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Day Four
Catrin
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“You’re sure?”
“Do you want to come or not?”
“Of course I want to come!” Catrin swept around the room, first picking up her cloak to hand it to Rhys and then tying her purse to her belt. “I’m just surprised you’re asking.”
“The investigation is over. Everyone can go back to normal. Nobody need pay attention to either of us at all.” He helped her adjust her cloak around her shoulders.
Catrin gave him a side-eyed look. “Which is, of course, why we are leaving the castle at sunset to revisit the scene of the crime in the dark.”
“Well ... not exactly the scene of the crime.”
They’d been speaking in Welsh, progressing down the corridor and out into the bailey. From the easy smiles turned in their direction by everyone they passed, the mood had definitely lightened.
“What does that mean?” Catrin asked.
“We have a stop first. It might take a while.” He had a horse waiting, held near the Queen’s Gate by a stable boy. Rhys mounted, and then the boy boosted Catrin up behind him.
Catrin cinched her arms around Rhys’s waist, deciding not to press him. She was glad to be included and, in truth, she didn’t much care where they were going. It was embarrassing, really, how quickly she’d come to prefer Rhys’s company to anyone else’s.
But before they could actually leave the castle, John le Strange hastened through the quiet building works, calling to them to stop before they could vanish through the gate. Once Rhys reined in, John halted by his left boot. Laughter could be heard emanating from the great hall, since the main door was open. Within the bailey, it was quiet, and he kept his voice so low Catrin had to lean forward to hear him.
“You’re still investigating, aren’t you?”
Rhys evaded boldly. “We’re going for a ride.”
“You won’t tell me the truth, and I understand why. We both know this poor fellow didn’t kill my brother. It’s absurd to think it. He was never seen in the town, for starters. He certainly was never let in any gate.”
That had been Catrin and Rhys’s conclusion. Because John had been honest, she decided it was safe to ask, “How do you know?”
“You aren’t the only one who can ask questions.”
Catrin felt Rhys shift in the saddle within the circle of her arms. She didn’t like John. She certainly didn’t want to be courted by him. But there was something raw about him tonight that aroused her empathy.
Rhys took in a breath. “We have to be somewhere else, but I promise we will talk tomorrow morning, first thing.”
John still looked pensive, but he stepped back and replied with a straightforward, “Thank you.” It was an amazing transformation in a single day.
Catrin had a sudden thought. “Without a protector, Dafi might not live through the night. Since it was your brother he supposedly killed—”
John’s expression cleared. “Leave it to me. Who better to protect him?”
Rhys and Catrin rode out of the castle with the sun setting behind them, a clear moment in an otherwise overcast and rainy day. Catrin found herself breathing deeply.
“It’s too constraining isn’t it? The castle, I mean.” Rhys shook his head. “These Normans and their stone walls ...”
“Llywelyn didn’t need them because he was one of us,” Catrin said. “Only a foreign conqueror needs to protect himself from the people he rules.”
“We can never go back,” Rhys said softly. “We can only go forward.”
“That’s what we’re doing.” Catrin tightened her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek into his spine, feeling the warmth of him.
A quarter of an hour later, they were trotting down the lane through the village to Gruffydd’s house. It was the only house with light inside. After they dismounted and tied the horse, they entered to find it packed to the rafters with villagers.
At their entrance, the babble of talk stopped like the dousing of a candle. At the sight of everyone looking at her, Catrin forced herself to breathe easy. Then, to her surprise, Rhys took her hand and threaded his way towards where Gruffydd stood in the center of the room. Upon reaching him, Rhys seated Catrin on a suddenly vacated stool a few feet from where he and Gruffydd had chosen to stand.
“Thank you for coming.” Rhys turned in a slow circle, taking in the faces of everyone present.
And it really was everyone, from six-month old babes to ancient grannies. Catrin sat with her hands clenched in her lap, not meeting anyone’s eyes. She understood the great trust Rhys and his people were placing in her to allow her at this meeting. If she hadn’t helped save the village, it might never have been possible at all. She also now understood why, after they’d dismounted, Rhys had removed his surcoat with Edmund’s crest. He wasn’t here today as an officer of the king but as one of them.
“You know why I’m here. Guy fitz Lacy has arrested Dafi. Our Dafi. Even if he rubbed every single person in this room the wrong way at one time or another, we can’t let him hang for a crime he didn’t commit. He didn’t murder any of those men. Which means someone else did. It’s time you told me what you know about it, so I can find the real killer, and a Welshman isn’t blamed yet again for a crime he didn’t commit.”
A red-headed older man raised a hand. “How do we know Dafi didn’t kill them, even this noblemen found in the latrine?”
“How many of you are allowed free passage into town enough to encounter a Norman at an inn and kill him? How many of you even speak English or French?”
Gruffydd grunted. “Not even Dai speaks English. In fact, you’re the only one I know who speaks all three languages.”
“And I didn’t do it.”
There was a stirring around the room at Rhys’s flat denial, prompting Catrin’s head to come up. She found so many eyes on her, she realized they needed her to speak too. So she rose to her feet and approached Rhys’s side. “I have been away a long time. Some of you may remember me tagging after Rhys and my brother Hywel, pigtails ratty with twigs, trying to keep up with them.”
Silence enveloped the room as they waited for her to continue. The moment was pivotal for her—not only with these people, but with Rhys—and she knew she had to speak from the heart.
“I was married away from here when I was only sixteen years old. My father did what he thought was best for Gwynedd in giving me to Robert. I serve the queen now. We all serve the queen now. But I remain as Welsh as you are. At sixteen, I had no say in what happened to me. I do now. Let me help you as Rhys does.”
She found Rhys’s hand wrapping around hers again. “Let us help,” he said. “We have a day, maybe two at most, to save Dafi’s life. If we can’t exonerate him, and he is found guilty of murdering Lord Strange, then this entire village will be punished. It will be not only Dafi, but you as well, who pay the price for these deaths.”
A stirring swept through the audience like a breeze through the leaves. She couldn’t fault them for their self-interest. She and Rhys were taking a risk in being so open with them. It might be that one of them was tempted to inform the authorities about where their true loyalties lay. John le Strange hadn’t been here long enough to set up a network of spies, but she knew for a fact that King Edward already had informers in several locales in Wales. It was a Welshman who’d betrayed Prince Llywelyn, and another who’d betrayed his brother Dafydd, there at the end, and ensured his capture.
But even if someone here today chose to forsake his people, in this they would gain nothing. Rhys was right that they would suffer along with the rest. If they didn’t, the whole village would know who’d betrayed them.
Gruffydd cleared his throat. “What exactly do you want to know?”
“Where did Tomos sleep at night?” Rhys said immediately.
The question fell into dead silence, which nobody filled for a long moment.
Rhys spread his hands wide. “I know you know. Why is it so hard to say?”
“Because we are ashamed to admit we shunned him,” Sian, Gruffydd’s wife, said finally. “He was working on the castle. In the end, he was the only Welshman working on the castle.”
“He refused to help a fellow combrogi out.” This came from a black-haired younger man with a baby asleep on his shoulder. “I know how to work stone, but he didn’t put in a good word for me. My family barely has enough to eat.”
Heads nodded all around.
Catrin wanted to say something, and she glanced at Rhys, who tipped his head encouragingly.
“Perhaps he was trying to protect you,” she said, and then because the man started to frown, hurried on, “He was the only Welsh stonemason at the castle. Conwy has more, but fewer and fewer have been hired because of fear of sabotage. Tomos knew that if something went wrong, it was a Welshman who’d be blamed.” She gestured to the baby. “You have a family to care for. Tomos had nobody anymore.”
Then she put out a supplicating hand, not wanting him to think she was chastising him or any one of them. “This is a new world you live in. But I have lived in it for twenty years. Normans want to be obeyed, and they are quick to anger if they are not. The king has a strong sense of justice, but in his mind, justice is best served when there is order, and he would rather punish the wrong man for murder as an example to everyone of what happens when they defy him, and let the real culprit go free, than punish nobody at all. If a wall falls down, the important thing is that everybody works harder to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Same with murder. Tomos may have known that.”
It was a long speech, and she didn’t know if her explanation was making sense to them, but it followed along the lines of what she’d heard from Aron when she’d visited him in his cell. Before the Welsh were conquered, they’d maintained an elaborate system of laws and courts that relied on lawyers, juries, and adjudicators. The system fined culprits (rather than killing or maiming them) according to the severity of the crime. Two months ago, Edward had codified English law as it applied to Wales, but what those laws were, and how they applied to these villagers, remained, for the most part, a mystery to them.
“What Catrin is telling you is true—and especially after Guy hanged two of your number last autumn,” Rhys said.
Oddly, the instant he spoke, his back stiffened, and he gripped her hand more tightly. Though his words, in and of themselves, were supportive and innocuous, something had dramatically changed in him.
Furthermore, his tension didn’t ease even after Gruffydd, head hanging, finally answered Rhys’s question: “Most nights, Tomos could be found sleeping in the barn where we found Cole.”
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After the meeting, rather than returning to the scene of the crime, which apparently hadn’t ever been Rhys’s intent anyway, he deposited Catrin back at the castle (somewhat against her will), to allow her to sing the queen to sleep.
But before he left her, she caught his hand. “What happened to you at the end of the meeting?”
“You mean when Gruffydd finally told us the truth?”
She shook her head. “Something changed in you after you spoke of Guy hanging the two Welshmen, and you’ve been silent ever since.”
He didn’t pretend not to understand. “I’m almost afraid to speak of it.”
She moved a step closer and looked up at him, waiting.
“We had a series of accidents that prompted the removal of all Welsh workers from the castle save Tomos—and I didn’t know about him at the time. Two Welshmen were hanged. One volunteered, like Aron. He was near death anyway and chose to stand for his people. The second was a man Guy picked out himself, someone he found rooting around the old palace.”
Catrin’s breath caught in her throat. “Like Cole?”
Rhys wet his lips. “Maybe.”
