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Day One
Catrin
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“Was it—did it—was it the poem that killed him?” Such was Gruffydd’s shock that he actually stuttered. For a bard of his standing, that was unheard of.
“No. The current evidence points to him being strangled.” Then Catrin clarified more bluntly. “Someone strangled him.”
Gruffydd let out a puff of air. “Moriddig and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye—” he made a motion with his head, “—well rarely, anyway, and not just because he was so short, but I would never have wished him dead! Least of all by my poem.”
Hywel stabbed a finger towards the paper still in Gruffydd’s hands. “How did it get into his mouth?”
“I don’t know!” Outrage, which Catrin had never seen in Gruffydd before, suddenly flared. “I certainly didn’t put it there.”
Hywel glowered at him. “You have to admit it looks bad.”
“I can’t help that.”
“When was the last time you encountered Moriddig?” Catrin thought it was time to bring the level of emotion down a notch.
“I saw him this morning sitting with his brother at the morning meal. Then he left. I had just arrived, having arisen later than perhaps I should have done. I did not see him again.” Conveniently, he’d just confirmed Adam’s story.
“What did you do after the meal?” Catrin asked.
“I played, as I do every day.” He waved a hand in the general direction of the stage. Hugh was now speaking to the last group of a hundred or so bards. These would be those in the lowest echelon, mostly apprentices. Moriddig’s son should have been among them, but he was still with Math. “I confess, I was somewhat resentful of the requirement to spend half the day here. I was told attendance was mandatory.”
“As were we,” Hywel said. “Why did you think he didn’t come?”
Gruffydd shook his head. “Moriddig’s standing is such that he is able to decide what is or is not worth his time. He is Owen de la Pole’s man, and Owen has the king’s favor, which means Moriddig, at least, can do precisely as he wishes.” Gruffydd spoke of Moriddig as if he were still alive. Because they were speaking in Welsh, he could have said Owain, in reference to Owen de la Pole. Instead, he’d pronounced the lord’s name the English way.
Catrin didn’t begrudge Gruffydd the tinge of derision in his voice either. She heard the same undertone in Rhys’s whenever he said Owen’s name too. “Was anyone else with you?”
“My apprentice, Rory.”
Catrin tipped her head to hear the name. “From Ireland?”
“He has an Irish mother. The Normans are able to pronounce Rory better than Rhodri, so he keeps to it.”
“He wouldn’t be the only one.” Hywel spoke without emphasis, merely stating the plain fact.
Catrin gazed towards the cluster of young bards. “Can you point him out?”
“At the back, there, in blue. Red hair.”
Hywel grunted. “My eyes aren’t what they once were.”
“I see him.” Catrin was standing on her tiptoes. “Can he attest to your whereabouts?”
“Didn’t I just say so?” Gruffydd cleared his throat. “If you need more, you can ask Rhiannon, my wife. She was with us all morning too, even walking me here before returning to our wagon.”
“She didn’t trust you to make it to the rehearsal on your own?” Catrin said.
Hywel’s mood had improved dramatically with the elaboration of Gruffydd’s alibi, and he was the one to laugh. “She did not. And for good reason.”
At Catrin’s sour look, Gruffydd hastily put up one hand. “She isn’t worried about my fidelity! Nothing like that. If I’m left on my own, I have been known to wander about. I might get an idea for a new song and never arrive at the place where I was supposed to go.” He paused. “She’s been worried for a while about me losing my head, figuratively speaking. Now she fears I might actually lose it.”
“She knows about the poem, then?”
“She does.”
Rhiannon was suddenly at the very top of the list of people Catrin needed to talk to. “Does Rory?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone else?”
“No. The fewer people who know about the song before it can be sung, the better.” That was all very well and good to say, but Gruffydd had shared it with three people. They’d now added four more. It was looking less a secret by the moment.
“Have you ever had an argument with Moriddig?” Catrin said.
Hywel scoffed openly at the question, causing Catrin to say, somewhat dryly, “I gather that’s a yes?”
Gruffydd didn’t reply immediately, instead folding his poem and stowing it away again in his jacket. “If you already knew the answer, why did you ask?”
“I needed to hear you say it. Even without the poem, you could be the prime suspect in the eyes of virtually everyone. Moriddig had rivals, and you were chief among them.”
“Far better to hear all about it from you now,” Hywel said. “That way we can dispense with the issue straight away.”
Gruffydd seemed to accept that logic. “We have been rivals, as you know. Except for when we were very young, I was always the better, as you also know. Moriddig was the elder of us, and he resented the way I pushed at him. I made him better, in truth. That is not to say we didn’t strive to out-perform each other. But I like to think that in our later years, we’d come to an understanding.” He looked from Hywel to Catrin. “Don’t be fooled into thinking that Moriddig agreed with everything the Poles stand for, just because he served them.”
“What exactly do you mean by that?” Catrin said. “What else are we supposed to think?”
“You will have noted, for example, that he never changed his name.”
“I wondered about that,” she admitted. “It seemed odd, given Owen, Adam, Patrick, and Hugh.”
“The language we speak, the words we choose, have the power to move the world.” Gruffydd gestured broadly to indicate the company in the field. Catrin, Hywel, and Gruffydd were still off to one side. “Isn’t that why we are here? The king is determined to curtail the power of the bards. He knows what we are. Why do you think we haven’t had a nationwide eisteddfod since before the first Welsh war?”
“To keep us divided,” Hywel said.
“As you say.” Gruffydd acknowledged the answer with a tip of his head. “Moriddig knew whom he served. Owen’s father was a clever man, albeit as ruthless as they come. He’s a shadow of his former self now, the last of the great Welsh lords of his generation, not even well enough to wait upon the king. I hear he resides permanently at his castle at Powis. By contrast, Owen is a lesser man. Llywelyn told me once that King Edward’s bargains are never what they seem at first, and the Welsh always come out the loser. Moriddig knew it. Owen will discover it soon enough.”
Catrin’s lips twisted. “The way you describe Moriddig is a far cry from the way he presented himself to the world.”
“That was deliberate. He wasn’t prepared to lose his position, not until he had someplace else to go. I assure you, in his heart, he was a Welshman.”
Hywel still looked skeptical. “It is by a man’s actions, not his words, that he is defined.”
“Not when he’s a bard,” Gruffydd said. “I know people perceive me in much the same way. I serve your brother, after all, who some would call a traitor.”
Few had the temerity to say those words out loud to Catrin, though they’d been whispered in circles that continued to resist the king. “They say that about me and Rhys too, I’m sure.”
“And me.” Hywel rubbed his chin. “I suppose, in that case, I can believe what you’re saying about Moriddig. Even so, there’s something bothering me about the poem: why is the one you showed us different from the one we found on Moriddig?”
“I don’t conceive a ballad all at once.” Gruffydd had a bit of impatience in his voice, as if this fact should have been obvious. “Any song takes time to perfect. That was an earlier version. And perhaps I should have said as well that it is not a version I shared with Moriddig—though I did share the poem with him.”
Catrin found herself gaping.
Gruffydd shrugged to see it. “I told you we’d come to an understanding. Several months ago, we talked about the possibility of him finding a new patron, although last I heard nothing was confirmed. It would not do to offend Owen, because that would mean offending the king.”
“You are sure you didn’t leave the poem with him?”
“Definitely not.” Gruffydd shook his head with fervor. “I knew what I had written, and he did too. He didn’t even ask to keep it.”
“So what happened to this bit after you wrote it?” Hywel said.
“I save all my drafts, in case I want to go back to an earlier version. The paper in Moriddig’s mouth should have been in a locked trunk in my wagon. Someone must have broken in and taken it.”
“Who might have done that?” Hywel said. “And when?”
Gruffydd turned his palms face up in an elaborate pantomime of ignorance. “How should I know?”
“Has someone broken the lock on your trunk?” Hywel asked.
“No.” Gruffydd looked rueful. “So maybe he had a key.”
“Did you note anything awry within your wagon in the last few days?” Catrin said.
Gruffydd appeared to waver without answering.
“Though one of the greatest bards who ever lived, Gruffydd is not, shall we say, tidy.” Hywel explained before Catrin could ask what she wasn’t understanding. “Are you certain the paper ever went into your trunk? Could you have left it on the floor in a moment of inattention?”
“I—” Gruffydd shook his head. “You know how I am when I’m writing. I forget things.”
“So you could have?” Catrin said.
“Yes.”
“Don’t you have a steward like Adam to clean up after you?”
“Better, he has a wife,” Hywel said dryly, “but Rhiannon is not allowed in the wagon unsupervised. She might move some of his things.”
For a moment, Gruffydd looked genuinely sheepish. “She is very forgiving, is my Rhiannon.”
“Why did you sign the paper?” Catrin asked. “Just admitting you wrote it could have you in chains. You had to know that.”
Gruffydd’s chin came up. “I sign every draft, every paper, no matter its condition or the state of the poem, bad or good. As I was taught. As is my right.”
She had touched a nerve. “If you did not murder Moriddig, you made it easy for the person who did to blame you.”
“I know.” Gruffydd readily admitted it, but his head remained high. He was not going to change who he was. And maybe, despite what he’d said about Moriddig growing and changing, he couldn’t. It wasn’t Catrin’s place to make him.
Nor was it Hywel’s. It seemed her brother’s opinion had turned completely around between when they’d discovered the poem in Moriddig’s mouth and now. “If you finish this song and sing it for us, just once, whatever you may or may not have done will be forgiven.”
Gruffydd swallowed hard. “You aren’t going to tell the king?”
“We are not.” Catrin might have added to that if they could just live long enough to hear Gruffydd sing the song as he was meant to, he would live forever a hero to the Welsh. “And I say this knowing I am committing treason.”
“What about Rhys?” Gruffydd’s eyes went to where Rhys was conferring closely with Hugh. She could feel the announcement of Moriddig’s death coming, like an oncoming storm. “He feels the same?”
“He does.” Catrin motioned towards her husband. “He will have told Simon that we found a paper stuffed into Moriddig’s mouth, but that the writing had been smudged and was now illegible.”
Gruffydd wasn’t yet able to believe her. “If it is discovered that he knew about my poem, it would threaten his position in the king’s court.”
“Yes, it would,” Catrin said.
“It would threaten all of our positions,” Hywel said.
“He would do that for me?”
“Not for you, not if you, in fact, murdered Moriddig. He would do it for Llywelyn.” Catrin made a motion with her head. “For him, even in death, he would do anything.”
Gruffydd’s eyes remained on where Rhys was now standing on the stage, his hands up, asking for quiet. “I suppose, if the stories I’ve heard about Cilmeri are true, he already did.”
