That brought Hywel’s eyes to Rhys’s face. “His loyalty is in question, isn’t it? Gareth brought that information from Amaury, but the man is an excellent liar, and I didn’t know whether or not to believe him.”
“I have a feeling that when my brethren write the history of King Stephen’s reign, it will never be entirely clear as to which side, other than his own, Ranulf was ever on during this war,” said Rhys.
Hywel stared down at his hands. From the very beginning, the scope of this investigation had been beyond anything he’d experienced before. “So Maud had her father murdered.”
Prior Rhys jerked his head to look at Hywel. “What? No. Did I say that?”
“Didn’t you?” Hywel said.
“I apologize for giving you that impression,” said Rhys, “but that isn’t it at all. Maud loved her father. Philippe and Ralph served Geoffrey of Anjou, Maud’s husband, before they came to England to serve her.”
The last piece of the puzzle fell into place, and it was one that Hywel had no difficulty reconciling with what he knew, even if it was entirely unexpected. “Geoffrey had King Henry killed because he didn’t support Geoffrey’s territorial ambitions in France.”
“King Henry did not, but Geoffrey knew that his wife would if she were on the throne, straddling the English Channel between England and Normandy.” Prior Rhys nodded. “Gareth—and you—were deceived from the beginning in this.”
“How so?”
“The four horsemen weren’t Maud’s men, not at the start. We were Geoffrey’s.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Gwen
Gareth and Gwen sat cross-legged on their bed facing each other. They were finally in their own home, for the first time in a month, having made the journey from Aber Castle that very day. The last miles home, Gwen could barely keep her eyes open. Now, though all she wanted to do was sleep, Gareth had spent the last quarter of an hour telling her about his plans for the next few days, as full summer had finally come. Every day would see them working from dawn to dusk on their land. Finally Gwen leaned in and put a finger to his lips.
Gareth stopped talking. “What is it?”
“I have something to tell you.”
“Is it about Mari and Hywel?” Gareth said. “Before they rode to Rhuddlan Castle, Hywel swore to me that he loved Mari and would do everything in his power to make her happy.”
“I know he will,” Gwen said. “This isn’t about Mari and Hywel. This is about us.”
“Is the upcoming journey to Ceredigion worrying you?” Gareth said. “I don’t want to be parted from you either, but perhaps if you kept Mari company, it would make it easier to be separated from me? You can be sure that Hywel will want to settle his affairs in Ceredigion quickly, either to prepare for Mari’s arrival, or to hurry home to her before the harvest.”
“Gareth—”
“I had a thought, also, that you might enjoy having Llelo and Dai stay with you for the summer if their uncle grants them leave,” he said. “I know you’ve grown fond of them—”
“We’re having a baby.”
Gareth’s last words had overlapped hers, so Gwen wasn’t sure at first that he’d caught what she said. Then he gave such a whoop that she feared he might wake everyone in the village.
“You are with child? You’re certain?”
“I desperately wanted to tell you sooner, but with everything that happened at Newcastle, and the wedding immediately after, I thought it might be better to wait until it was just the two of us, and I was sure. It’s been weeks since I began to hope, and now I believe.”
First Gareth laughed, and then he threw his arms around Gwen and rolled with her to the blankets, ending up with her resting on top of him. She lay with her cheek on his chest, reveling in the thudding of his heart.
“You’re happy about it, then?” she said.
Gwen felt the laughter bubbling up in his chest before she heard it. “Happy? Gwen—” Gareth hugged her tighter. “I’m terrified, of course, but how could I not be happy?”
Gwen sighed and snuggled against him. He released her only long enough to draw a blanket over both of them.
“It’s Prince Hywel who won’t be happy,” Gareth said.
“Why is that?”
Gareth raised his head and she lifted hers, so they could see into each other’s eyes. “I won’t go so far as to forbid you to be involved in any more of Prince Hywel’s investigations, but I must tell Hywel that he’s not to call upon his best spy for a good long while.”
Gwen patted her husband’s chest reassuringly but didn’t reply. She tucked the blanket under her chin, thinking but not saying, since it seemed wise to humor her husband in this instance: We’ll see.
The End
Historical Note
The Fourth Horseman is set in the time of what has come to be known as The Anarchy, the period in England’s history where the succession to the throne was in question, fought over by Stephen of Blois, grandson of William the Conqueror, and Maud, daughter of King Henry I of England. As relayed in the opening excerpt from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, civil war reigned for nineteen years.
The dispute over the succession came about after King Henry’s only legitimate son died when ‘the White Ship’ went down in the English Channel in 1120, leaving Maud as his only other heir. Because of the prejudice against crowning a woman, King Henry subsequently arranged for his barons to swear an oath to support Maud’s claim to the throne upon his death, but as the years went by, discontentment with that oath developed and grew. Eventually, Maud and her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, grew concerned enough about the dissent to urge King Henry to bestow Normandy (a region of France) upon Maud in advance of his death. He refused.
King Henry died on 1 December 1135, allegedly from eating ‘a surfeit of lampreys’—that is, he ate too many fish—while he, Maud, and Stephen were all in France. It is important to remember that the rulers of England at this time, including these three, were Norman French, not ‘English,’ and were as much interested in maintaining their hold on their lands in France as they were in ruling England. Maud had married Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, and was pregnant with her third child. Stephen was visiting his estates in Boulogne, acquired when he married his wife, Matilda. His elder brother, Theobold, technically the next male in line for the English throne, had never set foot in England. He ruled Blois, a region in France.
Stephen had spent many years in King Henry’s court, however, and had developed a following among the Anglo-Norman barons. When he learned of Henry’s death, he high-tailed it across the English Channel and was was hailed king by the citizens of London. Stephen was crowned by another of his brothers, Henry, who had become powerful in the English Church as the Bishop of Winchester and was the second richest man in England, after King Henry himself.
Meanwhile, Maud and Geoffrey maintained a hold on Normandy, eventually controlling the entire region. After several years of inciting rebellion against King Stephen and wooing allies in England, Maud crossed the English Channel with an invasion force in 1139, beginning the active phase of the civil war.
By 1144, when The Fourth Horseman takes place, England had experienced five long years of war. It wasn’t until 1153 that the issue of the succession was finally settled and a treaty signed. Empress Maud renounced her right to the throne in favor of her son, Henry, whom Stephen agreed to name as his heir. Oddly, like King Henry, whom he’d succeeded, King Stephen died unexpectedly of a ‘stomach disorder’ in October of 1154, only a year after the treaty was signed.
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The next Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mystery, The Fallen Princess, is now available wherever ebooks are sold.
The Fallen Princess
Hallowmas 1144. With the harvest festival approaching, Gareth has
returned from fighting in the south, hoping for a few months of peace with Gwen before the birth of their first child. But when an innocent foray to the beach turns up the murdered body of Prince Hywel’s long lost cousin, a woman thought to have run away with a Dane five years earlier, it is Gareth and Gwen who are charged with discovering her killer. The trail has long since gone cold, or so Gareth and Gwen think, until their investigation threatens to expose dangerous truths that everyone else from king to killer would prefer to keep buried.
No secret is safe, and no man, whether lord or peasant, can escape the spirit of Hallowmas in The Fallen Princess, the fourth Gareth and Gwen medieval mystery.
Sample: The Fallen Princess
Chapter One
Gwen
“This won’t be a pleasant sight, my lady.” Rhodri helped Gwen dismount. He’d come to Aber Castle to find Gareth, but Gwen’s husband had risen from his bed long before dawn, leaving to ride with Prince Hywel and his men on patrol.
“It never is,” Gwen said.
Rhodri set her gently on the soft sand, its usual yellowish-brown color turned to gray in the pre-dawn light. The cart intended for carrying away the body rumbled to a halt behind them, and another soldier, Dewi, jumped off the seat, leaving the stable boy who’d been driving the cart to wait with it and hold the horse’s head.
The tense expression in Rhodri’s face didn’t ease, so Gwen added, “I’m well, Rhodri. Truly.” Many women struggled with their health during pregnancy, but other than an annoyingly strong sense of smell, Gwen hadn’t had any difficulties so far beyond a few unpleasant mornings, particularly in the beginning, and an increased need for sleep. Even at this late stage, with the baby due at the end of January, some people still didn’t notice right off that she was carrying a child.
While the men shooed away the crowd of onlookers, Gwen circled the body, trying to disturb the scene as little as possible. She considered the corpse from all angles—though as it was well wrapped in a cloak, there wasn’t much to see. From the closeness of the weave, the cloak had once been very fine. It was dirty now, of a color that she thought should have been blue. The hood half-covered the face, implying that one of the onlookers had drawn it back and then, when death had been definitively determined, hastily thrown it over the face again.
Gwen braced herself for the need to see who this was and bent to lift away the cloth.
At the grotesque appearance of the face, Gwen’s breath caught in her throat. Then a hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped a foot. “By all that is holy—”
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Llelo said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Gwen let out a burst of air. “What are you doing here? Is Dai here too?”
“He’s a laze-about,” Llelo said, answering her second question first. “I came for the clams. Are you all right?”
“Why does everyone think I’m not well? I’ve seen dead people before.”
Llelo frowned, staring past her to the body. “Not like this one, I don’t think.”
Gwen deliberately hadn’t looked again at the dead woman’s face. Instead, she gestured towards a group of children looking anxiously in their direction. “They shouldn’t be here.”
“They’re the ones who found her,” Llelo said.
Gwen inspected her young charge. He’d grown four inches since he’d come to live with them and loomed over her. If she were to stand, he’d be taller than she was. Thirteen years old going on twenty, as Gareth had said privately to her more than once. Upon the death of his father, Llelo had needed to grow up quickly in order to care for his younger brother, Dai. Gareth had discovered both boys in an English monastery last May and taken them under his wing.
The boys had spent most of the summer with Gwen on Anglesey while Gareth was in Ceredigion serving Prince Hywel, but they had all gathered at Aber this week to celebrate Calan Gaeaf, what the Church called All Saints’ Day. It was the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. In the traditions of her people, at this time of year the veil between the next world and this one thinned. Tomorrow night, Nos Galan Gaeaf, or Hallowmas, the spirits of those who’d died would walk the earth. Gwen shivered to think that this poor soul could be among them.
“Since you’re here, you might as well help,” Gwen said. “The children will talk to you. Find out what they know while I see who this is.”
“You can tell it was once a woman,” Llelo said, with all the morbid fascination of the young.
Gwen waved her hand at him. “Off you go.” Asking Llelo to help her might turn out to be the worst idea she’d had this month, but since he was here, it was better to keep him busy.
Gwen turned back to the body, no longer able to avoid looking at it. As Llelo had said, it was that of a woman, but beyond this simple observance, Gwen didn’t know that she’d ever seen a stranger circumstance. For starters, the woman’s body wasn’t bloated with water like it should have been had she drowned. Instead, her skin was dried out, leathery and brown like an old apple, more bones than flesh, though flesh still adhered to the bone. The woman could have been dead for months, if not years. The cloak that wrapped her wasn’t wet either, which Gwen would have noticed earlier if she hadn’t been so distracted.
On the ride to the beach, Gwen had conceived two scenarios that would have put the body here this morning. One would have been a drowning, though the sea had been calm last night, despite three weeks of solid rain. The second and more complicated possibility had been that the body had been buried in the sand somewhere—a dune or a cliff face near the water’s edge—and over time, wind and tide had worn away the sand that covered her grave until it was fully exposed and the body fell into the sea.
In that case, the body could have washed up here because of the way the water moved in and out of the Menai Strait. Both possibilities would have involved a recent death, because that was the only way the body would have remained intact enough to wash up on the beach in the first place.
And if the body had washed up on the beach, even many hours ago, it would have been wet from head to toe. That wasn’t the case, which meant that someone had placed it here.
With these thoughts spinning in her head, Gwen put her hand flat on what remained of the woman’s belly. The fabric of her dress was damp, like laundry left out on the line all night, but it wasn’t sopping. Gwen looked up, meeting the eyes of several villagers, who gazed at her with expressions ranging from curious to revolted to worried. She, herself, was among the worried. She didn’t know who this was, but she knew nobody was going to be happy when she discovered the woman’s name. Somewhere, sometime, someone had lost a daughter. It would be Gwen’s task—and Gareth’s and Hywel’s—to find out who that was.
“Who found her?” she said.
Llelo lifted a hand to gain Gwen’s attention and brought the group of children closer. “They did, all together.”
“Did you touch her?” Gwen studied the children’s faces as they shook their heads vehemently in turn. She ended up looking intently at a medium-sized boy of about nine with a mop of dark hair and dark eyes.
“No, my lady.” He shook his head too.
Gwen looked sideways at him. “Not even a little?”
“It was I who pulled back her hood, Lady Gwen.” A burly villager stepped forward. “Once I saw that she was dead—long dead from the looks—I went to find Rhodri, there.” He gestured to where Rhodri guarded the pathway between the body and the cart.
If he’d come to the same conclusion Gwen had—that the woman hadn’t drowned—he’d realized that it was along that trajectory that evidence, if there was any evidence, would be found. All of the men-at-arms at Aber, whether they served Prince Hywel, his brother Rhun, or King Owain, knew from experience that Gareth would want to inspect the entire area personally and would be displeased if it had been marred by the curious and the careless. Beyond Rhodri, Dewi had gone back to the cart and was talking to someone, though since the man had his back to her, Gwen couldn’t
tell who it was.
She glanced up at the sky. The sun was coming up over the hills to the southeast, revealing a cloudless sky, unusual for so late in October. A warm breeze was blowing into her face from the south. She’d woken to dozens of mornings like this on Anglesey over the summer, and for a moment she wished that she was back at her little cottage, wiggling her bare toes in the warm sand instead of on this windswept beach crouching over a dead body. “When is low tide, Llelo?”
“Just now, Ma,” Llelo said. “That’s why we all came down here this morning. After the rain we’ve had, we were looking forward to a good haul of clams.”
Gwen focused on the damp sand around the body. The high tide mark was another ten feet further up the beach, beyond where the woman lay, which meant that she’d been laid down on this beach sometime after midnight. Otherwise, she would have been washed away with the tide. That led Gwen to conclude—though Hywel would say it was far too soon to conclude anything—that whoever had laid her here had wanted her to be found. Otherwise, he should have left her where he found her, wherever that was, or put her closer to the water’s edge so the tide could have taken her out to sea.
“Can we move her now?”
Gwen looked up and struggled not to let dismay show on her face. Adda, the commander of one of King Owain’s companies, had arrived at Gwen’s side with Dewi in tow. Adda bent over the body, his hands on his knees. Dewi wore a look of revulsion on his face.
“I’m sorry, sir, but we really can’t,” Gwen said.
“Why not?” Adda said.
“Because she didn’t drown.”
“What do you mean?” Adda said. “Sailors and fisherman often wash up on our shore when they don’t end up on the Great Orme.”
Adda was right. The villagers knew to come to the beach after a storm to look for valuable items they could salvage from boats lost at sea, even if they had come for the clams today.
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