The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery) (22 page)

His eyes lit at that, although whenever she’d looked into them they’d been bright—as if he found the world deeply amusing. Maybe he was like Hywel in that, though in Hywel, that amusement came out with more than a touch of cynicism. “You will sing for us when we reach my father’s hall.”

“Is he the King of Dublin?” Gwen said.

A shadow crossed Godfrid’s face. Apparently, this was the one thing that could dampen his mood. “He shares power with Ottar.”

Gwen didn’t know who Ottar was, nor Ragnall for that matter. The politics of Wales were so complicated that she’d never had time to learn anyone else’s, though she’d met men from Ireland before in southern or western Wales. “And Cadwaladr? Does he have plans for me?”

Godfrid glanced behind him to where Cadwaladr stood near the prow of the boat, one foot up on a box of cargo. He rested his hip on the rail and looked towards Ireland. “He may not realize it, but you are
my
hostage now, not his. You carry my cousin’s child. He should not have taken you from Hywel.”

Cousin
. And that eased Gwen’s fears even more. The Danes were no less fierce about kinship than the Welsh, for all that brother murdered brother just as in Wales. Gwen had learned enough about Hywel’s ancestry growing up with him to understand what that tie meant to the Royal House of Wales.

As Godfrid promised, they reached Dublin just after noon on the second day out from Anglesey. Though pale, having not kept anything down except a few sips of water in two days, Gwen was able to sit up once they reached the calm harbor below the city. She’d never seen so many ships in one place, from the larger warships like the one in which she’d sailed, to the smaller, more agile craft that hugged the coast.

These Danes didn’t seem to be fisherman as much as traders, bringing goods from all over the world into Dublin. She wondered how much of it was stolen. The Danes hadn’t raided Welsh shores for a hundred years, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t moved farther afield. Well … unless Anarawd’s murder counted as a raid. And that wasn’t random, since Cadwaladr had invited them in.

Dublin was a place unlike any she’d ever seen. In all their travels in Wales, her family had never passed through a town with more than a thousand people. The Dublin streets wended around a maze of thatched cottages. As at home, they’d been built in wattle and daub with thatched roofs, all crammed in together. They also appeared to have been planted anywhere the owner liked. Interspersed among them, equally haphazardly, were craft halls, stalls, churches, merchants, and small greens.

Church bells rang from all directions. She’d thought the Danes heathen, but according to Godfrid, who held her elbow as he helped her off the ship, that was no longer the case, not since the great Sitric of the silken beard had converted to Christianity and later died on pilgrimage to Rome. That was the same Sitric from whom Hywel descended, though not Godfrid as it turned out. He’d explained the genealogy that made him and Hywel cousins, but Gwen had soon lost track of the odd-sounding names and the multiple marriages and divorces that connected them. Besides, as she really wasn’t carrying Hywel’s child, it could hardly matter to her.

Solid ground felt like heaven, even as the barrage of sights and sounds overwhelmed her senses. “Five thousand souls live in Dublin,” Godfrid said, and Gwen could well believe it. The smell of refuse, excrement, and humanity almost made her vomit yet again, but she held onto her stomach with one hand and Godfrid’s arm with the other, weaving on her feet but still upright. Godfrid handed her off to the mute Olaf, who guided her through the streets, passing houses, merchants, and an open air market. At first she couldn’t grasp what was being sold, until she saw the men, women, and children bound together in a long line.
Slaves
.

Gwen shivered, though not from cold this time. Regardless of Godfrid’s present friendliness, if Cadwaladr or the Danes discovered that she wasn’t carrying Hywel’s child, that could be her fate too. The company wended its way deeper into the maze that was Dublin until they reached Godfrid’s father’s home on the edge of the city.

Prince Cadwaladr was there before her, smiling and condescending, as if by bringing her here he’d achieved a great victory instead of fleeing Wales with his tail between his legs. The hall rose before them, also unlike anything she’d ever seen. Because Dublin was unrelievedly flat, there was nothing to indicate they’d reached a special residence, other than the size of the hall, which was four times larger than any other place she’d seen so far.

“The true king of Dublin lives over there,” Cadwaladr said, waving his hand to indicate the way they’d come. This didn’t help her to orient herself, as she’d gotten turned around in the maze of streets. It was confusing enough that the sea lay to the east, not the west, as in Wales.

Danish halls, or at least this Danish hall, weren’t rectangular in shape as she might have expected, but was bowed outwards in the middle, tapering to a third less wide on both ends. It had timber walls, a great thatched roof, and was set on a laid-stone foundation that also served as the floor.

The entrance doors, with two men in full armor to guard them, sat at one of the narrow ends. At Cadwaladr’s approach, both men bowed, not particularly low but enough to acknowledge his higher rank, and moved aside. Cadwaladr had lived in Dublin for a long time and these men probably knew him. She shuddered at the thought of making that crossing from Wales more than once, much less willingly, as Cadwaladr had. She held more tightly to poor Olaf’s arm, trying to contain her exhaustion, and staggered up the stairs after the Welsh prince.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

H
ywel and Rhun returned to Aber with Cadwaladr’s men—without Cadwaladr and Gwen, of course—and King Owain accepted all with glittering eyes. Cold, for now, not hot. The king assigned one loyal man-at-arms to each of Cadwaladr’s wayward men, with the express intent of getting them drunk and hearing each man’s story. King Owain, like Hywel, might have preferred to kill them all, but somehow Rhun’s earnest objections persuaded him to defer that fate. As Hywel remarked to Gareth later, it would be easy enough to kill them later, if the need arose.

To Gareth’s surprise, King Owain appointed him as one of the ‘trusted’ knights, although his assignment was the poor boy, Tudur, who’d been the first to fall to his knees outside Aberffraw. Gareth watched him drink, not even trying to keep up with his consumption of mead after the first two flagons, which the boy downed before touching his meat. Once he got started, he just kept going, talking through his turnips and onions and roast chicken about how his father had died and he’d inherited his station.

“I was so proud to serve a prince of Wales,” Tudur said.

“Even this one?” Gareth said.

Tudur tried to shake and nod his head at the same time, and almost fell out of his seat. “Who was I to know the man he was? I’d seen the times my father had come home not willing to talk about what he’d been doing, but…”

Gareth studied the boy, waiting, knowing as only he could what was coming next.

“… the reality of service was something entirely different.”

Gareth couldn’t mistake the anguish in the boy’s voice.

“We sacked a village, you see,” Tudur said.

As Tudur went on at length about how the peasants had screamed, Gareth’s confusion grew. Raping and pillaging were part and parcel of the internecine warfare that predominated in Wales, though he couldn’t think of a particular lord with whom Cadwaladr had been at war at that time. Then, as Tudur talked more, it dawned on Gareth what Tudur was saying. Gareth put a hand on his arm to stop him talking and grasped his chin with the other hand. “You pillaged one of Prince Cadwaladr’s own villages?”

Tudur nodded, so drunk now he didn’t even try to stop his tears from falling. “In Ceredigion.”

“Why?”

Tudur just blubbered. Money? Disobedience? What could possibly be the reason a lord would murder his own villagers who were the source of his income, whatever their crimes? Cadwaladr’s rationale might not have been clear to Tudur either. Or at least he couldn’t articulate it after five cups of mead.

Gareth looked around for someone else who was still sober, but as he observed his friends at the other tables, he realized that they were drinking as steadily as their counterparts. He glanced towards the fire where Hywel sat, still as a stone, his chair pushed back and the sole of one boot planted on the edge of the table. Hywel caught his eye, held it, and then looked away again. Gareth went cold. Hywel already knew.

By now, Tudur was sobbing into his drink. Gareth rose, patted him on the shoulder, and crossed the hall to where his lord waited.

“Sit.” Hywel kicked at the rung of the chair next to him so it skidded out from under the table.

Gareth took the chair and sat. He gripped his knees as he thought of what to say.

But Hywel spoke first. “Gareth, tell me when a man’s actions require redress from his lord?”

“When they endanger the alliances of his sovereign,” Gareth said, “or threaten the stability of the realm.”

Hywel nodded. “I am aware of the stories these men are telling. Until Cadwaladr ordered the death of Anarawd, he had not crossed the threshold from reckless to treason.” Hywel nodded towards the men in the hall. “Cadwaladr is a royal brother. He could do what he liked with his own lands.”

“And if your father took him to task or brought him up short, it might send Cadwaladr into the arms of an enemy, someone who would look the other way,” Gareth said. “Even the King of England.”

“How many Welshmen would die if Cadwaladr brought an English army into Wales?” Hywel said.

Gareth knew his face held a stony look. He could admit that Hywel’s assessment of the political situation was accurate, even if he didn’t like it, but he couldn’t accept it. Still, he answered Hywel. “Far more than a little village in Ceredigion.”

“When a prince is trying to preserve his country, he doesn’t have the luxury of worrying about the small things.”

The small things
. Not for the first time, Gareth was glad he wasn’t a prince of Wales, continually forced to choose between two unacceptable alternatives. He took leave of his prince and was just leaving the hall when Meilyr stopped him on the steps, Gwalchmai a pace behind.

“You saw her?” Meilyr spoke around a clenched jaw and hands so tightly fisted it was a wonder his nails didn’t draw blood.

“I did,” Gareth said.

“What can you tell me?”

“Not much more than King Owain already has,” Gareth said. “She left Aberffraw by boat, Cadwaladr’s captive.”

“If he harms her—”

“He thinks she carries Hywel’s child,” Gareth said. Meilyr’s already red face turned purple. Before he expired on the spot, Gareth put a hand on his arm. “Cadwaladr has been misled. But for now, it keeps her safe from him or any man.”

“How dare you patronize me—”

“I love your daughter, Meilyr,” Gareth said. “I would have her hand if you will give it, when we get her back and if she agrees.”

Meilyr’s mouth opened and closed like a landed fish and then he snapped it shut. “Find her. Return her safely to me and we will see.” He brushed past Gareth and into the hall. Gareth wondered if Meilyr would be able to speak civilly to Hywel and hoped for his sake that he could.

Gareth looked at Gwalchmai, who’d remained behind, and rested a hand on his shoulder. It looked to Gareth like he was close to crying. “I won’t tell you not to worry, but this is a long way from over. We’ll find her. I swear it.”

* * * * *

The next morning, King Owain stood in the center of his hall, his nobles surrounding him. He held a staff in both hands. “My brother, Cadwaladr, ordered the death of King Anarawd, my friend and the man who would have been my son.” His voice carried throughout the hall. “Rather than face what he has done, and the choices he has made, he has fled, we believe, to Dublin.”

The majority of the people listening had heard some of this before. Nobody gasped in horror or dismay. “Most here already knew what kind of man Cadwaladr was,” Rhun said,
sotto voce
.

Gareth turned to find the prince at his right shoulder. But Rhun was only repeating Gareth’s own thoughts: that even if someone hadn’t heard the news, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. And that thought gave Gareth pause too, for if everyone had known what Gareth himself had faced in Cadwaladr’s service, why had so few understood and forgiven Gareth for his summary dismissal?

Rhun gave him a smile. “Do you know why I knighted you?”

Gareth shook his head. “We’d won the battle…”

Rhun didn’t wait for him to finish. “It was time.” He tipped his chin towards the crowd of men listening to King Owain. “It isn’t that men couldn’t forgive you for disobeying Cadwaladr, or at least, that’s not the full story. Your very existence revealed to them their compliance and dishonor. They shunned you because you had more courage than they, even if they prettied it up with talk of loyalty.”

Gareth swallowed hard. Rhun smiled again and returned to watching the room.

“I hereby strip my brother of his inheritance; I reclaim the lands in Ceredigion, Anglesey, and Lleyn that I gave him.” King Owain took the staff, split it over his knee, and tossed the smaller half into the fire. “Henceforth, I have no brother.” He turned to Hywel, who unlike Rhun had stood with his father throughout the ceremony, his hands behind his back. “Go.”

Hywel did as he was told. By noon, he’d gathered half his father’s personal guard (his
teulu
) along with all of Hywel’s own men and every other knight or man-at-arms the remaining nobles at Aber could spare.

King Cadell planted himself in front of Hywel. “I will ride with you to Ceredigion before continuing to my own lands.”

Hywel turned to him, surprise etched in his face. “Aren’t you staying for…” His voice trailed off, one of the few times Gareth had ever seen Hywel nonplussed.

“I will marry your sister in a year’s time, if all goes well,” Cadell said. “It is unwise to be hasty in these matters and I would prefer to clear up the details of my brother’s murder first.” He paused, his eyes narrowed at Hywel. It was the first time Gareth perceived the steel behind Cadell’s smarmy façade. “I would like to know that no suspicion falls on me in this matter.”