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Day One
Rhys
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They’d worked hard to disguise that anything was amiss, so Rhys made sure he moved casually after Hywel, without giving the appearance of hustling. As he did so, he suppressed a surge of guilt for being impatient with his job for even one moment. Anyone who’d ever been under attack—and that number included a significant portion of the men in the pavilion—knew the idiocy of wishing for action. A lack of action meant a man lived through another day. Rhys was clearly an idiot.
He left the pavilion with the hope of not disturbing those within, and he thought perhaps he had succeeded. To an outside observer, Rhys and Simon had conducted a short conversation, after which Rhys departed with neither fuss nor urgency. And then, since Math was still the one on duty standing guard outside, Rhys picked him up to come along too. Simon had known already to choose another of the guardsmen to take Rhys’s place. Now he would just have to find two.
Since April, when Rhys had renewed his service to the king, he and Simon had come to rely on each other again. Rhys hadn’t meant it to happen. After almost dying at Cilmeri, he had been actively avoiding attachment. But somehow, in the following five months, Rhys had acquired not only a wife but close friends again, one of whom was Simon, another Hywel, and a third, Math.
It was odd, and oddly wonderful, to be striding along with the two of them. Rhys had enjoyed mingling with any number of Welsh folk at the festival, finding himself happy to be surrounded by people speaking his native tongue. But none of them were companions in the way of Hywel, his oldest friend in life, and Math, his newest.
“What is the king going to say about this?” Hywel asked in an undertone and in Welsh.
“I don’t yet know what this is, do I?” Before now if Rhys were to think about Moriddig at all, he would have said that he hadn’t liked him very much. In truth, it was hard to imagine anyone liking the man. At the same time, he certainly had never wished him dead. “All you’ve said is that you found Moriddig’s body. Though, if Catrin is there, and she sent for me, she’s thinking he was murdered.”
“He ate breakfast with his brother this morning, and then three hours later we find him dead on the floor of his wagon.”
“Is there a chance it was just his heart failing?”
“He lies flat on his back with his hands folded on his chest, like he’s asleep.”
“Except he’s dead,” Rhys said, only partly as a question.
“That sounds like the body was arranged after death,” Math put in. “A guilty conscience?”
“I can’t know anything until I see it,” Rhys said heavily, thinking about how many people Moriddig’s death was going to affect, whether or not he was murdered. Given his stature in this community of bards, his loss was going to upset the entire event.
For starters, the king wasn’t going to like the distraction from his agenda. If Moriddig had hated being upstaged, the king refused to abide it. He was already in a foul mood, knowing that the men he’d sent after Trahaearn had so far failed to recover him. Math and Rhys could only be grateful they hadn’t been chosen for the task. Rhys thought it was a kindness on Simon’s part and, possibly, a mistake. They were the only ones among the king’s guard who spoke Welsh. Still, it was the guardsman George who’d been assigned to lead a troop of mounted soldiers from the military escort that always traveled with the king. If they didn’t find Trahaearn within the next few hours, they were never going to find him at all.
The king might be furious, but Rhys privately thought it was a blessing, and not just because he didn’t want to see Trahaearn’s tongue cut out. The festival was already a pile of pitch wood waiting for a spark. Bards, as a whole, were independent folk, never mind that they sang for great lords. They had always been set apart from normal society and its rules. Uniquely among members of a Welsh royal court, they were tasked with speaking the truth as they saw it, and woe betide the lord who offended a bard and was subsequently memorialized in song.
Trahaearn’s flight and the king’s wrath might cow them for a time, as might Moriddig’s death. King Edward would undoubtedly try to turn both to royal advantage. All of a sudden it occurred to Rhys that he might not even want Moriddig’s killer found: one of Wales’s preeminent bards is dead? Only nine hundred and ninety-nine more to go.
“I still find it interesting you’re not questioning that there will be a killer,” Rhys said, putting aside his ruminations for now.
“You didn’t see the body,” Hywel said. “Catrin knew it the second she saw it. It was she who sent me to you, of course.”
And that could engender another spasm of guilt on Rhys’s part, if he let it. Fortunately, they arrived at the wagon instead.
Catrin had seen them coming, and by the time they stopped in front of her, she had sat herself on the top step, her chin in her hands like she was a girl of seven. Her manner appeared relatively cheery. Again, how shameful was it that he’d so conditioned his new wife to murder that she could treat it with such nonchalance?
Though she’d positioned herself in such a way that it wasn’t easy to see past her, Rhys could still make out the soles of a pair of boots that must belong to Moriddig.
“Where’s Adam?” Hywel asked before Rhys could. As her brother, he was typically unconcerned about her feelings.
“He went to find Moriddig’s son, Patrick. We’re not going to be able to keep Moriddig’s death a secret for very long, if even another hour. I asked Adam to bring him here, since they are the first to whom we’ll need to speak.” She made a motion with her head to indicate the depths of the wagon. “You should have a look at Moriddig before Adam gets back, Rhys.” She then hopped down so Rhys could climb the stepstool in her place. “I know how you like to see things for yourself, so I won’t say anything more until you do.”
“You know me too well.” He patted her shoulder as he went by.
“I wouldn’t say too well.”
At another time he would have grinned. Instead, Rhys ducked under the canvas entry and surveyed the body. Moriddig’s narrow nose was pointed at the ceiling as Hywel had described. At first glance, the bard could have been asleep—until Rhys bent closer to see that Moriddig’s neck was arched unnaturally and, even in the relative darkness of the wagon, the bruising of the tissues was clear.
“Strangled?” Math settled on the other side of the body without being invited. He really was growing on Rhys. “A crime of passion?”
“I can’t answer that until we discover who did it,” Rhys said.
Catrin came up the steps again. “Afterwards, the killer put thought into his position. Check his mouth. There’s something in there. I didn’t want to pull it out until you arrived. Adam didn’t note it.” She settled herself beside Math, while Hywel took his turn crouching on the top step. If someone passed by, they might wonder what was happening, but Hywel’s station could keep them from asking.
Now that Rhys was looking closer, he could see the bit of paper stuck to Moriddig’s lip. And because the body was in the early stages of rigor, he was still able to open the jaw wide enough to extract the rest which filled his mouth.
Math bent closer. “Strangled and suffocated?”
“Don’t tempt me to speculate, Math.” It was a bit of censure, but kindly meant. Before coming here, Rhys should have detoured to his tent to acquire his small leather wallet with some tools of his trade, including a pair of tweezers. As he hadn’t, he was left with tugging on the paper with two fingers, as delicately as he could, so as not to rip it. “It depends on how much paper was used. It could have been stuffed into his mouth after death.”
Just thinking about it made Rhys want to vomit. He hated having anything pressing at the back of his throat.
“Is it a message?” Hywel’s face was bright with interest.
“And if so, to whom?” Math said. “Moriddig? Or the one who would find him.”
“How could the killer have been sure who that would be?” Catrin said.
“Likely, you are the last person he’d expect,” Rhys said, somewhat absently. Once he coaxed the thin piece of paper out of Moriddig’s mouth, he carefully spread it flat on his knee, inadvertently smearing a bit of the ink writing as he did so, since it was moist from Moriddig’s mouth. The paper was a handspan wide and equally tall. In volume, it shouldn’t have been enough to choke Moriddig. For all that Rhys didn’t like jumping to conclusions, Hywel was probably right that this was meant to be a message, not a murder weapon.
Even smudged, Rhys could make out a verse written in a fine hand, worthy of the bard Moriddig had been. He scooted to the end of the wagon, into the daylight, and began to read. At first, it was only to himself, but then he spoke the words out loud, having realized that what he was reading was too important to be kept from the others, even another moment.
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Can you not sense the turmoil amongst the oaks?
Do you not see the path of wind and rain?
And that the world is ending?
Cold my heart in fearful breast
For the lion of Wales, that oaken door
our warlord, our dragon-king
Our Llywelyn ... is dead.
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The words were heartrendingly beautiful and utterly treasonous. The paper was signed Gruffydd ab yr Ynad Coch.
