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Day Two
Rhys
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What he was going to say to the king when he went before him with Simon was preoccupying Rhys’s thoughts more than the poor fellow before him. Tomos was dead, stabbed the same way Cole had been. Rhys didn’t really have much more to say about it than that, but he was doing his due diligence anyway. The king was a far more daunting puzzle.
A shoe scraped on the threshold of the hut. “Another body, eh?”
“Yes.” Rhys endeavored not to sigh at the sight of Guy. After all, he had told the guards at the gate to send for the coroner, and here he was.
It was Guy who sighed instead, and though he spoke of the body, his eyes were clearly on Rhys himself, taking in his surcoat with Prince Edmund’s crest and the accompanying sword at Rhys’s waist. If possible, the corners of his mouth turned down even farther. “Do we know who he was?”
“A mason, working on the castle. According to Math the Waterman, his name was Tomos.”
The frown firmly fixed on his face, Guy clearly didn’t want to step closer but knew it was his duty. “He looks worse than the last one. Is that because of the water?”
Rhys decided there was no harm in explaining. Guy was going to be the Sheriff of Denbigh, and anything he learned here might be of help to the people there. “Because he was in the water, I am forced to be less clear about the day of death than with Cole’s body, but the combination of lack of rigor and decomposition indicates to me he’s been dead more than two days and closer to four. In fact, if we ultimately discover that he died about the same time as Cole, I wouldn’t be surprised. The question before us now is what these two men have in common that would have led to their deaths?”
“Nothing, surely.”
“But they had to, else why would they both be dead?”
Guy gestured to the stab wounds in the man’s belly, almost identical to those that had killed Cole. The similarities were unmistakable, even without Cole’s body to compare them to. “I see he didn’t drown.”
“He did not. It’s worse than what you see there too.” The body had been placed on the table face up, but now Rhys pushed up on the dead man’s shoulder to show Guy the incomplete hexfoil carved into his back.
Guy swallowed hard. “The man you sent to find me didn’t mention that.”
“I didn’t tell him. If the people think a crazed acolyte of Satan is loose in Gwynedd killing people, there will be panic. But there is no doubt these two were stabbed in the same way and are both associated with the incomplete hexfoil. It is impossible their deaths are a coincidence.”
A satisfied look crossed Guy’s face. “The king will be pleased we already have the killer in custody.”
Rhys gaped at Guy for just a heartbeat, but then closed his mouth and looked back down at the body. “Did you talk to Aron?” If so, it hadn’t been with Rhys to translate.
“Since you were nowhere to be found, I took Dai. The man refused to confess.”
“That would be because he didn’t do it, my lord.”
Guy’s chin stuck out. “Of course he did.”
“There are witnesses who can vouch for his whereabouts the night these men died. Besides which, it was always unlikely that the man who discovered the body was the killer anyway. You might as well blame Owain or Math for finding the body in the millpond.”
Guy’s eyes narrowed, and Rhys cursed inwardly for putting the idea into his head. Because of that, he spoke more exasperatedly to Guy than he ever had before. “If you start accusing every man who finds a body of its murder, the people will learn not to report a body when they find one.”
Then he cleared his throat, endeavoring to calm himself. He hadn’t wanted Guy to know who he really was, but now that he did, Rhys couldn’t shy away from using it. Not with a man’s life at stake.
“With the king in Caernarfon, any evidence will have to be presented to him, because he will be the one to pass any sentence. If you bring Aron before him as the killer, I will have to speak the truth myself as I know it.”
As Rhys was speaking, Guy’s face lost all expression. It was almost more disconcerting than if he’d been furious, but Rhys figured if he was going to go down, it might as well be in defense of Aron.
At the same time, Rhys decided that he could Guy throw a bone—and, if he was honest, one for himself as well. “My lord, Aron is a small man, aged. If you look at him closely, he isn’t in the best of health either. Will anyone really believe he could have overpowered either Cole or Tomos?” He gestured to the dead man before him. “Look at him!”
Guy didn’t like those conclusions, Rhys could tell, but if he was picturing a trial in the hall, as Rhys was, Aron’s slight form would provide a sharp contrast to the description of either murder victim.
“They were stripped of their clothing and gear,” Guy said musingly, “and transported some distance.”
“I was barely capable of lifting Tomos onto the horse’s back with Math’s help. We have to look elsewhere for the murderer.” Rhys spoke with a finality he hoped would be compelling.
And to Rhys’s relief, Guy was looking more resigned than mutinous. Rhys had a terrible feeling that at some point he was going to pay for disagreeing with Guy. Or he would have done if Guy hadn’t been preparing to leave for Denbigh. The moment of departure couldn’t come soon enough.
But then Guy ruined everything yet again. “As it is, we will have to report these events and the state of our investigation to the king as soon as possible. This man was a king’s mason. Cole was a messenger from the Earl of Gloucester. We can no longer put off our duty.”
Rhys kept his eyes focused somewhere near Guy’s chin, having noted Guy’s we and our. “When we spoke this morning, Lord Simon mentioned the need to see the king. With the discovery of this new body, I haven’t yet had a chance to return to the castle to report what we know.” His we twisted a bit on his lips as it came out, but Guy didn’t remark upon it any more than Rhys had.
In truth, he supposed he might as well get it over with. Even if Simon hadn’t arrived at Caernarfon, with this second death, being recognized might have been impossible to avoid.
“May I take it you will release Aron?”
Guy grunted his reluctant assent before adding, “When Lord Tudor offered you to me as my quaestor, he said you’d investigated death before, but he should have told me you’d done so for the king himself.”
“Pardon, my lord, but it was in the service of his brother, Edmund.” Rhys spoke very carefully, trying to tread the narrow path where he was respectful but also correcting Guy’s error.
Guy’s expression was still pinched, but he didn’t counter that Rhys was splitting hairs. Instead he said, “So what is our next step?”
It was on the tip of Rhys’s tongue to mock, to say it’s about time you asked me what I think, but he refrained and simply answered the question as straightforwardly as he could. “We know his name and where he worked, so we can begin to question the other masons and Tomos’s family, if he had one, as to when they last saw him. Did he sleep in his own bed his last night? Was he drinking with his mates?” He grimaced before adding. “Did anyone have any reason to hate him enough to kill him?”
“There has to be something. I’ll set my men on it.”
“Oh, and also, my lord,” Rhys finally looked up and met Guy’s eyes, “Lord Simon is concerned that the death of his predecessor, Captain Gerald, wasn’t a genuine illness and his death could be related to these other two.”
Guy stopped in the doorway, staring. “Do you really think so? Gerald died of the flux.”
Rhys shrugged. “So we thought. No hexfoil there, incomplete or otherwise, anyway, and it wasn’t as if he was stabbed to death.”
“True, but our killer could be getting a taste for murder.” He paused. “I think that’s an important line of inquiry. You should pursue it as best you can.”
Rhys was a little taken aback by Guy’s sudden enthusiasm, but the conversation had been so productive, Rhys didn’t want to object. He even felt he could venture another suggestion. “If the master mason or his second could come visit me here, we could get some of these questions cleared up right away, so I would be able to pursue this other line of inquiry.”
“You should have asked him to come when you sent the guard to find me.” Guy’s expression reverted in an instant to being superior. It had to have become a habit by now, and Rhys was pleased to see how little time it had taken, a matter of one heartbeat to the next.
“My apologies, my lord. I didn’t want to take that step without your approval.”
“Wait here for him. I’ll send him along.” Then he departed.
Rhys heaved that sigh of relief he’d held all this time to have Guy finally gone. He had a headache from all the back and forth; he couldn’t imagine what Guy himself was feeling.
Then he pulled his journal, pen, and ink from his satchel and set to work, describing the state of the body and his observations of it so far. He made an attempt to draw the incomplete hexfoil, but he had no hand for it, so he did his best with words.
He was about to throw a covering sheet over the body when his next visitor, Mark, the mason’s second, an Englishman, appeared in the doorway. He was closer to Rhys’s height, some six feet, than Tomos’s greater size, though he shared Tomos’s broad shoulders and barrel-like chest. His hands were thick and stubby, and he had what looked like gray granite dust permanently fixed in his hair.
The last time Rhys had encountered Mark was a few months ago, when Rhys had been investigating the theft of some tools.
“Coroner Lacy sent me to identify the body,” he said stiffly in English. “Sir.”
In conquering England, the Normans had brought the French language to Britain, making it the language of government and law. The English had proved stubborn, however, and insisted on keeping their own tongue, which gave Rhys hope that the Welsh could keep theirs too.
“Thank you for coming.” Rhys put down his pen and picked up a secondary lantern from the table against which he’d been leaning and held it above the dead man’s face.
Mark bared his teeth. “That’s Tomos all right.” He harrumphed. “He was a journeyman dresser and an expert sculptor. I knew as soon as he didn’t show up for work that something was wrong. Up until then, he had been very reliable.”
“How long ago was this?”
Mark screwed up his face as he thought. “I last saw him at the end of the work day the evening of the day before the king arrived.”
Rhys had to pause a moment to work out the day Mark meant. Cole’s body had been found in late evening the day after the king had arrived, and it had already passed through rigor. For that reason, Rhys had put his time of death two days earlier—making it possible Cole and Tomos died on the same night. If he hadn’t been looking at his second murder, he would have been pleased to have guessed correctly.
“He had a family?”
“He did. His wife died with their child. That’s why he came all the way out here.”
“From where?”
“Rhuddlan.”
Rhuddlan was a castle and town on the River Clwyd, some distance east of Conwy but still in Wales. King Edward had begun Rhuddlan Castle in 1277, so a mason who worked on it would be well known to his fellow workers, which explained how Tomos had ended up in Caernarfon.
“My lord! My lord!” The high tones of a boy speaking English rang in the street outside the door, and then the third visitor of the day filled the doorway. “Oh.” He stopped as his eyes adjusted to the lower light, and he realized who was in the hut and what they were doing in it.
Rhys threw the sheet over the corpse. “Can I help you?” He knew most of the children in the town, few enough of them as there were, and the messenger’s name was Johnny.
“I was sent to find you.” Johnny’s eyes were fixed on the body, even though it was now completely covered. It was unlikely to have been the boy’s first dead body, but Rhys didn’t want to be responsible for any child’s nightmares.
“You’re speaking to a crouchback.” The mason cuffed him upside the head. “Show respect.”
Johnny ducked his head in acknowledgement of the censure. “Sir Reese, I was sent to find you.”
By this point, Rhys was torn between wanting to throttle Simon for his meddling and thanking him.
Strangely, Rhys also felt somewhat embarrassed. Before two years ago, he took his station as a knight for granted. Then, when he’d returned to Gwynedd a year ago and deliberately hidden his past from the conquerors, their disrespect had made him alternately angry and bemused. Now to be treated well was creating an itching between his shoulder blades, as if he was under intense observation. He always had been watched, of course, but shedding his mask created a situation where more would be expected of him, and he would be even more of an oddity than before. Welsh crusaders were few and far between.
On top of which, the truth was worse (or better, depending on one’s perspective) than they knew. It was only a matter of time before the entire castle heard the rest of the story—from Simon in a pinch, but even possibly from the king himself: Rhys wasn’t just any crouchback. It might be dawning on Guy only now that Rhys knew the king personally and had been Prince Edmund’s personal quaestor. But what he might not yet know was that Rhys had saved Edmund’s life at Qaqun in the Holy Land and had been knighted on the spot by the prince himself.
Some part of Rhys wanted to see Guy’s face when he found out. The rest was urging him to run.
But all he did instead was reassure the boy. “It’s all right, Johnny. Why were you sent to find me and by whom?”
“Cole de Lincoln is to be buried at sunset. Lady Catrin awaits your escort to the funeral.”
