The Renegade Merchant (28 page)

She dropped to one knee to turn the man so
she could see his face, and then recoiled when she realized she was
looking at Conall, the missing merchant. He wasn’t looking so
renegade anymore—nor, seeing as how he was as much a captive as
they, much like a murderer.

Hywel

“
W
hat do you mean they aren’t here?”
Hywel swept a hand across his brow, pushing the wet hair from his
face and glaring at Meilyr.

Meilyr tried to defend his son-in-law. “My
lord, the Deputy Sheriff asked for Gareth’s help with a
murder—”

Hywel made a slashing gesture with one hand,
cutting him off, “You don’t say.”

To suggest that it had been a long day would
be an understatement. Hywel had been looking forward to a warm fire
and a meal at the behest of the monks, but instead he’d been met in
the stable by Meilyr with his bad news. It wasn’t Meilyr’s fault,
of course. If Gareth thought he had difficulty controlling Hywel at
times, Hywel had nothing on Gareth himself. The man could find
himself in trouble just pulling on his boots in the morning.

Or Gwen could.

Neither would have turned their back on John
Fletcher if he’d asked for their help.

“Have you told John Fletcher that they’re
missing?” Hywel said, his eyes going to the rain pounding on the
cobbles of the monastery’s courtyard.

“I was about to go myself, since Gwalchmai
and Tangwen are finally asleep,” Meilyr said. “Gareth said not to
worry about them until at least an hour after compline.”

“We’re there now,” Hywel said.

“Where are your men, my
lord?” Meilyr said, looking past Hywel for his
teulu
,
which,
of course, wasn’t with him.

“It’s a long story.” Hywel growled under his
breath. “Never you mind John Fletcher. I will send Evan to find
him.”

“John is here, my lord,” Evan said from
behind Hywel.

Hywel turned to see Evan and John Fletcher
entering through the wide stable doorway, both shaking rain off
their cloaks as they did so.

John bowed. “My lord, it is a pleasure to
see you again. Why did you need me?”

“Gareth and Gwen have gone missing,” Hywel
said. “What brings you to the abbey if not that?”

“I detained a merchant, Flann MacNeill, as
he was leaving the town,” John said. “I came here to ask Gareth if
he’d like to be present when I questioned him.”

“I thought you didn’t have enough
information to hold Flann?” Meilyr glared at the young sheriff, as
if it was his fault that Gareth and Gwen were missing.

“I didn’t, but at Gareth’s suggestion, I put
the manager of a local brothel under watch, and she met with Flann
not an hour ago. Young Oswin reported the meeting to me, and I
decided that Flann had become enough of a person of interest in
regards to these murders to justify questioning
him.”  

“I’m sure Gareth would want to be part of
that, were he here.” Hywel shook his head, trying to dismiss the
buzzing in his ears that came from knowing nothing about anything
that was going on. He wasn’t even going to ask who Flann MacNeill
was, how a brothel came into it, or how either were connected to
murder. It was bound to be a long story, which he didn’t have time
for. Hywel turned back to Meilyr. “Where did Gareth and Gwen
go?”

“They wanted to spy out another brothel
beyond St. Giles,” Meilyr said, and then at Hywel’s derisive laugh,
put up both hands, “though there was something about leaving Gwen
at the abandoned abbey mill.”

“Why a brothel?” Hywel said.

“It is owned by the same group of men as the
one in town that Gareth suspected of being linked to the murders
he’s investigating.”

“And what is that link?” But before anyone
could answer, Hywel waved his hands in frustration, feeling like he
was going in circles. “Never mind. Fletcher, lead the way to the
brothel.” Then Hywel pointed at Meilyr. “You stay here in case
Gareth and Gwen return.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Hywel found that he was no longer interested
in a warm fire, and though his horse had been ridden far today,
another mile wasn’t going to harm him. In short order, John roused
a dozen watchmen from the Abbey Foregate and the Eastgate region of
Shrewsbury, to give him a good complement of men, and with Hywel,
Cadifor, and Evan, rode onto the main road.

Never talkative to begin with, Evan’s face
had settled into grim lines of determination—as well as exhaustion,
Hywel surmised—a match to Hywel’s own expression. Cadifor looked
impassive, as always, and he rode close to Hywel’s side as if the
Englishmen with whom they rode might turn on him at any moment.
Cadifor didn’t speak English, and that had to be making him
uncomfortable. Hywel’s English was only passable, but since John
himself spoke both Welsh and French, they found themselves getting
by.

Fortunately, the ride to the brothel, which
they took at a gallop, took no time at all, though John pulled up
when they still had a hundred yards to go. Hywel and the others
stopped too, in response to John’s raised fist giving a silent
command.

Four months ago, John had attacked Gareth in
the courtyard of the abandoned monastery in Clwyd, but that overt
confidence had been sheer bravado, overlaying an insecurity that
had colored his actions.

This John was a different man, one who’d
grown accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. Hywel
didn’t begrudge him his authority. He didn’t know the area at all
and still didn’t understand what they were doing here or why Gareth
and Gwen had thought to investigate the brothel on their own. He
did understand that they could be in trouble—and that was all the
information Hywel needed to act.

A door banged somewhere up ahead, and a man
shouted in English. With the rain and the distance, Hywel couldn’t
make out the words, but John nodded. “My lord, perhaps the two of
us could move closer to the brothel itself to spy out the
situation, while the others fan out into the woods around it. If
Gareth and Gwen have been captured, I don’t want their throats slit
because we’re seen coming.”

Hywel nodded, signaling that Evan and
Cadifor should go with the others. He and John rode openly into the
clearing in front of the brothel. The main building had a sign out
front with the picture of a dancing girl, which was certainly
appropriate. Other buildings lay behind the main one in the yard,
which had a fence around it, more to delineate that property, Hywel
thought, than to keep anyone out. Or in.

The brothel was a large building, two
stories high, nearly forty feet wide at the front, and seemed to
extend at least that far at the back. Torches shone brightly from
stands on either side of the doorway. They had to have been fueled
by oil since the rain was pelting freely down.

As they approached the front door, it
opened, and laughter echoed through the night towards them. A man
came out and circled around to the back of the property. The whole
scene would have been inviting if Hywel wasn’t fearing for the
lives of his friends.

“It sounds like they’re doing a brisk trade
tonight despite the rain,” John said. “Do we go straight in the
front?”

“No—let’s follow where that man went first
and see what’s there,” Hywel said. “The complex appears to include
more than just the inn and extends far back from the road.”

In addition to the main building, three
other structures were associated with the brothel: a kitchen; a
two-story, house-like structure; and a long low building, from
which the man who’d left the brothel led his horse, indicating it
was the stable. He mounted and rode away without ever looking in
Hywel’s and John’s direction.

John headed towards the stable, lifting a
hand as he approached the boy, who stood in the entrance to take
his bridle.

Hywel dismounted and led Glew under the
eaves himself, shaking out his cloak before entering because the
rain had become torrential. Once inside, without waiting for
permission, Hywel strode down the center aisle, past a dozen
occupied stalls, looking from one side to the other until he
reached the second to the last stall on the left. It was without
shock or even surprise that he recognized Gareth’s horse, Braith.
Gwen’s horse was housed in a nearby stall.

Braith whickered gently at him, recognizing
him, and even as Hywel’s mind galloped down pathways he would
rather not think about, he patted the horse’s neck reassuringly.
Hywel himself was far from reassured. Gareth and Gwen had to be
here, but from what Meilyr had said, Gareth had not planned to take
Gwen inside the brothel.

Then John approached, having given up his
horse to the stable boy. “Are we really staying? Gareth and Gwen
must have entered the brothel, else why leave their horses?”

“No, we are not staying.” Hywel pointed with
his chin to his friends’ horses. “Braith still wears her saddle,
which means Gareth didn’t care for her before he left her here.
That is unlike him and would have aroused my suspicions if they
weren’t already as high as they could go.”

“Where could he have gone?”

Hywel pictured the yard outside the stable.
“We’ll search every corner of this property. Get your men. Gareth
and Gwen have to be here somewhere.” He shivered, less from the
rain dripping from his hair onto his neck than at the thought of
his friends in trouble. Then his brow furrowed. “Meilyr mentioned
an old mill where Gwen was supposed to wait for Gareth. Do you know
it?”

“I-I don’t know exactly—”

Hywel didn’t wait for John to finish
stuttering his uncertainty but strode back towards the stable boy.
“Did you see the owners of those horses come in?” He indicated
Gareth’s and Gwen’s horses.

“No, sir. They were here when I
arrived.”

“And when was that?”

“Less than an hour ago.”

Hywel stepped closer. “Someone mentioned an
old mill nearby. Where is it?”

“I don’t know of any mill—” he broke off,
his expression belying his words.

“Where?”

“Out the back is a track that goes west to
the old mill race—”

But Hywel was already heading for the
door.

Gareth

G
areth woke with a moan and a splitting headache. He tried to
sit up, but Gwen was beside him in an instant, her hands on his
shoulders and her face close to his.

“Hush. I don’t want them to know you’re
awake.”

Even as Gareth blinked his eyes clear, he
nodded his understanding. He didn’t need the bandage around his
head to spur his recollection of being ambushed as they left the
woods in front of the mill, and with that memory, a searing pain
shot through his left shoulder and back. “How long was I out?”

“Not long. It’s been a quarter of an hour or
so since the men left.”

Gareth’s eyes cleared some more, and with a
few controlled breaths, the pain in his shoulder and in his head
lessened to manageable levels. The room was dimly lit by light
seeping through the cracks in a nearby wall. He could see well
enough to note the general shape of it, and that they weren’t
alone. “What do we have here?”

“Slaves,” a man’s voice spoke without
inflection from somewhere to Gareth’s left. “Us too, if we don’t
get out of here.”

Gareth turned his head in the direction of
the sound to find the spitting image of the drawing in his pocket
staring back at him. Conall was leaned up against the wall, his
legs sprawled out before him and an expression on his face not far
off from how Gareth was feeling.

“You’re Conall.” Gareth could hardly believe
it.

“He didn’t murder Roger Carter, if that’s
what you’re wondering,” Gwen said. “In fact, he doesn’t know
anything about any murders, not even the girl, though he can make a
good guess about who she was.”

Conall flopped a hand towards the dozen
women who sat on the floor together a few paces away. “She was one
of them, brought into Shrewsbury to display to a client. She
escaped. Your wife says one of these men murdered her, though I
can’t see the point in that. They didn’t kill me because they can
sell any person for some amount of money.” He looked Gareth up and
down. “Admittedly, they got closer with you, but you’re not dead
either.”

“They plan to sell us?” Gareth was unable to
keep the incredulity out of his voice.

Conall snorted. “They can sell every one of
us to a master, who will never believe, nor care if he did believe,
what our lives were before.”

“Which was what, in your case?” Gareth
said.

 “I serve Diarmait mac Murchada, King
of Leinster, sent by him to discover who has been taking women from
his lands to sell to foreigners.” Conall bent infinitesimally from
the waist, though even that small movement seemed to pain him.

Gareth could sympathize with the pain—and
the reason for him being here. Although Conall’s Irish forbears had
enslaved their enemies with the same enthusiasm as Gareth’s had, in
recent years, both nations had come to see that the practice
created more problems than it solved, and kings had thought better
of enriching the traders in the Dublin slave market with the blood
of their own people. Here in England, the Norman kings, at the
behest of the Church in Rome, had sought to stamp out the slave
trade wherever their writ stretched. King Stephen was not going to
be pleased to learn that slavery had been alive and well in one of
his market towns.

Still, Gareth wasn’t prepared to take Conall
entirely at his word. “Leinster has traded in slaves and captives
for generations beyond count. Why would Diarmait care?”

Conall stared hard at Gareth, though because
he was in so much pain, Conall’s eyes were the only part of him
that moved. Then his lips twisted. “Whatever our past history,
Diarmait no longer countenances slave-taking.”