| |
Day One
Math
––––––––
“Nobody can know about this.” Catrin had come to the end of the wagon to look over her husband’s shoulder. “Nobody but us.”
“And the killer.” Math climbed out of the wagon after Rhys and Catrin, suddenly grateful that Simon had not come with them and that Catrin had sent Moriddig’s brother away when she had.
Hywel, whom Math really hoped they could trust, was already on the ground. Although Math had been born the greater lord, his family had chosen the losing side in the last war and had refused to switch sides, even when the end was plain to see. As a result, Math’s brother had ended up in an English prison. Hywel’s brother Tudur, on the other hand, had defected to the king and had achieved a certain degree of favor. Even if Catrin had explained quite fervently that Llywelyn had told him to do so, Math didn’t necessarily believe it.
“You don’t mean the murder, do you?” Hywel said. “Just the poem.”
“Just the poem,” Catrin said. “We don’t need to give the king another bard to mutilate, whether or not he murdered Moriddig.”
“What do you mean whether or not he murdered him? It’s his poem, stuffed into the mouth of the man he killed!” Hywel let out a sharp breath. “To think my family is sponsoring him at this festival. If this gets out, it could be the end of us too.”
“Hywel.” Catrin put a hand on her brother’s arm. “You know Gruffydd, better than most. Does strangling a man after the morning meal really seem like something he’d do? Have you ever even seen him angry?”
Catrin’s words caused Hywel to stop and think. “I guess not. He’s a jovial fellow on the whole. Generous, always. Much like Adam.”
“If Gruffydd decided to murder Moriddig,” Math said, not sorry to be able to counter Hywel too, “it would have been in the heat of the moment. And if he did murder him, would he really be stupid enough to incriminate himself by stuffing his own poem into his mouth? Whatever Gruffydd may be, he is not stupid.”
Hywel was starting to nod. “I have always found him to be honest. If he had murdered Moriddig, he would have walked into the king’s pavilion and announced his guilt. He wouldn’t be subtle about it.”
“We don’t want him to have done it, that’s clear.” Rhys cut through their talk. “We can come up with every reason on earth why he couldn’t have. But it is wrong of us to dismiss this. We all have faced demons these last two years. It is safe to say that Gruffydd has as well.”
Hywel was still thinking. “Maybe he didn’t even write the poem. Anyone could have signed his name to it.”
“It couldn’t have been just anyone,” Rhys said. “The style is very much Gruffydd’s, and few would have had access to a poem we know for certain Gruffydd is not sharing widely.”
“So the killer is someone who hates Gruffydd and Moriddig,” Math said. “If the murderer is not Gruffydd, I can’t think of a better way to take down both.”
“Imagine if anyone other than us had found the poem?” Catrin’s expression turned pensive. “Imagine if Adam alone had found it. He was on his way to the wagon; Hywel and I arrived only a few moments before he did.”
“He would have shouted for Gruffydd’s head from the ramparts,” Hywel said, as sure of Gruffydd’s innocence now as he had been a moment ago of his guilt. “The king would have had him hanged, drawn, and quartered before dinner, practically before Gruffydd even knew of what he was accused.”
“I don’t like to rely on luck, but we were lucky,” Catrin said.
“Again.” Math shot a meaningful look at Rhys and Catrin, thinking of their intervention with Trahaearn. It had been an eventful day, and it was barely past noon.
“I read you the poem because, once heard, it cannot be forgotten,” Rhys said. “I do believe Gruffydd could have written it.”
“It does sound like him,” Hywel admitted, “and if we hadn’t found it in the mouth of a murdered man, I couldn’t have been more proud to have him in my brother’s household.”
“We will start by asking him,” Rhys said.
Catrin’s reply was to point to the paper in her husband’s hands. “Put that away right now.”
Rhys did as his wife bid, not asking why, especially since she was already stepping past him to greet Adam and Patrick, who were just arriving. Math had also been so intent on the conversation that he hadn’t noticed them coming. It was a poor performance, on the whole, for two of the king’s guards to be caught so unaware.
Adam had his arm around the shoulders of his nephew, who took after him physically far more than his father. It was obvious to anyone looking at the pair that they were related.
While Catrin held out her hands to Patrick, Rhys stayed facing away, his back to the newcomers so he could fold the paper into a small square without them noticing. Then he handed it to Math, who took it unquestioningly, accepting that he was less likely to be noticed by Adam, since Rhys was the real authority here in terms of the investigation. Math didn’t believe for a moment that Rhys would pass off the paper so he wouldn’t be caught with it and would in no way be surprised to find that he wanted it back just as quickly. Rhys was like that. He would be trying to protect Math.
Once again, they were in this together, however one described this.
Even so, since Math was dressed identically to Rhys, in armor that didn’t exactly provide him with a plethora of pockets, he at first didn’t know what to do with the paper anymore than Rhys had. After a moment’s consideration, he tucked it into the bracer on his forearm. He’d already built a secret sleeve within the leather for a tiny knife blade. He’d never been called to use it, but one could never be too prepared.
“My father really is dead?” Patrick stared into the back of the wagon.
Initially, Hywel had shifted to block his view, but then, at a look from Rhys, gave way enough for the young man to see his father’s unmoving form.
“I am so sorry for your loss,” Rhys said.
Patrick reached out a hand towards his father’s foot but then drew it back. “My uncle told me he was dead, but I didn’t believe it until now.”
Rhys put a hand on his shoulder. “I must leave you now to speak to my commander and likely the king. After that, I assure you we will do everything in our power to discover who did this to him.”
Patrick turned his head to stare at Rhys, his brown eyes disconcertingly wide. “Wh-who did what to him?”
Rhys hesitated as he looked past Patrick to Adam. “You didn’t tell him?”
“What could I say?” Adam put up both hands in a helpless gesture. He looked like he’d aged ten years, so drawn and white was his face. “I couldn’t tell him the whole of it.”
In the pause that followed, Math took it upon himself to stand eye-to-eye—and man-to-man—with Patrick. The two of them were close in age, and he thought the truth might be easier coming from him. “Your father was murdered. We don’t know the full circumstances; in fact, we don’t know anything about Moriddig’s movements this morning other than what Adam was able to tell Catrin. Did you see your father this morning?”
“No.” Patrick was swallowing repeatedly. Math had thrown a whole raft of information at him. Fortunately, he latched onto the last sentence, as Math hoped he would. “He hates to be disturbed in the morning. I learned that a long time ago.”
“What about last night? He often stayed up late ...” Math let his voice trail off, asking a question without asking it, wanting Patrick to fill in the rest of the thought on his own.
“I’m not sure what he did. What does it matter since he was seen this morning?”
“We are just trying to get a sense of his movements.” And yours went unsaid in Math’s mind.
Patrick obliged with a definitive answer. “He and I practiced long yesterday afternoon, separately and together, and then had a meal. Afterwards, I was invited to a gathering of other bards from Powys, younger ones, not my father’s concern. I was with them until after the midnight hour. Then I went to my tent.”
“Alone?” Hywel asked softly, speaking for the first time since Adam and Patrick had arrived.
“Alone, my lord,” Patrick said firmly. “I know better than to become distracted in the midst of an eisteddfod. If my father saw me with a woman, he would have my head!” Then he stopped and swallowed hard. “He would have had. Poor choice of words.”
For a bard, a poor choice of words or a slightly incorrect turn of phrase could be the difference between maintaining his position and being thrown out of his lord’s household on his ear. Moriddig himself had always been one for flowery phrases, august proclamations, and using ten words when two would do. Prior to the conquest, a Welsh bard went through a decade of training as an apprentice, memorizing tens of thousands of lines of poetry, in order to finally achieve the lowest status of bard. As a result, bards had a habit of working what they’d memorized into daily conversation.
The highest-ranking of all bards were the pencerdd, the master bard for the kingdom, followed by the bardd teulu, the household bard.
For Gwynedd, the pencerdd was Gruffydd ab yr Yfan Coch.
For Powys, it had been Moriddig.
