Gwen didn’t care if he was avoiding work and didn’t blame him for wanting to cool off in the river. “On our way here we passed a water hole full of caterwauling local boys. You’d been among them?”
Teilo nodded.
“My boys would have loved it.” Gwen gave a rueful smile at the thought. Gareth had formally adopted their two wayward charges, Llelo and Dai. The adoption meant they were now sons of a knight and no longer destined to be herders like their grandfather or a trader like their father. Consequently, their training to be soldiers had begun.
Since neither Gareth nor Gwen had kin of their own to provide guidance for the boys, Prince Hywel had arranged for them to fall under the care of Cynan, his twenty-three-year-old half-brother. Cynan had been fostered by King Owain’s sister, who was married to the King of Powys. Recently, King Owain had made Cynan custodian of Denbigh Castle, north of Rhuddlan. From there, he and his two younger brothers, Cadell and Madoc, protected eastern Gwynedd for their father. Dai and Llelo had been welcomed into the garrison, and Gareth was confident they would learn to be knights there.
It had been two months since she’d seen them, and Gwen missed her sons. She planned to visit Denbigh upon her return to Gwynedd in the autumn.
She motioned with her hand to encourage Teilo to continue his story. “You were walking by and …?”
“And I saw him, bobbing about in the reeds,” Teilo said.
“Face down or face up?” Gwen said.
Teilo’s face went blank for a moment, but then he said, “Face down.”
She needed to ask these kinds of questions, even if they appalled the men, so she tried to ignore their shock. She looked at the two monks. “You two retrieved him?”
They nodded.
“Can you show me exactly where he was floating?” she said.
Prince Rhun answered for them. “He was under the trees, over there in an eddy.”
One of the monks then pointed east, to the opposite side of the pond from the mill. The Rheidol River flowed from east to west, emptying ultimately into the sea. Upstream, a portion of the river had been diverted into a man-dug channel to form a pond here, in order to provide a steady supply of water to the water wheel that ran the mill.
Gwen turned back to Prior Rhys. “While I examine the body, would you mind following the others around the edge of the pond to see if you can discover the place where the dead man went in? It would be good to know the exact spot.” Gwen remembered from an earlier investigation how uncomfortable the prior had been to witness her examination of a corpse. She would avoid discomfiting him this time if she could.
A smile hovered around Prior Rhys’s lips—perhaps in acknowledgement of what she was trying to spare him—but he nodded and gestured to the two monks that they should lead the way. The journeyman begged off, saying he had to get back inside the mill. Gwen watched him go, telling herself not to distrust the man just because he was resentful of his position.
Teilo went with the monks, but before Prior Rhys himself moved away, Gwen caught the edge of his sleeve. “I don’t want to tell you what you already know, but Gareth would want me to say this: try to make sure they don’t trample whatever evidence has been left.”
A smile twitched at the corner of Rhys’s mouth.
“Sorry.” Gwen looked down, chastising herself for even mentioning it. Prior Rhys had been a soldier and spy before she’d been born. She had no business telling him what to do.
“I value your counsel, Gwen,” he said. “I will do my best.”
“Thank you.”
Prior Rhys turned away to follow the other men around the millpond, and Gwen eyed Prince Rhun, who was hovering over her. “Are you ready for this?”
“I’ve seen dead bodies before, Gwen.” He looked at her carefully. “You must know that I have killed men.”
“Yes, but—” Gwen broke off as she thought of how best to say what she meant. Rhun had killed men in war. Gareth had too, of course. But murdering a man—and the sight of a murdered man—was different in both thought and deed, and a man who could kill another man in the heat of battle might find himself squeamish at the sight of the same man dead beside a millpond on an August afternoon. “I know you’ve seen murdered men before, but it’s a beautiful day and maybe you have other tasks that need your attention.”
“One—” Prince Rhun held up his right forefinger, “I’m not leaving you alone here with a dead body and men you don’t know, and two—” up went the second finger, “I’m interested. I have witnessed the beginning of investigations before—Newcastle comes to mind—but I had other duties there that prevented me from seeing the whole of it.”
Gwen took in a breath and let it out, accepting that Rhun meant to stay and deciding not to worry about it. “If you mean it, we might as well get started.”
“What do we do first?” Prince Rhun said.
“First of all, we should acknowledge that this man didn’t drown.”
Chapter Two
Gwen
“He wasn’t murdered for his money either,” Gwen said, though it was too soon to declare the why of his death, which had to come after the way of it.
“What? How do you know any of that?” Rhun looked from the body to Gwen and back again.
“My lord, look at the whole of him. He wears a threadbare coat, his soles are thin, despite the three boot makers who have taken stalls at the fair, and his purse is flat and still tied to his belt.” Gwen crouched beside the body and carefully removed the purse in order to peer inside it. It contained nothing much: a bit of string, a few small coins, and a fire starter. Nothing to kill a man over, nor anything to indicate the man’s identity. Rather than encumber herself with it, she tied the purse loosely back onto his belt.
“If I take a step back, I can see what you mean about his wealth,” Rhun said, “especially about the purse. But why do you say he didn’t drown? How can you tell that just by looking at him?”
“A drowned man would have spent days in the pond, much of it on the bottom. This man hasn’t done that.” Gwen gestured up and down the length of the body. “If he’d spent any time in contact with rocks or debris, his nose, forehead, and chin, along with his knees and the back of the hands, would show evidence of it.”
“So you’re saying the man was dead before he went into the water?” The prince was looking at her intently.
“Dead men float; drowned men sink,” Gwen said. “A drowning man dies because he pulls water into his lungs—he breaths it in—and once he dies from it, the weight of the water inside him causes his body to sink. He ends up on the bottom of whatever body of water he fell into. It is only after some days have passed that fumes inside the body cause it to bloat, and float, and eventually rise to the surface again. It’s like blowing up a pig’s bladder into a ball for children to play with.”
Gwen glanced up at Prince Rhun, whose mouth had formed an ‘oh’, though no sound came out. She plowed on. “In this instance, this man’s body is stiff with rigor, which happens within half a day of death. That’s not enough time for any real decay or bloating to occur. As you said, he died before he went into the pond.”
Rhun finally managed to speak, and when he did, his voice was normal in tone. “I’m guessing the murderer didn’t know this, or he might have found a different means of disposing of the body.”
“I would say you’re right,” Gwen said.
Rhun’s brow furrowed. “What if he’d died naturally and just happened to fall into the water on his own?”
“You mean, perhaps his heart failed or illness overtook him as he was standing on the edge of the water?” Gwen said.
Rhun’s lip curled. “When you say it that way, it sounds foolish. Nobody dies that quickly.”
Gwen put out a hand to the prince, not quite touching his arm. Rhun thought she was mocking him, but she hadn’t meant to. “As I said, the issue is whether he was breathing when he went into the millpond. If he was still alive, even if he was dying, his lungs would
have taken in water. He would have sunk to the bottom, and after a few days there, he would not look like this man does.”
“He would look much worse. I can see that.” Rhun nodded. “Can you tell how long ago he died?”
“He is very stiff.” She gently lifted one of the man’s arms, though it didn’t want to move.
“I would have thought soaking in the water would prevent him from stiffening up,” Rhun said, and then made an appeasing gesture of his own. “And don’t look at me the way you did before.”
“How did I look at you before?”
“Pityingly,” Rhun said. “I’m asking questions because I want to know what you know.”
Gwen looked down at her hands, taking a moment to compose herself. Then she raised her head. “I apologize, my lord. I didn’t mean to offend you. And I certainly don’t pity you. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in what I’m seeing that I don’t think about what I’m saying. Truthfully, it is helpful to me for you to ask these questions because it clarifies what’s in my own mind.”
Rhun gave a small smile, looking pleased, and Gwen was hugely relieved to see that she hadn’t offended him, or at least he wasn’t offended any longer.
She went back to the body. “I would guess that he died in the early hours of the morning, roughly half a day ago. Rigor will vary depending on the temperature of the water. Right now, the water here is about as warm as it ever gets, but it still isn’t warmer than the air.”
Rhun leaned out and put a hand into the pond. Shaking the excess water off his fingers, he wiped them on his breeches. “The river flows down from the mountains. Even with this heat, the millpond carries a chill.”
“He probably would have decomposed faster had he not been thrown in.” Then Gwen beckoned to the prince, since he looked as if he was about to move away, thinking they were done. “There’s more, my lord.”
“More?”
Gwen held back a smile, knowing he wasn’t going to like what she was about to do—and opened the man’s eyelids with her forefinger and thumb. The revulsion on Rhun’s face was almost comical, and he made an involuntary motion with his hand, as if to suggest that she shouldn’t have touched the dead man’s face.
Gwen ignored his reaction. “You can tell a great deal about how a man died from the condition of the eyes.”
Rhun swallowed down whatever protest he’d been about to make and joined her, kneeling in the dirt beside the body. Beads of sweat dampened the hair at his temples, but another quick glance at him told Gwen that he’d been telling the truth earlier: he was hot, as they all were, but he wasn’t squeamish.
“When a man drowns, tiny red or brownish spots form in the eyes. Gareth thinks the change has something to do with what happens when a person is deprived of breath. He’s seen it also in the eyes of men who’ve been strangled. Regardless, this man doesn’t have those spots.”
Rhun gazed intently into the dead man’s face. The prince didn’t seem to have anything to say, so Gwen continued, “Did the monks close his eyes?”
“They did. His eyes were open when he came out of the water. How did you know?”
“When eyes dry out, a splotchy brown line forms in the whites,” Gwen said. “I’m not seeing that here. Nor have his eyes turned opaque. I’m guessing that this man died somewhere very close by and was put in the water immediately after.”
As Gwen let go of the dead man’s eyelids, Rhun reached out a hand and widened them again. His revulsion seemed to have left him.
“But even without all that, I know the man didn’t die from drowning.” Intentionally keeping her face expressionless so Rhun couldn’t see the triumph in her face at her discovery, Gwen gingerly poked her finger through a slit in the man’s shirt, right under his left breast. “He was stabbed in the chest.”
Rhun bent forward, lifting the shirt to show the wound beneath. “You’re right.” Then he frowned. “Why is there so little blood on his clothing? The front of his shirt is stained with mud and blood, but not nearly as much as I might have expected from a stab wound.”
“That is very observant of you, my lord,” Gwen said, “and I can explain that too.”
“I can’t wait to hear it.”
Gwen just managed not to smirk at his sarcasm. “You must have noticed that when you stab a man, if you keep the blade in his body, blood doesn’t really flow from the wound until you remove it. The sword—or the arrow—acts as a plug.”
“I have seen that,” Rhun said. “I may not know much about murder, but I’ve seen death in battle. Usually men don’t die quickly, especially from such a small stab wound. And yet, this man barely bled at all.”
“You’re right,” Gwen said, “but if the murderer waited until the man was dead to remove the blade, the blood would hardly have flowed from the wound. The instant the heart stops, the body stops bleeding. And if he fell on his back, and the murderer let the body set for a moment, the blood would have pooled away from the wound. Then he could have put him into the pond face first. The blood near the wound would have done little more than seep out the gash, and the water would have washed most of that away.”
Gwen was glad to see that Rhun was looking at her with an expression that was closer to awe than horror. “You’re amazing, Gwen.”
She tsked through her teeth. “Gareth would have realized he hadn’t drowned within moments of looking at him too. The blade was thin and narrow, but you can’t hide a death wound like thi—” She broke off with a gasp she couldn’t suppress as she bent to study the wound more closely. It very much resembled one she’d seen before—on the road to Dolwyddelan, three years ago almost to the day.
“What is it, Gwen? What’s wrong?” Rhun was looking at her with concern.
She shook herself. “Nothing, my lord. It’s nothing.”
“It isn’t nothing. You practically jumped out of your skin,” Rhun said.
Gwen suppressed the impatient growl that rose to the back of her throat. Rhun might not have much experience observing the details of murdered men, but he had always been good at reading people. Gwen traced the line of the wound, her finger a hair’s-breadth above it because in this instance she didn’t want to touch the skin if she could help it. “Do you see the way the wound is ragged here? The blade had a notch in it.”
Rhun leaned closer to look, putting his nose six inches from the man’s chest. “I see what you mean, though if you hadn’t shown me, I wouldn’t have noticed.” He paused. “Murder, like you said.”
“This is definitely murder.” Gwen sat back on her heels. Hywel wasn’t going to be happy to learn that someone had been murdered on the eve of his festival, unless he himself had done it. Her heart sped up a little to think about it. Please God, let it not have been him.
Rhun rose to his feet, and she looked up at him. “My lord, we need to keep this quiet if we can—for as long as we can.”
Rhun looked down at her. “The man is dead. How do we keep that quiet?”
“I didn’t mean his death,” Gwen said. “I meant that it was murder. Everyone will believe that he drowned, and for now, it might be better if the murderer didn’t know that we know that he didn’t.”
Rhun laughed under his breath. Gwen didn’t know what he was laughing at, so she hurried to explain. “Prince Hywel taught me to give out as little information as possible. If someone knows more about the death than he should, he might be the murderer.”
“If the murderer is here for the festival, he might have hoped to have been long gone before the body surfaced.” Rhun said.
Gwen chewed on her lower lip, thinking that the prince was looking a little too fascinatedly at the body. Simply because they’d often been called to investigate it, Hywel, Gwen, and Gareth had learned the ins and outs of murder, but there had been something wholesome about Rhun’s unfamiliarity with it. Gwen was starting to regret besmirching Rhun’s innocence with her long lecture about the differences between a drowned man and a murdered one. And if Prince Hywel had anything to do with the murd
er, it would be best if she could find a way to keep his brother far, far away from it.
For now, that wasn’t going to be possible, especially since Prior Rhys appeared at the edge of the trees a moment later and waved at them.
“Let’s get one of the monks back here to guard the body,” Prince Rhun said. “It looks like the prior has something to tell us.”
Chapter Three
Rhun
Although Rhun had participated in several of these investigations at which Hywel excelled, he’d never been one to trek around in the mud looking for clues to the killer. As he and Gwen headed around the edge of the pond, following Prior Rhys, Rhun truly appreciated for the first time the necessity for speed, discretion, and the careful placement of feet.
The undergrowth around the pond was thick and prolific, with vegetation everywhere he looked. This week of heat had been preceded by a month of rain, and the woodlands were a long way from drying out. As Rhun stumped through the ferns and bushes on a well-worn path, Rhun found himself admiring Prior Rhys’s skill in preventing Teilo and the monks from trampling whatever evidence might have been left behind. At the same time, he knew exactly what the prior had done to achieve it: he had a way of looking at a man that sent shivers down his spine. And if Rhun, a prince of Gwynedd, felt that way, one would be hard pressed to find an illiterate peasant who could withstand it for more than a few heartbeats.
“What have you discovered?” Gwen said when Prior Rhys stopped in a small open space near the water’s edge. She, apparently, remained unintimidated.
Prior Rhys indicated the ground in front of him, giving no indication he objected to Gwen’s straightforward demand. “Some blood and scuffed earth.”
“What do they tell you?” Gwen said. “It’s pretty clear from the body that the man was stabbed.”
The Unlikely Spy Page 2