The Renegade Merchant (20 page)

Tom pulled out a bench, gesturing that they
should sit. “So you saw her? My girl?”

Gwen sat, Tangwen on her lap. “I did. Yes,
sir.”

Tom took in a deep breath through his nose
before crouching on a low stool at the end of the table. He put his
elbows on the table and his hands in his hair, hanging there for a
moment before straightening. “I’m glad someone was with her at the
end.”

“She’s buried properly in a churchyard,”
Gwen said, without mentioning that she herself hadn’t actually been
present as Adeline had died. She didn’t know if Tom realized that
or not, but it was hardly something she was going to bring up
now.

“Up near Mold, is it?” Tom said.

Gwen nodded, though she didn’t give him the
Welsh name of the village. It would mean nothing to him.

“Where are my manners?” Tom stood again,
tipping over his stool. He flushed as he righted it. “I have food
and drink prepared.” He disappeared out the back of his house,
which gave Gwen and her father an opportunity to take a deep breath
themselves. Tangwen, for once, wasn’t squirming to get down, and
instead leaned back against Gwen’s chest. Maybe Gwen was going to
be so lucky that Tangwen would take a short nap.

“You’re doing well,” Meilyr said.

Gwen smiled. “What about you? Is your head
all right?”

Meilyr scoffed. “I remember now why it has
been such a long while since I drank that much. I’ll recover. It
serves me right.”

Gwen hadn’t been going to say it, but she
was glad that her father seemed to have recovered from his
melancholy. Then Tom returned, a forced smile on his face, but
still a smile, and he offered them fresh bread with butter and
watered mead. “You’re Welsh. I thought you might prefer it.”

“We do,” Meilyr said. “Thank you.”

Tom raised his cup. “To Adeline.”

“To Adeline,” Gwen and Meilyr repeated.

Gwen took a small sip, but Tom drained his
cup in a long series of gulps, and when he set it down, his eyes
were clearer than before. He filled his glass again. “That’s
good!”

Tom didn’t quite get drunk as he consumed
cup after cup, but he became more talkative, making the meeting
less awkward than Gwen had feared. She had thought to avoid talking
about the specifics of how Adeline had left Shrewsbury, in order
not to offend Tom, but Tom’s openness encouraged her to try.
Besides, having taken a short nap, Tangwen had woken refreshed and
run off to chase the chickens in Tom’s courtyard, under the
watchful eyes of Tom’s journeyman and apprentices. Thus, Gwen
didn’t have to worry about the little girl overhearing something
Gwen would prefer she didn’t.

“At the end, before Adeline left, did you
ever see her with a Welshman?”

“Are you asking if I saw her with the one
that died with her, who looked like your husband?” Tom said.

Gwen shot a quick glance at her father, who
nodded. “I told him about Gareth.”

“I don’t mean to bring up bad memories but,
while it is true that I was wondering about that man, I also want
to know about another man, maybe one obviously wealthy, who might
have swept her off her feet.”

Tom snorted into his cup. “You’re talking
about the big, blond, fancy man who wore a sword, though I didn’t
think he knew how to use it.”

“You saw her with him?” Gwen tried to keep
the urgency that filled her out of her voice.

“From a distance. He was coming down the
street having visited the castle when he came upon Adeline.”

“Are you saying they met by accident?” Gwen
said.

Tom shook his head. “It looked to me like
she’d been lying in wait. I laid into her about it, didn’t I? She
had no cause to be talking to the likes of him, seeing as how he’d
only want one thing from her, and she didn’t want to be known as
that type of girl. She should have been paying attention to her
future husband, shouldn’t she have?”

“Roger Carter.” Gwen could hardly have
forgotten about him.

“And now he’s dead too.” Tom sighed.

“A cartwright, wasn’t he?” Meilyr said.

“The best in Shrewsbury, he and his brother.
Well-respected they are—were. Roger was quite a bit older than
Adeline.” Tom sighed again. “I should have known better than to
accept his offer for her hand, but I wanted what was best for her,
even if she didn’t.”

“Why did Roger offer for her?” Gwen
said.

“He loved her, didn’t he?” Tom said. “Every
man did. She turned heads everywhere she went.”

Gwen didn’t say that what
he described wasn’t actually
love
, but that wasn’t her place to
explain either.

“Where is the cartwright’s shop?” Gwen said,
trying not to sound like she cared very much. Gareth had already
visited the family, and she didn’t want to interfere with his
activities, but with Roger’s murder, the more she knew about Roger
the better she would be able to help. She really just wanted to see
it.

“The next street over.” Tom canted his head
to indicate the direction. “You might be careful about how you
approach Martin if you plan to talk to him. You look very much like
Adeline. She and Jenny, Martin’s wife, were close.”

Gwen put up a hand, palm out. “I have no
desire to meet him. I was just curious.”

Then Tom frowned. “You know, I might have
seen that other fellow, the fancy man, not two weeks ago.”

“You did? Where?” It was Meilyr who leaned
in this time, which was good because Gwen found her breath catching
in her throat.

“Riding down the east road past the
monastery, wasn’t he? I was delivering cloth to the hospitaller and
just coming out the main gate. Plain as day it was the same man—or
at least I thought so at first,” Tom said. “I almost went after
him, but he was riding fast, and I had no horse.”

 “Did he have anyone with him?” Meilyr
said.

“A man-at-arms and a servant,” Tom said.
“That’s all. Light company for one such as he, I thought at the
time.”

Gwen thought, but didn’t say, that he had so
few men with him because he’d abandoned the rest of his men in
Gwynedd.

“Did Adeline ever tell you this fancy man’s
name?” Gwen held her breath.

Tom shook his head. “Never mentioned a name,
though it was plain he was above her station.”

Gwen shared a glance with her father. Sadly,
they didn’t actually need Tom to tell them his name to know it:
Prince Cadwaladr. Who else could it be? Like his brother, King
Owain, Cadwaladr had an eye for women, but in this case, Adeline
had an eye for men too, and perhaps he hadn’t needed to pursue
her.

 “Thank you for meeting me.” The weaver
was a kind, sad man. Gwen kissed him on his cheek. “I am so sorry
for your loss.”

He clutched her hand. “Thank you. Just
seeing you here eases the pain a little, knowing you cared for her
too. She was a lost lamb always.” Tom smiled gently at Gwen. “Be
well.”

Once outside in the street, having collected
Tangwen from her play, Gwen hesitated as to where they should go
next.

Meilyr didn’t. “Let’s walk by that
cartwright’s shop. I want to see this place where Adeline’s beloved
lived.”

“Whether or not they were betrothed,
according to John Fletcher and Tom Weaver, the cartwright was in no
way her beloved, but I suppose it can’t hurt to wander by.” Gwen
understood her father’s desire to know everything he could about
Adeline, but what she didn’t say was that she had begun to think
that the sooner her father admitted that Adeline hadn’t been his
daughter, the better.

They set off down the street, turned onto an
adjacent one, and then turned again, stopping in the middle of the
street to inspect what was before them. Gwen had the sense that
Shrewsbury had started out orderly, with each kind of merchant
setting up shop in a particular quarter of the town, but in recent
years, the system had been undermined by rapid growth. On this
street, merchants had set up shop higgledy piggledy wherever a spot
had become vacant.

The cartwright in question was located next
to a glover, whose shop lay adjacent to a goldsmith. Gwen had never
seen a goldsmith shop before, though she wore a gold cross around
her neck that would have come from a place such as this.

“Adeline!”

A girl with a mane of dark red hair, similar
in color to Roger’s and coming loose from her wimple, came hurtling
out of the driveway that led into the cartwright’s yard and flung
herself at Gwen. Gwen caught her, but only by letting go of
Tangwen’s hand. Fortunately, Meilyr scooped up Tangwen before she
could become upset by the strange woman who was hugging her mother
and alternately sobbing and laughing in her arms.

“I’m not—” Gwen tried.

“I knew you weren’t dead, and they were all
silly to say so. I knew you’d come back!”

Gwen knew she had to take charge of the
situation before it got any more out of hand. She could feel the
eyes of a dozen people in the surrounding shops and houses watching
them, so she grasped the girl by the upper arms and forcibly pushed
her away so that she could look into her face. “I am not Adeline. I
am Gwen.”

The girl stopped in mid-laugh, gaping at
Gwen. The two women were of a height, and the girl’s bright green
eyes were filled with tears.

A man hurried out of the cartwright’s shop.
“Jenny! Jenny!”

Jenny put her hands up to Gwen’s arms,
gripping all the tighter. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she
tried to get a hold of herself.

Gwen felt like crying herself just seeing
Jenny’s grief. “I’m so sorry.”

The man came to a halt a few paces away and
shook his head. “It isn’t your fault. I knew that she hadn’t
accepted Adeline’s death. And now with Roger’s too—”

“We shouldn’t have come,” Meilyr said from
beside Gwen. “We can go.”

“No!” Jenny clung to Gwen still, but after a
moment, she managed to take some gasping breaths, let go of Gwen,
and wiped at her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “I’m all
right.”

Martin moved to put a hand on his wife’s
shoulder. “I met your husband earlier when he and John came by to
tell me about Roger, but—” he shook his head, “it took seeing you
for myself for me to believe that what people are saying is
true.”

Meilyr put out his hand to the man. “I’m
Meilyr, Gwen’s father.”

The man grasped his forearm. “Martin Carter,
John Fletcher’s brother-in-law, and Roger’s brother. May I invite
you inside?”

Gwen hesitated. “Your house is in
mourning—”

“We’ve seen to Roger already. You needn’t
concern yourself with making his death worse than it is.” Martin
lifted a hand to someone behind Gwen.

She turned to see what had drawn his
attention. As they’d stood talking, a crowd had gathered around
them, far more than she’d initially supposed. “This is so awkward,”
she said in Welsh in an undertone to her father.

Meilyr bowed, still looking at Martin. “We
would be honored.” Tangwen clung to him with her chin wrinkled up
and her brow furrowed. She looked close to tears herself.

Gwen brushed one of her daughter’s curls out
of her face and took her back from Meilyr. “It’s all right,
love.”

“Home,” Tangwen said, transferring her arms
from her grandfather’s neck to her mother’s.

“Soon,” Gwen said.

Martin by-passed his front door and instead
led the way down the driveway, which he and his wife had come down
earlier to meet Gwen and Meilyr. Still wiping at her cheeks, Jenny
flashed a smile at Gwen before hurrying ahead, probably to prepare
food and drink. Gwen didn’t have the heart to tell her that they
didn’t need it, since they’d just eaten and drunk at Tom’s
house.

In the yard, a cart had been pulled up in
front of the workshop and was currently resting on only three
wheels because Martin’s apprentice, a well-built man in his early
twenties, with bulging muscles, was in the process of removing the
fourth one.

At the sight of it, Gwen stopped in her
tracks. A stain marred the wood of all four wheels, and the one the
apprentice was removing was missing its rim.

Leaving her father, who was saying nice
things to Martin about Shrewsbury, Gwen approached cautiously, not
wanting to seem too curious, but unable to keep herself away. “What
are you doing?”

The man looked up to answer, went completely
white, and then recovered with a visible gulp. “Oh.”

Gwen would have thought his behavior
suspicious if she hadn’t known she looked just like Adeline. She
smiled. “I’m Gwen.”

“Huw.” The man swallowed hard again before
gesturing towards the wheel with a lift of his chin. “The wheel
slipped its rim. I’m just seeing about a new one.”

“For whom?” Gwen said.

“For him.” The man jerked his head towards a
man standing off to one side whom Gwen hadn’t noticed when she’d
come in. Meilyr had already recognized Flann, the talkative
merchant from the monastery, and approached, both nodding their
greetings to one another.

From Adeline, to Roger, to Flann, to the
brothel—this was a puzzle in the making if Gwen could only get the
pieces to fit.

Hywel

I
t
was with a heavy heart and his most fervent prayers that Hywel saw
Cadell and Gruffydd on their way, heading north the long way around
the great escarpment of Eglwyseg that rose up to the east of Dinas
Bran. Looking at it from the west, the range formed an impenetrable
barrier, which was why they’d been forced to ride around it to the
south—and why Dinas Bran had been built where it had in the first
place. Most of the time, the escarpment protected Llangollen from
the English. Today, it would protect Cadell from his uncle’s
forces.

“We need to move.” Cadifor pointed with his
chin towards faint specks barely visible in the distance, but which
were moving towards them along the Dee River, coming from the
village. “Can we get across the river before they see us?”