Her hands itched to touch her husband, and she prayed that these men wouldn’t hurt either of them anymore, and that they might even leave. Leave us alone leave us alone cycled through her mind in a litany, as if somehow her thoughts could be conveyed to them and influence their behavior. She presumed that the exterior door, which she made sure not even to look at in case one of them noticed, was locked or even nailed shut, or else they wouldn’t have left the women here without a guard in the first place. If someone watched the door, there would be no reason for any of them to remain inside the room.
As the men obeyed her unvoiced command and moved towards the steps, Gwen gave a huge sigh of relief and turned her attention to her fellow captives. A few of the women gazed back at her, blinking sleepily, but none seemed very awake, and none had said a word throughout the entire exchange among the men. One of the women curled up into a ball on the floor, and it was then that Gwen realized that not only were the woman’s hands free, but none of her companions were constrained at all.
Sadly, Will took the lantern with them, but after the door closed behind him, it looked as if he then set the lantern on a table near the door because it continued to shine faintly into the room through the many gaps between the slats of the walls and around the doorframe. Thus, even in its absence, Gwen was able to see how rickety her prison really was. Maybe they assumed, because they were leaving within the hour, that she didn’t have time to escape. With Gareth unconscious, she had to admit she was at a disadvantage.
But she wasn’t helpless.
Gwen propped her shoulder against the wall of the cellar, using it to brace herself until she could get her feet under her. Even though her hands were tied behind her back, she was able to feel for the knife in her boot that Gareth always insisted she carry. He would be missing all his weapons, of course, but the men hadn’t bothered to search her.
Gwen edged towards the woman closest to her. She was about Gwen’s age, with lighter color hair, dark eyes, and a ragged dress. “Can you untie me?” Gwen said in English, holding out the knife. She was willing to do it herself if she had to, but slicing through the ropes with the knife at such an awkward angle might well end up with blood everywhere.
The woman looked at her blankly, so Gwen tried again in Welsh.
The woman’s eyes widened. “I can’t,” she replied in the same language. “He’ll beat me.”
Hell.
Gwen didn’t often resort to profanity, but the situation seemed to call for it. She gazed around at the faces turned towards her, and even as she looked at them, she saw many lose interest, or perhaps even forget that she was there. Gwen puzzled over their odd behavior for a moment before concluding that they must have been given some kind of potion that muddled their minds. She had to get out of here before it was given to her too.
Gritting her teeth, acknowledging that she was on her own and her and Gareth’s best hope for survival was herself, she gripped the hilt of the blade, turning it on end in her palm, and sawed through her bonds.
It was only as the bonds fell away, having nicked the fat part of one thumb but freed herself nonetheless, that Gwen noticed the man lying in the far corner of the room. His arms were tied behind his back at the wrists and his legs at the ankles. Thinking that he could be an ally, once she cut his bonds and provided she could wake him, Gwen hastened through the women, who didn’t even move aside to let her pass. It was as if they didn’t even see her.
She dropped to one knee to turn the man so she could see his face, and then recoiled when she realized she was looking at Conall, the missing merchant. He wasn’t looking so renegade anymore—nor, seeing as how he was as much a captive as they, much like a murderer.
Chapter Twenty-six
Hywel
“What do you mean they aren’t here?” Hywel swept a hand across his brow, pushing the wet hair from his face and glaring at Meilyr.
Meilyr tried to defend his son-in-law. “My lord, the Deputy Sheriff asked for Gareth’s help with a murder—”
Hywel made a slashing gesture with one hand, cutting him off, “You don’t say.”
To suggest that it had been a long day would be an understatement. Hywel had been looking forward to a warm fire and a meal at the behest of the monks, but instead he’d been met in the stable by Meilyr with his bad news. It wasn’t Meilyr’s fault, of course. If Gareth thought he had difficulty controlling Hywel at times, Hywel had nothing on Gareth himself. The man could find himself in trouble just pulling on his boots in the morning.
Or Gwen could.
Neither would have turned their back on John Fletcher if he’d asked for their help.
“Have you told John Fletcher that they’re missing?” Hywel said, his eyes going to the rain pounding on the cobbles of the monastery’s courtyard.
“I was about to go myself, since Gwalchmai and Tangwen are finally asleep,” Meilyr said. “Gareth said not to worry about them until at least an hour after compline.”
“We’re there now,” Hywel said.
“Where are your men, my lord?” Meilyr said, looking past Hywel for his teulu, which, of course, wasn’t with him.
“It’s a long story.” Hywel growled under his breath. “Never you mind John Fletcher. I will send Evan to find him.”
“John is here, my lord,” Evan said from behind Hywel.
Hywel turned to see Evan and John Fletcher entering through the wide stable doorway, both shaking rain off their cloaks as they did so.
John bowed. “My lord, it is a pleasure to see you again. Why did you need me?”
“Gareth and Gwen have gone missing,” Hywel said. “What brings you to the abbey if not that?”
“I detained a merchant, Flann MacNeill, as he was leaving the town,” John said. “I came here to ask Gareth if he’d like to be present when I questioned him.”
“I thought you didn’t have enough information to hold Flann?” Meilyr glared at the young sheriff, as if it was his fault that Gareth and Gwen were missing.
“I didn’t, but at Gareth’s suggestion, I put the manager of a local brothel under watch, and she met with Flann not an hour ago. Young Oswin reported the meeting to me, and I decided that Flann had become enough of a person of interest in regards to these murders to justify questioning him.”
“I’m sure Gareth would want to be part of that, were he here.” Hywel shook his head, trying to dismiss the buzzing in his ears that came from knowing nothing about anything that was going on. He wasn’t even going to ask who Flann MacNeill was, how a brothel came into it, or how either were connected to murder. It was bound to be a long story, which he didn’t have time for. Hywel turned back to Meilyr. “Where did Gareth and Gwen go?”
“They wanted to spy out another brothel beyond St. Giles,” Meilyr said, and then at Hywel’s derisive laugh, put up both hands, “though there was something about leaving Gwen at the abandoned abbey mill.”
“Why a brothel?” Hywel said.
“It is owned by the same group of men as the one in town that Gareth suspected of being linked to the murders he’s investigating.”
“And what is that link?” But before anyone could answer, Hywel waved his hands in frustration, feeling like he was going in circles. “Never mind. Fletcher, lead the way to the brothel.” Then Hywel pointed at Meilyr. “You stay here in case Gareth and Gwen return.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Hywel found that he was no longer interested in a warm fire, and though his horse had been ridden far today, another mile wasn’t going to harm him. In short order, John roused a dozen watchmen from the Abbey Foregate and the Eastgate region of Shrewsbury, to give him a good complement of men, and with Hywel, Cadifor, and Evan, rode onto the main road.
Never talkative to begin with, Evan’s face had settled into grim lines of determination—as well as exhaustion, Hywel surmised—a match to Hywel’s own expression. Cadifor looked impassive, as always, and he rode close to Hywel’s side as if the Englishmen with whom they rode might turn
on him at any moment. Cadifor didn’t speak English, and that had to be making him uncomfortable. Hywel’s English was only passable, but since John himself spoke both Welsh and French, they found themselves getting by.
Fortunately, the ride to the brothel, which they took at a gallop, took no time at all, though John pulled up when they still had a hundred yards to go. Hywel and the others stopped too, in response to John’s raised fist giving a silent command.
Four months ago, John had attacked Gareth in the courtyard of the abandoned monastery in Clwyd, but that overt confidence had been sheer bravado, overlaying an insecurity that had colored his actions.
This John was a different man, one who’d grown accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. Hywel didn’t begrudge him his authority. He didn’t know the area at all and still didn’t understand what they were doing here or why Gareth and Gwen had thought to investigate the brothel on their own. He did understand that they could be in trouble—and that was all the information Hywel needed to act.
A door banged somewhere up ahead, and a man shouted in English. With the rain and the distance, Hywel couldn’t make out the words, but John nodded. “My lord, perhaps the two of us could move closer to the brothel itself to spy out the situation, while the others fan out into the woods around it. If Gareth and Gwen have been captured, I don’t want their throats slit because we’re seen coming.”
Hywel nodded, signaling that Evan and Cadifor should go with the others. He and John rode openly into the clearing in front of the brothel. The main building had a sign out front with the picture of a dancing girl, which was certainly appropriate. Other buildings lay behind the main one in the yard, which had a fence around it, more to delineate that property, Hywel thought, than to keep anyone out. Or in.
The brothel was a large building, two stories high, nearly forty feet wide at the front, and seemed to extend at least that far at the back. Torches shone brightly from stands on either side of the doorway. They had to have been fueled by oil since the rain was pelting freely down.
As they approached the front door, it opened, and laughter echoed through the night towards them. A man came out and circled around to the back of the property. The whole scene would have been inviting if Hywel wasn’t fearing for the lives of his friends.
“It sounds like they’re doing a brisk trade tonight despite the rain,” John said. “Do we go straight in the front?”
“No—let’s follow where that man went first and see what’s there,” Hywel said. “The complex appears to include more than just the inn and extends far back from the road.”
In addition to the main building, three other structures were associated with the brothel: a kitchen; a two-story, house-like structure; and a long low building, from which the man who’d left the brothel led his horse, indicating it was the stable. He mounted and rode away without ever looking in Hywel’s and John’s direction.
John headed towards the stable, lifting a hand as he approached the boy, who stood in the entrance to take his bridle.
Hywel dismounted and led Glew under the eaves himself, shaking out his cloak before entering because the rain had become torrential. Once inside, without waiting for permission, Hywel strode down the center aisle, past a dozen occupied stalls, looking from one side to the other until he reached the second to the last stall on the left. It was without shock or even surprise that he recognized Gareth’s horse, Braith. Gwen’s horse was housed in a nearby stall.
Braith whickered gently at him, recognizing him, and even as Hywel’s mind galloped down pathways he would rather not think about, he patted the horse’s neck reassuringly. Hywel himself was far from reassured. Gareth and Gwen had to be here, but from what Meilyr had said, Gareth had not planned to take Gwen inside the brothel.
Then John approached, having given up his horse to the stable boy. “Are we really staying? Gareth and Gwen must have entered the brothel, else why leave their horses?”
“No, we are not staying.” Hywel pointed with his chin to his friends’ horses. “Braith still wears her saddle, which means Gareth didn’t care for her before he left her here. That is unlike him and would have aroused my suspicions if they weren’t already as high as they could go.”
“Where could he have gone?”
Hywel pictured the yard outside the stable. “We’ll search every corner of this property. Get your men. Gareth and Gwen have to be here somewhere.” He shivered, less from the rain dripping from his hair onto his neck than at the thought of his friends in trouble. Then his brow furrowed. “Meilyr mentioned an old mill where Gwen was supposed to wait for Gareth. Do you know it?”
“I-I don’t know exactly—”
Hywel didn’t wait for John to finish stuttering his uncertainty but strode back towards the stable boy. “Did you see the owners of those horses come in?” He indicated Gareth’s and Gwen’s horses.
“No, sir. They were here when I arrived.”
“And when was that?”
“Less than an hour ago.”
Hywel stepped closer. “Someone mentioned an old mill nearby. Where is it?”
“I don’t know of any mill—” he broke off, his expression belying his words.
“Where?”
“Out the back is a track that goes west to the old mill race—”
But Hywel was already heading for the door.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Gareth
Gareth woke with a moan and a splitting headache. He tried to sit up, but Gwen was beside him in an instant, her hands on his shoulders and her face close to his.
“Hush. I don’t want them to know you’re awake.”
Even as Gareth blinked his eyes clear, he nodded his understanding. He didn’t need the bandage around his head to spur his recollection of being ambushed as they left the woods in front of the mill, and with that memory, a searing pain shot through his left shoulder and back. “How long was I out?”
“Not long. It’s been a quarter of an hour or so since the men left.”
Gareth’s eyes cleared some more, and with a few controlled breaths, the pain in his shoulder and in his head lessened to manageable levels. The room was dimly lit by light seeping through the cracks in a nearby wall. He could see well enough to note the general shape of it, and that they weren’t alone. “What do we have here?”
“Slaves,” a man’s voice spoke without inflection from somewhere to Gareth’s left. “Us too, if we don’t get out of here.”
Gareth turned his head in the direction of the sound to find the spitting image of the drawing in his pocket staring back at him. Conall was leaned up against the wall, his legs sprawled out before him and an expression on his face not far off from how Gareth was feeling.
“You’re Conall.” Gareth could hardly believe it.
“He didn’t murder Roger Carter, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Gwen said. “In fact, he doesn’t know anything about any murders, not even the girl, though he can make a good guess about who she was.”
Conall flopped a hand towards the dozen women who sat on the floor together a few paces away. “She was one of them, brought into Shrewsbury to display to a client. She escaped. Your wife says one of these men murdered her, though I can’t see the point in that. They didn’t kill me because they can sell any person for some amount of money.” He looked Gareth up and down. “Admittedly, they got closer with you, but you’re not dead either.”
“They plan to sell us?” Gareth was unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice.
Conall snorted. “They can sell every one of us to a master, who will never believe, nor care if he did believe, what our lives were before.”
“Which was what, in your case?” Gareth said.
“I serve Diarmait mac Murchada, King of Leinster, sent by him to discover who has been taking women from his lands to sell to foreigners.” Conall bent infinitesimally from the waist, though even that small movement seemed to pain him.
Gareth could sympathize with
the pain—and the reason for him being here. Although Conall’s Irish forbears had enslaved their enemies with the same enthusiasm as Gareth’s had, in recent years, both nations had come to see that the practice created more problems than it solved, and kings had thought better of enriching the traders in the Dublin slave market with the blood of their own people. Here in England, the Norman kings, at the behest of the Church in Rome, had sought to stamp out the slave trade wherever their writ stretched. King Stephen was not going to be pleased to learn that slavery had been alive and well in one of his market towns.
Still, Gareth wasn’t prepared to take Conall entirely at his word. “Leinster has traded in slaves and captives for generations beyond count. Why would Diarmait care?”
Conall stared hard at Gareth, though because he was in so much pain, Conall’s eyes were the only part of him that moved. Then his lips twisted. “Whatever our past history, Diarmait no longer countenances slave-taking.”
“How did you end up here?” Gareth said.
That prompted a mocking laugh. “I posed as a trader—as a possible source of women. Unfortunately, I must have given myself away—” he broke off as sound of a door banging came from the other side of the wall.
They all looked at each other, a little wide-eyed, afraid that their captors were returning already.
“We have to get out of here,” Gwen said.
“You have a plan for doing that?” Gareth said.
“I have a plan now that you’re awake.” Gwen tipped her head in the direction of the wall behind her, in which a door was set. The orientation of the room indicated that the door led to the outside.
“One would presume that it’s locked,” Gareth said.
“Yes, but the floor is dirt, isn’t it?” Gwen said. “And if I’m not very much mistaken, the bottom panel is rotting from contact with the damp earth.”
Gareth’s eyes narrowed, trying to see what she was talking about, but the room was too dimly lit. He shifted to rise to his feet, having momentarily forgotten about his wounds, and nearly screamed from pain. He tasted bile and fought to control both it and the pain.
The Renegade Merchant Page 21