Hywel nudged Mari’s shin with his toe, and this time her eyes popped open. “Where am I—?” Her voice went high in anguish and panic. “Hywel?”
“Shush, cariad. I’m here,” he said. “We’re at Prior Rhys’s farmhouse, the one Gwen and Gareth found. We’re going to be fine, but you need to keep quiet.”
Mari gasped another few breaths but then breathed more easily as she gained control of herself.
“Good girl,” Hywel said, his voice barely a whisper. “Now. How tightly are you tied?”
“Tightly—but only at my wrists and ankles.” Mari lifted her hands to show him the rope that bound her hands in front of her. Hywel raised his eyes to say a prayer of gratitude that whoever had abducted them was an idiot.
“Can you sit up?” Hywel said.
“I think so.” Mari rolled onto her stomach, bending at the waist and putting all of her weight onto her elbows until she could get her knees under her. The skirt of her dress made it difficult to move her legs, but she managed to scoot forward so she could kneel in front of Hywel. She lifted her hands to touch his cheek. “You’re hurt.”
“I hadn’t noticed.” It seemed as if someone had punched him a few times while he was asleep, just to make sure he stayed that way. “Can you wriggle around to the back of the chair and untie my hands?”
“I can try. These bonds are very tight; I can barely move my fingers.”
Still, Mari tried to do as he asked. She tugged at the front of her dress with the fingers she could move, and managed to pull the hem out from beneath her knees. Even so, her legs got tangled up in her skirt the first time she tried to move. She squeaked as she lost her balance, falling forward with her forehead butting into Hywel’s shoulder.
“It’s all right,” Hywel said, trying to shush her again. He wished he could put his arms around her to steady her.
“Sorry.” By holding onto one arm of the chair and allowing Hywel’s weight to counterbalance her own when she leaned back, Mari got her feet under her.
“Good girl,” Hywel said again.
“Do you know how we got here?” Mari said. “My head hurts when I try to remember.”
“I can’t imagine I remember any more than you,” Hywel said. “Evan brought us that wine and—”
“What do you think might have happened to Evan since he’s not here with us?” Mari said, her eyes wide.
“Hopefully, he is asleep in an out-of-the-way place.” Hywel prayed that Evan wasn’t dead; he didn’t even want to speak of it. To voice his fear would mean admitting it might be true. “If he wakes as we have, he will understand immediately that something has happened to us. He’ll find my brother or Gareth and Gwen.”
“All of whom you insisted were to make Prince Henry’s safety their first priority,” Mari said. “They’ll be among those watching for him, and since we have no idea of the current time, he could be arriving at any moment!”
“I think we have to accept that we are out of this particular fight, Mari,” Hywel said. “Control over whether or not Prince Henry lives or dies has moved beyond us.”
“Do you know why we’re even here?” Mari worked her way around the chair with little hops and bent to work at the rope that bound his hands. “We haven’t figured anything out yet!”
“We’re not here because the traitor is afraid of what we know,” Hywel said. “We’re here because he wants his emerald.”
“As if you would tell him where it is,” Mari said.
“I would tell him in a heartbeat if I thought it would get us out of here or if he threatened to hurt you if I didn’t,” Hywel said. “But how long after I told him do you think he’d let us live?”
Mari grunted as her fingers wrenched and slipped on his bonds. “Not long—”
A chair scraped the floor above them, and they both froze. They had been speaking very quietly, and even the sound of Mari’s hopping had been muffled by the dirt floor, but they needed more time if they were to get free. They would get only one chance at this.
Hywel gave it a long count of ten before he shifted his shoulders, working to ease the strain on them from having his hands pulled so tightly behind his back.
“I feel like an animal waiting for slaughter,” Mari said.
“I’m afraid too, cariad,” Hywel said.
“How could this happen?” The last word would have been a wail if she hadn’t spoken it right in his ear.
“I made a mistake,” Hywel said. “I trusted the wrong person. I just wish I knew who that person was.”
“We’ll know before we die,” Mari said. Her voice came out much more matter-of-fact this time. “We’ll have that satisfaction, at least.”
Hywel grunted his assent. “How’s it going back there?”
“My fingers are very stiff. I wish I had a knife—” And then her fingers stiffened on his hands. “I do have a knife, a tiny one. Let me see if I can get it from my boot.”
“Take your time.” Hywel leaned back his head and closed his eyes, breathing in and out, searching for patience and not wanting to put any additional pressure on Mari. He could think of only one other woman who wouldn’t have been reduced to tears to find herself bound and left to rot in a dark cellar—and who might carry a knife in her boot as a matter of course—and that was Gwen.
While he waited, he strained to hear more from the guard above them. He hoped it wasn’t too much to ask that he could have fallen asleep.
“I’ve got it.” She worked at the bonds some more, and it took long enough to slice through them that he guessed the blade wasn’t as sharp as it could have been. “There,” Mari said at last. The strand of rope fell to the ground.
Hywel brought his arms around in front of him, working one wrist and then the other to renew the circulation in his hands. Then he took the knife Mari handed him and began sawing through the rope that constrained his ankles.
He got his feet free and moved around the chair so he could crouch in front of Mari to free her hands. “We’re going to have to trust that Gareth and Gwen will do what they can, and that what is meant to happen, will.”
“You are very sensible,” Mari said.
“I’ve had to be,” Hywel said. “And I would return the compliment. While I regret that your father abandoned you for his work for the empress, your upbringing has made you strong. Capable.”
Mari regarded him with a composed expression. It was on the tip of Hywel’s tongue to speak of how he felt about her, but now that it came to it, he had no idea what to say. He’d had more women than he’d had any right to, wooing them with an eloquent tongue—or more often a song—and yet anything he thought to say to Mari sounded trite and insincere when he rehearsed it in his head. His default was to simply kiss her, but that might send the wrong message. She had kissed him, true, but she’d had no idea what she was doing.
He did. It was up to him to make this right.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Mari said.
Now that her hands were free, she let Hywel ease her down to sit on the ground. She straightened her legs so her feet were in front of her and he could get to the rope that tied her ankles together.
“I was thinking about two things of equal importance,” Hywel said. “The first is how we’re going to get past that guard up there. The second—” He almost looked away but at the last moment told himself not to be a coward, “—the second is how to tell you that I love you.”
The bonds around Mari’s ankles loosened and dropped to the floor. Hywel grasped her hands and pulled her to her feet. He didn’t let her go.
“Do you really?”
Hywel was glad his hands were no longer tied because he knew what to do with them. He slipped one around her waist and brushed a stray hair back from her face with the other. “I do.”
“Why?” Mari said.
Hywel made to laugh but then swallowed it back, afraid the guard would hear him. The cellar wasn’t the place for this, and it certainly wasn’t the time, but now that the wor
ds were out, the rest was easy. “You may know that I haven’t given any woman my full attention in a long while, but I don’t think you know the reason for it.”
Mari didn’t speak, just remained focused on his face.
“After I lost a woman and her babe—our babe—three years ago, I swore I would never care that much about anyone ever again,” Hywel said, remembering the path of self-destruction he’d followed for far too long after Branwen’s death. “Although I meant it at the time, I know now that I was wrong to make that oath, and I cannot keep it, not if it means I can’t have you.”
Mari put the palm of her hand to his cheek. “Whether you admit it or not, you are a sweet man, Hywel ap Owain, and I love you too.”
A bang from above had them jumping apart.
“Who are you?” their guard said.
A chair scraped on the floor, and then a different voice said, “I am someone about whom you should be very worried.”
“Prior Rhys—” Mari breathed the name. Hywel would have recognized the prior’s educated French accent anywhere.
Grunts, slaps, and thuds resounded throughout the house, and then Hywel heard a loud thunk as if something heavy had fallen to the floor.
Taking a chance, Hywel raced to the opening. “We’re here!”
“My lord.” Prior Rhys crouched above them, grinning and shaking his hand to ease its hurt. His knuckles were scraped red and bleeding.
“I’m glad you haven’t forgotten how to fight,” Hywel said.
“Son, I can’t say that I’m glad I had to use my skills, but I’m certainly not sorry I have them,” Rhys said. “Let’s get you out of there. We have a traitor to catch.”
Chapter Twenty-four
Gwen
Gwen gripped Gareth’s hand tightly as they stood with Prince Rhun, Gruffydd, and the two boys near the cluster of huts that lined the road to the west of the castle. They had converged together in the last quarter of an hour after Gareth and Gwen had ridden to Newcastle at the tail end of Prince Henry’s entourage. Rhun and Gruffydd had come from the castle with the bad news that Evan, Mari, and Hywel were missing, and Llelo and Dai had run all the way from the Welsh camp to tell Gwen that Prior Rhys still couldn’t be found. No one had seen him since she’d said good night to him and retired to her tent with the boys.
To top it off, Gwen was focusing very hard on not allowing the roiling in her stomach to overwhelm her completely. She’d woken every morning for the last week feeling as if she didn’t want breakfast and would lose it if she ate it. At first, she’d told herself that her queasy feeling was due to anxiety over the trip or the progress of the investigation. Yesterday, she’d decided that she’d eaten a bad piece of meat. But she couldn’t deny the other changes in her body any longer.
While part of her wanted to shout from the highest tower in Newcastle that she was carrying Gareth’s baby, she knew it would be better to wait to tell Gareth until they were alone, maybe even in their own bed at home. If her courses hadn’t returned by then, she could be absolutely sure of her pregnancy, and Gareth wouldn’t have so much else to worry about.
The entire village of Newcastle, not to mention the residents of the castle itself, had come out to greet Prince Henry as he arrived. The boy himself appeared innocent enough, waving as he passed, though he had to be uncomfortable wearing his fine clothes and thick ermine-trimmed cloak in the brightness of the early morning sun. On his head he wore a gold circlet, which wasn’t quite his right, since his mother was uncrowned as yet. Gwen felt sorry for him for having a mother who insisted on full ceremony at every occasion.
“If Empress Maud and Earl Robert can’t protect the prince, nobody can,” Gareth said. Gwen and Gareth had tried to close the distance between them and the prince during the ride, but the boy’s retainers had protected him, and it was reasonable to believe that they would continue to do so.
“I can accept that,” Rhun said, “especially if it means we can turn our attention to what concerns us specifically: where my brother and Mari have gone.”
“Where do we even begin to look?” Gwen said. A dozen worst-case scenarios were skipping through her head, each one more evil than the last and all of them ending in her friends’ deaths.
“We could try the tunnel again,” said Gareth. “Amaury said that other passages branched from the main one with plenty of places to hide a body if a man wanted to.”
Rhun nodded. “That’s a good place to start—”
“The prince! The prince!”
“No—” Gwen choked on the word as more shouts came from the gatehouse. A woman ran towards them, screaming and sobbing, her arms spread wide. “He’s dead!”
Onlookers had overflowed the road when Prince Henry had ridden by. They’d begun to disperse once the parade was over but now surged towards the castle. At the same time, some inside the castle looked to flee, and they fought to get past each other at the gate.
Rhun let out a sharp breath and pointed at Gruffydd. “Begin your search for Prince Hywel in the village. Go from house to house if you have to. Perhaps someone noticed a cart—anything—leaving the castle that could have hidden two or three people.” Gruffydd nodded and departed at a run.
Then Rhun put his hand on Gareth’s shoulder. “It has to be chaos in the castle right now. With Ranulf gone and Amaury injured, Earl Robert needs men who can think. That’s you.”
“Surely you would be better suited to that task—”
“I’ve already searched the castle from top to bottom. My brother isn’t there. Hywel’s life is in danger, and I can be of no use to Earl Robert or the empress until he is found,” Prince Rhun said.
“I will go with Gareth,” Gwen said.
Rhun shook his head. “You should return to the camp.”
“She can’t go off on her own, not in this crowd,” Gareth said, taking Gwen’s hand. “I won’t let her out of my sight.”
“What about us?” Llelo and Dai had been standing behind Rhun, hopping from one foot to the other, waiting for their assignment.
Rhun swung around to look at them, but instead of sending them back to the camp like Gwen expected, he said, “You know the friary and its grounds better than most, I imagine. You will come with me to find Philippe and tell him what has happened.”
“Yes, my lord!” the two boys sang in unison and then set off, sprinting down the road towards the friary.
Rhun turned back to Gareth and Gwen. “Come to us there when you can.”
Gareth handed the prince the reins of his horse, upon which he and Gwen had ridden together from the camp. “Take him. It’ll be faster.”
More sure and decisive than Gwen had ever seen him, Rhun swung into the saddle and spurred the horse after the boys.
Gwen hurried beside Gareth towards the gatehouse, lifting her skirt so the hem wouldn’t trip her up. Like a fool, she’d dressed in finery again, in honor of the coming of Prince Henry. She should have known better.
Shouts still erupted from the bailey, but the crowd wasn’t shoving and heaving anymore, and as they came under the gatehouse, Gwen understood why: the guards had dropped the portcullis. Gwen and Gareth had to be let in by the wicket gate. Gareth pointed at one of the guards as he passed through. “What happened?”
The man’s face was as white as new-fallen snow. Gareth’s question seemed to settle him a little, however, and he said, “The prince dismounted, there was a scuffle, and a sudden press of men and horses. When everyone retreated, Prince Henry lay bleeding on the ground.”
“Did you see who did it?” Gareth said.
The guard shook his head. “I didn’t. Nobody did. We were all focused on the empress.”
“How do you mean?” Gwen said. “Why the empress?”
“Earl Robert was waiting for Prince Henry on the steps to the keep,” the guard said. “He signaled for the horns to blow, which they did, and then the empress made her grand entrance. By the time the noise stopped, the prince was—was—”
Gwen put a han
d on his arm. “We understand. You’ve done well to stay at your post.”
“Don’t let anyone in or out,” Gareth said. “I would have thought that order would already have been given.”
“It-it-it was,” the man said, still not recovered.
Gareth stepped closer. “You let us in.”
“I recognized you.”
“Did you let anyone out?” Gwen said.
The man shook his head.
Gareth nudged Gwen. “We need to keep moving. It’s unlikely that the assassin would have tried to leave this way, not when there are other choices. We need to find where he did go.”
“He could have gone through the tunnel, like you said before,” Gwen said.
“That was my thought, too,” Gareth said.
They hurried towards the northwest tower, though not without glancing towards the center of the courtyard, because they couldn’t help it. Blood stained the ground and men milled around it, avoiding the spot but unable to stop looking at it.
“I don’t understand it,” Gareth said.
“What?”
“Nobody is paying us the slightest attention.”
“Everyone is still in shock over what happened to Prince Henry,” Gwen said.
“That’s no excuse,” Gareth said. “Where is Earl Robert or the empress? No one in authority is anywhere to be seen.”
Gwen didn’t have an answer for him. They clattered down the tower stairs to the guardroom; both guards were present and alert. “You heard?” Gareth said.
“Yes, sir,” said the first guard, a tall, blond man in his twenties with a thick beard. His face was very pale.
“Did anyone come through here?” Gareth said.
“No, sir!” The man stiffened to attention. “None except three of Earl Ranulf’s men.”
“What were they doing?” Gwen said.
“They said they’d seen the assassin escape and were chasing him,” the guard said.
“But the assassin didn’t come this way himself?” Gareth said.
“No sir, not through here. I assumed he meant that the assassin had escaped like that spy, Alard, by rope from over the battlement.”
The Fourth Horseman Page 21