The Fourth Horseman

by Sarah Woodbury

  “How could they not know?” For all that he’d been raised a prince, Henry was still only ten years old. Truth came in black and white to him.

  “Because Philippe had begun to rely more and more on Amaury over the past few months,” Gwen said. “When Amaury told David and John that the emeralds were payment for their long years of service to the empress, and they had only this one last task to do for her—to kill Alard—they believed him.”

  Prince Henry’s brow furrowed as he thought. “Why give the emeralds to David and John at all? If they thought the order came from Philippe, they’d be doing no more than their duty to obey him. At the very least, Amaury could have paid them once Alard was dead.”

  “Ah, but then it would look as if the emeralds were payment for murder, not for long service,” Gwen said.

  “Amaury needed to keep them quiet and send them on their way once Alard was dead,” Gareth said. “Reporting to Philippe would have been their natural instinct, and Amaury hoped they would be so focused on the emeralds, they would accept his instruction not to do that. They were to meet Amaury later at the farmhouse.”

  “At which point Amaury would have killed them and taken back the emeralds,” Henry said. “Even I can see how Amaury thought this would work.”

  “Thanks to Alard, that part of the plan failed before it started,” Gwen said.

  “Amaury tried to recover the emeralds, to salvage what he could,” Gareth said. “He arranged for his men to take David’s remains from the chapel and had already removed the emerald from John’s body by the time I examined it.”

  “But why kill Alard at all?” Henry said.

  Gareth rested his elbows on the table and took a sip of wine. “This is where Amaury started to think too hard about what he was doing. He was afraid that Philippe, despite his infirmity, was growing suspicious of him. The messenger from William of Ypres had said Alard was the traitor, but Amaury was afraid that if Alard was alive to defend himself, Philippe would begin to doubt the authenticity of the messenger’s claim.”

  Gareth shot Prince Henry a sardonic smile. “In addition, Amaury hoped that killing Alard would allow him closer access to Henry’s retinue and perhaps even authority over his security at Newcastle. ‘Prince Henry’ would have been easy pickings for Amaury at that point.”

  “All the rest of what Amaury did that had us chasing our tails was his attempt to patch the holes that had been rent in his increasingly complicated plot,” Gwen said.

  “Distract, delay, and divert were his exact words,” Gareth said, “even to the point of bribing that guard, Ieuan, at the camp to do whatever he could to obstruct me. It didn’t matter to Amaury what that might be.”

  Mari leaned forward to speak across Gwen. “I am glad that you had the presence of mind to identify Amaury as the assassin, my lord.”

  “Thank you,” Prince Henry said.

  “What I don’t understand,” Mari said, “is why Bernard wasn’t better protected.”

  Gwen’s brow furrowed. “I assumed Earl Robert left Bernard open to attack because he was bait. That’s not true?”

  “Young lady, you have a quick tongue.”

  Gwen started. The earl, sitting beyond Mari and Hywel, had turned his steely blue eyes on her. She swallowed hard. “I apologize, my lord, for speaking out of turn. But Sir Amaury was playing a long game and didn’t fool only you.”

  “That is no excuse in my case.” Earl Robert stabbed a turnip with his knife and bit off the tip. “Bernard was my responsibility, and I failed to predict the possible danger that he might face in the bailey of my own castle. I didn’t anticipate how the treachery of one man could be so hard to defend against.”

  “What I’d most like to know,” Prince Henry said, “is why Amaury did it?”

  “Every man has his price, and loyalty is more often about promises and payment than love,” Earl Robert said. “Some men come cheaper than others, though for four emeralds, even small ones, Amaury didn’t come cheap.” He put down the knife and turned his full attention to their end of the table, his eyes this time on Prince Henry. “You should know that the empress has departed for Devizes with the traitor.”

  Gwen’s heart hurt when Prince Henry’s face crumpled at the news. “She never spoke to me, not even once.”

  “The empress is nearly as loving as my father,” Mari said, in Welsh and under her breath.

  Gwen shot her friend a wide-eyed look, afraid Earl Robert had heard her. “What will become of Amaury?” she said to change the subject.

  “He will lose his head,” Earl Robert said, having returned his attention to his food, “as an example to those who would betray the empress.”

  “What is to become of Prince Henry?” Henry said, sounding like the ten-year-old boy he was.

  “As soon as it is feasible, I mean to send him back to his father in France,” Earl Robert said. “He is too important to our cause to risk.”

  “You might send Alard and Ralph with him,” Gwen said. “You know them now to be unwaveringly loyal.”

  “I intend exactly that.” Earl Robert glanced down the table yet again, this time with a smile twitching at his mouth. “That may mean a slight delay, however, since Ralph’s first responsibility will be to attend his daughter’s wedding.”

  Mari and Hywel froze in identical postures of shock, food halfway to their lips. Slowly, Prince Hywel put down his knife, wiped the corners of his mouth with a cloth, and glanced at Mari. Gwen’s heart leapt to see the smile they shared.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Gwen elbowed her friend in the ribs.

  Mari just smiled and looked down at her lap.

  Prince Hywel cleared his throat. “I must confer first with my father before anything can be decided.” Then he grinned and his eyes lit, turning them to blue sapphires. Gwen hadn’t seen such happiness in him in a long time. “But Earl Robert is right. I have spoken to Mari and she has agreed, despite the numerous flaws in my character, to become my wife.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  St. Kentigern’s Monastery, St. Asaph

  Hywel

  Hywel stepped out from behind the pillar, stopping Prior Rhys in his tracks. The prior hesitated before raising his lantern. “Are you here to kill me, Prince Hywel?”

  “Have you done something worth killing over?” Hywel said, and then amended, “Recently, I mean?”

  “I didn’t expect you to be the one to come.” Rhys gestured with one hand, indicating that Hywel should walk with him. They left the cloister and headed along the pathway that led through the monastery gardens. “Or rather, I was expecting someone else.”

  “Gareth,” Hywel said.

  Prior Rhys canted his head, not giving anything away, but agreeing nonetheless.

  “Before our last parting, you answered his questions to his satisfaction,” Hywel said.

  “But not to yours?” Rhys said, with a sideways glance at Hywel.

  “He has his questions; I have mine.”

  Rhys stopped and turned. “Don’t you have some place to be? You’ve been married all of two days. Don’t tell me your wife won’t notice your absence from her bed.”

  Hywel pulled up with him. “She is sleeping. Rhuddlan Castle is not far away. I will return to her before the sun rises.”

  Rhys peered at Hywel. “This is customary for you, isn’t it? How long have you passed off your nocturnal activities as liaisons rather than give voice to what you’re really doing?”

  Hywel tsked through his teeth. “A while.”

  “You cultivate a guise of willful promiscuity to hide … what … secret meetings with your spies?” At the expression on Hywel’s face, Prior Rhys went on, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure you’ve had your share of women, but—”

  “Gareth warned me about you,” Hywel said.

  “What did he say?”

  “That if I came to see you, I might end up giving more than I got.”

  Rhys laughed, and this time it was genuine. “I like that boy.” />
  “So we now have spent valuable time talking about me instead of about you,” Hywel said. “I have questions, as I said.”

  “So ask them.”

  Now that it came to it, Hywel wasn’t sure where to begin. He had important questions, ones that Rhys wasn’t going to want to answer. Perhaps it was better to start with an easy one: “Just to be clear—who was the archer that shot Amaury?”

  “Ah. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about him. I hoped you had too. I should have known better.”

  “Well?” Hywel said when Rhys didn’t continue immediately. He could waste a little time wooing the prior, but the man was right that he had Mari to get home to.

  “The hours lay heavy in my hands after I was injured and gave me too much time to think,” Prior Rhys said. “I began to wonder, merely by the process of elimination, if Amaury could be at the heart of the crimes we witnessed. But of course, I was injured enough that I had little ability to find proof of treachery on my own.”

  “I wish you’d spoken to me or Gareth,” Hywel said.

  “You were suspicious of me, as you may recall, because of what I’d hidden about myself,” said Rhys. “To accuse another, a friend, might make me appear disingenuous. In addition, you weren’t telling me everything either. I didn’t know you had an emerald until after the incident at the abandoned chapel.”

  Hywel bowed slightly at the waist. “That is true. My apologies.”

  Prior Rhys looked down at his hands.

  When he didn’t continue speaking, Hywel prodded him for a second time. “The archer?”

  Prior Rhys nodded. “I saw him when we entered Newcastle that first day, that very first moment, in fact. He was standing by the gatehouse, speaking with one of the guards. I have a good memory for faces, but I didn’t need it in this case, since I’d used him a time or two.”

  “He was an assassin,” Hywel said.

  Prior Rhys lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Think of him as the best shot in your arsenal. You use him if you can.”

  Hywel folded his arms across his chest, ready to hazard a guess. “You got to him, didn’t you? You ordered him to miss Ralph!”

  Prior Rhys laughed. “Not quite. He told me that Philippe, via our friend Amaury, had tasked him with bringing down Alard—not to kill him, mind you, but to injure him just enough that he could be captured. A nice leg wound would have done very well. I merely suggested that he was on the side of the devil if he followed that order and that he might find life more hospitable in the court of King Owain in the land of his birth. I was very persuasive.”

  Hywel was glad it was dark because his jaw had dropped at Prior Rhys’s audacity. Hywel would do well to take lessons on intrigue from this man.

  Prior Rhys went on: “Before Amaury led you through the tunnel, he ordered my archer to the woods outside the abandoned chapel, in the hopes that Alard would put in an appearance. The site was remote enough, and exposed enough, to be the perfect place for an ambush.”

  “Had you suggested that he shoot Amaury instead?” Hywel was incredulous, near laughter at the outrageousness of it.

  “Certainly not! That was on his own initiative. Still—may the Lord forgive me—once it was done, I was not sorry,” said Rhys. “While I had no evidence against Amaury beyond instinct, I was curious to see if the action stopped when he did.”

  “But it didn’t,” Hywel said.

  “It was too little, too late,” said Rhys, “though I didn’t realize it at the time. I absolved Amaury of any wrongdoing, other than overzealousness in the pursuit of a man his master had declared a traitor and lying about his loyalties to Gareth. You and Mari almost lost your lives because of my failure.”

  “Too bad for the archer that he ended up dead,” Hywel said.

  Prior Rhys bit his lip, suppressing a smile. “Oh … he’s not dead.”

  Hywel’s eyes narrowed. “What about the dead archer Gareth found?”

  “Oddly, Philippe was half-right about that man not being the archer. The dead man Gareth found was some poor soldier, one of Philippe’s men, whom the real archer brought along as a spotter. He killed him to throw you off his scent.”

  Hywel growled deep in his throat as understanding rose in him. “Your archer is the man we picked up on our way home as we entered Wales. You vouched for him, and I let him join our company.”

  “Cadoc is a very good shot,” said Rhys.

  “You should have told me more of this at the time,” Hywel said.

  “Old habits die hard, keeping secrets being one of the last to go. I had revealed myself to you as a horseman by then, but I didn’t want you asking questions of me, not before it was safe.”

  “You didn’t want Gareth asking questions, you mean,” Hywel said.

  “You do realize what you have in him, and Gwen too, don’t you?” said Rhys, as usual diverting Hywel from something he didn’t want to answer with a question of his own.

  “Believe me, I do.” Hywel gave a mocking laugh. “You’d be surprised what they know and what they have been willing to forgive.”

  Prior Rhys studied Hywel. “You are speaking from experience.”

  Hywel wasn’t going to respond to that. It was his turn to ask the questions. “Why did you leave the empress’s service? And don’t tell me it was because your commission sickened you. It has to be more than that.”

  Rhys looked away. His eyes followed the line of the orchard wall, just visible in the moonlight, and he began walking again. Hywel came with him, and when they reached a bench set against the wall of the orchard, Rhys lowered himself onto it. It faced south, and on days when the sun peeked through the cloud cover would provide the gardeners a warm place to sit. “I spoke the truth.”

  “But not all of it.” Hywel sat beside the prior and leaned back against the wall.

  “Why do you want to know?” said Rhys.

  “You know why. Because without it, I am missing a piece of the puzzle.”

  “And that’s important to you?”

  “The past informs the present,” Hywel said. “If I know this, then it might help me someday with that.”

  “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but I know that you are good at keeping secrets.” Prior Rhys eyed Hywel again. Even in the moonlight, Hywel had the sense that the prior could see right through him. “This tale isn’t really about me at all but about Ralph.”

  “Ah.” Hywel smiled, satisfaction coursing through him. He had been right to come.

  “Yes.” Prior Rhys glanced at Hywel again in that way he had, assessing. “Your new father-in-law has more secrets than I do. What he told Mari about leaving her to spy for the empress in King Stephen’s court was true as far as it goes.”

  “But again, not the whole truth,” Hywel said.

  “Ralph didn’t have a choice but to leave,” said Rhys. “It would have been unsafe for him to stay. Myself, I’m surprised the empress hasn’t had him murdered long since.”

  Hywel sat up straighter. “Go on.”

  “It was I who helped Ralph fake his own death and then ensured my own. Mari hasn’t realized yet that she knew me as a child. When she sat with me at Newcastle, after Amaury sent his mercenary to incapacitate me, I was sure she would recognize me, but she never did.” Rhys clasped his hands together. “It was a long time ago.”

  The questions spilled over in Hywel’s mind so fast, he was at a loss to articulate even one. Finally he managed, “Why?”

  “Old King Henry didn’t die from eating too many lampreys,” said Rhys. “It was poison.”

  The word poison echoed in Hywel’s ears. “Ralph murdered him?”

  “For many years I assumed so, though now I’m not so sure. If it wasn’t him, he knows who did.”

  “Philippe,” Hywel said on impulse, pulling the name out of nothing but a hundred impressions and questions he hadn’t yet thought to ask.

  “Very good,” said Rhys. “If not Ralph, that would be my gues
s too. Philippe and Ralph moved in the same circles, far above mine. And as you know, Philippe replaced Ralph as spymaster when he left.”

  “If it was Philippe, his secret will never be safe as long as you and Ralph live,” Hywel said. “As you wondered, why are any of you still living?”

  “Initially, we were allowed to live as long as we were useful, and now we are old and discredited,” said Rhys. “Philippe and Ralph would never betray each other; they were friends once, and among spies, friends are few and far between.”

  “That still doesn’t—”

  “You have to understand what the atmosphere is like at the empress’s court, my prince. At times, it is poisonous. She plays men off one another, encouraging them to vie for her favor.” At Hywel’s expression, Rhys hastened to add, “Not that kind—I’m talking about land, power, money. She wields men like weapons, even her own against her own.”

  Hywel straightened his legs in front of him. “Knowing that, why didn’t Ralph defect to King Stephen in truth as well as name?”

  Prior Rhys canted his head as he looked at Hywel. “You really don’t understand the Norman mind if you have to ask that.”

  “Enlighten me.” Hywel felt like he was ten again and being instructed by Gwen’s father in a particularly difficult Latin conjugation.

  “To those who follow her, the empress is the rightful heir to the English throne. Stephen is a usurper. No matter how much they might fear her, even despair of her as a queen who cannot bend even for a moment for the good of her people, to follow Stephen would be to turn away from God.”

  “Do you feel that way?” Hywel said.

  Rhys smiled. “I am Welsh and far more practical than Ralph. Still, what did I do? I chose to leave England and my chosen profession entirely rather than serve another earthly master.”

  “I find it incredible that all of you are still keeping these secrets after all these years, even Ranulf, about whom far too little has been said so far.”

  Prior Rhys coughed a laugh. “Ranulf keeps many secrets.”