Gwen
Gwen was alone again in an empty courtyard. It was odd enough that she stood still for a moment considering her options. Her duty was first and foremost to Tangwen, and she debated whether she should follow after her father to collect her daughter. Before she could, however, Brother Ben, the monk who’d been hurt when Erik’s body had been taken, evident by the bandage wrapped around his head, loped into the courtyard. He pulled up at the sight of Gwen all alone. “Where is your husband?”
“In the chapter house with the other men.” Gwen moved towards him. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“If your husband isn’t abed, then I shouldn’t be either.”
Gwen couldn’t argue with that. “Why do you need him?”
Brother Ben dipped his chin. “Mathonwy requests his presence at the barn. We’ve found—” he coughed apologetically, “—another body.”
Gwen didn’t often gape. She took pride, in fact, in her ability to remain unshocked, but her mouth fell open as she looked at the monk. “I can’t disturb the conclave. It’s too important.”
Ben turned up one hand. “What should we do?”
Gwen sighed. “Mathonwy will have to make do with me.” She tugged her cloak closer around herself. They were well into afternoon now, but instead of being the warmest part of the day as it often was in summer, the wind had picked up and was scattering the last of autumn’s dead leaves across the courtyard.
She headed to the stable to get her horse and then was hugely relieved to find Llelo and Dai inside, brushing down the horses who’d come with King Owain’s party. Under normal circumstances, Gwen would hardly have said that St. Kentigern’s monastery was a dangerous place, but there had been an ominous tone in the courtyard even before Rhodri’s accusation. Gareth didn’t know about the second body yet, but he wouldn’t want her going anywhere without protective men around her, even if the only men available were the youngest in the king’s party.
“Are you going to tell us what’s going on, Mother?” Llelo said once they were on their way, riding down the track to the barn.
Gwen laughed under her breath. “You’re assuming that I know. The gaping holes in our understanding of what’s going on here are about to swallow us whole.” She threw a glance over her shoulder.
Llelo caught the look and put out a hand to her. “Father will be fine. Really.”
And then from behind them Dai added in a sour tone. “Next time Da finds himself in the thick of things, he needs to make sure we’re with him!”
Gwen turned more fully in the saddle to look at Dai. “Putting yourselves in danger isn’t going to help Gareth. What I’d prefer is if the three of you could keep yourselves out of trouble entirely. A faint hope, I know.” She turned back to Llelo, who was looking at her gravely. She hadn’t answered his question about what was going on, and as she studied her foster son, she decided that it would do no harm to tell him. He and Dai served in the king’s army, and since they were accompanying her to see a body, if anyone deserved to know what she was thinking, it was they.
“I speak the truth when I say that I’m not sure what’s going on. We know more about what is happening politically than the actual facts of what happened.”
“Are you speaking of Madog and Cadwaladr?” Llelo said.
Gwen nodded. “They were the end of our investigation last time. Now, when our only tangible evidence is Erik’s body and competing accounts of events that occurred for reasons we don’t know, their actions have to be our starting point.” Gwen chewed on her lower lip.
“I know these people far less well than you, Mam, but since Dai and I came to Denbigh, I’ve learned about King Madog. He wants to get the better of King Owain. Paying either his own men or a band of ruffians, which on the whole seems likely, to sack his own monastery sounds like something he’d do. I heard about how he and Prince Cadwaladr sold Madog’s own people for silver. Sacking a monastery is a small matter in comparison—though blaming Father for the deed says to me that Prince Cadwaladr is involved.”
That was a well-reasoned speech for a man as young as Llelo, and Gwen took his words as he intended—as an attempt to make sense of what she and Gareth were facing. “Our thoughts always go to Cadwaladr—and sometimes we’ve been wrong.”
Llelo let out a puff of air. “Perhaps. Still, it could be that Cadwaladr arranged for the same band to maraud all over Powys as long as they promised to share the treasure with him and as long as he could blame the reign of terror on King Owain.”
Gwen had no trouble picturing that scenario in her mind either. “So we work backwards from the ending: Madog and Cadwaladr are to blame. Who have they hired, and how have they constructed this plot—and how does that lead us to the man who killed Erik?”
“I don’t know.” Llelo shook his head like he had flies about his ears.
They arrived at the barn to find a handful of somber monks waiting for them, all that was left of the host of men who’d worked to put out the fire. Gwen gazed at the desolation and couldn’t help but sigh. There was something particularly forlorn about the burned husk of a building, whether barn, house, or monastery. In the aftermath of the struggle to control the fire, everything was soaking wet. Burned beams stuck up at random, blackened along their full length and likely unsalvageable. The roof, which had withstood the initial onslaught of the flames, in the end was still made of thatch and was entirely gone. A half-dozen monks continued to pace around the exterior of the barn, full water buckets in hand, dousing any spark that might still be smoldering.
His robe and cloaked bunched between his knees, Mathonwy crouched by the body, which had been dragged free of the wreckage and was lying on a scrap of board some twenty paces from the burned barn. Although the dead man’s hair was burned off and much of his skin was blackened or covered with ash, he wasn’t completely charred. That it was a man there was no doubt since his features could still be made out. Nor could any woman be that tall or have such large feet and hands.
Even though most everyone was conveniently forgetting that Gwen was pregnant, she had not, and if she’d been inclined to ignore the child inside, her stomach wouldn’t let her. It clenched uncomfortably, and she wished she hadn’t eaten just now since she feared her meal was about to end up on the ground. As it was, once she dismounted, she bent over, her hands on her knees, breathing hard.
Llelo dismounted too and put a hand out to her. “Stay here.” He and Dai went to where Mathonwy waited.
“Do any of you recognize him?” Gwen called from several yards away.
“No, my lady,” Mathonwy said. Dai and Llelo shook their heads.
Gwen closed her eyes, struggling for composure. She didn’t want to get any closer, and the men were kindly speaking loud enough so that she wouldn’t have to, but this was too great a burden to put on her sons. She was having second thoughts about exposing them to such carnage. “Dai—”
“I’m fine, Mam,” Dai said immediately. He was bent over the body, in the same posture as Gwen, though without the vomiting. Even from twenty feet away she could see that his eyes were intent.
Mathonwy ignored their side conversation and continued to speak to Llelo. “We pulled him from one of the stalls. When the roof came down, it knocked out a side wall, exposing the body. I sent two men to get him just as soon as it was safe.” The monk shrugged helplessly. “I apologize that the body is badly burned, but it’s better than it could be. Its location in the stall sheltered it from the worst of the fire.”
Llelo frowned. “How does that make sense? Wasn’t the fire set to prevent us from finding the body? Whoever did this should have started the fire around the body itself.”
Mathonwy stood abruptly and walked to where one of the monks was in the process of lighting a torch. The day was waning and clouds had come in—typically, after the fire was already out—so it was growing hard to see. He waited patiently for the monk to light the torch and then took it. “Come with me.” He led the boys around the side of the barn.
Gwen decided that her stomach was enough under control that she could follow, and should follow, in fact, though she averted her eyes as she passed the dead man. When she arrived on the other side of the barn, she found Llelo, Dai, and Mathonwy just inside it where one wall had stood. “What is it you’re looking at?”
Llelo scraped at the ground with his boot. “Ash.” He canted his head. “Pieces of straw.”
Mathonwy nodded. “This is where we found the body. A beam had fallen on him, which is what lit his clothes and charred parts of his body.”
“But the fire couldn’t have started here,” Gwen said, not as a question. “In fact, it looks to me as if the fire came here later than to other parts of the barn.” She looked beyond the fallen walls to the trough in which Erik had been found. Ironically, it was untouched by the blaze.
Llelo came over to where Gwen stood and spoke in an undertone. “Da would have my head if he knew you were here without him.”
“He’ll have my head for bringing you too,” she said. “What did you see on the body?”
“He was stabbed in the back with a dagger.”
Gwen gave a tsk under her breath. “Erik was stabbed in the belly.”
“It could be that the same man killed them both.”
“The gash couldn’t have been made by the beam falling or other damage from the fire?” she asked hopefully.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. You can look for yourself, but the body is mostly intact.” He frowned. “Why would that be?”
“Bodies don’t burn that easily, not unless the fire is very hot.” Gwen tapped a finger to her chin as she thought. “If he was dead before the fire was set, then his death and the fire could be unrelated. Again, we’re looking at two different men with two different agendas.”
Llelo canted his head to one side. “Erik was murdered and left for the monks to find and then the body was stolen. If one person did all that, his actions make no sense. It could make sense if we have two different villains working separately.”
Gwen noted the we but didn’t comment on it. “And what does this have to do with the theft here or at Wrexham?” Gwen looked away, though her eyes weren’t really seeing the pasture beyond the lane. As at Shrewsbury, the situation had grown very complicated—until at the end it had all become very simple. “All we have to tie Erik’s murder to those crimes are the silver coins Gareth found.”
Mathonwy had stayed out of earshot while Llelo and Gwen talked, but now he lifted a hand to gain their attention. “Geoff is here, and it may be that he can tell us more.” Mathonwy signaled to a stocky man with a water bucket that he should come closer. “He’s an old friend of the abbot’s from his days in King Henry’s service. He came to St. Asaph when he discovered that the abbot was here. He owns the inn in the village now. Fire was his specialty.”
“What does that mean, fire was his specialty?” Gwen said.
“Starting them, controlling them, using them in war,” Mathonwy said with the tone of a man who’d seen its use in person. “I’ve heard him say that every fire speaks to him in its own language.”
Such knowledge could put Geoff on the top of the list of people who could have started the fire, but apparently Mathonwy didn’t agree.
“Yes, brother?” Geoff halted in front of them. He was at least twenty years older than Gwen, with a thick beard shot with gray and deep brown eyes that were almost black in the torch light.
Dai had moved off to survey the area around the barn, but Mathonwy introduced Llelo and Gwen. “Tell them what you told me about the fire.”
Geoff gave a sharp nod. Gwen recognized the kind of person he was from her many years of living in a royal court. Here was a man who was the backbone of any army—the common-born soldier who’d risen above his station to lead men.
“I haven’t been able to get very far inside yet,” Geoff said as a caveat, “but I can tell a few things already. Namely, the fire was set. If it was started by lightning, the roof would have gone up first.”
Gwen nodded. “As it was, it went last. I saw that when I was here earlier.”
“Right. My guess from the way the fire spread is that it started on the ground in the exact center of the building.”
“What about the body?” Llelo said.
Geoff shook his head. “That’s your business, not mine.”
“What can you tell us about how it burned?” Gwen said.
“Oh, that,” Geoff said as if a burned body was of minor interest compared to the real issue of the setting of the fire. He gestured to where the body lay, now thankfully under a piece of sacking Dai had salvaged. Leave it to him to always be thinking of how Gwen felt. “The fire was hot enough to singe off his hair and burn most of his clothes, but less so the flesh underneath. He wasn’t caught in the midst of it.”
“Would you say that he was dead before the beam came down?” Gwen said.
“If he was alive, why not call for help?” Mathonwy said. “You saw the state of the barn. He could have kicked his way out a side wall.”
“You have a point.” Gwen turned back to Geoff. “Would you say, then, that the point of the fire wasn’t to cover up his death?”
“Absolutely it wasn’t,” Geoff said. “Or if it was, the killer did a remarkably bad job of it.”
“How would you have done it if it were you?” Gwen said.
“I would have soaked the man’s clothes in oil to fuel the fire. The oil soaks into a man’s tissues, making the burn far worse than any other burn, even alcohol, though that works too. Then I would have piled hay all around him and lit it.” Geoff spoke very straightforwardly. Fire was his business.
Everyone nodded. No household could be run without oil, which had many uses, from lanterns to cooking to the production of soaps and lotions. Its flammable nature was a given, and anyone who worked in the kitchen had to be constantly aware of oil when it was heating. In addition, pouring oil, boiling or otherwise, on a castle’s attackers—and then lighting them up—was a standard tactic in sieges.
“Thank you, Geoff. If we need to speak to you more, will you be nearby?” Gwen said.
“At my inn.” He bowed. “My lady.”
Gwen let Mathonwy go too so he could arrange for the transport of the body to the room off the cloister where he could lie alongside Erik, and then she and Llelo walked slowly back to their horses.
“It’s too bad we didn’t inspect the barn fully when we were here earlier,” Llelo said. “I feel like that’s partly my fault. Da is tired and in pain, and—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Gwen said. “Too much has been happening too quickly for any of us to devote the time needed to each aspect of the investigation. At least Conall should still have the rope that measured the shoe size of the man in the loft. When we get the dead man to the chapel, we can compare it.”
“This dead man does have really big feet and hands,” Llelo said.
They had reached the horses. Gwen stopped before mounting, watching the monks move the body onto a board in preparation for putting it in the back of one of their carts. “Do you see that?”
Llelo frowned, unaware of what Gwen was talking about, but she moved to the monks and stopped them.
“Look at his hand.” She turned slightly to show Llelo the dead man’s left arm, which had fallen off the board and out from under the sheet.
Llelo, Dai, and Mathonwy, who’d been directing his fellow monks, all converged on her, and Mathonwy raised his torch so the light would shine on the man’s hand: the last finger on his left hand was missing its tip, while the rest of it was bent at a grotesque angle.
“So this is Erik’s murderer,” Llelo said.
Gwen shook her head in disbelief. “He may be that, but then who murdered him?”