The Fallen Princess (4 page)

“I wouldn’t worry too much about the younger
brother,” Hywel said. “Ifon hasn’t a violent bone in his body. I
can’t see him having anything to do with his brother’s death. Or
Tegwen’s, for that matter.”

Hywel’s comment violated their oft-spoken
motto,
never assume
, but Gareth let it go for now. He’d met
Ifon, and Hywel’s assessment was accurate up to a point. Still,
while Ifon might not have an impressive intellect or the same skill
with a sword as his older brother, Gareth had worked for Hywel long
enough to know that the face a person showed to the world often
belied his true character. You could never know what was in
another’s heart, especially when he rarely talked about himself or
put himself forward.

“My lord, I have news.” Adda finally
reappeared with Rhodri and Dewi in tow.

A look of disdain crossed Hywel’s face at
the sound of Adda’s voice, but since Hywel still faced Gareth, Adda
didn’t see it. Hywel rolled his eyes at Gareth and then cleared his
expression before turning around. “Good. Let’s hear it.”

“I was unable to find any witnesses to this
incident.” Adda held his back straight and gazed at a point to the
right of Hywel’s left shoulder. “I did discover tracks that I
believe are from a cart. They start twenty yards up the beach from
the body and continue past where we left the horses. If I am not
mistaken, there are two sets: coming and going.”

Gareth took a step closer. “Rhodri and Dewi
brought a cart when they arrived with Gwen. How can you tell the
difference between the tracks?”

“The other set goes off towards the west,”
Adda said. “They are deeper, too, as if the cart carried a
load.”

Gareth nodded. “Excellent work.” Adda’s
observations were far more insightful than Gareth would have given
him credit for.

Prince Hywel looked Adda up and down as if
seeing him with new eyes too. “What happens after the tracks reach
the road?”

“It is impossible to trace them, my lord,”
Adda said, still stiff.

“Did you stand watch last night?” Prince
Hywel said.

“No, my lord,” Adda said. “Mine was the
morning shift.”

“Find the man you replaced and bring him to
me once I return to the castle,” Prince Hywel said. “You are
dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.” Adda saluted and departed with
Dewi.

Rhodri had been hovering on the margins of
their conversation and didn’t leave with Adda even though the older
soldier shot him a look that indicated he should. While Hywel bent
to Tegwen’s body and began wrapping her back up in her cloak,
Rhodri stepped towards Gareth. “My lord, if I may have a word?”

Gareth nodded and moved with Rhodri to one
side, out of earshot of Hywel. “What is it?” It wasn’t that he
wouldn’t share the information Rhodri was bringing him with Hywel
but that there was a solemnity to Hywel’s movements that Gareth
didn’t want to disturb.

“I wanted you to know that I wasn’t on duty
either; I was here. I brought my boy to the beach this morning. My
family are fishermen, and it’s his heritage, you see.”

Having seen to Tegwen, Hywel signaled to
several of the men to come help him carry Tegwen’s body to the
cart. Gareth turned back to Rhodri, who hurriedly continued, “I
didn’t notice her until the children pointed her out, seeing how it
was still dark when we arrived, and it was at least an hour that
she lay on the beach before there was enough light to see by. The
lanterns don’t shed much light beyond a small circle, you see.”

“You don’t have to apologize, Rhodri,”
Gareth said. “She’d been dead a long while before today.”

Rhodri ducked his head. “It’s not that. It’s
this.” From his pocket, Rhodri brought out a coin pendant with a
hole shot through it and strung on a length of leather thong.
“Within a few moments of our arrival, my boy found this lying on
the path. He picked it up, thinking to keep it, but I reckon that
it isn’t his to keep.”

Gareth took the pendant and held it out flat
in the palm of his hand, a cold wave of dismay flooding his chest.
It was clearly old and so worn that Gareth couldn’t read the
writing on the coin or make out the image on its face. It would
have been worn as a necklace and passed through many hands to reach
his. “Thank you, Rhodri, for your honesty. I will show this to
Prince Hywel.”

“I thought it might be the dead woman’s, you
see,” he said. “I couldn’t by rights keep it.”

“See to your boy. This can’t have been an
easy day for him.” Gareth dismissed Rhodri and returned to Hywel’s
side. The prince had by now seen his cousin safely ensconced in the
cart. Gareth waited patiently for Hywel to finish adjusting the
cloak so it covered Tegwen completely and then caught his lord’s
attention, touching his sleeve and stepping away from the group of
men who had gathered themselves for the somber journey to Aber
Castle.

Hywel’s expression turned wary at seeing the
concern on Gareth’s face, and when Gareth handed him the necklace
and explained where it had been found, the muscles in Hywel’s jaw
tightened. He turned the coin over in his fingers, licking his lips
and as reluctant as Gareth to speak.

Finally, Hywel said, “You know as well as I
do to whom this belongs.”

“I will name him if you won’t,” Gareth
said.

Hywel shook his head. “Uncle Cadwaladr, what
have you done now?”

Hywel

U
ncle
Cadwaladr
.

Although Hywel had never liked him, his very
existence had been haunting Hywel for over a year now. At first, it
had been because he hired a company of Danes from Dublin to ambush
and murder King Anarawd of Deheubarth and Hywel had been
instrumental in proving his culpability. Since then, Hywel had
taken over Cadwaladr’s castle and lands in Ceredigion, and the
legacy of his uncle’s every decision had been dogging Hywel’s
steps. Cadwaladr had been a bad ruler, alienating the populace and
fomenting discontent such that they didn’t trust
those
foreigners from Gwynedd
, of which they viewed Hywel most
definitely as one.

And the worst thing was that Hywel could see
Cadwaladr in himself. A few different pieces to his life—and a few
different people in his life—and he and Cadwaladr could have been
very much alike.

Long ago, when Gwen and Hywel were no more
than eight and nine, Gwen had openly chastised Hywel for his
behavior for the first time. Hywel had taken a kitten from the
daughter of one of the kitchen staff and hidden it from her in his
room. He hadn’t hurt it, but when Gwen learned that the kitten was
missing, she’d come to him, all fire and outrage.

At first he’d tried to brazen it out, but
then he’d succumbed to her glare and shown her where he was keeping
it and that it wasn’t hurt. Gwen had then asked him,
why would
you take pleasure in hurting others?

Such a simple question, and one that he’d at
first refused to answer, though his heart had sunk into his boots.
He hadn’t known why he’d stolen the kitten. It had been a game to
him with no real consequences from his end, since he’d intended to
return it eventually. But he’d hated the disappointment he’d seen
in Gwen’s eyes. She could see right through him.

Everyone else he could charm—and he’d
charmed Gwen plenty too, he knew—but not when right and wrong were
at stake. If not for Gwen—not just that time, but all the times she
pointed him in a better direction from the one he was taking,
though usually more subtly than in that first instance—Hywel
wondered if he wouldn’t have turned out like his uncle.

Hywel knew himself to be perfectly capable
of killing. He’d done it in battle. He’d killed Anarawd, who was to
have been his brother-in-law, and not lost more than a night or two
of sleep over it. He’d justified his actions, as all men did, by
telling himself that what he’d done was
right
, because to
believe anything else would be to undermine his very existence.

But Cadwaladr was a different animal
entirely, and Hywel didn’t think he was just telling himself that
in order to feel better about hating his uncle. Cadwaladr really
did care only about himself: how he felt, what his position was,
how other people viewed him. He’d been spoiled by his mother, or so
Hywel understood. Hywel had no idea what that was like, since his
own mother had died at his birth, and he’d been raised by a series
of nannies and foster mothers.

Just like Tegwen.

Until he was seven years old, Hywel hadn’t
even lived with his father, who had fostered him and Rhun out to a
man named Cadifor, with estates on the Lleyn Peninsula. Hywel’s
father had brought the boys to him when Cadifor’s wife died, and he
deemed them old enough to take their place at court. Hywel had
hoped that Cadifor would bring his sons to Aber to celebrate the
harvest, but three years running he’d stayed home, and given the
lateness of the hour, Hywel supposed he would do the same this year
too.

Hywel didn’t think it was an estrangement
keeping them apart, or at least he hoped it wasn’t. Hywel would
have to go to him if many more months passed without them seeing
each other. He’d get Rhun to come. If Hywel had offended his foster
family in some way, Rhun would help smooth it over.

Hywel’s men-at-arms clustered together near
the cart, and Hywel tried to focus on each one as they spoke to him
of what they’d found—or rather, not found—on the beach. He hadn’t
put Cadwaladr’s pendant coin away. He wouldn’t keep it himself;
when Gareth returned from collecting Llelo, Hywel would give it to
Gareth to hold. It wasn’t that Hywel’s scrip was too full but
rather that the thought of having something near him that belonged
to his uncle turned his stomach, even if that something was
evidence against him.

Hywel clenched his fist around the coin. He
could admit that he hated Cadwaladr, and part of him rejoiced at
the idea that he’d caught his devious uncle out in more wrongdoing,
but Hywel feared it too. The next break between King Owain and
Cadwaladr might well be the last, and then there was no telling
what Cadwaladr might do. If he were cast out, Hywel’s father would
have no more control over him.

Though, judging from today, the control that
King Owain did have was no more than an illusion.

Unable to contain his body when his thoughts
were in turmoil, Hywel spun away from the cart and climbed to the
top of the adjacent dune. He could see Aber’s towers from here and,
facing the other way, the Lavan Sands, Anglesey, and the Irish Sea
stretching into the distance. This was home. He and Gwen had ranged
all over the cantref as youngsters. He’d missed the quality of the
air and the sea while he’d been away. He’d missed the
mountains.

He’d come back from Ceredigion to breathe
this air and see this view. He’d needed to see his wife, Mari, too,
and had been looking for a respite from the pressures and the petty
conflicts that marked his life. He desperately wanted to bring Mari
south with him when he returned. She was smart and capable, and he
surely needed every capable hand he could find.

His father had taken the lordship from
Cadwaladr and given it to Hywel as his own and as a test of Hywel’s
character. He needed Hywel to hold it, for Hywel’s own sake and as
a buffer for Gwynedd against the Normans in Pembroke and the
ambitions of King Cadell in Deheubarth. It burned Hywel to admit
that within a year of receiving ownership, he was perilously close
to losing it. Enemies confronted him on all sides, and while he was
gaining experience every day, it wasn’t happening quickly
enough.

Gareth was a good man—a good leader—but he
knew even less about governing a people than Hywel did. Ruling a
kingdom wasn’t the same as winning it. It was as if his father had
sailed with him in a boat halfway to Ireland and then shoved him
out of it, saying, “Swim.” By God, Hywel was swimming as hard as he
could, but Ceregidion wasn’t Gwynedd. The people there had spent
far too much time among Normans to understand how true Welshmen
lived and acted. The lesser lords plotted and connived, always
looking for a weakness.

Hywel hadn’t known what real leadership was
until this year, and it terrified him to think he didn’t have it in
him. So far, Hywel’s father hadn’t said anything to him about the
men he’d lost or the money he was spending. He had to think that,
for now, his father believed that having Hywel in charge of
Ceredigion was better than having Cadwaladr, whom he was punishing.
But if Hywel didn’t get control of the cantref soon, he might find
himself yanked by the neck hairs back to Gwynedd.

“My lord?” Evan approached the base of the
dune and looked up at Hywel with a concerned expression.

“What is it?” Hywel glanced down at him,
hastily rearranging his thoughts and smoothing his expression in
case what was going on inside his head showed.

“We await your orders, my lord.”

“I’m coming now.” Hywel took a last look at
the view and then slid down the dune, holding his arms out for
balance so he wouldn’t land ignominiously on his rear. As he
reached level ground again, one of the guards who had departed with
Gwen returned.

The man dismounted by the cart and went down
on one knee before Hywel, far more formally than was usual for his
men, but the occasion seemed to have touched everyone and demanded
it. “I am so sorry for your loss, my lord.”

Hywel looked down at the man’s bowed head
and then snapped his fingers, indicating that he should rise. The
man was in his middle thirties and had served Hywel’s father before
transferring to Hywel’s company. “Thank you, Cynan. How do you know
I have experienced a loss?”

Cynan straightened his back and looked at
Hywel, his expression confused. “Isn’t this the body of Princess
Tegwen?”

“Did Gwen tell you that?”