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Day Three
Catrin
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“I should seek out Mary and Jane.” Catrin said to Rhys. She was referring to Hugh’s wife and daughter. “Last I saw, they were watching one of the contests. They might already be wondering where he might have got to. How much can I tell them?”
“Start with enough to get them out of the festival grounds and back to the castle. You don’t want them to cause a scene that disrupts the festival. The king is still adamant about that.”
Catrin promised to do her best, which was how she found herself a quarter of an hour later edging her way through the onlookers to where Mary and Jane were standing. Speaking to the family of someone who’d died unexpectedly was never easy, made far worse by the fact that the deceased had been murdered. Catrin had managed to wade through Adam’s grief. She could endure the grief of Hugh’s wife and daughter too.
Hugh and Moriddig were connected in several ways, but the two most important appeared to be, firstly, that they both served in the household of Owen de la Pole; and secondly, that Moriddig had achieved his position because he had given Hugh a fee. Or so rumor had it, even if roundly denied by Moriddig’s son.
Similar in age to Moriddig, Hugh had served Owen’s father before Owen’s maturity. Once it was clear Gruffydd was no longer capable of managing his own estates and needed a different set of retainers, Owen inherited Hugh along with the responsibilities of lordship. Up until now, Catrin had only ever viewed Hugh as respectable, responsible, and trusted. The way he died would have called into question everything they thought they knew about him even if they hadn’t already heard about his bribery scheme.
Catrin fetched up beside Jane, Hugh’s fifteen-year-old daughter, while at the same time reaching out a hand to Mary’s sleeve to gain her attention. “Mary, Jane, I was hoping you could come with me.”
At first, Mary was too focused on the singing to look away, but when Catrin tugged on her arm again, she glanced over long enough to take in Catrin’s expression. Her face fell at the sight of it. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to tell you away from here.” Catrin had been trying to make her expression mild and unassuming—and had clearly failed. At the same time, any instance where the wife of the king’s quaestor asked a person to come with her, trouble had to be the reason.
Without waiting to make sure the other women were following, Catrin turned with some abruptness and headed back the way she’d come. By the time she looked over her shoulder, Mary and Jane were five steps behind.
She didn’t manage to extricate them from the crowd of festival goers until they reached the entrance to the festival grounds. At that point, Catrin set off towards the town. It was a good quarter-of-an-hour’s walk, and for the first half of the journey she was moving too fast for either Mary or Jane to find the breath to ask questions.
Finally, however, Mary grabbed Catrin’s arm, stopping her abruptly in the middle of the street. “What has happened? You must tell me before I take another step.”
Catrin looked left and right, seeing a few people but none paying much in the way of attention to them. They were near St. Mary’s by now, so Catrin gestured for them to enter the churchyard. With its many ancient yew trees, they could be hidden from prying eyes.
Once under some spreading limbs, not far from Moriddig’s grave, Catrin could put off the truth no longer. “It’s your husband, Hugh. He is dead.”
Jane let out a painful shriek, which was exactly what Catrin had been trying to avoid. In truth, it was unavoidable. There was no good way to tell a wife and daughter that the man upon whom they depended was dead.
Mary wrapped her arms around Jane and stared at Catrin over her daughter’s head. “How can this be? He wasn’t in ill health. I saw him earlier today, and he was well!”
Catrin didn’t answer immediately, instead taking Mary’s elbow and guiding her and Jane towards the church itself. Jane continued to sob in her mother’s arms, but Catrin managed to get them inside and settled on a bench against a wall. Only then did Catrin lay out the full explanation of what they knew, without getting into any of their speculation as to who might have killed him or why.
When Catrin finished, Mary bent her head and breathed slowly in and out for a time. Catrin had sat herself on the bench beside her and now took her free hand, the one that wasn’t holding onto Jane. “I am so very sorry.”
“I can’t believe he’s dead.” Mary’s voice sounded like it came from very far away. “You’re sure it’s Hugh?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand the bit about the coins. He promised me he wasn’t accepting payments anymore.”
Catrin’s heart thumped to hear her speak so plainly. “You knew about those?”
“Of course I knew.” Mary sniffed. “For years, I told him what he was doing was bad for him and for the men from whom he took these fees.” The word came out with a bit of a sneer. “He had finally listened. He had changed! Or so I thought.”
Catrin wanted to comfort her, even if she thought it unlikely, given the circumstances of Hugh’s death, that he had changed. “Maybe he did stop. Maybe this was about something else, or a grievance from the past.”
“That would be some comfort.” Mary let go of Catrin’s hand in order to wrap both arms around her daughter, who continued to sob. “Were the coins from his purse, do you know?”
“We didn’t find a purse on him.”
Mary’s face was so pale Catrin was afraid she might faint. “He owned a leather purse, embossed with his initials, H and C. He was never without it.” At Catrin’s regretful shake of her head, Mary continued, “Money can be poisonous to relationships. It soured ours for a long time. Hugh cared too much about accumulating wealth and having fine things. He did everything he could to ingratiate himself with these Normans. Like Owen, he changed his name and insisted we do the same. I was born Marared and Jane was christened Geneth. He said those days were over, and if we wanted to survive, we would have to adapt. I did as he asked. And then, one day, he did as I asked, which was to stop taking payments. I told him so many times it would catch up to him. To us.” At last, her face screwed up, and the tears began to fall. “I thought things were better. We were doing so much better.”
Tears pricking her own eyes at seeing their grief, Catrin remained with her arms around both Mary and Jane until they quieted. She was sure now that Mary’s surprise at her husband’s death was genuine. She hadn’t murdered Hugh. Truly, Catrin should have known that already, since she’d seen Mary at the festival grounds at some point during her treks across the various fields with Rhys before Emma had screamed.
And yet, it had been vaguely possible that she could have killed him and then rejoined her daughter without anyone noticing. Maybe that could have been true of Jane too, if the idea that Jane killed her own father with a stab to the heart wasn’t wholly laughable. It did occur to Catrin that if Emma and Stephen had agreed to meet in the barn, Jane could have too. Catrin could imagine a scenario where Hugh had spied on Jane and her lover. Then, after Jane left, he tried to bribe the man to go away—and been killed for his pains.
That wasn’t a topic to broach in this moment, but she filed it away for later consideration.
Eventually, Catrin was able to ask a few gentle questions again. “Can you tell me what you meant when you said things were better?”
Jane had laid her head in her mother’s lap and appeared to be almost dozing. Maybe that was just as well, given the conversation.
Mary rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “I have to go back a ways for you to truly understand.”
“Take your time; I am happy to listen.”
“Hugh’s father had been steward to the Lord Gruffydd, Owen’s father. Unfortunately, he—Hugh’s father, not old Gruffydd—had fallen to gambling and drinking in his later years. For a while, his vices put the whole family in a precarious position. They were in danger of losing everything for which he’d spent a lifetime working. Even though Hugh was young, he managed to convince Lord Gruffydd, who saw what was happening, to take him on instead of his father. Hugh was only twenty, but anyone could see how competent he was.”
She gave a shake of her head. “His father died not long after; Hugh and I married after that, and, after some more years, I had Jane.” She rubbed her daughter’s shoulder again. “From the start, Hugh was haunted by his father’s fall from grace and became obsessed with shoring up his own position. By the time we married, he justified what he was doing by saying he was only making sure that if anything happened to him, Jane and I would be protected. And he did protect us. Even with his death, we have a home of our own and enough wealth to maintain us—Jane until she marries, and me for as long as I live.”
“That is quite a gift.”
Mary ducked her head. “He was paid well by the Poles, but he felt it wasn’t enough. That’s why he supplemented his income.” She stopped.
“Did these fees really amount to that much?”
“It wasn’t just payments given to him at an eisteddfod.” Mary allowed herself a low laugh. “As the Poles’ steward, Hugh was in a position to extract similar fees from a whole host of supplicants. Did a man need to see the lord today rather than tomorrow? A small fee would ensure it. Or did that man want to win a dispute against his neighbor? If so, that would require a bigger payment.” Her laugh became mocking. “How is the king’s chancellor any different with his fees? How is a sheriff any different, collecting money when a man dies?”
Catrin found herself swallowing down a rebuttal she didn’t actually believe in. “Did Hugh keep records?”
“I suspect you won’t be surprised to learn that he did. I will get the ledger to you.”
“Did anyone ever pay him a fee and then not get what they paid for?”
Mary gave a quick shake of her head. “He worked very hard to ensure that was never the case.”
“Never?”
“If he couldn’t fulfill what he promised, he returned the money.”
Catrin wanted to believe her, for her sake more than Hugh’s, for whom it no longer mattered. “Did Owen know?”
She held her breath as she waited for the answer, but it came quickly and surely. “He did not.”
Catrin endeavored not to look as skeptical as she felt. “Really?”
“Owen took over the full reins of the estate only in the last year. I think it was that event, more than anything I said, that convinced Hugh it was time to take a step back. He even returned money he’d taken from the most recent supplicants. He was trying to make amends!”
“But he still had enough money for you to live comfortably.”
Mary’s head shaking was very expressive. “He set a certain sum aside, money he wouldn’t touch, for me and for the running of his estate. We have people who depend on us. He knew he had done wrong, but he didn’t want me to pay for his mistakes.”
“Did you notice anything strange with him recently? Did he express concern or fear about someone from the past coming back to haunt him?” Or hunt him? Catrin didn’t say the last thought out loud, but she was picturing Hugh hiding outside the barn, watching what was happening within.
Mary looked at Catrin curiously. “You ask all the right questions. Yes, he was very concerned about his role in this eisteddfod because of the people from whom he’d taken money in the past. In truth, he couldn’t just pay them all back, and most had been satisfied with the arrangements they’d made anyway. Look at Moriddig—” She broke off. “Well, maybe don’t look at him.”
“He took money from Moriddig?”
“Once, years and years ago.”
It was nice to have that suspicion confirmed. “Is that what ties the two of them together, besides their employment by the Poles?”
“Is it? I don’t know. They weren’t at odds, and neither seemed concerned about the other. I don’t know why they’re both dead.” Mary frowned. “I can tell you about something strange that happened, even though I can’t see how it’s related. Hugh went to fetch his horse from where he left it in the corral at the festival grounds, and it was gone.”
Catrin sat up straighter. “That is something.” A horse was a valuable asset and theft a major offense. “What did the boys keeping watch say?”
“I don’t know; Hugh just told me that the horse was gone.”
“Those were his exact words?”
Mary nodded. “Before he could say more, he was called away by another matter. I never found a moment to ask about it again.”
“When did you last speak to him?”
“Last night he came to bed after me. He kissed my forehead and told me he loved me.” Mary’s tears began to fall again. “He had left our bed by the time I awoke this morning.”
Grief often manifested when a person thought about life with the deceased and realized they’d never be able to be with that person again. From this day forth, Mary was going to bed alone, as perhaps she had often done. But never again would Hugh come to kiss her awake in the middle of the night and tell her he loved her, as he had done last night. Those words were from what from now on would be her former life and would be buried with him.
