The Unexpected Ally (17 page)

“She’s my sister.” Saran took in a deep
breath and let it out.

Meilyr pulled one of the stools closer to
him and put his feet up on it. “We know she’s your sister, Saran,
and that you want to think the best of her—and want the best for
her. Even if it’s been a long time since you’ve seen us, you should
know that you can tell us what troubles you.”

She gave him a genuine smile. “I
have
seen you at your worst.”

Meilyr nodded, his eyes on Saran’s face.
“Yes, you have. Things are better now.”

“I can see that.” Saran’s eyes went to Gwen.
“My sister is two years younger than I. She was the baby of the
family, prettier than I, and she has always used her prettiness to
get what she wanted.”

“I would not have said that Derwena is
prettier than you now,” Gwen said.

“She’s had a hard life, and any woman who
reaches middle age as we have has lost her beauty by now. She had
more beauty to lose. Her husband died when Rhodri was a child, and
since then she has struggled to support them with her small flock
of sheep.” Saran sighed. “Rhodri grew up clever but not wise or
intelligent, if you know the difference?”

Meilyr and Gwen nodded, because how could
they not? It was a common condition.

“Perhaps he inherited that from his mother.”
Saran looked down for a moment. “Derwena has always been
calculating. You saw that when she was here. She tries to fall back
on innocence and her beauty, but it’s gone now and all that’s left
is the cleverness.”

“What is it that you think she is being
clever about?” Gwen said. “Do you think she knows what Rhodri is up
to?”

“She knows,” Saran said. “I have no doubt
that she knows, and she doesn’t want to tell us because we won’t
approve or because it will implicate him in some genuine
wrongdoing.”

Meilyr pushed to his feet. “Let me escort
you to the healer’s house, Saran. Perhaps if we two go over it
again, we can figure out what she’s hiding.”

Saran smiled. “Thank you, Meilyr. I would
like that.” She nodded to Gwen. “Tomorrow, my dear.”

Gwen stood to hug Saran, and stayed behind
as they departed as her father had clearly wanted. This was again
one of those moments when an investigation intersected with her and
Gareth’s personal lives, and Gwen didn’t see how she could stop it
from happening. At the moment, given how pleased with life her
father seemed to be all of a sudden, Gwen wasn’t going to interfere
with his developing relationship with Saran.

It was odd to be completely alone for once,
and for a moment Gwen didn’t know what to do with herself. But the
monks who attended the guesthouse had gone to Compline before
cleaning up from dinner, so she began collecting cups and stacking
empty dishes on a tray to return to the kitchen. When the first
load was ready, she carried it through a narrow doorway, along a
covered but open-air walkway for a few steps, and then into the
kitchen. It was empty but for one man, who was just pushing open
the back door.

Both he and she hesitated in their
respective doorways, each equally surprised to see the other, and
then Gwen took a few steps forward to set the heavy tray on a
nearby table. “Father Alun!”

The old man beamed. “My dear Gwen.” He
walked towards her and put his hands on her shoulders in a partial
hug. “You look absolutely radiant!”

Gwen didn’t know about that, but she smiled
anyway. Father Alun was the priest of the church in Cilcain, a town
ten miles as the crow flies east of St. Asaph. Alun had been
unlucky enough to find the body of a woman who looked like Gwen
half-buried in his graveyard last autumn. That finding had
ultimately set Gareth and Gwen on a course for Shrewsbury. While
she couldn’t regret knowing that the girl who’d died had been her
cousin, she was sorry that Father Alun had been caught up in
murder.

“I am well.” She leaned forward to speak to
him conspiratorially. “Gareth and I are expecting another child
later this year.”

He squeezed her shoulders. “I’m so happy for
you, especially after all that has happened.” He shook his head and
looked down for a moment. He was thinking of the loss of Prince
Rhun, as they all still did, many times a day.

“But why are you here?” Gwen said.

He looked up. “The peace conference, of
course. I was invited as a witness.”

Though Gwen would never say it, she thought
it was kind of Abbot Rhys to invite the older man. She didn’t think
Alun was exactly lonely in Cilcain, given the busy life of a parish
priest, but it must be nice to be among other churchmen every once
in a while, men he could truly relate to as friends, rather than as
confessor and parishioner. Rhys had implied as much earlier when
they were discussing why Rhys already knew about the events of the
previous year without Gwen or Gareth having to tell him.

“Come. Sit.” Gwen moved a stool from beside
the fire to the table. “You must be hungry after such a long
journey.”

“I am. I am.”

For a moment Gwen frowned. “Why did you come
to the guesthouse instead of the monastery kitchen? Surely they
have a spot for you there.”

“They do; they do.” Alun spoke heartily, but
then he leaned forward and said in a loud whisper, “The food over
here is better.”

Gwen smiled. “I’ll fix you something.”

“I hope you serve it with news from Gwynedd.
We know of the taking of Mold, of course, but recent events often
pass us by in Cilcain.”

“I do have much to tell you.” While she
talked, Gwen bustled about, getting the old priest dinner. The pot
over the fire had a few cups of mutton stew left in it, and half a
loaf of bread remained on the sideboard. She set the meal in front
of him, poured them each a glass of mead, and then pulled up a
stool to sit beside him.

“Where is your husband? I hope he is not so
unwell that he is abed?” Alun said.

Gwen smiled ruefully. “I’m waiting for him
to return. I’m afraid that we have another death to
investigate.”

“You don’t say! My dear, that’s
terrible.”

Gwen pursed her lips, reminded of her
encounter with Deiniol, and pulled the sketch of Erik from her
purse. “Do you recognize him?”

Alun squinted at the page. “Is he the
murderer or the victim?”

“The victim.” And she described his overall
size and shape beyond simply what his faced looked like.

Alun stood and took the paper closer to the
fire, which was blazing brightly. “My eyes aren’t what they used to
be, but I saw this man earlier this week.”

Gwen spun around on her seat. “In
Cilcain?”

Alun nodded. “Passing through. He stopped at
the church to ask if I knew where Prince Hywel was now, as he
wasn’t at Mold Castle where he was supposed to be.”

Gwen’s eyes lit. “So he was looking for the
prince. I don’t suppose he said what for?”

Alun shook his head sadly. “No.”

“Did he have anyone with him?”

“Not that I saw.” Then Alun frowned. “He
asked if my church was missing any relics. I told him that we had
so little here, there was nothing to miss, and if a thief was so
desperate that he needed to rob us, he was welcome to what he
took.”

Gwen studied the priest. It was just like
Alun to say that. More importantly, his testimony was the first
link between Erik and the thefts. Then her stomach dropped into her
boots as fear surged through her. It could even be that Erik had
been looking into what had happened in Wrexham, as she and Gareth
now were, and someone had killed him for it.

Gareth

E
ven as Gareth
trailed after Derwena, he was cursing himself for following yet
another new thread when he’d been dropping the old ones left and
right. First and foremost, if Rhodri was the same man who’d ridden
to St. Asaph with Erik, they needed to get Deiniol and Rhodri in
the same room together to see if they knew each other. He also had
yet to question Mathonwy, the milkman, about his visit to the
treasury.

Gareth didn’t necessarily think that
Mathonwy had anything to do with the theft. If he had, he would
have run, not calmly returned to his milking—but he might have
spoken incautious words to someone else, which had then led to the
theft. And as always, Gareth told himself not to presume anything
without evidence until he had no more threads to pull.

Evan loped beside him across the courtyard,
trying to avoid the puddles that had formed among the dips in the
cobbles. It wasn’t raining right now, thankfully, and Derwena was
hurrying along at a rapid clip such that by the time they left the
guesthouse, she’d already entered underneath the gatehouse.

“Moves fast for an older woman, doesn’t
she?” Evan said under his breath.

“She does seem to be in a hurry, doesn’t
she?” Gareth said.

Evan checked the location of the moon.
“Prince Hywel’s dinner with his father and the other lords who have
come should be ending soon.”

“I should have been among them,” Gareth
said.

Evan scoffed. “You didn’t want to be there
any more than you wanted to attend the mass. The last thing you
need right now is to involve yourself in politics.”

Gareth gave a low laugh. “You have the right
of that.”

They reached the gatehouse, passed through
it easily because the gate was still open, and Gareth lifted a hand
to the gatekeeper as he went by. Derwena had, in fact, turned east
as if she intended to go the encampment, but once she passed the
corner of the stone wall of the monastery that fronted the main
road, she turned left in order to head northeast down the side
road, heading back to the place where they’d found her by Madog’s
camp.

The older woman trotted along at a rapid
clip, and because the road was otherwise deserted, Gareth and Evan
had to stay well back lest she look over her shoulder and see them.
If this had been mid-afternoon when the monastery was a busy place,
they perhaps could have remained undetected, but it was late
evening, and there wasn’t another soul but them about. The moon
reflected off the puddles and the clouds, allowing them to see well
enough to follow. If it had been raining, they couldn’t have seen
anything without a torch.

No longer jesting with one another, Gareth
and Evan followed the western margin of the road, trying to keep to
the trees. Just past Madog’s encampment, which was considerably
quieter than it had been an hour earlier, Derwena slowed. Gareth
and Evan held back, thinking they should get no closer than two
hundred feet but having no idea why Derwena had returned here. Then
a woman holding a torch, the flame of which was blowing hard in the
wind, stepped out from a side-path—one that ran through the
monastery grounds and intersected the road Derwena had come down.
She was followed by a man on horseback.

Gareth and Evan froze, and their ears
strained to hear what the three people were saying. Unfortunately,
the wind that was blowing through the newly leafed trees that lined
the road prevented them from hearing anything else. It was darker
under the trees than on the road too, so Gareth bent over in a half
crouch and began to pick his way through the grass and bushes. He’d
gone only a dozen feet, however, before the man on the horse
reached down and pulled Derwena up behind him. Turning the horse’s
head, he cantered away north. The woman, watched them go for a
moment and then turned away and hastened back down the path by
which she’d come.

Gareth picked up the pace, though still
trying to keep to the soft grass beside the road to disguise the
sound of his boots hitting the earth. He called over his shoulder
to Evan, “We may have lost Derwena but let’s not lose this other
woman!” Even injured as he was, the two hundred feet took Gareth no
time at all, though he found himself annoyed again when Evan
eventually beat him to the crossroads.

Earlier, when they’d helped Conall after
Derwena had knocked him down, Evan and Gareth had come off the
northeast corner of the monastery’s protective stone wall, crossed
the cleared space between the wall and an orchard, and then crossed
two pastures in order to reach Madog’s camp. They hadn’t used the
road the woman had disappeared along, since it was farther north.
But as they followed it back through the monastery grounds, Gareth
realized it was leading them west towards the barn where Erik’s
body had been found.

Sure enough, the road eventually intersected
the cart track that Gareth had been on several times today already
and which started at the back gate of the monastery. The woman with
the torch was just barely in sight, and Gareth and Evan hustled
after her, turning south to follow the cart way. She reached the
back entrance, passed through it, and then the gate shut behind
her.

The monks didn’t normally post a guard at
the gate, but since the peace conference would start tomorrow and a
murderer was on the loose, Hywel had sentried one of his own men
here. Gareth and Evan pulled on the latch and found it locked, as
it should have been. Thus, as the woman must have done, they
knocked on the wooden door. A heartbeat later a little window
opened in the door, revealing one eye and the nose of the guard.
“Da!”

“How did you end up pulling this duty, Dai?”
And then Gareth waved a hand dismissively. “Never mind. Let us
in.”

“Yes, sir.” The door swung wide.

Gareth and Evan stepped through it in time
to see the skirts of the woman who’d preceded them disappearing
around a hedge up ahead. While on the road, she had covered her
hair with a veil, but now the covering hung loosely around her
shoulders, and the moon glinted off her blonde hair. Gareth pointed
with his chin at her retreating back, asking the question of Dai,
even though he already knew the answer. “Who was that?”

“Queen Susanna.”

Evan would have hurried after her, but
Gareth caught his arm and stopped him. “Wait.”