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Day Three
Catrin
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It was a woman, screaming long, loud, and terrified. The sound came from a barn-like structure on the edge of the woods above the River Dee. Rhys and Catrin had been walking along a nearby path, taking a moment away from the festival and its participants to consider in private what they’d learned and how next to proceed.
Fortunately, they had come far from the festival grounds, and only she and Rhys were close enough to hear above the sound of the rushing river below them. It was another bit of luck, like their proximity to Trahaearn had been, though they didn’t know that until later.
Catrin lifted her skirts to run, but Rhys still out-sped her, leaping a low wall that demarcated the edge of the field, while she had to clamber over it. Once reached, the barn looked as if it had been part of a prosperous estate, but was long abandoned and derelict. With the meander of the river undermining the bank year after year, a real danger had developed that the sheep and cattle that grazed in the field might inadvertently fall down the steep embankment into the river.
For today, the barn was in no danger of collapse. It was what was happening inside the barn that was at issue. Rhys reached for the door, only to have it flung open by none other than Simon’s niece, Emma, who barreled straight into him.
As Rhys caught her arms, the abruptness of his arrival cut off the noise coming out of her mouth in mid-scream.
In the time it took for her to catch her breath, he asked, “What has happened?”
“A-a-a-man. Inside.” She twisted in his arms to point through the now-open door. “I think he’s dead!”
By this time, Catrin had caught up, and Rhys practically tossed Emma into her arms before entering the barn. Catrin and Emma stood in the doorway, Emma’s face pressed into Catrin’s shoulder. The roof was half-collapsed, allowing the afternoon light to shine down on the man lying spread-eagled in the middle of the packed-dirt floor with a large pool of blood around him. He had been stabbed through the midsection.
And it wasn’t just any man. It was Hugh, whom they’d spent the morning investigating.
Emma continued to sob, wetting Catrin’s dress with her tears. Catrin didn’t give in to impatience, reminding herself that Emma was all of seventeen, even if in appearance she could have passed for a woman of twenty-five. Her experience in life was limited. Certainly she had never encountered a murdered man before. Besides, anyone coming upon such a gruesome scene would have screamed.
And then Emma impressed her by pushing back and wiping at her tears. “I’m all right.” She looked towards Rhys. “Did you note all the coins, too?”
“They’re hard to miss.” Bending, Rhys came up with a silver penny, which he showed to Catrin and Emma. “There’s many more.”
Emma nodded. “It was the coins I saw first. It’s like they make a trail to his body!” She sucked in a breath, making an obvious effort not to collapse into hysterics again. “There’s so much blood.”
The killer had also poured what looked like an entire bag of coins over Hugh’s belly, scattering them all around and even in the wound.
Catrin didn’t see a purse, so perhaps the murderer had taken it away with him. “This was staged, no less than the opening of the festival.”
“Or the murder in Caernarfon.” Rhys crouched to Hugh’s side, making sure to keep the toes of his boots well away from the pool of blood. “This death is as cold-blooded as that one. Whoever ran Hugh through left him to bleed his life out in an abandoned barn.”
Emma had a hand to her face, looking at the body through her fingers. “It really is Steward Hugh, isn’t it?”
“It really is,” Catrin said. “What I’m interested in learning at this moment is how you came to find the body. Were you here to meet him?”
“Of course not!” Emma recoiled at the very idea.
“But you were meeting someone,” Rhys said, not as a question.
“Just a friend.” Though, as Emma spoke, she averted her eyes.
Rhys looked at Catrin, who nodded back at him. She knew what to do.
For starters, they had to get Emma out of here before anyone else saw her. She might not be fully aware of how her world had changed this week, but she was not just any girl now. She had met the king, and her father was working to get him to take a personal interest in the man she would marry. She should not, under any circumstances, have been in this barn by herself, waiting for her as-yet-unnamed friend.
Before Catrin departed, she said to Rhys in Welsh, assuming Emma wouldn’t understand, “We already knew Hugh had a habit of asking for payment from participants. Maybe he asked the wrong person this time.”
Rhys nodded, his eyes on the body. “And they objected, very strongly, to paying.”
