The Uninvited Guest (20 page)

“
Goronwy was involved in a
land dispute with one of his neighbors and wanted the extra
manpower. In the spring, he had no more need of my services. It had
been kind of him to keep me on as long as he did, since the courts
had settled the lawsuit in January. I went south, for no other
reason than that it was where the road led. I asked for hospitality
for the night from a community of nuns. Before I started on the
soup, their prioress asked me to stay longer.”

“
What—and become a nun?”
Hywel had been listening. He turned on a heel to look at Gareth,
his eyes alight with good humor.

Gareth laughed. “Of course not. They needed
protection from a company of marauders. This was well out of Owain
Gwynedd’s domain, mind you, right on the border between Wales and
England, and the border hasn’t been peaceful for a while.”

“
No,” Hywel said. “My
father will have to turn his attention to it after the Christmas
feast.”

“
Surely the unrest in
England is beyond his scope to manage,” Gwen said.

Hywel eyed her. “He doesn’t want to manage
it. He hopes it continues for many more years. But if King Stephen
can’t control his own lands, if he allows thieves and highwaymen to
waylay travelers, my father must step in and subdue those lands in
his stead.”

“
And what he subdues, he
might as well keep,” Gareth said. “King Stephen is going to regret
turning a blind eye to lawlessness.”

“
He is going to find that
some of his Norman allies, too, have grown restless,” Hywel
said.

“
Did I hear someone
speculate the other day that this was thanks to Cadwaladr?” Gwen
glanced from one to the other as they both nodded at her. “What has
he done?”

“
Some of the Marcher lords
see Prince Cadwaladr’s disaffection—for all that my father has
welcomed him back to court—and my father’s distraction with both
him and this wedding, as an opportunity.”

Gwen’s face fell. “That’s really why you
came back to Aber, isn’t it? It wasn’t for your father’s wedding.
It’s because his lands are in danger from the east.”

“
My father would have had
my head if I hadn’t attended his wedding,” Hywel said. “But the
eastern threat looms large in our consultations and is one reason
we were delayed in our return north.”

Gwen turned back to Gareth. “You still
haven’t answered my question, you know. About the reading.”

“
Oh that,” Gareth said.
“Teaching me to read was payment for my services. I stayed with the
nuns for four months.”

“
Did you have to fight for
them, in the end?” Gwen said.

“
I did.”

Gwen waited through several heartbeats and
when nothing more was forthcoming, she accepted that he wasn’t
going to say anything else on that subject. “And then what?” she
said.

“
The fighting moved beyond
their lands and I decided I’d try my luck again in the north,”
Gareth said. “The abbess gave me a glowing recommendation. I
thought if anything could counter Cadwaladr’s slandering of me, it
was her testimony.”

“
That’s when I first
encountered you,” Hywel said. “You were fighting for—”

“
Yes,” Gareth
said.

“
Glad that didn’t last
long.” Hywel gestured to Gareth’s newly bandaged head. “Now that
you are in one piece again, what’s your intention?”

Gwen felt herself
saying
grrr, grrr, grrr
inside. The men’s conversation had deliberately excluded her,
indicating that here was yet another piece of Gareth’s past that he
didn’t want to talk about. It wasn’t that he couldn’t have his
secrets. She probably had some of her own, though she couldn’t
think of any more exciting than the time she and a friend stayed
awake past midnight in the stables getting drunk on blackberry
wine. It was just that his secrets kept popping up when she least
expected them.

Gareth rose stiffly to his feet. “Our
problem appears to be how easily our killer gets around. We have no
idea who he is and unless he shows himself by murdering again—”

“
And I wouldn’t put it past
him,” Hywel said.

“—
then we have to come at
this from a different direction. It seems to me that our hopes rest
on finding more about what Enid was up to that got her killed,”
Gareth said. “We know what Ieuan was doing—running errands for the
murderer—but our missing assassin may have answers for us too.” He
reached into his coat, pulled out a scrap of paper, and unfolded
it. “I made a sketch of him while I was waiting for
you.”

He held out the paper. Gareth had drawn
images of Enid, the assassin, and Ieuan in charcoal.

“
Those are perfect
likenesses,” Gwen said. “I forgot that you could draw.”

“
Before, it was only in the
dirt,” Gareth said, “since no one would trust me with their
precious paper.”

“
You see why I keep him
around, Gwen?” Then Hywel canted his head to Gareth. “How much time
do you need?”

“
It depends on how far I
have to go,” Gareth said. “A few days? A week? I will report back
within seven days, even if I’ve found nothing.”

“
I’m almost more concerned
that you find something. This man has murdered two people, and
tried to kill two more, one of whom is you,” Hywel said. “My father
had a good idea in sending out search parties, even though his
quest degenerated into a boar hunt. I need a dozen more men doing
what you’re proposing, but I don’t have that many whom I trust.” He
put a hand on Gareth’s shoulder, squeezed once, and released him.
“All the more reason to take care of the one I do have. Be
careful.”

“
Yes, my lord.” Gareth
slipped his arm around Gwen’s waist and drew her to him.

Now that Gareth was leaving her again, Gwen
found tears pricking at her eyes. She managed to blink them back,
but she was sure Gareth saw them. “You will head east, then?” she
said.

“
If you were fleeing Aber,
which way would you go?” Gareth said. “King Owain’s writ runs only
to his eastern border and not beyond.”

“
Or to the sea,” Gwen
said.

“
If our assassin has
escaped to Dublin, I’m not following,” Gareth said.

That made Gwen laugh, despite herself and
her fears.

“
I will be careful,” Gareth
said. “I promise.”

“
Meanwhile, Gwen and I will
try to keep my father alive until you return,” Hywel
said.

Chapter
Sixteen

H
ywel stood at Gareth’s stirrup as he mounted Dewi, the horse
Evan had sent to the hay barn for him. “You do realize that our
killer is a nobleman? He has to be.”

“
I do.” Gareth had more
than enough experience with the nobility. Their life of privilege
made them more certain of their own rightness than those below
them. Sadly, Cadwaladr was only one of many self-serving and
arrogant barons Gareth had encountered.

When he’d been speaking to Gwen and Hywel
earlier, Gareth had cut off the story about his past when he’d
gotten to the part where he’d joined the garrison of a Lord
Dafydd—a cousin to King Owain a few times removed. Like King Owain,
Lord Dafydd was a second son advanced to his station by the death
of his older brother.

But unlike King Owain,
Dafydd had only one son whom he spoiled as if he were a five year
old, for all that he’d reached eighteen. Gareth had spent nearly
nine months cleaning up after this young man’s ‘youthful hijinks,’
as his father called them. In anyone but a lord’s son, his acts
would have been considered criminal. The final straw for Gareth had
been the young man’s claim of
droit de
seigneur
: the right of a lord to take a
maiden before her wedding.

Gareth had never heard of
the
droit
before,
beyond rumor, and in any case, lords in Wales had no such right,
even if men in other nations claimed it. The youth didn’t heed
Gareth’s protests (or that of the girl’s betrothed), raped her, and
sparked open warfare between village and castle. Gareth had
defended the lord’s son, to the point of not allowing the villagers
to kill him, and then he had ridden away. He hadn’t left
Cadwaladr’s service only to lose his soul in another’s.

“
You must tread very
carefully.” Hywel’s eyes flicked to where Gwen waited in the
doorway of the barn, and then back to Gareth. “The killer might be
at Aber, but you don’t know who else knows what he’s done and what
he plans. Anyone you meet could be part of his scheme.”

Gareth was about to scoff at Hywel’s words,
but his lord’s intensity stopped him. “Yes, my lord. I won’t trust
anyone. I won’t assume anything.”

“
Good man.” Hywel slapped
the horse’s rear to get him going.

As Gareth trotted into the rain and away
from the barn—and Gwen—he turned in his seat once to look at her.
She stood in the entrance, forlorn, and his heart constricted. Yet,
this was the right course. He knew it. While he didn’t like leaving
Gwen, he could do far more good on the outside, rather than
hovering around King Owain, waiting for the killer to strike
again.

Gareth was wearier than he ever remembered
being, even during the wars with the Normans for Ceredigion when he
first became a man. After months of near-constant battle in Hywel’s
service, he felt as if his armor had fused with his skin. He could
feel every link of his mail through his padded shirt and he ached
to remove it; to lay his head down just once on a bed—a real bed in
a real room, with a lit fire that heated the room all the night
through.

Even better if Gwen could be in that bed
with him, though he’d settle for sharing the same hall. He could
survive without her in his bed for the time that remained, until
after King Owain’s wedding. He’d burned for her for five years. He
could wait a little longer.

In addition, during his hike to the hay
barn, he had come to understand that the miles from Ceredigion to
Aber hadn’t entirely burnished the muck and mire of battle from
him. His sword blade shone, his eyes were clear, but he could put
his hand on his hilt and still feel the sweat and blood that had
marred it, almost daily for a time. Gwen was everything that was
whole and clean in his life. When Gareth finally stood up with her
at their wedding, he needed to enter their marriage as a whole
man.

Gareth headed away from Aber, skirting the
holdings to the east of the barn and then turning north, towards
the Irish Sea. Since he was supposed to be dead, it wouldn’t do to
have him speaking to the residents at Aber’s village. Gwen had
agreed to take on that task. He’d given his three drawings to her,
and then used his last scrap of paper to draw more pictures for
himself. Hywel promised to acquire another stash of paper for him
when he returned.

The issue immediately
before him was
which path to take?
If Gareth were the assassin and fleeing Aber, he
would certainly have headed east, but on what road? After some
thought and a consultation with Hywel and Gwen about what King
Owain’s men had found—or not found—Gareth had decided that a wanted
man would not take the main road that led to the standing stones,
Caerhun, Dolwyddelan, and points east of the Conwy River. While the
only regular inhabitants of those ten miles were sheep, other
travelers used that road far more often than any of the other
trails and tracks that crisscrossed the landscape.

Thus, Gareth followed a track that would
take him along the shore of the Irish Sea and through the small
fishing communities that lined it. If nothing else, this path gave
him the opportunity to talk to people, even if they had nothing to
tell him. But as it turned out, he had luck at the third home he
came to, owned by a daughter and her aged father.

“
Come inside, out of the
rain,” the daughter said, eyeing Gareth’s bandaged head.

The hut was small, even for a poor peasant,
and Gareth merely stepped under the eaves. His horse nudged his
back, demanding that he make room. Gareth edged forward and held
out the piece of paper with the drawings on it.

“
I seen ‘em,” the man
said.

“
Which one?”

Gareth wasn’t really sure that the old man
could see anything, but both he and his daughter pointed to the
image of the assassin.

“
Rode past on the track
some days ago, just like you but going the other way. Fine horse he
had, for a man with such poor weave to his clothing,” the woman
said. “I would have thought he’d stolen the horse, except that he
spoke with a refined tongue when he asked to fill his water skin
from our well. Down on his luck, I guessed.”

“
Did he tell you his name?”
Gareth said. “Or where he was from?”

The woman shook her head. “He came from the
east. He didn’t linger.”

“
Come to think on it, I
heard hoof beats two nights ago. Early morning it was.” The old man
poked his daughter’s arm. “Told you about them, didn’t
I?

“
That’s right,” the
daughter said. “They came from the west that time. Do you think it
could be the same man?”

“
It could be,” Gareth
said.

“
Sure it could,” the old
man said. “We don’t get so many riding through, you know, not like
the fine folk up at the castle.”

Gareth looked east from where he stood,
still in the sheltered bay that Aber Castle overlooked. Several
miles down the beach the Great Orme loomed. To continue this way
would take him to the Conwy River. As the assassin had possibly
come this way both times, he would have known that he wouldn’t be
able to ford it anywhere south of Caerhun.