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Day One
Catrin
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At the sight of Moriddig’s dead body, Hywel had gasped, “I spoke in jest. I swear it!”
While Catrin respected those who had a strong connection to spirits and faeries and the world that couldn’t be seen with the naked eye, she had never had the gift of the sight herself and would not have said her brother did either. But his earlier banter had become potent premonition, and she herself had taken one look at Moriddig’s body and known he was dead. There was always an aura—or maybe a lack thereof—around a corpse that made it feel different from a man who was merely asleep.
Immediately, she had turned to Hywel and said, “I need Rhys.”
“I don’t want to leave you—”
“I will be fine. I have done this before, as you well know, and we need to begin as we mean to go on. That means Rhys. Last I saw, he was on duty in the king’s pavilion.”
It was because of Rhys’s work that she had been left on her own during the rehearsal. Festival or no festival, treason or no treason, the king was seeing to formal business. No matter where he traveled, the work of the court went on. Catrin could have been attending to Queen Eleanor or baby Edward, but both were napping, and the queen hated to be hovered over while she slept. If they had found Moriddig alive, Catrin would have returned to the manor afterwards. Now she was going to be late—perhaps very late—and she hoped the queen would see her excuse as a good one.
As Hywel set off for the king’s pavilion at a rapid walk, Adam was still refusing to accept what his eyes should have been telling him. “Moriddig! Wake up!” He tugged on one booted foot. When that garnered no response, he grunted unhappily, “How did he get this drunk between breakfast and now that he can’t be woken?”
“Does he often drink to excess in the morning?” Catrin hadn’t meant to start in on the questions already, but the circumstances seemed to call for it.
“Not recently. Last year he was drinking quite a bit, but he has been better these last few months. I wouldn’t have thought he’d want to be impaired for the rehearsal or for his performance this afternoon before the king!”
Unfortunately, while Catrin had been distracted by the issue of Moriddig’s sobriety, Adam had boosted himself into the wagon. He hadn’t even used the stepstool left at the back for that purpose. Catrin hadn’t realized what he intended until he was already inside. While to her, it was obvious that Moriddig was dead, she hadn’t actually spoken the thought out loud, not even to Hywel. With her brother, she hadn’t needed to.
By the time she was able to say, “Adam, you don’t understa—” he had discovered the truth for himself. After a choked exclamation of surprise, he sent up a high, keening wail.
“I’m so sorry, Adam, but you must quiet yourself!” This was definitely not a conversation to be had while Catrin was still outside the wagon. She grabbed the stepstool, since her clothing was not designed for clambering, and got herself into the back of the wagon too, settling on the opposite side of Moriddig’s body from Adam.
“He’s dead! He’s dead!” The pain in Adam’s voice was bottomless.
“I know he’s dead, but it would be preferable if you didn’t announce that fact to the entire encampment before we know how or why.” It was the kind of thing she thought Rhys might say. “Maybe his killer is close by and waiting to see what happens upon his discovery.”
Adam’s keening cut off like the slamming of a door. “His killer? What are you talking about?” He had barely encompassed the fact that Moriddig was dead. The idea that he had been murdered was so far beyond him that he just stared at her, open-mouthed.
Moriddig’s wagon was one of the most impressive Catrin had seen, as befitting his station as the household bard in the retinue of Owen de la Pole. A raised platform bed took up one side, and it was on the edge of the bed that Catrin was sitting. Adam had settled opposite, on one of the wooden boxes that would be secured to the side of the wagon with netting while on the move. Moriddig was lying in a narrow corridor that ran from the front of the wagon to the back. He was a small man, short and slender, so he fit in the space in a way that a much larger person like Adam would not have.
While Adam gazed at her in shock, Catrin took a moment to unhook the canvas flap that exposed the back of the wagon to the world. As she did so, she was pleased to see that nobody was within hailing distance, even after Adam’s loud grieving. Everyone who had set up his tent or wagon in this field should be at the rehearsal. Those who weren’t participating were likely watching.
Besides, in an encampment this large, shouts, curses, and barking dogs were commonplace, not to mention drumming, strumming, and singing. The extent to which everyone was accustomed to an excess of noise had acted to their advantage this morning. Trahaearn hadn’t been the only bard starting early. It was impossible to have a thousand bards, with all their families, friends, and retainers, in one place without a certain degree of chaos. Some bards, particularly those younger and less accomplished, might have come to the festival alone, but most would have at least one person with whom they shared the road. In that, this encampment was little different from one associated with an army.
“Your brother did not die of a natural cause. You can see that from how he is laid out here on the floor, like he’s waiting for burial. A man doesn’t die with his hands folded on his chest.”
“He could have been sleeping and died in his sleep!”
“When there’s a perfectly good bed right here?” Catrin had known by instinct that Moriddig was dead before she climbed into the wagon. Now that she was beside him, he had obvious wounds around his neck that Adam in his grief had failed to see. “He was strangled, Adam.”
Adam reared back, denial in every line of his body.
Catrin looked at him pityingly, and maybe it was that expression, more than her words, that had him looking at his brother more closely. “Sweet Mary. No!” He threw himself across his brother’s body, hanging on like a drowning man to a floating log.
With Adam lost in his grief, Catrin gently lifted Moriddig’s right arm at the wrist. His body was warm and barely stiff. That meant he had died recently, within the last two to three hours. Catrin herself would have liked to examine the body more fully right there and then, but she couldn’t move Adam yet. It would have been better had she found a way to stop him from climbing into the wagon in the first place.
But since she couldn’t begin again, and Rhys hadn’t yet arrived, what was left to her were more questions. “I’m sorry to inquire so soon about this, Adam, but can you tell me again when you last saw Moriddig?”
“At our morning meal!” He pushed up from his brother’s body, wiping at the tears on his cheeks with his fingers. As it turned out, asking a question had got him thinking instead of upsetting him further.
Until that point, Catrin had been worried he would start wailing again. “What hour would that have been?”
“I can’t say exactly. Mid-morning sometime?”
“Now it’s mid-day, so ... three hours ago?”
“That would have been when we breakfasted. It was probably closer to two hours ago that he left. My brother didn’t rise early since he keeps late hours when performing.” He paused. “Kept. My brother kept late hours.”
“Thank you.” Catrin bent her head in appreciation. “We will ask who else might have seen him after you.”
It would have been more polite to let Adam grieve in peace, but Catrin wasn’t in the business of being polite, not with a murder victim in front of her. She certainly wasn’t about to leave Adam alone with the body. In her experience, which admittedly wasn’t all that extensive, men were usually murdered by someone they knew.
Adam had to be at the top of that list, never mind that his grief appeared very real and raw right now. With his reddened eyes and tear-streaked cheeks, she found it hard to believe that he could have murdered his brother. At the same time, his tears could have been the result of regret at what he’d done. Moriddig had been the preeminent sibling and Adam at times hardly more than his servant, even though he was the elder. Just because Adam murdered his brother, that didn’t mean part of him—or even all of him—mightn’t regret doing it.
With that, she’d just accused, tried, and convicted Adam with no evidence whatsoever. Probably, if she put her mind to it, she could come up with an equally plausible scenario to explain why one of Moriddig’s rivals, like Gruffydd, murdered him instead. Or even his lord, Owen. This was the reason Rhys discouraged speculating. It could take an investigator down distracting paths.
“Did Moriddig have any other family? A wife, perhaps?”
“After his wife died, he never remarried and had only one son. Padrig.” The answer came quickly, followed almost instantly by the correction: “Patrick. He is a bard too, as you might expect. A good one. That’s who I was with after I ate breakfast with Moriddig.”
This too would be easy to confirm, and for now Catrin took Adam at his word.
Then Adam let out a moan. “I’ll have to tell him. He will be as distraught as I am.”
“Moriddig and Patrick got along well?”
“Always.” This answer was instinctive, and she saw the moment he realized it wasn’t entirely true and that he needed to modify that thought as well. “Most of the time. You know how fathers and sons are. Moriddig was perhaps harder on him than he should have been. You have a son of your own, I hear.”
“I do.”
Adam nodded, as if that settled the matter.
Catrin had one son, Justin, from her first marriage, and her husband had been overly hard on him at times. It was fortunate for Justin that he had taken to the physical and mental tasks of a nobleman with more ease than some. Catrin hoped that one day, perhaps even this month or the next, she’d be able to tell Rhys, who had no children of his own, of a new pregnancy. She wasn’t pregnant yet, and she reminded herself that they’d been married less than two months, only since the last days of July. The middle of September was hardly time enough to fall pregnant, especially at her age.
Adam knew nothing of these issues, and his tears had abated during her questioning, revealing the intelligent and fundamentally competent man she knew him to be.
“Was anything taken from the wagon that you can see?”
“Are you wondering if he came upon a thief, who killed him?” The idea seemed to cheer Adam. Then he swallowed. “I can’t see anything missing. If the killer looked through the boxes, he was very neat. But—”
He paused long enough for Catrin to prompt him. “But what?”
Adam pointed to Moriddig’s hand, near where she was sitting. “Moriddig’s ring is missing.”
“Was it one he always wore?”
“Yes. It was in memory of his wife, who gave it to him. He took it off only to play the drum, and even then he put it on a chain around his neck.”
Moriddig wasn’t wearing such a chain now, though that would have been a useful weapon by which to strangle him. As it was, when Catrin inspected Moriddig’s hand more closely, she thought she could make out an untanned circle of skin at the base of the fourth finger. “Do you know anyone who would want to kill him?”
Despite his grief, Adam barked a laugh. “Only every single other bard here.”
