The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery) (21 page)

“Of course not,” Hywel said. “Cadwaladr isn’t a child but a middle-aged prince of Gwynedd.
He
might excuse his own actions, rationalize them away, but the rest of us can’t. Not even my father will be able to, this time.”

This time.
Hywel had recounted to Gareth his confrontation with his father when he broached the subject of Cadwaladr’s potential treachery. But King Owain had claimed that Cadwaladr had been loyal up until now. Hywel hadn’t contradicted his father but that didn’t mean that what the King said was true. Perhaps Cadwaladr wasn’t the only one who’d been lying to himself. For Gareth’s part, this time he was even more of a pessimist than Hywel. King Owain would do what he pleased as it suited him. Far from hanging Cadwaladr, he might pardon his brother’s crimes, no matter how heinous, if he had a good reason.

Hywel gathered the other men who’d ridden to the beach and led the way back to Aberffraw’s main gate. They arrived to find Rhun observing two rows of Cadwaladr’s men—all of whom were men-at-arms. Tellingly, Cadwaladr hadn’t chosen any knights to accompany him to Anglesey.

Though not peasants, these men had achieved a similar station to that which Gareth had held before Cadwaladr dismissed him. A knight, especially an older one, wouldn’t have lost his reputation along with his position for opposing Cadwaladr as Gareth had with his small act of defiance. Unlike knights, who had their own lands and authority, these men were dependent on their lord for their living. This was, of course, why Cadwaladr had chosen them to assist him in his treachery.

The men-at-arms comprising Aberffraw’s garrison stood sentry behind Cadwaladr’s men, blocking their retreat to the castle. They were weaponless: Rhun had made them stack their weapons by the gatehouse. Now he paced, his hands behind his back, in front of the watching men-at-arms.

“You have all served Cadwaladr for long enough to recognize the truth about my uncle,” Rhun said.

At this preamble, Hywel dismounted and waved the rest of the men off their horses. While Rhun continued speaking, enumerating Cadwaladr’s crimes, Hywel tapped Gareth’s shoulder and signaled him closer. “I wonder how many of them wish they’d followed your example.”

“Honor is lost a day at a time—a year at a time—not all at once. Rarely is the moment for defiance as clear as it was for me,” Gareth said. “Cadwaladr chips away at you until it’s hard to remember what it was like when you stood on your own two feet.”

“And yet,” Hywel said, “honor, even once lost, can be regained. There is hope for these men.”

“And for me?” Gareth said, not quite looking at his prince.

Hywel shot Gareth a rare smile instead of a smirk. “Oh yes.”

“That’s the fine line, isn’t it?” Gareth said. “It’s easy to say
I did what I had to do
but there are lines a man shouldn’t cross—shouldn’t be asked to cross—even if we’ve all done it more times than we can count.”

“I’m not worried about you,” Hywel said. “You are not your milk-brother.”

Gareth turned his attention back to Rhun’s lecture, Hywel’s confident
‘oh yes’
still echoing in his ears. Such was the basis of loyalty; Gareth would die to protect his lord and at times like these, he believed Hywel might do the same for him. That trust and loyalty were not the same thing was something Cadwaladr had never understood.

A few of Cadwaladr’s men appeared unmoved by Rhun’s speech.

“The one on the far left,” Gareth said. “Maredudd.”

Hywel nodded. “I noticed. You know him?”

“He’s stood with Cadwaladr for thirty years,” Gareth said. “He’s seen it all. He could be Madog, if Madog would have served Cadwaladr.”

“Which he wouldn’t,” Hywel said.

Rhun was as aware as they of the effect—of lack of effect—of his words on Cadwaladr’s men. He glanced at Hywel, who flicked his finger
one, two, three
in their mutual code.
Three men
. Hywel shifted, glanced at Gareth, who nodded his understanding. Then Hywel tipped his head at two of his archers.

Without seeming to move, all of Hywel’s men eased into more ready stances. Rhun gave each of Cadwaladr’s men a long look and then stepped close to Maredudd, who’d found a position at the end of the first row of men.

“Have you heard anything I’ve said?” Rhun said.

“All of it, my lord.” Maredudd looked straight ahead, over Rhun’s left shoulder.

“To whom do you owe your allegiance?”

“To Prince Cadwaladr, my lord.”

“Do you understand that he is foresworn? That he will be stripped of his lands? That he has abandoned you?”

Maredudd’s lips tightened. “I pledged my allegiance to him the day I became a man. I have never broken my vows.” His eyes flicked to Gareth and then away again.

And then, in a move Gareth had been expecting but for which he still wasn’t entirely prepared, Maredudd coiled and leapt at Rhun. He barreled into the prince, knocking him over, and then raced past him, heading towards the woods to the north of the castle. Hywel pointed and the archers released their arrows at the same instant. Two found their mark and Maredudd fell forward, dead, both arrows sticking straight up in the air from his back.

Rhun lay sprawled where he’d fallen. None of Cadwaladr’s men, who were closer, moved to assist him so Gareth stepped forward, his hand out. Rhun grasped it, levering himself to his feet, and brushed the dust from his clothes. Hywel hadn’t stirred, beyond that initial motion ordering his men to shoot.

Rhun pulled out his sword and stood with it loose in his hand. “Anyone else care to follow that man’s example? Does anyone else refuse to acknowledge my father’s authority?”

Silence.

While Rhun was speaking, Hywel moved without haste to the back row of Cadwaladr’s men. Gareth watched, having no idea what his lord was doing, other than that it demanded a grim set to his jaw. Rhun shot a quick glance at Hywel that told Gareth he was in on it too. They’d come to some sort of agreement that needed no conversation.

Hywel paused, as if he was counting to himself, and then stepped behind and just to one side of the second of Cadwaladr’s men he didn’t trust. The man shifted from one foot to the other, trying to see Hywel’s face out of the corner of his eye. Rhun had been speaking—more of his lecture about Cadwaladr—but cut off his words in mid-sentence, coming to a halt in front of the last man whom Hywel had pointed out. In the same instant that Hywel grasped the second man around the head and shoulders, Rhun shoved his sword through the third man’s stomach.

Rhun’s man fell to his knees, his hands clutching his belly. Hywel, meanwhile, had wrenched his man’s neck and broken it.

His face expressionless, Rhun pulled out his sword, reached down for the end of the man’s cloak, and wiped off the blood with it. The remaining soldiers fell as one to their knees. One shouted, “My lord!”

“That’s better.” Hywel moved to the front of the company to stand beside his brother.

“We should kill them all,” Rhun said, his tone matter-of-fact. “We can trust none of them.” Coming from him, the words were far more daunting to Gareth’s ear than if Hywel had spoken.

A voice piped up from near Hywel’s fallen victim. “I will swear! I will swear allegiance to Owain Gwynedd!” The boy was probably no more than sixteen. His face was deathly pale and his hands gripped his knees so tightly his knuckles stood out white.

The remaining men looked left and right. One of the problems with having a ruler such as Cadwaladr, was that he didn’t take kindly to men who carried their own authority and whom he couldn’t bully. Thus, none of the men left were leaders; without Cadwaladr and the three men-at-arms already dead, Cadwaladr’s company had no head.

Rhun pursed his lips. “For those of you who didn’t choose your allegiance, but allied yourself with Cadwaladr through birth or circumstance, I will spare your life. For those who chose him, and when you discovered your error, could not escape his clutches, I will spare your life. But for those of you who chose to serve Cadwaladr, even when you knew what he was, I tell you now that if you ever waver in my father’s service, if I sense one moment of hesitation on your part for your changed circumstance, I will kill you myself.”

“Do you hear my brother?” Hywel said, his voice soft but carrying over the heads of the kneeling men. “And if you hear him, do you listen?”

“Yes, my lords,” the men murmured, all ten of them.

The boy practically slobbered on the ground at Rhun’s feet. Gareth felt for him. It could have
been
him, six years ago. Gareth was just thankful that he’d escaped before something comparable had happened to him. He’d never known where the certainty had come from, but one day he’d woken up with the courage to walk away. It had already been too many years of service in which he couldn’t stomach his allegiance, but he hadn’t known how to get out. Overnight, he’d resolved not to commit one more crime, not to perform one more heinous deed, at Cadwaladr’s behest.

Perhaps the boy, like Gareth, would survive long enough to recover the honor and courage he’d lost. Gareth was glad, too, that Rhun was in charge and not Hywel. Hywel’s eyes told him that he would have killed them all—and would probably have been right to. They couldn’t trust these men, not even the boy, because unlike Gareth, none of them had had the courage to walk away.

Chapter Twenty-Six

G
wen hung her head over the side of the Danish ship, emptying her insides into the sea for the twentieth time. The chop of the waves was such that she had to grip the rail tightly just to stay upright and not spew the contents of her stomach—what little remained of them—on herself or in the boat. Part of her thought that would serve the others right, but the smell would probably only make her more ill. The moment of spite wouldn’t be worth it.

The big square sail flew above her head and men scrambled all over the boat as they maneuvered the rigging, tacking their way towards Ireland. As soon as they’d left the immediate vicinity of the shore, the leader—the same man who’d carried her—had ordered his men to hoist it. It puffed out now—satisfactorily it seemed from the looks on the sailors’ faces. In addition, the wind hadn’t lessened since they’d left Wales, which seemed to please them all no end.

Watching it, the leader turned to Gwen with an enormous smile. “A good wind. If it keeps up, we will reach Dublin before two full days have passed.”

Gwen stared at him, horror churning in her gut instead of fear. She rested her forehead on the rail, feeling the coolness of the sea spray blowing into her face, but overcome by despair that with the disappearance of the shore behind them, she had no choices at all. She had to continue with the Danes.

And Gareth
… she shivered. Surely he knew that Hywel hadn’t touched her—had never touched her for reasons that had never been entirely clear to her, but by now were set in stone. Hywel would tell him so, but sometimes men didn’t think clearly when it came to women. And with that, she acknowledged that she loved Gareth—and wanted him to love her. Maybe when she saw him again she’d have the courage to tell him. She fingered his cross which she still wore around her neck. The time had never seemed right to give it to him. As it had every day for the last five years, it comforted her to have something of his always with her.

Whatever August heat had warmed her on shore had disappeared the moment they’d pulled out of the bay. A new guard hung onto her waist—this time, a young one named Olaf. He grinned through perfectly white teeth and spoke no Welsh, nor any other language it seemed. His grip tightened as her shoulders shuddered, as if he feared she would throw herself overboard even though they were in the middle of the sea. She couldn’t even see Mt. Snowdon anymore. As they tacked towards the setting sun, the direction of the wind confirmed what she’d feared: they’d continued sailing directly west, towards Dublin, and not south to Ceredigion as she’d initially hoped.

It had been a faint hope anyway, with Cadwaladr on the run from his brother and in the company of four dozen Danishmen. He would be as safe as he could be in Ireland. Ceredigion was another matter and he knew it. She wondered how his wife would react, knowing she had a coward for a husband. Then again, she probably already knew.

Finally, Gwen had nothing left in her stomach to come up, so her guard left her with her eyes closed, curled on a blanket near the stern of the boat so she’d be out of the way of the oarsmen and the rigging. Her illness gave her two advantages: one, they left her alone, and two, it perpetuated the myth that she carried Hywel’s child.

She hoped she could keep up the façade long enough for them to either lose interest in her, or take her back home, though that thought in and of itself was enough to make her gag. It was only because she’d left her family behind—and Gareth—that she could even contemplate a return journey. Gradually the sun lowered in the sky until it shone directly into Gwen’s face. She shut her eyes, feeling the warmth on her eyelids.

All of a sudden, the sun disappeared. Gwen opened her eyes to find the big Dane blocking the light. He gazed down at her, his hands on his hips. Gwen curled up tighter, not wanting him to look at her, speak to her, or touch her. The Dane didn’t appear to get the message.

“No sea legs, eh.” He crouched in front of her and reached a hand to her shoulder.

Gwen twitched away.

“You’re afraid of me?”

“Shouldn’t I be?” Gwen said. “You’ll do whatever Cadwaladr says and I know of what he’s capable.”

The Dane snorted. “I don’t take orders from Cadwaladr.”

Gwen had been staring at his boots so as not to look into his eyes, but the disgust and assured tone in his voice made her chance a glance at his face. “What do you mean?”

“You think us barbarians,” he said, “but I reckon my Latin is better than yours.”

Despite herself, Gwen smiled. “Don’t tell my father that.”

“See,” the Dane said. “Already your fear leaves you. I am Godfrid mac Ragnall, descended from Brian Boru, like your Hywel, eh?”

Gwen opened her eyes fully, finding that her fear was fading, as he’d said. “I am Gwen, a bard’s daughter.”