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Day Two
Catrin
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After the discovery of the body at the millpond and her conversation with Rhys, Catrin needed answers more than ever. After some deliberation, she decided the best place to get them from was Aron, the wrongly arrested villager. The fact that Rhys knew Aron was innocent and had arrested him anyway was deeply troubling. The injustice scored her heart. If that was the way he worked, he really wasn’t the man she’d known, even if the moment-to-moment experience of being with him was tugging her in the other direction.
Catrin had to know the truth of Rhys before she spent another moment in his company. If his head was truly as bowed as her brothers’, who were now serving Edward as wholeheartedly as they’d served Llywelyn all those years, then she really had no place else to turn in this world.
But even as she made her way to Aron’s cell, she acknowledged the extent of her own hypocrisy. She’d accepted her brothers’ decision to bend the knee to Edward immediately after Llywelyn’s death. Why couldn’t she accept Rhys’s?
Because she expected better from him. Maybe it wasn’t fair. But it was how she felt.
She expected better from her brothers too, but she could forgive them for wanting to save their family. She half-believed Tudur—and even more Hywel—that Llywelyn himself had told them to change sides, knowing that Tudur had spent too many years despising Dafydd, Llywelyn’s younger brother, to follow him as Prince of Wales after Llywelyn’s death. Dafydd’s rebellion had been more about him and his pride, as everything always was, rather than the people he led. They all knew he was a fraction of the man Llywelyn had been and had himself betrayed Llywelyn too many times.
And she also knew that if her brothers had continued their resistance, all three of them would have died in the aftermath of Cilmeri, along with many of their people. If Llywelyn really had given Tudur permission to abandon him, he was a better leader and man than even the most loyal partisan had supposed.
As Catrin crossed the threshold of the guardroom, the man on duty looked up from where he was leaned against the wall, his stool tipped back on two legs. It took a heartbeat for him to realize he was looking at a noblewoman, after which he leapt to his feet. “My lady!”
“I would like to talk to your prisoner,” she said in her best French.
The guard’s face lost all expression as he tried to figure out if she was serious. “He speaks no French.”
“But I speak Welsh,” Catrin said in Welsh.
“So you are one of them.” The guard nodded, not so much implying something untoward about her identity as acknowledging a truth, and Catrin had a sudden thought that his accommodating attitude might be the result of Rhys’s efforts to cultivate good relations with members of the castle garrison.
Regardless, without further ado, he led the way down the spiraling tower steps to the basement, at which point they were faced with a door composed only of metal bars, which he unlocked with a large key. The cell was round like the room above, with a stone floor, likely necessary so close to the sea, to deter seepage of groundwater. Several sets of chains were attached to the walls, giving opportunity to have more than one prisoner in the cell at a time. The castle might be years from completion, but the prison was in full working order.
The gate swung wide, and Catrin stepped inside the cell. At the moment, it held only one prisoner, and Catrin blanched at Aron’s unkempt condition, even after less than a day in chains. Instantly, she realized she’d made a mistake—not in coming, but that she should have brought food and water with her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said in Welsh to Aron, and then she turned to face the guard, who still stood in the doorway. “Thank you for letting me see him. Now I need you to fetch food and clean water.”
The guard’s face lost all expression. Having lived in England for many years, with many English in her employ, she recognized the look as one which meant he was deciding whether or not to argue.
“If he murdered Cole, he will hang, but as Cole was my man, I want his killer going to the gallows whole. Please,” she paused, determined to convince him but unsure as to how, “the queen would be dismayed that a man would be kept in such condition in the same castle in which she is about to give birth.”
This was entirely untrue, of course. There was perhaps no person alive more vindictive than Queen Eleanor—and that was including King Edward. Fortunately, the guard was part of Caernarfon’s standing garrison, so he didn’t know how little Queen Eleanor cared about any of her people, English or Welsh. She cared about the king, her children, books, and money, not necessarily in that order (though it was true the king always came first).
To Catrin’s relief, after another moment of dithering, the guard nodded and disappeared up the stairs, leaving Catrin to crouch in front of the prisoner. “I was a fool not to have brought you something to eat and drink myself. Forgive me.”
To her surprise, Aron looked at her with bright eyes. “I confess to being thirsty, my lady, but I am perfectly well, all things considered.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“We all do. Welcome home, my lady. We are glad to see you back where you belong.”
“I don’t know that I will be staying. I’m in the service of the queen now.”
He bent his head in a sign of respect. “As are we all, my lady.”
“So, how can you say that you are well?”
“Ach, I am not without hope. Iôr Rhys will be seeing to me soon.” Lord Rhys, he’d called him.
“You can’t know that.”
“Of course I do.” He looked at her with narrowed eyes. “You knew him well once, my lady. How can you not know he will move heaven and earth to get me out of here alive and well if he can?”
Before Catrin could answer, the guard returned with water and a loaf of bread, and such was the effort he’d made that the bread was still warm.
She took it from him with genuine relief and a smile. “Thank you.”
He backed out of the doorway. “I’ll be in the guardroom.”
Once he was gone, Aron sneered and said, “Mochyn.”
She frowned. The guard had gone out of his way to help. At the same time, given Aron’s current position, it was easy to understand his disdain. “I think he has some English blood, actually.”
“Ah, then he is defaid.” A sheep.
“I’m sorry you’ve been caught up in a crime not of your doing. I wish there was something I could do to help.”
Aron had already taken a long drink of water, but now he set down the flask. “The fact that you’re here is more than enough.”
“What do you mean? You are in chains for a crime you didn’t commit.”
“But it was my choice, wasn’t it?” He made a gesture with one hand, rattling his bonds. “The more we are able to take the world for what it is, the more we’ll be able to stand with straight backs. Rhys taught us that.”
She was glad of the opening. “Tell me about Rhys.
He tipped his head. “Can I trust you? Perhaps you were sent here by the coroner to learn what you could from me.”
Catrin drew back in genuine shock. “I wouldn’t!” Then she took a breath, completely understanding why he would question her presence. It was pernicious, this lack of trust—and not knowing whom to trust. Anyone could be genuinely working with the king, like her brothers were, and report to him even the slightest infractions of correct thinking. Come to think of it, such was her situation with Rhys.
Aron smiled, having been watching her face closely and reading what she showed there. “Ah, you see it now. Do you understand why I had to ask? Iôr Rhys is risking everything for us.”
Catrin eased out a breath, endeavoring to get her heartrate to slow. This was what she’d come to hear, and she didn’t want to ruin the moment by displaying too much urgency. “How so?”
“You really don’t know, do you?” Aron studied her for another long moment. “You think he betrayed our prince.” It wasn’t a question.
“Didn’t he?”
“My lady, he was badly injured and left for dead. It’s a miracle he survived.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Aron shook his head at her, not to deny but because he appeared to have no words in the face of her suspicions.
“How is it that nobody in the castle knows he rode in Prince Llywelyn’s teulu and was with him at Cilmeri?”
At the mention of the prince, Aron’s hand jerked towards her arm, and he gripped it tightly. “Shush, my lady.”
Her lips pursed. “You don’t say his name?”
“They know it when we do. Better to make them think we have forgotten him. Submitted.”
She couldn’t let his dismay deter her. “How can they not know?”
“Who is going to tell them? He was hiding in plain sight—and doing it well—until you arrived.” Aron laughed derisively. “The only Welshman any mochyn ever looks directly at is Lord Tudur.”
She thought back to her conversation with Hywel. He’d been evasive, even as he’d encouraged her not to judge Rhys.
Aron relented. “We didn’t need him to explain that building the castle for Edward would be like allowing ourselves to be conquered all over again, but he was the one who told us to stop sabotaging it.”
“Now I really don’t understand.”
Aron relaxed against the wall, cradling the loaf of bread to his chest. “We resist, my lady, in every way we can, but it does us no good to get caught or lose so many of our number that we are left with only widows and orphans. We resist by teaching our children who we are.”
“And who is that?”
He threw out a hand the best he could given the length of chain with which he had to work. “We are part of this land, and it is part of us as long as we don’t forget or neglect it. We resist by living. And we resist by not allowing that coroner to put an innocent boy in chains to assuage his pride and because it’s convenient.” He bounced the flat of his hand off his chest. “I am an old man. Iolo is eighteen, and he is too sweet to survive a day in here without blubbering.”
“So you took his place.”
“I did.” There was unmistakable pride in Aron’s posture and voice.
“And Rhys let you?”
“Of course.”
“He was never one to lie before.”
Aron laughed. “Is he lying? I have never heard him tell a lie. It’s more a matter of shaping events so they make sense to those who rule us while leaving us room to maneuver and breathe.”
“He has befriended all the guards in Caernarfon. He told me so himself.” She was trying to be matter-of-fact.
“And look how it has benefited me. Because the guard knows Rhys, they let you in to see me, and here I am with a nice warm loaf of bread.” He tore off a piece and ate it, his expression dissolving into one of pure pleasure. He swallowed before speaking again. “They like him. And that makes them hurt us less.”
Catrin was finally beginning to understand the scope of what Rhys was attempting. The risk to him left her breathless.
“What about my brothers? Do they know what Rhys is doing?”
Aron’s expression turned into a mockery of innocence. “Know what, my lady?” Then he sobered. “They know he was at Cilmeri, of course. Rhys thinks Hywel suspects he is using his position to protect us, but he hasn’t pried, and nobody is going to tell any of your brothers what is better for them not to know for certain. Best that nobody has to lie to the king.”
