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Day Six
Rhys
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Rhys woke with a start at a banging on the door behind him. Bleary-eyed from too little sleep, he peered through the arrow slit at the bright light of day outside before opening the door to be confronted with five of the king’s guards.
“The king requests your presence,” the leader said.
After Rhys had returned from escorting Catrin to the Eagle Tower, he and Simon remained behind, talking over their strategy—or lack of strategy, in this instance—for the morning. Rhys had acquired food in the kitchen at one point and had finally fallen asleep by the door, leaving Simon to adjust the wealth in the satchel so he could use it as a pillow. Neither dared leave it alone for a moment, knowing Simon would have to see the king about it first thing in the morning.
Morning had, apparently, come.
Simon threw the heavy satchel over his shoulder as Rhys had done the night before. Though the guards didn’t actually tie Rhys’s hands behind his back, there was a definite menace in the way they corralled and herded them in the middle of their escort. These were Simon’s own men too, or had been for the last few days anyway, but he didn’t question them or even ask their orders. They’d come from the king, clearly.
As they were escorted through the bailey, with the workday in full swing and all eyes on them, a feeling of doom settled on Rhys’s shoulders. Catrin had warned him that it could be a mistake to go up against Henry de Lacy. He had a horrible feeling that not only had she been right, but Simon was about to suffer the consequences of Rhys’s actions too. He began marshalling arguments in his head, working to explain to the king why everything that had gone on was his fault, not Simon’s. They entered the long southern corridor inside the walls of the castle and were eventually ushered into the king’s private chapel.
The king was its sole occupant.
The rarity of the audience took Rhys’s breath away. Henry de Lacy wasn’t present. Guy wasn’t smirking behind the king’s chair, or worse, on his knees beside him.
Instead, King Edward was sitting on a bench near one of the narrow windows, staring up at the cross on the altar, which at the moment was the only adornment in the room. Rhys and Simon stood together in the doorway, hesitating. Their guards had melted away, and the three of them were, to all appearances, alone.
“Tell me what happened.” The king spoke without turning around. “All of it.”
Rhys stared at the back of the king’s head. He had removed his cap, and he was going bald at the pate, a change from the last time Rhys had seen him before his arrival in Caernarfon.
When neither Simon nor Rhys immediately responded, Edward stood and swung around. His eyes were hard and looking at Rhys. “Don’t keep me waiting.”
While initially Rhys had found favor with Prince Edmund and King Edward because he’d found a murderer who would have gone free, they’d kept him close in the aftermath because he told them the truth when few people ever did.
Rhys could evade and elide day and night to Guy. He’d done so for an entire year.
But he had never lied to anyone’s face.
And he couldn’t start with the king.
So he began, laying out step by step what he’d done and how he’d done it, while keeping Catrin out of it as much as he could and attempting to keep how he felt about these events in check. He spoke of Aron coming forward as a scapegoat, even though he hadn’t found Cole’s body. He explained to the king other information he’d withheld and why. He told him in full the kind of man Guy was.
Rhys knew he was taking a huge risk to speak the truth so clearly. His confession had the real danger of ensnaring Simon and Catrin in whatever punishment the king devised for him. But the more Rhys revealed of the investigation—along with the pain, humiliation, and anger at what he and his people had endured—the more his confidence grew and his spine straightened.
This was who he was, come what may, and it was best the king knew it before another hour passed.
Throughout, Simon stood stoically beside Rhys, looking straight ahead and not speaking. He didn’t even adjust the satchel on his shoulder, which must have started hurting by now from the weight of the treasure inside.
When Rhys finished, the king nodded. “Catrin was lighter on the details than you, and where you tried to protect her involvement, she worked to protect yours, but the minutiae are immaterial at this point.”
Rhys’s mouth actually fell open, and Simon spoke for the first time, “What?”
“The man in custody has been released and sent home, on the word of one of Queen Eleanor’s maids, who has sworn that, at the time of Rolf’s murder, she was conferring with him about acquiring fresh eggs and milk for the queen’s meals.”
Rhys’s astonishment was so complete his feet were frozen to the floor, and his jaw was practically on it.
King Edward laughed. “Come. We will dine.” He walked towards them, and they parted to let him through the doorway.
Even Simon, who’d spent more years in the king’s company than Rhys, had been rendered speechless. In Edward’s personal quarters, a table had been laid for three, with silver plates and goblets, along with a breakfast of sausage, eggs, and bread on platters. Edward sat on one side of the table and gestured them to the chairs opposite.
Simon was the first to obey, and he set the satchel down with a clunk on the stones of the floor.
“I gather that’s for me?” the king said dryly.
He’d been speaking ostensibly to Simon, but his eyes went to Rhys’s face, so it was Rhys who had to answer. “Yes, my lord.”
“I am disappointed.” The king spoke heavily.
Rhys didn’t know whether he should reply, but in the end repeated, “Yes, my lord,” in as soft a tone as he could manage while still being heard. He was trying very hard not to think about anything at all, afraid to upend whatever was going on here that had them eating breakfast with the king.
Then, as Rhys slowly lowered himself to his chair, the king shifted, visibly putting aside the weight of his disappointment—in Rhys? In Guy?—and began loading food onto his plate. “You should know that Guy sailed with the tide, heading to Denbigh. We got word in the night of a rebellion brewing in his new jurisdiction that had to be seen to immediately and put down.”
“Apologies for my ignorance, sire, but knowing what we just told you, and with you apparently believing us, you let him go?” Simon made no move towards the food so Rhys didn’t either.
King Edward looked at Simon carefully. “No.” He dragged the word out a bit. “That isn’t what has happened. Not at all.”
Rhys sat back in his chair, pure astonishment welling up inside him, as he suddenly realized what the king was telling them. “Who’s captaining that ship?”
“A man loyal to the queen.”
“And his orders are ... what?”
The king stabbed at an onion. “Not something to speak of out loud, even in my private quarters.” He made a broad gesture with his knife, almost flinging the onion off the tip. “The walls have ears.” But then he said anyway, feigned sadness in his voice, “I fear Guy will never reach Denbigh.”
Simon finally started spooning eggs onto his plate. “My lord, pardon me for saying so, but it isn’t exactly justice.”
“Isn’t it?” Edward said mildly.
“It is justice,” Rhys glanced at his friend, “just not the law.” Then he looked back to the king. “Does Guy’s brother know what lies in store for Guy on that ship?”
“He does not and will never know.” The king spoke softly but firmly, in a tone Rhys recognized as one that brooked no argument.
Simon, for once, or maybe because he was the captain of the king’s guard, was still ready to argue. “I still don’t like it, my lord. It isn’t the kind of solution that gives anyone closure and puts the minds of the citizens, Welsh or English, at ease. At the very least, what are we going to say about who killed Lord Strange?”
Edward ripped a piece of bread from the loaf and buttered it. “Before the boat sailed, Rolf le Strange’s men dragged one of the sailors in chains through the hall and out the gate to the dock. It was all very public. You must have still been sleeping.”
“Why are we saying he did it?” Rhys asked, genuinely curious as to the completeness of the story the king and queen—and Catrin, apparently—had concocted.
“He killed Cole and Tomos and decorated them with the unfinished hexfoil to distract the coroner from his real target, John le Strange, who, as you may recall, arrived the night Cole’s body was found. The sailor hated John because he’d imprisoned his father, who died while in captivity.”
Rhys set down his knife. “That’s actually believable, my lord.”
Edward raised an eyebrow in his direction. “You think you are the only one with clever ideas?” Then he laughed. “But you can thank your Catrin for that one.”
“What about our remaining twin?” Simon himself managed a sardonic laugh, for which Rhys was grateful because it meant he didn’t have to answer the king.
“His name is Rolf henceforth. With my brother’s spymaster dead, our enemies will think they have free rein, and my new spymaster will discover who they are.” King Edward’s eyes had been bright with amusement, but now a degree of calculation entered them. “Rolf le Strange, meanwhile, has become my new coroner of Carnarvonshire.”
