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Day Five
Catrin
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The next day, Catrin was kept busy with the needs of an increasingly irritable queen, to the point that she hadn’t been able to speak to Rhys for more than a few exchanged greetings in passing as he went about his business and she hers. She hadn’t even had time to look in on the market fair—though the second time she saw Rhys, he bowed over her hand and left in it a new green ribbon for her hair he’d somehow found time to acquire for her.
She was sent back to the kitchen three times throughout the morning for food, not only for the queen but for the other ladies. Nearing noon, she was eventually dismissed and thus given the freedom of movement to seek out Rhys and Simon, running them to earth in Simon’s domain within the guard tower.
They were sitting around Simon’s table talking to John, amazingly enough. Outwardly he remained Rolf, but since Catrin knew the truth, she was finding it very difficult to call him that. Fortunately Lord Strange was all that was required in public.
Last night, after singing Queen Eleanor to sleep, Catrin had passed through the great hall to find Adeline moving sympathetically towards him. It had actually made Catrin feel bad for John that he had to respond to Adeline as Rolf rather than himself.
Dutifully, the first thing Simon said was, “How is our queen?”
“Irritated her confinement has begun.”
“Some would have thought it should have started sooner,” Rhys said.
“The priest who mentioned it nearly had his ears boxed.” Catrin laughed. “She told him she didn’t have time for that nonsense and, as she was the Queen of England, with the full support of the king, there was nothing he could do but leave. Now, the baby’s arrival really is imminent, and she wants to survive the birth. So she stays put.”
“Leaving you to wander about?” This Rhys said to her in Welsh.
She suddenly found herself grinning at him and replied in French. “Actually, I think I have a plan.”
All three men perked up.
“We were just discussing the shortness of time left,” Simon said. “The only reason Guy hasn’t hanged Dafi already is because the queen has not yet birthed the child, and the king views a gruesome death so close to her time as unseemly.”
“It’s a superstition I won’t argue with in this instance,” Rhys said.
“But we are closer! You know we are.” Catrin slid onto the bench set against the wall, putting her side by side with Rhys and across from Simon and John. Rhys squeezed her hand for a moment, which she took to mean he hadn’t yet told John about their suspicions of Guy. Fortunately, that didn’t change what she’d come to tell them.
“Let’s talk about what we know rather than what we don’t: first, the murderer is someone who is able to travel freely between the countryside and the town. That’s a truly limited number of men. Second, he knew Rolf—excuse me, John—well enough to lure him to the inn—”
“Rosie wrote the note,” Simon interjected. “The killer may have had no idea where he was going until he arrived.”
“Right. Sorry.” Catrin bobbed her head, undeterred. “Regardless, the murderer either followed the man he thought was John from the castle to the inn or he saw him at the inn and followed him to the latrine. What I’m trying to say is that the three murdered men either have something in common we haven’t yet discovered, or we are looking at the murders all wrong, and they have nothing in common. And that’s the point.”
The three men gazed at her, and it was Rhys who finally had the wherewithal to say, “I don’t understand. You think the three men were killed at random? Why?”
“That isn’t quite it.” She shook her head. “What if two of them were killed to cover up the murder of the third? Have we found a Baphomet connection anywhere beyond the symbols carved on or near the bodies? We have no Templars here and nobody who has ever been involved in the Templars except you few crusaders. What if the incomplete hexfoil is simply a ploy to distract us from the reason one of these men was murdered?”
“All right,” Simon said. “Which one?”
Catrin gave Rhys a side-eyed look, and he gave her a tiny nod, telling her to continue. “We have recently learned that both Cole and Tomos have a connection to that barn. What if Tomos saw the murderer hiding Cole’s body in the barn and was caught too? The murderer would have had no choice but to kill him as well. Only then, faced with two dead men, did the murderer strip the bodies and carve the unfinished hexfoils.”
“But why kill Cole?” John asked.
Catrin again glanced at Rhys, who lifted one shoulder, and this time it was he who answered. “He saw something he shouldn’t have.”
“What about my brother?”
“Your brother was dressed as you at the time,” Catrin said.
“My guess? Same as Cole, you know something or saw something that the murderer thought was going to get him caught,” Rhys said. “Possibly you said something you viewed as innocuous, but which his guilty conscience perverted.”
John’s posture became fixed and a befuddled look entered his eyes, an expression she’d never seen in him before. “I wish I could think, but since Rolf’s death, my mind is wandering in a fog.”
All of them had lost someone close to them, and the truth of his words stilled them for a moment.
“Alternatively,” Simon said, “if Catrin is right, he just didn’t like you.”
“Which brings me to my plan,” Catrin said, pleased to have had the conversation come back around again. “We can lay a trap for him.”
Rhys sat up straighter. “We talked about that earlier, using John as bait.”
“This is a bit different.”
“Different is usually your approach,” Simon said to Rhys.
“Tell us,” John said.
“This afternoon, before the funeral, we should start spreading the idea—actually, I should start spreading the idea—that—” suddenly Catrin was embarrassed, “—well, what I’m about to suggest is a total lie, actually.”
“Perhaps in this instance we can be forgiven,” Rhys said. “All good lies contain a kernel of truth, so what’s this one about?”
She forged on, “What if I wonder out loud what happened to Cole’s ring, given to him by Gilbert de Clare for his years of service? It wasn’t among the possessions found in Dafi’s house, which means Dafi must have hidden it. It’s a real ruby and very valuable.”
“That’s a good idea,” Simon said, “but what’s to prevent any treasure hunter from going to Dafi’s house to search for it?”
Catrin’s face fell. “I didn’t think of that.”
Rhys patted her thigh, telling her not to worry. “Catrin needs to suggest instead that the ring must have fallen off Cole’s finger at the place Cole was murdered, because both Dafi’s house and the barn have been thoroughly searched. She says she’s thinking about asking Simon to put together a search party tomorrow to comb the area for where Cole was killed.”
“But we know where he was killed,” Catrin said.
“We do, but—” Rhys’s face took on a pleased expression, “—I never told anyone else that you and I had found it.”
Simon blinked. “You didn’t tell me, certainly, and you should have. You didn’t even speak of it to Guy?”
Rhys shook his head. “After we found Tomos’s body, it suddenly became much less important.”
“So where is it?” John asked.
A wary look entered Rhys’s face. “I think I’m not going to say, particularly to you.”
John’s eyes started to narrow, but Simon put out a hand. “You should be grateful for that, since you’re going to be drinking yourself into a stupor as the evening progresses, telling everyone within earshot what Catrin has concocted. That way, you can’t give away the location by mistake.”
John still didn’t like it, but at Simon’s reassuring nod, he acquiesced.
Rhys stood, prepared to leave. “All of you have to attend the funeral, but I don’t. I will leave now to scout the place. I’ll wait all night for the killer to come if I have to.”
Catrin wrinkled her nose. “I wish I could go with you.”
“That is one thing you can’t do.”
“What if the killer catches you like he did Tomos?” John said.
Rhys looked at him with amusement. “I will be quiet and clever and simply lie in wait. I’ll let him search and find nothing and leave. Then I’ll come back here and tell Simon who it is, and he can arrest him.”
Simon shook his head. “That might not work if we don’t have definitive proof and it’s only your word against his. I’d rather catch him in the act of searching. I should be going with you.”
Now it was Rhys’s turn to shake his head. “Your absence from the funeral would only call attention to what we’re doing. And really, the most important thing is to know the truth for certain.”
Catrin herself nodded, feeling more confident about the plan now that they’d put their heads together about it. “And then we can work backwards from there.”
