“He doesn’t have to know that it won’t mean what it usually means,” Rhun said in Welsh.
Hywel’s eyes narrowed at his brother, suppressing a sudden anger that what Rhun had said was all too true. His reputation among the ladies was well known. While he hadn’t always been as circumspect with his women as he might have, he was growing wiser in his old age. Hywel took in a breath and let his shoulders relax. Rhun was right. It was likely that Hywel’s reputation had preceded him and would serve him in this instance.
All things being equal, Hywel didn’t care one bit about what any Norman might think of him, but he hated to feel at a disadvantage or to be looked down upon. It was bad enough that among Normans, Rhun and he possessed a lesser status because they were born illegitimate. At Newcastle, however, the circumstances of their birth were never mentioned because Earl Robert was a bastard too, and that put them all on equal footing, at least in this.
Hywel gestured to Amaury. “Lead on.”
Amaury did, taking them into the basement of the northwest tower of the curtain wall. As they approached the entrance to the tunnel, the two soldiers who guarded it rose to their feet and stood at attention. They’d been sitting at a table. At the sight of Amaury, one of them said, “Sir.”
“Has anyone passed this way on your watch?” Amaury said.
“No, sir,” the man said.
Hywel looked closer at the man. He’d been looking down, which wasn’t unusual for a subordinate. “How long have you been on duty?”
“Since none, my lord,” the man said, again with downcast eyes.
“We would like to pass this way,” Amaury said. “No one is to follow us, is that clear?”
“Yes, my lord,” the man said.
The second man had remained silent, his chin up, staring at the wall behind Amaury. He was inordinately tall, which meant that Hywel, who wasn’t a short man, had to look up to see into his face as he passed him. The man kept his face impassive. Hywel walked by them and entered the tunnel.
“These English lie too well,” he said to Gwen in Welsh.
“It’s because they’re used to it,” Gwen said.
They’d both been speaking in a low voice, but even so, their voices had echoed down the passage. If someone else was down here, he and Gwen had given away their position.
“The time the guard gave us tells us nothing,” Gareth said, overhearing, “since we don’t know what time Mari and Prior Rhys left his room.”
“We know it was after he sent Tomos to Gareth,” Gwen said. “I wish he could have spoken to any of you who remained at the castle. Where did you spend the day such that he couldn’t find you?”
Hywel let out a sharp burst of air, cursing under his breath for the hundredth time since he’d discovered Mari’s absence. “Evan watched my back as I wooed different Norman lords. Rhun and Gruffydd rode to the Earl of Chester’s camp and returned to the castle only moments before you arrived. With everyone coming and going so often, I can see why Tomos gave up and rode to find Gareth, but I wish he’d tried harder to find me.”
“He’s just a boy,” Gwen said. “My hope is that Mari and Prior Rhys simply gave up on his return and left the castle of their own volition.”
“That is my hope too,” Hywel said.
The tunnel looked nothing like the tunnels underneath Aber Castle. Although Hywel’s father maintained them and kept them clear of debris, he couldn’t keep back the damp, and the ceiling ran only a few inches above Hywel’s head. Here, the tunnel was natural, not dug out of the dirt, made by God and of solid stone. The ceiling arched above Hywel’s head, curving this way and that as the tunnel meandered downwards from the entrance.
“You said there was more than one passage?” Gwen said.
“I did.” Amaury plucked a lantern from where it hung on the wall and handed it to Gareth while he lit a second one. “But only one comes out the other side.”
“I assume you know the right one?” Gareth said.
“I do,” Amaury said.
“Before we begin, allow me to walk a little ahead and check for footprints,” Gareth said.
He held his lantern and cat-walked forward twenty paces, holding the light close to the ground. He went a little further and then came back. “I can’t be sure what I’m seeing because I want to see footprints. I’ll walk ahead with Amaury because once we pass by, our feet will obscure the prints of those who went before us.”
Clear water dripped from the ceiling, reflecting the light of the lanterns off the golden stones that surrounded them. The companions followed Amaury for a quarter of an hour, twisting through this tunnel and that before finally heading upwards again. Hywel could hear Gareth counting his paces in front of him. For Hywel’s part, he’d already built a mental map of their journey and could have returned on his own, even in the dark. His senses told him that the tunnel had skirted the village of Newcastle to the west and come out the other side.
Amaury lowered his lantern and stopped. Ahead, a faint light cut through the darkness. “We’re almost there.”
“I haven’t seen any sign so far of Mari and Prior Rhys,” Gareth said. “I apologize, my lord, if this was a fool’s errand.”
“We had to know,” Hywel said. “We haven’t come out in one piece yet, either.”
Gareth took Gwen’s hand and now paced with her just behind Hywel. “What are the chances this turns bad?”
Amaury’s brows came together. “Why would you even say that?”
Gareth gave a mocking laugh. “Stick with Gwen and me. You’ll see.”
Hywel smirked, and they exited the tunnel. Like the entrance back at the castle, this one was located in a damp basement. Then his smile faded as he saw the two guards who were supposed to be protecting the tunnel. They sat on benches at a table, heads down on their arms, unmoving.
Gareth shot Amaury a grim smile. “See what I mean? It’s inevitable.” He released Gwen and put a finger to the neck of the first man. “He’s alive.”
“This one is too,” Gwen said from the opposite side of the table. “His pulse is faint, but present.”
“My impulse is to send you back to the castle for help, Gwen, but I don’t want you going off on your own,” Hywel said.
“We should just go on,” Gwen said.
Amaury gestured towards the inclined corridor leading out of the guardroom. “Earl Robert took this over when he claimed Newcastle. We are underneath an old country chapel, long abandoned in favor of St. Giles.”
Hywel looked up. The foundations of the church had been grafted onto the natural stones. Thick wooden beams grew from floor to ceiling to support what was above them.
Amaury had already started walking and Hywel followed, but then he stopped when Gwen hesitated, her hand on her stomach. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Gwen said.
“Then let’s move. We need to find Mari.” Hywel continued on without waiting for her. He’d learned over the years that there were few situations he couldn’t handle merely by declaring that he could. Even at fourteen, when his father sent him to roust one of his knights who’d betrayed him, Hywel had sat on his horse, watching the man’s steading burn, while a feeling of cold certainty settled onto his shoulders and wrapped itself around him like a cloak. He’d worn that mantle ever since. Hywel could always do what had to be done.
But the anxious feeling he’d felt in his chest ever since he’d learned of Mari’s disappearance had him concerned that his surety had abandoned him.
The passage opened into the crypt of the church. Stone sarcophagi had been placed on ledges on either side of the passage. Twenty feet long at most, it ended at a door. “This opens onto a stairway which rises behind the altar in the choir.”
“Do you hear voices?” Gwen said, her ear to the wooden panel.
Hywel didn’t stop. It was time to move this along. He didn’t want to be reckless, but he heard the voices too, and one of them sounded like Mari’s. He pulled on the door, which was closed
but not locked, and stepped through it, his sword extended. As Amaury had indicated would happen, he stood on a stone slab at the bottom of a set of stairs that rose above him to his own height, approximately six feet.
Gareth had come through the door just behind him, and together they took the stairs up two at a time. They came out behind the altar and turned toward the voices, which were coming from an alcove to their right. Hywel hadn’t been able to see the alcove at first due to the pillars that ran from floor to ceiling—or had once done when the chapel had a ceiling.
Amaury hadn’t been misleading them when he’d said the chapel was abandoned. Most of the roof was gone, along with three-quarters of the walls. All that was left of the nave were the pillars, the stone altar, and the wall at the back of the church. The chapel had become hardly more than a grassy clearing, though flagstones still poked through the grass near the altar.
Three people stared at them from the former alcove: Mari, Prior Rhys, and a third man Hywel didn’t recognize. “Cariad, are you all right?” Hywel strode towards Mari and caught her up in his arms before she could answer.
Mari hugged him back, and then he reluctantly released her.
“I’m-I’m fine.” Mari’s eyes were wide as she clutched his arms.
She then glanced at the third man, a worried expression on her face. Given his greying hair and the lines on his forehead and around his eyes, the stranger was at least twenty years older than Mari and Hywel, similar in age to Prior Rhys, who stood next to him.
“How did you find us?” While Rhys’s face was very pale and he clutched his cloak around his shoulders, he didn’t waver on his feet. “Did Gareth get my message?”
Hywel gestured to Amaury, who had entered the chapel with Gwen and joined them in the alcove. “Eventually,” Hywel said.
“We didn’t know where you’d gone, of course, but I thought this was a place worth looking,” Amaury said.
Mari released Hywel’s hand to hug Gwen and give her a peck on the cheek. “We were very worried,” Gwen said.
“I’m sorry to have frightened you,” Mari said.
“Mari wanted to tell you where she was going, my lord,” Rhys said to Hywel, “but neither she nor Tomos could find you. I did the best I could by sending a message to Gareth.”
Hywel made a gesture of dismissal, accepting the apology even though his instinct was the opposite. “All is forgiven if you tell me why.”
Mari took in a deep breath. “My lord Hywel, may I introduce you to my father, Ralph de Lacy.”
Chapter Seventeen
Gwen
The older man beside Prior Rhys bowed low. “My lord.”
Gwen’s hand went to her mouth. Mari gave her a tremulous smile, and Gwen noticed the dried tear tracks on her cheeks that looked to be renewed at any moment.
Hywel was looking daggers at Ralph. “We thought you were dead. You let Mari believe you were dead.”
Gwen blinked at the fierceness in Hywel’s voice. He was angry.
Ralph bowed his head. “I have been serving my empress.”
“You left your daughter to fend for herself,” Hywel said, “while you’ve been alive this whole time?”
“I made sure she was cared for—”
“You let her think she no longer had a father!” Hywel’s hands clenched into fists.
Ralph didn’t flinch or raise his voice. “It was necessary.”
Mari put a hand on Hywel’s arm and spoke in rapid Welsh. “Thank you, my lord. But it’s all right.”
“It isn’t all right.” Hywel was still glaring at Ralph. “Why did you do it? How could you do it? And why reveal yourself now?”
“What I did then, I did out of loyalty to my sovereign, just as I serve her now by coming forward,” Ralph said. “As I was just saying to Peter—I mean, Rhys—I have learned of a plot that threatens Prince Henry’s life. Saving him is more important than continuing my deception.”
“We know of the plot,” Amaury said. Gwen glanced at him, curious that like Hywel, his hands were clenching and unclenching as if he were struggling to control his emotions.
“Where have you been all this time?” Gareth said.
“Like Rhys, I changed my name, though instead of retreating to a monastery, I made my way to the court of King Stephen.”
“But not because you switched sides?” Gwen said. “You’ve continued to work for the empress?”
“Yes.”
Hywel made an impatient gesture with his hand. “Tell us about this plot and how you discovered it.”
“It was a matter of following the emeralds,” Ralph said. “I understand you know of them too.”
Hywel’s arm came around Mari’s waist, and he looked down at her. It looked like he’d managed to rein in his temper, because his words were soft, “I wouldn’t have had you mention the emerald to your father.”
“He knew about the gems already but not for whom they were destined,” Mari said. “It seemed important that we pool our information before it was too late.”
Hywel nodded and then looked back to Ralph. “Tell us what you do know.”
“William de Ypres, King Stephen’s spymaster, has been paying off men in the empress’s retinue since Stephen was crowned king,” Ralph said. “It was to discover who these traitors were that I joined King Stephen’s service in the first place.”
“How did that come about?” Gareth said. “How did you convince King Stephen of your loyalty?”
“Earl Robert arranged for me to be attached to Ranulf when he was still a member of the King’s company. When Ranulf defected to the empress a few years later, I stayed, having established myself as a loyal retainer.”
Gareth nodded. “And yet you chose this moment to jeopardize everything for which you’ve worked so hard?”
Ralph sniffed. “William of Ypres found someone close to the empress who agreed to murder Prince Henry for the payment of four emeralds. I had no choice but to come in the hope that I’d be in time to stop him. I hadn’t realized that Prince Henry was due to arrive at Newcastle so soon until my daughter told me of it.”
“Why not send a message?” Hywel said.
“I did not dare in case it was intercepted. It has been many years since I lived among Earl Robert’s men, and I didn’t know whom I could trust. My instincts told me that other than my friend, Alard, I might be able to tell only the empress herself of what I’d learned. When I got word that she would be arriving at Newcastle tomorrow, I resolved to come myself.”
Gwen pursed her lips. That was a chain of events she could actually understand.
Ralph continued, “But in the hours since I arrived, David and John have died, Alard is accused of murdering them, my own daughter and former friend are involved somehow—and nobody is at all concerned about the welfare of the prince.”
“That would be because we had no idea who might be behind such a plot if that man is not Alard,” Gareth said, “and he has strongly asserted his innocence in this matter.”
“Was it you on the wall walk with him when we first arrived?” Gwen said. “Was it you who met Alard by the river … and killed John?”
Ralph’s mouth twitched, hinting at a smile, though Gwen couldn’t see how taking a man’s life could ever be amusing. “I hoped nobody had seen me, either at the castle or beside the river. I was very careful to leave no signs of myself.”
“You left boot prints,” Gareth said.
“You understand that my first act, after I left King Stephen’s court, would have been to contact Alard? He was the only one, besides Rhys and the empress herself, who knew of my mission all these years. Alard and I met in secret every few months—though I hadn’t seen him since he was sent to Scotland.”
“And the real traitor?” Hywel said.
“I don’t know who’s behind the plot. The man is surely high up in the empress’s ranks,” Ralph said.
Amaury stepped into the ring around Ralph. “We need to know everything you do.” The Norman’s face was
both intent and anxious. “Begin with the emeralds, if you will.” Then his brow furrowed, and he turned to Hywel. “Tell me, my lord, how is it that you know of them?”
Hywel said: “Could it be Ranulf who is betraying the Empress?”
“I don’t know,” Ralph said.
“I would know if the traitor was Ranulf,” Amaury said, irritation rising in his voice. Hywel had ignored his questions in favor of interrogating Ralph. “I am the castellan at Chester, after all—”
Thwtt!
An arrow whipped by Gwen’s cheek and lodged in a pillar to the right of Ralph. It had come so close to her she’d felt the feathers on her skin. Then Amaury staggered and fell to one knee, an arrow high in his chest, near his left collarbone. Gwen gasped, without even the presence of mind to dive to the ground. Fortunately, Gareth, Hywel, and Prior Rhys moved instead: Gareth to throw himself on top of Gwen and bring her to the ground, Hywel to do the same for Mari, and Prior Rhys to clutch at Amaury and cover his body with his own.
“Stay down, all of you!” Gareth said, though he himself lifted his head and gazed around the chapel.
Gwen turned her head to one side. Mari lay in the grass with Hywel crouched over her. She looked at Gwen with wide eyes. “Are you hurt?” Gwen said.
Mari shook her head.
“Where is Ralph?” Hywel said, looking right and left, much like Gareth.
“I don’t know!” Gareth moved off of Gwen, cursing under his breath, though he still kept a hand on her shoulder to keep her down. He swiveled on the toe of his boot, scanning their surroundings.
“We need to get the women to safety,” Hywel said.
“I know. Come this way.” Gareth grabbed Gwen’s arm to help her up and urged her towards the back of the altar and the stairs that led down to the crypt. “Stay here.”
A moment later, Mari crouched beside her. “What about Amaury?” Gwen said.
Hywel scuttled to where Prior Rhys held the Norman knight in his arms. “How is he?” Hywel said.
“Bleeding, but breathing,” Rhys said. “If we can get him help, I don’t think the wound has to be fatal. I don’t dare withdraw the arrow, however, until we have a way to stop the flow of blood.”
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