Gareth stood up and left the room. He had no more to say to Huw. The casual way he’d murdered Roger made Gareth sick to his stomach. He felt the same way about Martin, who’d ruined life after life without thought to anyone but himself and the weight of his own purse.
The investigation was over. It was time to go home.
Chapter Thirty-two
Hywel
“There you are, you truant!” King Owain bounded out the front door of Aber’s main hall, cloaked and booted as if for a ride. “You’re just in time.” He caught Hywel up in an enormous hug, lifting him off his feet.
Truly unable to believe the transformation in his father, Hywel took a moment to return the embrace. “In time for what, Father?”
The king set Hywel back on his feet. “We are off in a moment to the marshalling of men at Denbigh. An attack on my sons, even if unsuccessful, cannot go answered.”
That had Hywel gaping at his father even more. Rhun’s death had gone unanswered for four months, but an attack on Hywel and Cadell couldn’t wait even a week to be countered with an army? Part of Hywel was gratified at his father’s obvious concern, but part was distrustful too, and he suspected that something more than love was behind his father’s rush to war.
King Owain frowned as he took in the demeanor of his obviously weary son. “We expected you two days ago. What is the disposition of Madog’s men?”
“He isn’t coming, or if he is, the men of Powys don’t know about it.” Hywel gestured towards Conall, who’d ridden with them from Shrewsbury, intending to introduce him, but King Owain’s eyes strayed beyond him to where Meilyr and Gwalchmai had dismounted behind the others.
“Meilyr!” King Owain strode towards the bard. “Don’t tell me you’ve been all the way to Shrewsbury too? My hall has been empty of music. We’ve had to prepare for war without the inspiration of the brave deeds of our ancestors.”
Meilyr stared at the king, as uncomprehending as Hywel had been, and then uncharacteristically stuttered, “I apologize, sire. I went to—” That was as far as he got before he gave up, realizing that the only sensible reply was simply to bow before the king.
“Never mind.” King Owain waved a hand in the air. “Did you find what you were looking for?”
“Yes, my lord,” Meilyr said.
“Good, good. You will come with us to Denbigh, of course.”
“Of course.” Though Meilyr shot a worried glance at Hywel as he spoke.
Hywel didn’t know that he had ever helped Meilyr with a single thing in his life, but he obliged his old teacher by drawing his father’s attention away from the bard. “Meilyr might have found what he was looking for in Shrewsbury, Father, but I didn’t.”
The king’s brow furrowed as he gazed at his son.
The open courtyard wasn’t the place to have this discussion, but Hywel stepped closer and told the truth anyway. “I sent Gareth to Shrewsbury in hopes of discovering the whereabouts of Cadwaladr. He had definitely been there, and even now is in league with Madog in more ways than one—”
“Tell me on the way!” King Owain spun away from Hywel, striding towards his horse, whose head was being held by Gruffydd.
Their eyes met, and they both shrugged. Gruffydd had done exactly what he’d said he’d do, and Hywel had no cause to complain about the outcome. Gareth and Gwen were looking at the king with the similar stunned expressions, islands of inactivity in the midst of the marshalling men. Conall looked merely amused, which seemed to be his natural state.
For Hywel’s part, he was having trouble absorbing the fact that not only was the king better, but he was leaving Aber, and he expected Hywel and his companions to come with him. Hywel could hardly have hoped for a better scene to return to than this, with the possible exception of the complete absence of Cristina, his stepmother.
She stood on the top step of the hall, and he didn’t have to see her glare to feel it boring into him. Cristina didn’t like him. She was supremely jealous of the standing of her own sons, who were well down the line of heirs to the throne of Gwynedd. Still, Hywel gave her a nod, though if he’d been a good stepson he would have bowed.
Gwen brushed her shoulder against his arm. “If looks could kill, my lord.”
Hywel just managed to stop himself from glancing at his stepmother again. “I can’t see how she had anything to do with Rhun’s death or with the attack on Cadell and me at Dinas Bran, but I have no doubt that she would not have grieved my loss.”
“Nor Cynan’s, Madoc’s, Cadell’s, Iorwerth’s, or the loss of any other son who stands in the way of Dafydd’s patrimony,” Gwen said. “We must be very careful from now on.”
Nodding agreement, because he’d known it already, even if he’d never articulated the fear, Hywel boosted Gwen back onto her horse and mounted his own. Only then did he turn to look back at the door to the hall.
Cristina had already disappeared inside, without so much as a raised hand to the company, much less a kiss goodbye for his father. In the past, she’d been very careful to treat the king with constant affection, in between their screaming bouts, of course. At those times, Cristina’s ill humor would have roused his father’s temper, but that didn’t seem to be happening today either. Hywel had never wanted his father to marry Cristina in the first place, so he could only cheer the king’s determination to leave.
Gareth frowned and said in an undertone. “Could your father truly be putting her aside?”
Hywel watched the king. “I would never have dared think it, but that’s what it looks like to me too.”
For a heartbeat, Hywel’s father eyed the spot Cristina had vacated. Then he turned his gaze on Hywel himself and motioned that he should come to him. Hywel obeyed, and his heart lifted at his father’s genuine smile at his approach.
“Come, son,” King Owain said when Hywel reached him, “It’s long past time to go.”
The End
Historical Note
In the end of that year died Rhun, son of Owain, being the most praiseworthy young man of the British nation, whom his noble parents had honourably reared. For he was fair of form and aspect, kind in conversation, and affable to all; seen foremost in gifts; courteous among his family; high bearing among strangers, and fierce towards his enemies; entertaining to his friends; tall of stature, and fair of complexion, with curly yellow hair, long countenance; with eyes somewhat blue, full and playful; he had a long and thick neck, broad breast, long waist, large thighs, long legs, which were slender above his feet; his feet were long, and his toes were straight. When the report of his lamentable death came to his father Owain, he was afflicted and dejected so much, that, nothing could cheer him, neither the splendour of a kingdom, nor amusement, nor the sprightly converse of good men, nor the exhibition of valuable things; but God, Who foreseeth all things in His accustomed manner, commiserated the British nation, lest it should perish like a ship without a pilot, and preserved Owain as a prince over it. For before insufferable sorrow had affected the mind of the prince, he was restored to sudden joy, through the providence of God.
There was a certain castle called Gwyddgrug (Mold), which had been frequently attacked, without its falling; and when the liege men of Owain and his family came to fight against it, neither the nature of the place nor its strength could resist them, till the castle was burned and destroyed, after killing some of the garrison, and taking others, and putting them in prison. And when Owain, our prince, heard of that, he became relieved from all pain, and from every sorrowing thought, and recovered his accustomed energy.
-- Brut y Tywysogion
(The Chronicle of the Princes of Wales)
In addition to the above quote from the Brut y Tywysogion, this book is full of bits of historical information I didn’t know anything about before a few years ago when I started writing the Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mysteries. I didn’t even know that the Danes ruled Dublin for hundreds of years, and I especially did not know that they ran an extensive slave trade out of the Dublin slave
markets.
Slavery predated the Danes, of course. Slaves were taken in raids through history, and the Romans were huge practitioners of slavery. Before the Danes took Dublin, the Irish raided their neighbors and the Welsh coast for slaves as a means of subduing their enemy. Often these slaves would be ransomed for gold or land. The Danes transformed slavery into an actual trade after they established Dublin. Essentially, the framework of slavery and slave-taking changed from having mostly to do with power relations between lords to being about money.
In The Renegade Merchant, I mention that King Owain’s father, Gruffydd, in the late 11th century, partially paid for the retaking of Wales with slaves, and he was hardly the only one. But by the 12th century, slavery was on the wane. Slave-taking became far less common, and since the Normans had made slavery illegal—in large part thanks to the influence of the Church—the Dublin slave market went into decline and then closed altogether.
Another subject about which I knew nothing before delving heavily into the twelfth century was the history of prostitution. It is, of course, said to be the oldest profession, and has taken many forms over the millennia. Again, the Romans were proud proponents of it, and the existence of brothels was legal in England (albeit frowned upon by the Church), even to the point that the Bishop of Winchester in 1162 was granted the right to license prostitutes and brothels in London.
Finally, there is Shrewsbury, a border town in the March of Wales. Much of what I knew about Shrewsbury before starting to do my own research came from Ellis Peters and her wonderful and beautifully written Brother Cadfael books. The Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mysteries have now moved beyond the time in which her books are set, but many elements remain the same, including the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul and its Abbot Radulfus, and the town of Shrewsbury itself.
I would like to take particular note of the wall which surrounds the town in the Brother Cadfael books and in The Renegade Merchant. My research indicates that the town wasn’t given a right to murage (which means to charge a tax to build a town wall) until 1218 when King Henry ordered the town to make itself defensible. That isn’t to say that it didn’t have a town wall earlier—just that there is no mention of it. I chose to harmonize the specifics of the town of Shrewsbury in my book with what Ellis Peter’s described in hers.
Also—a note on the use of the word villain. Nobody was more surprised than I to discover that the word used in the context of The Renegade Merchant, has its origin in villainy from Anglo-French vilanie and Old French vilenie, meaning to be of low character, unworthy act, disgrace, or degradation. This definition dates to a hundred years before its use as villein, meaning a feudal class of half-free peasants (c. 1200 v. c. 1300). I’d always thought the origin was the other way around.
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Keep reading for a sample of Exiles in Time from the After Cilmeri series, also by Sarah Woodbury.
Sample Exiles in Time
November 2016
Cardiff, Wales
Callum
“We found them.” It was Agent Jones, the new man, who so far had done a better job of keeping his composure in the current crisis than most of his superiors.
“Where?” Callum said, holding his dripping hands above the sink. Callum’s employer, the British internal security service known as MI-5, no longer stocked paper towels. Callum needed to run the drying machine, but the conversation with Jones came first.
“Fueling up at a petrol station south of Builth Wells,” said Jones.
“So we have them,” Callum said, not as a question.
Jones paused before speaking. Callum sensed him arranging and rearranging his sentences in his head to find a way to tell the truth in the most efficient and least painful manner. “We didn’t catch the image in real time, sir. It’s from an hour ago.”
Callum slammed his fist onto the counter. “What road were they on?”
“The A470, sir.”
“I want to see the images. Set it up. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“Yes, sir.”
Callum dried his hands and was back in the conference room within the allotted time.
Agent Jones stood at attention to the right of the screen that filled one wall. The images of their fugitives took up half the space: Meg Lloyd; her husband, Llywelyn Gruffydd (who claimed to be the last Prince of Wales); and Goronwy, whose surname they hadn’t yet determined.
“So they’re headed back to Chepstow.” Callum nodded to Jones, who tapped a square in one corner of the screen showing a map of Wales. He highlighted the southeastern portion of the country and enlarged it to fill the screen.
“They must have taken that trackway from Devil’s Bridge,” said Agent Natasha Clark, pointing to the unnamed road that ran through the Elan Valley. “No cameras, which is why it took so long to find them.”
“Not much of anything out there but sheep,” said Jones, “though at least the road is paved.”
“It couldn’t have been fun in the dark,” Natasha said. “They must have felt desperate to take that road.”
“We made them desperate,” Callum said.
The initial pickup had been handled badly, not by Callum, but by Thomas Smythe, a fellow security service agent. Although the file on Meg was Callum’s, and had been for six months, his boss had bypassed him for the lead on the case because Smythe spoke Welsh. Smythe didn’t know anything about people, however, and had misjudged his quarry badly, going in heavy when he should have gone in light.
“They could be heading anywhere, not necessarily Chepstow,” Callum said.
“If they didn’t go north, Chepstow Castle is the most logical choice,” said Jones. “They’re trying to reverse what they did to come here.”
According to Meg’s brother-in-law, Ted, Meg had spent the last few years living in medieval Wales. She and her companions had started out earlier in the week in the Middle Ages, jumped from Chepstow’s balcony that overlooked the Wye River, and gone from 1288 Chepstow to 2016 Aberystwyth in the blink of an eye.
“Does that sound as crazy to you as it does to me?” The last member of the team, John Driscoll, kicked back in his chair.
“From their point of view, it makes a certain kind of sense,” said Jones.
Snorting his disgust, Driscoll tossed the papers he’d been holding onto the conference table. “A pregnant woman and two old men, one of whom has a heart condition, are running circles around us. How in the hell have they eluded us?”
“While Meg might be from this world originally,” Natasha said, “Llywelyn and Goronwy are not. That reaches to the heart of our problem: they don’t think like we do.”
“I wouldn’t have taken you for a true believer, Natasha,” Driscoll said.
Natasha gave her fellow agent a sour look. “I’m not. Just keeping my options open.”
“I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion. As if that’s not crazy right there.” Driscoll mumbled the words under his breath as he typed into his laptop.
“If we could focus on the mission—” Callum said.
“Of course, sir,” Natasha said. “All I’m saying is that if Meg is telling the truth—”
“Would you rather I put you on to infiltrating those Welsh nationalists in St. David’s?” Callum said. “You could reveal everything you know about the return of the last Prince of Wales and they’d welcome you to their meetings with open arms.”
That made Natasha laugh. “No, no. I’ll take this case any day over that.”
Callum checked his watch and then pointed to Jones. “Keep watching the cameras. If they’re in Chepstow, or getting close, we need to know.” He looked at the rest of his team
. “I think we all should be involved in this.”
Driscoll closed the lid of his computer and got to his feet. “I’ll get Ted ready.” He left the room.
Callum turned to Natasha and Jones. “I don’t want to hear talk about anything but the task before us. We have a job to do, and we’re going to do it.”
“Yes, sir,” Jones and Natasha said together.
The SUV pulled into the parking lot of Chepstow Castle a few minutes before seven in the morning.
Natasha rubbed her hands together. “It looks cold.”
“It’s November in Wales. What did you expect?” Callum unlatched the door and discovered that the driver had parked directly over a puddle. Having just responded curtly to Natasha, Callum refrained from chewing out the driver. They were all going to get a lot wetter than this before the day was over. Callum was still dressed in his regular work clothes: business suit, trench coat, and respectable shoes. Half an hour ago when they’d left Cardiff, he hadn’t felt he could stop by his flat to collect his rain boots and hat.
The men who made up Callum’s security team wore Kevlar under black trench coats. While it was standard policy to wear armor during operations like this, Callum hadn’t seen the point for himself. As far as Callum was concerned, nobody was shooting anyone today, and certainly not pregnant women or men who thought they were nobles from medieval Wales. They weren’t a threat to anyone but themselves, and even that was debatable.
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