturdiness, and it would be impossible to truly batter any down with a siege engine, seeing how the river prevents access.”
Gwen gave an unladylike snort, as skeptical as Gareth, who’d already had this conversation with John. Still, when King Stephen had attacked the town nearly ten years before, he hadn’t tried to force the river and instead had taken it from the castle side in the traditional manner. So maybe there was something in what John was saying. One or two spies sneaking in a back door could disable the guards at the main gates and let in an army, but that weakness was always the worry for a defending force, regardless of how many holes in the fortifications they had to contend with.
The vagaries of Shrewsbury’s defenses weren’t Gareth’s problem today. They had two murders now, a missing Irishman, who was looking less like a suspect and more like a third victim with every hour that passed, and a murderer who, as Gwen had said, might have a heart as cold as Cadwaladr.
Gareth hadn’t thought that anyone could be cold as the traitorous prince. Without a doubt, they had a villain on their hands.
Chapter Twelve
Gwen
As John’s men loaded the dead girl into the cart, Gareth turned to Gwen. “What have you heard from your father?”
“Nothing.” Gwen had been trying not to think about her father all day. He’d left the monastery early that morning, after John Fletcher’s boy had come to fetch Gareth about the pool of blood and just before Gareth had sent for Gwen herself. Here it was, getting on towards evening, and she still hadn’t seen him.
“Should I ask John Fletcher where Adeline’s father has his shop?” Gareth said. “I hadn’t thought to inquire.”
“I was with my father when he spoke to the prior, so I have an idea where it is.” Gwen tucked her hand into Gareth’s elbow, and they set off behind the cart, back through the main gate that allowed access into the town from these fields and the southern sweep of the Severn. “Maybe we should walk by it on our way to the monastery.”
“On second thought, this is your father’s business,” Gareth said. “You shouldn’t meddle in it unless he asks you to. When he is ready to talk about it, he’ll come to you.”
“You seem very sure of that,” Gwen said, not liking Gareth’s advice but knowing he was right. They were here in Shrewsbury for her father, even if she and Gareth were using it as a cover for Prince Hywel’s inquiries. Adeline may have been Meilyr’s daughter, and even if Gwen had been her half-sister, she had fewer rights to her than Meilyr, and she certainly needed to respect his privacy for one day at least. She could always pin him down later and make him tell her what had gone on in his meeting with Tom Weaver. “There was a time he wouldn’t have told me anything at all.”
“He is no longer that man,” Gareth said, “and you are no longer that daughter.”
Except, a moment later, Gareth was proved wrong as a very familiar voice, raised in song, came to Gwen’s ears. It wasn’t Gwalchmai this time, singing praises to God for the abbot’s pleasure, but her father, bellowing out a bawdy ballad. Fortunately, he was singing in Welsh, which would at least reduce the number of people who understood the words.
After entering the town, Gareth and Gwen had been following the river road towards the east gate, but now Gareth guffawed and started forward at a quicker pace, darting down a different street that led more to the center of town. “Meilyr boxed Hywel’s ears once for singing that song in the hall.”
“How did you know that?” Gwen hustled to keep up with Gareth’s long legs as they left the cart behind them. “You weren’t at Aberffraw back then.”
Gareth glanced down at her. “Hywel told me about it just the other day.”
Gwen laughed with genuine pleasure. The prince’s mind had been closed to her since Rhun’s death. That Hywel had told Gareth about his childhood meant that Hywel might speak to Gareth about his thoughts and feelings when he was ready.
They came around a corner, some distance now from the east gate, and spied Meilyr weaving on his feet in the middle of a street. Even drunk, his voice was impressive, rich in tone and fully supported, so it wasn’t any wonder a crowd had gathered around him to listen—and maybe to see what spectacle he might create of himself next.
Gwen approached Meilyr from the front, to make sure that he saw her and didn’t startle away or become angry. “Father, it’s time to return to the monastery.”
“Don’t want to go home.” Meilyr sounded like Gwalchmai when he was five and hadn’t wanted to leave the warmth of the hall for his bed.
Gwen moved closer and cautiously put a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to go home if you don’t want to. Perhaps you and I can walk a bit instead.” She hadn’t seen her father drunk like this in years, though at one time it had been a nightly occurrence. A rush of memories returned to her, mostly of the despair and sadness she and her father had felt after her mother’s death. They’d grieved separately, however, and that, more than anything else, had created the rift between them that hadn’t healed until a few years ago.
Meilyr had sought relief from grief in mead and wine. At times, Gwen had been relieved to see him drinking, because he wasn’t a sour or angry drunk, as some men were and which she might have expected, given his normal gruff personality. Instead, alcohol softened him around the edges and made him easier, rather than harder, to deal with.
Still, it hadn’t helped his singing or composing and, in retrospect, Meilyr blamed too much mead for his falling out with King Owain after old King Gruffydd’s death. It wasn’t that he’d said things he’d regretted. He’d been sober when he’d argued with the king. It had been his slow incapacitation for which Owain had held no patience.
Thankfully, Meilyr responded now to Gwen as he had then, most of the time anyway. His belligerence faded, and he put a hand on her cheek. “Daughter, you look just like your mother.”
Gwen smiled. “Yes, Father.”
She met Gareth’s eyes and gestured with her chin towards the east, indicating that Gareth should continue as they had been, returning to the monastery with the girl’s body while Gwen handled her father. Gareth, seeing that she did, in fact, have things in hand, nodded and turned away. John Fletcher had stopped the cart at the bottom of the road where they were standing, and Gareth raised a hand to him, indicating that he could now continue.
The onlookers, seeing that the concert had ended, dispersed as well, though not before several took a second look at Gwen herself. She would have explained to them who she was if they didn’t already know, but right now her father was her first concern.
Gwen glanced upwards, noting how low the sun had fallen in the sky. She wasn’t worried about their safety on the streets of Shrewsbury, but she knew that at some point the guards closed the gates and were reluctant to open them again to just anyone. She steered her father in the direction Gareth
had gone.
“Has something happened, Father?”
“I spoke with the weaver.”
Gwen heaved a sigh, grateful that she wasn’t going to have to beg him to tell her what had happened that day. “What did he say?”
“He wasn’t Adeline’s true father.”
“Oh.” Gwen didn’t know whether she was happy or sad to hear it. Either way, Adeline was dead, and Gwen would never know her now. “Does that mean—”
Meilyr shook his head back and forth in the way he did when he wanted to say ‘no’ and was too drunk to realize he was still doing it. “He doesn’t know who her father was. Said he didn’t mind telling me, seeing as how I might have been him.”
“So he didn’t resent you coming to talk to him?”
Her father shook his head again, and this time the motion made him weave on his feet such that Gwen was afraid he might fall over.
She gripped his arm tighter to steady him. “Who was Adeline’s mother?”
“He hardly knew that either. He met the woman one night at a tavern. She had the baby with her. This was when he was still working a cart, peddling his wares from place to place and weaving on a small loom. He didn’t have a wife—didn’t have anyone. They spent the night together.” Her father’s words came in a long stream with no inflection and barely any pause. He said the last sentence as if it was of no more importance than the first.
Gwen’s brow furrowed, confused by the disjointed way her father was telling the story. “So, the woman fell pregnant, and Adeline was Tom’s child?”
“No, no.” Meilyr shook his head forcefully. “He awoke the next morning to find the woman gone and the baby left behind.”
Gwen stopped in the middle of the street and turned so she could see his face. He was only a few inches taller than she, so she barely had to look up. “You’re telling me that Adeline’s mother left her with Tom Weaver and didn’t look back? He never heard from her again?”
The Renegade Merchant Page 9