The Unexpected Ally (26 page)

“I speak the truth when I say that I’m not
sure what’s going on. We know more about what is happening
politically than the actual facts of
what happened
.”

“Are you speaking of Madog and Cadwaladr?”
Llelo said.

Gwen nodded. “They were the end of our
investigation last time. Now, when our only tangible evidence is
Erik’s body and competing accounts of events that occurred for
reasons we don’t know, their actions have to be our starting
point.” Gwen chewed on her lower lip.

“I know these people far less well than you,
Mam, but since Dai and I came to Denbigh, I’ve learned about King
Madog. He wants to get the better of King Owain. Paying either his
own men or a band of ruffians, which on the whole seems likely, to
sack his own monastery sounds like something he’d do. I heard about
how he and Prince Cadwaladr sold Madog’s own people for silver.
Sacking a monastery is a small matter in comparison—though blaming
Father for the deed says to me that Prince Cadwaladr is
involved.”

That was a well-reasoned speech for a man as
young as Llelo, and Gwen took his words as he intended—as an
attempt to make sense of what she and Gareth were facing. “Our
thoughts always go to Cadwaladr—and sometimes we’ve been
wrong.”

Llelo let out a puff of air. “Perhaps.
Still, it could be that Cadwaladr arranged for the same band to
maraud all over Powys as long as they promised to share the
treasure with him and as long as he could blame the reign of terror
on King Owain.”

Gwen had no trouble picturing that scenario
in her mind either. “So we work backwards from the ending: Madog
and Cadwaladr are to blame. Who have they hired, and how have they
constructed this plot—and how does that lead us to the man who
killed Erik?”

“I don’t know.” Llelo shook his head like he
had flies about his ears.

They arrived at the barn to find a handful
of somber monks waiting for them, all that was left of the host of
men who’d worked to put out the fire. Gwen gazed at the desolation
and couldn’t help but sigh. There was something particularly
forlorn about the burned husk of a building, whether barn, house,
or monastery. In the aftermath of the struggle to control the fire,
everything was soaking wet. Burned beams stuck up at random,
blackened along their full length and likely unsalvageable. The
roof, which had withstood the initial onslaught of the flames, in
the end was still made of thatch and was entirely gone. A
half-dozen monks continued to pace around the exterior of the barn,
full water buckets in hand, dousing any spark that might still be
smoldering.

His robe and cloaked bunched between his
knees, Mathonwy crouched by the body, which had been dragged free
of the wreckage and was lying on a scrap of board some twenty paces
from the burned barn. Although the dead man’s hair was burned off
and much of the skin was blackened or covered with ash, he wasn’t
completely charred. That it was a man there was no doubt since his
features could still be made out. Nor could any woman be that tall
or have such large feet and hands.

Even though most everyone was conveniently
forgetting that Gwen was pregnant, she had not, and if she’d been
inclined to ignore the child inside, her stomach wouldn’t let her.
It clenched uncomfortably, and she wished she hadn’t eaten just now
since she feared her meal was about to end up on the ground. As it
was, once she dismounted, she bent over, her hands on her knees,
breathing hard.

Llelo dismounted too and put out a hand to
her. “Stay here.” He and Dai went to where Mathonwy waited.

“Do any of you recognize him?” Gwen called
from several yards away.

“No, my lady,” Mathonwy said. Dai and Llelo
shook their heads.

Gwen closed her eyes, struggling for
composure. She didn’t want to get any closer, and the men were
kindly speaking loud enough so that she didn’t have to, but this
was too great a burden to put on her sons. She was having second
thoughts about exposing them to such carnage. “Dai—”

“I’m fine, Mam,” Dai said immediately. He
was bent over the body, in the same posture as Gwen, though without
the vomiting. Even from twenty feet away she could see that his
eyes were intent.

Mathonwy ignored their side conversation and
continued to speak to Llelo. “We pulled him from one of the stalls.
When the roof came down, it knocked out a side wall, exposing the
body. I sent two men to get him just as soon as it was safe.” The
monk shrugged helplessly. “I apologize that the body is badly
burned, but it’s better than it could be. Its location in the stall
sheltered it from the worst of the fire.”

Llelo frowned. “How does that make sense?
Wasn’t the fire set to prevent us from finding the body? Whoever
did this should have started the fire around the body itself.”

Mathonwy stood abruptly and walked to where
one of the monks was in the process of lighting a torch. The day
was waning and clouds had come in—typically, after the fire was
already out—so it was growing hard to see. He waited patiently for
the monk to light the torch and then took it. “Come with me.” He
led the boys around the side of the barn.

Gwen decided that her stomach was enough
under control that she could follow, and should follow, in fact,
though she averted her eyes as she passed the dead man. When she
arrived on the other side of the barn, she found Llelo, Dai, and
Mathonwy just inside it where one wall had stood. “What is it
you’re looking at?”

Llelo scraped at the ground with his boot.
“Ash.” He canted his head. “Pieces of straw.”

Mathonwy nodded. “This is where we found the
body. A beam had fallen on him, which is what lit his clothes and
charred parts of his body.”

“But the fire couldn’t have started here,”
Gwen said, not as a question. “In fact, it looks to me as if the
fire came here later than to other parts of the barn.” She looked
beyond the fallen walls to the trough in which Erik had been found.
Ironically, it was untouched by the blaze.

Llelo came over to where Gwen stood and
spoke in an undertone. “Da would have my head if he knew you were
here without him.”

“He’ll have my head for bringing you too,”
she said. “What did you see on the body?”

“He was stabbed in the back with a
dagger.”

Gwen gave a tsk under her breath. “Erik was
stabbed in the belly.”

“It could be that the same man killed them
both.”

“The gash couldn’t have been made by the
beam falling or other damage from the fire?” she asked
hopefully.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so. You
can look for yourself, but the body is mostly intact.” He frowned.
“Why would that be?”

“Bodies don’t burn that easily, not unless
the fire is very hot.” Gwen tapped a finger to her chin as she
thought. “If he was dead before the fire was set, then his death
and the fire could be unrelated. Again, we’re looking at two
different men with two different agendas.”

Llelo canted his head to one side. “Erik was
murdered and left for the monks to find and then the body was
stolen. If one person did all that, his actions make no sense. It
could make sense if we have two different villains working
separately.”

Gwen noted the
we
but didn’t comment
on it. “And what does this have to do with the theft here or at
Wrexham?” Gwen looked away, though her eyes weren’t really seeing
the pasture beyond the lane. As at Shrewsbury, the situation had
grown very complicated—until at the end it had all become very
simple. “All we have to tie Erik’s murder to those crimes are the
silver coins Gareth found.”

Mathonwy had stayed out of earshot while
Llelo and Gwen talked, but now he lifted a hand to gain their
attention. “Geoff is here, and it may be that he can tell us more.”
Mathonwy signaled to a stocky man with a water bucket that he
should come closer. “He’s an old friend of the abbot’s from his
days in King Henry’s service. He came to St. Asaph when he
discovered that the abbot was here. He owns the inn in the village
now. Fire was his specialty.”

“What does that mean,
fire was his
specialty?
” Gwen said.

“Starting them, controlling them, using them
in war,” Mathonwy said with the tone of a man who’d seen its use in
person. “I’ve heard him say that every fire speaks to him in its
own language.”

Such knowledge could put Geoff on the top of
the list of people who could have started the fire, but apparently
Mathonwy didn’t agree.

“Yes, brother?” Geoff halted in front of
them. He was at least twenty years older than Gwen, with a thick
beard shot with gray and deep brown eyes that were almost black in
the torch light.

Dai had moved off to survey the area around
the barn, but Mathonwy introduced Llelo and Gwen. “Tell them what
you told me about the fire.”

Geoff gave a sharp nod. Gwen recognized the
kind of person he was from her many years of living in a royal
court. Here was a man who was the backbone of any army—the
common-born soldier who’d risen above his station to lead men.

“I haven’t been able to get very far inside
yet,” Geoff said as a caveat, “but I can tell a few things already.
Namely, the fire was set. If it was started by lightning, the roof
would have gone up first.”

Gwen nodded. “As it was, it went last. I saw
that when I was here earlier.”

“Right. My guess from the way the fire
spread is that it started on the ground in the exact center of the
building.”

“What about the body?” Llelo said.

Geoff shook his head. “That’s your business,
not mine.”

“What can you tell us about how it burned?”
Gwen said.

“Oh, that,” Geoff said as if a burned body
was of minor interest compared to the real issue of the setting of
the fire. He gestured to where the body lay, now thankfully under a
piece of sacking Dai had salvaged. Leave it to him to always be
thinking of how Gwen felt. “The fire was hot enough to singe off
his hair and burn most of his clothes, but less so the flesh
underneath. He wasn’t caught in the midst of it.”

“Would you say that he was dead before the
beam came down?” Gwen said.

“If he was alive, why not call for help?”
Mathonwy said. “You saw the state of the barn. He could have kicked
his way out a side wall.”

“You have a point.” Gwen turned back to
Geoff. “Would you say, then, that the point of the fire wasn’t to
cover up his death?”

“Absolutely it wasn’t,” Geoff said. “Or if
it was, the killer did a remarkably bad job of it.”

“How would you have done it if it were you?”
Gwen said.

“I would have soaked the man’s clothes in
oil to fuel the fire. The oil soaks into a man’s tissues, making
the burn far worse than any other burn, even alcohol, though that
works too. Then I would have piled hay all around him and lit it.”
Geoff spoke very straightforwardly. Fire was his business.

Everyone nodded. No household could be run
without oil, which had many uses, from lanterns to cooking to the
production of soaps and lotions. Its flammable nature was a given,
and anyone who worked in the kitchen had to be constantly aware of
oil when it was heating. In addition, pouring oil, boiling or
otherwise, on a castle’s attackers—and then lighting them up—was a
standard tactic in sieges.

“Thank you, Geoff. If we need to speak to
you more, will you be nearby?” Gwen said.

“At my inn.” He bowed. “My lady.”

Gwen let Mathonwy go too so he could arrange
for the transport of the body to the room off the cloister where he
could lie alongside Erik, and then she and Llelo walked slowly back
to their horses.

“It’s too bad we didn’t inspect the barn
fully when we were here earlier,” Llelo said. “I feel like that’s
partly my fault. Da is tired and in pain, and—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Gwen said. “Too much
has been happening too quickly for any of us to devote the time
needed to each aspect of the investigation. At least Conall should
still have the rope that measured the shoe size of the man in the
loft. When we get the dead man to the chapel, I can compare
it.”

“This dead man does have really big feet and
hands,” Llelo said.

They had reached the horses. Gwen stopped
before mounting, watching the monks move the body onto a board in
preparation for putting it in the back of one of their carts. “Do
you see that?”

Llelo frowned, unaware of what Gwen was
talking about, but she moved to the monks and stopped them.

“Look at his hand.” She turned slightly to
show Llelo the dead man’s left arm, which had fallen off the board
and out from under the sheet.

Llelo, Dai, and Mathonwy, who’d been
directing his fellow monks, all converged on her, and Mathonwy
raised his torch so the light would shine on the man’s hand: the
last finger on his left hand was missing its tip, while the rest of
it was bent at a grotesque angle.

“So this is Erik’s murderer,” Llelo
said.

Gwen shook her head in disbelief. “He may be
that, but then who murdered him?”

Gareth

“I
n the middle of
the investigation at Shrewsbury, Gwen and I were on the verge of
telling you that we could no longer do this job,” Gareth said to
Hywel as they walked towards the chapter house.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Hywel
hesitated on the threshold, his eyes surveying the room in a quick
glance that Gareth knew had taken in the position of all the major
players.

“Neither of us can turn away. We resolved to
be more detached instead.”

Hywel laughed out loud as if he didn’t have
a care in the world and clapped Gareth on his good shoulder. “I’d
say this is a good day to start.”

The odd thing was that Gareth didn’t think
Hywel’s amusement was feigned. He really was in high good humor,
and the only explanation that made sense was that Rhodri’s public
accusation of Gareth had exposed his enemy for who he was, and
Hywel was looking forward to engaging Madog on his own terms. Of
course, Madog had no idea that Hywel had already spoken to
Rhodri—and maybe he wouldn’t have known to care if he did.
According to Hywel, Rhodri believed every word he’d said, and Madog
was counting on that sincerity to convince the room that King Owain
was the real villain today.