The Fourth Horseman (11 page)

Mari’s hand gripped Hywel’s, and Hywel found
that his feet were fixed to the floor. The silence stretched out
for a long count of ten, and then Gwen spoke again. “You’re part of
this somehow, aren’t you? You were involved even before we rode
through the gates of the castle.”

“
Did you join my retinue
because you still work for the empress?” Hywel found himself
struggling to push down a rising anger that the prior had kept this
from him. He swallowed hard, acknowledging that his anger had less
to do with the secrets Prior Rhys had kept than his own hurt pride
at not knowing them already.

“
No.” Prior Rhys eased back
into the pillows. “As you may recall, it was you who asked me to
join your company.”

“
But you said ‘yes,’” Hywel
said.

Prior Rhys’s eyes flashed. “Because you
asked.”

“
You weren’t worried that
you might meet some of your old compatriots?” Gwen shifted on the
bed, easing back from Prior Rhys to give him more space.

“
Years have passed,” Prior
Rhys said. “Men die, they move on, and I have changed in appearance
and vocation. Besides, even if I did encounter someone I knew
before, why would it matter? I swear to you that my involvement
with what is happening at Newcastle is as a bystander
only.”

“
Someone apparently doesn’t
think so,” Hywel said.

Prior Rhys lifted one shoulder. “I cannot
account for that. I have had no contact with any of the empress’s
men since I left.”

“
Why did you leave royal
service?” Gwen said.

A flash of a smile. “Leave it to you to
wonder that, Gwen. In all these years, the only man who ever asked
me why I left was the former prior of the monastery. I put him off
with a piece of the truth—that I was aging, that I was tired of
war. I didn’t tell him all, not even the man to whom I owe so
much.” He contemplated her face. “I wonder that I am considering
telling you.”

Hywel could feel Mari holding her breath
beside him. None of them moved or said anything. Prior Rhys looked
past Gwen to Hywel, but he didn’t focus on his face. Hywel thought
Prior Rhys wasn’t seeing him as much as the ghost of what had
driven him to the Church.

“
For many years, I was a
warrior,” Rhys said. “I fought in battles. I killed more men than I
can count. Their faces hover before my eyes each night when I pray.
But even I could not stomach the conflict that I saw coming between
Stephen and Maud. From the moment Prince William’s ship went down,
war was inevitable.”

“
You didn’t leave then,
though,” Mari said.

“
My dear,” Prior Rhys said.
“It wasn’t that simple.”

In response, Mari released Hywel’s hand so
she could lean forward and take Prior Rhys’s. Hywel flexed his
fingers, missing the warmth of her hand in his.

“
I acted only when my loss
of honor weighed on me more heavily than I could bear.” Then Prior
Rhys blinked and hitched himself straighter on the bed.

“
Empress Maud must have
been none too pleased at your departure,” Hywel said. “I confess
I’m having trouble believing that your current circumstance has
nothing to do with your past.”

“
Or the way you left,” Gwen
said.

“
I thought we agreed that
the man disabled me because he wanted to steal David’s body?” Prior
Rhys said.

“
Maybe what we should be
asking is why you wanted to watch over David.” Hywel’s anger had
receded, which meant he was starting to think.

“
Wasn’t it my duty as a
servant of God?” Prior Rhys said.

A second question. If Gareth were here, he
would have said that Prior Rhys was trying to deflect Hywel. Hywel
leaned forward, a hand on the bedpost. “Then tell me the truth, as
a man of God, Rhys.”

“
I have told more truth to
you today than I have ever told anybody.”

“
And yet you now evade,”
Hywel said. “Was David one of the men you used to know, before you
left the empress’s service?”

“
My lord, surely—” Prior
Rhys put his fist to his mouth and coughed.

“
Please don’t prevaricate,”
Hywel said. “You know what I am asking.”

Hywel thought he wasn’t going to answer, but
then Prior Rhys dropped his hand to the bedcovers in a gesture of
resignation. “Yes, I knew him.”

“
You knew him when you
served the empress?” Hywel said.

“
Yes.”

The truth came to Hywel in a flash of
understanding, in the time it took for each of them to breathe in
and out once. “You were one of them, weren’t you? You were one of
the four horsemen.”

Prior Rhys’s brow furrowed. “The what?”

Gwen’s hand had gone to her mouth. “Were
you? Is Prince Hywel right?”

Prior Rhys turned his gaze on Gwen. “You
know nothing of what you speak.”

“
But you do. You were more
than a warrior. You spied for Empress Maud. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Hywel had allowed a hint of admiration to creep into his voice, and
he glared at Prior Rhys to compensate for it. “We already know some
of the story from another source, more than you might
think.”

Prior Rhys looked away, towards the door, as
if wishing he could get up and walk through it. Then he nodded. “I
would have preferred never to speak of this again because it was
never my intent to be a spy or to be involved in the doings of the
royal court at all. This legend that Empress Maud has cultivated is
… abhorrent. ” Rhys’s regret seemed genuine. “I wish the subterfuge
and enmity she fostered had ended with my departure. I tried to
make it so, but I failed.”

“
Your three fellow horsemen
continued in her service up until this very day,” Gwen said. “You
should know, however, that David and John died today, and Alard is
accused of murdering them both.”

Prior Rhys shook his head. “I don’t see—” He
stopped, lifting his chin and looking straight at Hywel. “I told
you the truth when I said that I have had no involvement—no
contact—with any of them since I joined the monastery. I knew when
I left that it would be hard on all of us, and it would be better
to cut all ties. They were my brothers, and I abandoned them when
they needed me the most.”

“
You were following your
heart,” Mari said.

“
I was a warrior,” Prior
Rhys said. “I left my brothers to fend for themselves, and I cannot
forgive myself for that.” He pointed at Hywel. “You’ve fought
battles; you know what it’s like to depend on other men and trust
them.”

“
I do know,” Hywel said,
“but it would be a cruel day when I chose to fake my own death
rather than serve my liege lord, as you faked yours …
Peter.”

“
Ah.” Prior Rhys gave a
low, mocking laugh. “You already know about that.”

“
We do,” Hywel
said.

“
How could you?” Gwen
said.

Prior Rhys held her gaze. “All I can tell
you is that I did what I felt was necessary.”

“
All the more reason to
wonder who injured you today and why,” Hywel said.

“
Are you suggesting that
one of my former colleagues recognized me in the few minutes we
were in the bailey, before David fell, and bore a serious enough
grudge against me all this time that he felt it necessary to nearly
murder me?” Prior Rhys said.

“
You tell me,” Hywel
said.

“
Perhaps someone did,” Rhys
said, “but whatever I did was done a long time ago, and you said
yourself that John and David are dead. Alard left the castle by
rope. My assailant can be none of them.”

“
Would another have a
grievance?” Hywel said. “As a spy, you must have made
enemies.”

“
Of course,” Rhys said,
“but none that I know of who are here today and who would steal
David’s body. I swear to you, the reason behind David’s death is a
mystery to me.”

“
What if you were to
encounter Empress Maud?” Gwen said.

“
She is here?” For the
first time in their conversation, Prior Rhys looked genuinely
concerned.

“
Gareth has gone off to
speak with her, at her request,” Gwen said.

“
Empress Maud is—”Rhys ran
a hand through his hair, not finishing the thought.

“
She never forgets or
forgives, or so I hear,” Hywel said.

Prior Rhys waved a hand dismissively. “Even
if she learns of my existence, it shouldn’t concern her. Alard was
always her favorite. She used me but cared for my well-being only
in that I was willing to do her bidding. She sent me to serve Earl
Robert in England almost immediately upon my joining her
retinue.”

“
If you were associated
with Earl Robert, have you been to Newcastle before?” Mari had been
silent a long time, but her question was one Hywel himself hadn’t
thought to ask. Another reason to be glad she was in the
room.

“
Oddly, yes,” Rhys said.
“We—the four horsemen, if you must call us that—established our
base at a farmhouse on the other side of the Lyme
Brook.”

Hywel’s attention sharpened. “A farmhouse?
Is it still there?”

“
I wouldn’t
know.”

“
That should have been the
first place we looked for Alard.” Hywel turned to Gwen. “Why didn’t
Amaury mention it?”

“
Perhaps he doesn’t know of
its existence,” Prior Rhys said. “It was ours—we chose it and
stocked it for our benefit. Perhaps my former companions continued
to keep it a secret to all but a few confidants, of whom Amaury
wasn’t one.”

“
You didn’t even tell Earl
Robert?” Gwen said.

“
Not specifically.” Prior
Rhys glanced at her. “You think that’s odd, don’t you? But he made
it clear that he didn’t want to know the details of our activities,
and I rarely saw him anyway. It was his spymaster who held my
reins, though he drowned before I left, and you would be right to
think that I chose to make my departure on the heels of his
death.”

Mari had been picking at the ends of Prior
Rhys’s blanket while she listened. She’d appeared less overtly
focused on the conversation than Gwen and Hywel, but her head came
up at Rhys’s last words. “Say that again? Your spymaster
drowned—?”

“
Yes, my dear,” Rhys
said.

“
What was his name?” Mari
said.

Prior Rhys’s brow furrowed, but he answered
civilly enough. “The man I served, before his untimely death, was
Ralph de Lacy.”

“
But how can that be?” Mari
swallowed hard. “Ralph de Lacy, if we are speaking of the same man,
was my father.”

Chapter
Eleven

Gareth

G
areth again rode from the gate with Amaury and his men. This
time, instead of continuing down the road to the Lyme Brook, they
dismounted before the friary door.

“
Tell me again why the
empress isn’t staying at the castle?” Gareth said. “Surely it’s
much better fortified against attack.”

Amaury shot him a wary look. “She has her
reasons.”

“
She isn’t concerned that
Earl Robert might be wavering in his loyalty, is she?” Gareth
said.

“
Not that I am aware,”
Amaury said.

“
Then why isn’t she staying
at the castle?” Gareth said, pressing him a little. He’d felt from
the start that nobody, including Amaury, was telling him the whole
truth and was determined to find out what was really going on. If
that meant asking a few direct questions and offending a few
Normans, so be it.

“
She is a pious woman,”
Amaury said. “She likes having a church near.”

Gareth stared at Amaury,
who colored and looked away. He was openly lying now, and they both
knew it. What Gareth couldn’t figure out was
why
. For the first time since he’d
arrived at Newcastle, he felt a trickle of fear. Dismounting among
the men who had escorted him and Amaury to the friary, he wondered
if he’d chosen to ride a different way—back to the Welsh camp, for
example—they would have stopped him.

Amaury gestured Gareth inside without saying
anything more. The friary occupied higher ground to the southeast
of the castle but was a less elaborate construction. A head-high
wall separated the road from the main buildings of the friary.

They led their horses through the gate and
into a cobbled, square courtyard. The chapel, cloister, monks’
dormitory, and meeting hall filled the northern and western side of
the square. The stables were to their east, abutting the road, and
to the northeast, the courtyard opened onto gardens, a cemetery,
and green fields with scattered outbuildings beyond.

A boy in sandals and a worn robe ran to take
their horses, and then Amaury led Gareth through a narrow door into
a central dining hall.

“
I must leave you for a
short while,” Amaury said. “Please wait for me here.”

Given the awkwardness of their previous
exchange, Gareth didn’t ask for more information and halted in the
middle of the floor. Amaury left the room through a far door and
closed it behind him. Left alone, Gareth gazed after him, wondering
what might come next and feeling slightly better about whether or
not he might end the day in chains. The fear had abated, replaced
by curiosity and a sense of righteousness. These Normans thought
they could intimidate him; he was going to prove them wrong.