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Day Three
Rhys
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“We have to start inquiring about Hugh,” Catrin said from beside Rhys. The two of them, plus Math, were seated at a table in the meal pavilion, having something of a hurried breakfast. “We have no choice.”
“We do have a choice.” Yesterday, Rhys had met Prince Edmund here. With another day gone and no arrests, he could feel the eyes of every other person present, judging him for his lack of progress. “Moriddig’s murder has to be our first priority. The king may see any questions about Hugh as outside my purview. And that isn’t to even mention what Queen Eleanor or Owen de la Pole might say. Perhaps the bards were lying to me last night.”
“Did they sound like they were lying?” Math asked.
“How can we believe Gruffydd but not Cadwgan?” Catrin said. “Someone is lying to us, clearly, but I doubt it is ten people all at once. Besides, Patrick admitted Hugh used to take bribes, and many of the men believe Moriddig gained his position by giving one, even if Patrick denied that too. We need to know if money is changing hands this week. We have to follow where the investigation leads us.”
Rhys found himself shaking his head. “We are wading into deep water.”
“I can swim just fine,” Math said.
“Can you? You are more confident than I.” Rhys looked at the pair of them, both practically glaring back. Then he gave way. “In truth, I don’t even disagree with you. I just want you to think about what we may be getting involved in. Imagine if Owen has condoned Hugh’s activities? Or the king knows about it and wants to ensure the identity of a winner?”
“The queen was adamant that no corruption occur,” Catrin said. “She’s going to hang anyone found cheating.”
“The fact that she told that to Hugh—and to you—is what’s keeping me moving forward right now,” Rhys said. “Murder investigations reveal secrets that would otherwise have been kept hidden. We’ll start by confirming the story I was told last night. We need to know if bribery is actually happening before we speak to Hugh, Owen or, ultimately, the king and queen.”
It was time for Math to return to duty, so Rhys and Catrin set out alone. They decided to start with bards from Gwynedd, figuring they were more likely to be sympathetic to their questions. It was helpful that most of them had settled on the periphery of the festival grounds. As Rhys had witnessed last night, bards from the same kingdom tended to flock together.
As it turned out, no subtlety was needed, since the first bard they approached practically spit out his initial response. “You’re asking me that now?”
Rhys looked at him warily. “If not now, when?”
The man, whose name was Dafydd, threw up his hands in frustration. “Years ago would have been helpful.”
“I am sorry not to have done that, but I remain ignorant as to what might have transpired in the past.”
They had come upon Dafydd outside his wagon, preparing for the day by tuning his crwth. This was not the same Dafydd, or Dai as he’d named himself when he’d admitted his heritage, who’d sung in Windsor. Catrin’s son, Justin, had identified him as a fellow Welshman, a fact which the bard had begged Justin not to reveal. It seemed he was still passing as an Englishman, because he hadn’t answered the king’s summons. It was a hard life, living a lie like that. Rhys honestly wished him well and didn’t judge.
“Surely there was talk in the royal court before the event!”
“I assure you there wasn’t. Nor was I involved in any of the planning for the festival.”
“You’re the king’s quaestor!” Dafydd was still irate.
“If you think that means King Edward confides in me, you would be wholly mistaken,” Rhys said. “Even so, I assure you that I was not party to any gossip from anyone who sits closer to the king than I about bribery at the festival. We heard about this for the first time last night from other bards.”
Dafydd gave a grunt, obviously finding this very hard to believe.
“I can only apologize again,” Rhys said. “It has been years since I attended a festival like this.”
“Four years, actually,” Dafydd said. “Admittedly, that one was smaller, and included only bards from Gwynedd.”
Rhys bent his head. “I do remember.”
When his head came up, he met Dafydd’s eyes. It was as if the bard had been waiting for the moment. Instead of the recriminations for which Rhys was bracing himself, there was an outpouring of sympathy—from Dafydd to Rhys and Rhys to Dafydd. They both knew what they had lost. He could find irony in how much they had lamented at the time about the reduction of Llywelyn’s land and authority to west of the River Conwy. In retrospect, those had been idyllic days.
More in accord, Dafydd said, “I have heard from others that the first time Hugh asked for a bribe was as long ago as three decades, before Llywelyn was acknowledged ruler of all Wales. At that time, irregularities at an eisteddfod would not have risen to his concern. That event didn’t even take place in Gwynedd, else Hugh would not have been in charge. You were young then too, and soon went on crusade. No man can look askance at you for that, especially because you came home afterwards. Once Llywelyn lost the first war to England, we in Gwynedd held only that one festival. To tell the truth, I barely believed until I arrived that we were having one now.”
Rhys would have preferred they weren’t having one now, but he didn’t say so. This was the man’s livelihood, after all.
“Tell us how it started,” Catrin said, “for you, anyway.”
Dafydd was no longer angry, or even resigned. Just matter-of-fact, since someone was listening. “Years before I was a bard in my own right, my father came home one day cursing. Hugh had asked for what he called his fee, implying that without it my father would find himself farther down the rankings. My father gave him the new cloak off his back. He won the festival, which I can’t say I was sorry about because his victory gave me a boost as well. I was his apprentice in those days.”
“How long ago was this?” Catrin asked.
“Fifteen years? That would have been shortly after King Henry recognized Llywelyn as the princeps of Wales.” He raised his eyebrows at Rhys. “And shortly before you left for the Holy Land.”
“I was oblivious to anything but my own concerns,” Rhys said.
“Again, not your fault. This was also in Powys, not far from here but very far from Gwynedd.”
“Did your father tell anyone else?”
“Whom would he tell? Besides, once the fee was accepted and he’d won the contest, he was complicit.”
“What about the men who gave Hugh fees and didn’t win?” Catrin said.
“Now that is a question,” Dafydd said, “and I think it’s the reason Hugh has got away with his activity for so long. He is too smart to have anyone going away unhappy. He promises different rewards to different men. My father never paid him quite as significant a fee again, but he would speak well of him, or buy him a drink of an evening. Like it was a gift. And because of my father’s victory, he never lacked for a patron. I never did either, before the war.”
“What about Moriddig?” Rhys said. “It is my understanding he was aware of the situation.”
“And that we all thought he achieved his place because he paid Hugh to arrange for it all those years ago?” Dafydd snorted. “As much as he denied it, he wasn’t an accomplished enough bard for us to ever believe him.”
“He wasn’t accomplished enough?” Catrin wrinkled her nose, herself disbelieving.
Both she and Rhys had been present when Moriddig had sung for the king the night before his death. He’d been magnificent. Rhys could believe Moriddig had won his place that first time through a fee to Hugh, but thirty years of service indicated he deserved it.
“Oh, he was a fine bard, but not the finest. Not like Gruffydd.” Dafydd put out a hand. “I know what you’re thinking. I’m from Gwynedd so my assessment has to be taken with a grain of salt. But if you think so, you’d be wrong. Moriddig had an impressive voice, it’s true. It was his compositions that were lacking.”
Again, that was a matter of perspective and judgment, which was why festivals needed judges. A musical competition wasn’t the same as two men jousting, where one physically knocked the other off his horse. The finest bard in the land could only ever be a matter of opinion. Very rarely was the man who sat in the chair put there by genuine acclaim. Taliesin must have been such a man, in his day, and Aneirin in his. But even then, Rhys suspected they’d had rivals whose names were lost to the mists of time.
“How many of the men here have been subject to Hugh’s requests for payment?” Catrin said.
“I couldn’t say.” Dafydd chewed on his lower lip. “May I ask who told you about the scheme?”
Rhys and Catrin exchanged a glance before Rhys said, “I’d prefer not to say.”
“If you were so concerned about it, why didn’t you say something earlier yourself?” Catrin said. “Why was it Rhys’s responsibility to ask?”
Dafydd continued to look a bit rueful. “It wasn’t. Please accept my apologies. Hugh’s requests have been an open secret among the bards, and we forget that nobody else would know about them unless we were to tell them. Hugh’s schemes should have been exposed long ago.”
“Were you ever asked to pay a fee?” Rhys said.
To his credit, Dafydd didn’t equivocate. “Yes. Once. And, as with my father, it was worth it.”
Rhys had one more question, possibly the most important of all: “Who paid Hugh to win this week?”
“Moriddig.” Dafydd said the name with a bit of a sneer, and then his expression turned contrite. “My apologies again. The man is dead, after all.”
“Do you know this for certain?” Rhys asked.
“No.”
“Would this fee be reason enough to murder him?” Catrin said.
“His death is what I thought you’d come to talk to me about.” Dafydd let out a breath. “If you think winning this contest is worth killing over, you’d be wrong. No bard from Gwynedd wants the crown, that’s for certain. Maybe some of those from the south would like the honor. The rest of us are just trying to keep our heads down and get through this.”
“Even Gruffydd?” Rhys said.
Dafydd tsked. “Especially Gruffydd.”
“And why is that?” Catrin said.
Dafydd looked at her one more time as if he couldn’t believe she didn’t already know the answer. “Because the last thing any of us want is to come to the attention of the king. Gruffydd led the parade at the beginning of the festival only because he couldn’t get out of it. He is the last person who would ever have wanted Moriddig dead.” He made a motion with his hand. “Again, maybe some of the bards from the south feel differently. They’ve been scrabbling amongst the rushes for scraps for a long time. They are well-trained. They probably would even see a victory here as an honor. If you’re looking for Moriddig’s murderer—and the one Hugh will crown in his stead—simply look to them.”
Catrin and Rhys said their goodbyes and then trekked back and forth across the festival grounds several more times, marshaling their evidence against Hugh. What exactly the steward’s desire for payment had to do with Moriddig’s death they didn’t know. Maybe nothing.
It was especially confusing that, while every bard to whom they spoke over the course of the morning knew about the fees Hugh had demanded throughout the years, none admitted to giving him one this week. None knew from whom he might have taken a bribe. None knew which of the judges were involved because, if such a scheme were to work, at least one of them had to be. They’d have to confront that man eventually too.
In other words, it was a frustrating morning.
And that was before the screaming started.
