Gareth
“In the middle of the investigation at Shrewsbury, Gwen and I were on the verge of telling you that we could no longer do this job,” Gareth said to Hywel as they walked towards the chapter house.
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Hywel hesitated on the threshold, his eyes surveying the room in a quick glance that Gareth knew had taken in the position of all the major players.
“Neither of us can turn away. We resolved to be more detached instead.”
Hywel laughed out loud as if he didn’t have a care in the world and clapped Gareth on his good shoulder. “I’d say this is a good day to start.”
The odd thing was that Gareth didn’t think Hywel’s amusement was feigned. He really was in high good humor, and the only explanation that made sense was that Rhodri’s public accusation of Gareth had exposed his enemy for who he was, and Hywel was looking forward to engaging Madog on his own terms. Of course, Madog had no idea that Hywel had already spoken to Rhodri—and maybe he wouldn’t have known to care if he did. According to Hywel, Rhodri believed every word he’d said, and Madog was counting on that sincerity to convince the room that King Owain was the real villain today.
The chapter house was nearly full already, with more men than earlier in the day. Likely, word had spread, not only of Rhodri’s capture and accusation against King Owain, which had happened this morning, but Gareth’s comedown was something men wanted to see. He had never intended to place himself above anyone else. He’d done his duty. He’d strived to be a good knight in all things. But sometimes people interpreted a man’s behavior as an indictment of their own.
Evan appeared on Gareth’s wounded side.
“This isn’t going to come to anything,” he said before Gareth could speak.
“You told me once that I could be found standing over a dead body with a bloody knife in my hand, and nobody would accuse me of the crime.”
Gareth meant to keep his tone light, as a jest, but Evan didn’t think it was funny. “I still believe it. We’ll see what kind of evidence they bring against you, besides the word of one man who helped sack a monastery.”
King Madog clearly believed it. He was holding court in the main circle. The table that had been placed in the center for the morning conclave had been removed. Rhys stood beside Madog, listening gravely and nodding at everything he said. With the arrival of the main party from Gwynedd, Rhys turned his attention to the audience and lifted a hand, asking for quiet.
The kings arranged themselves in positions similar to where they’d sat that morning, but without the table between them. Gareth sat directly behind King Owain, buttressed on one side by Hywel and by Evan on the other. Again the conclave began with a song from Meilyr and Gwalchmai and then a prayer from Rhys.
Because the seats were full, the men who ranged behind Gareth, between him and the door, had to remain standing. One glance back showed Gareth that instead of standing to prevent him from leaving, they had arranged themselves such that the path was clear from him to the door. If at all possible, they were going to ensure his free flight if it became necessary.
He turned to face front just as Madog rose to his feet. “This assembly was witness to my accusation earlier against King Owain, and I repeat it again here.” He made an expansive gesture with both hands. “A fortnight ago, men paid by the King of Gwynedd did sack the monastery at Wrexham, stripping it of its wealth. I have a man in custody, who will testify not only that what I say is true, but that this man—” here he pointed a finger straight at Gareth, “—was the paymaster.”
A wave of chatter swept around the room. It was one thing to have Rhodri shout across the courtyard. It was another to accuse a man in open court—for that’s what the peace conference had turned into, just as Hywel had predicted.
Gareth gazed back at Madog as impassively as he could, but Hywel leaned into him and whispered, “Note how the real crime here, Madog’s attempted murder of me, has been completely eclipsed by your supposed crime. Even more, because you are accused, you are silenced in this court—even though it is you who uncovered his crimes. It’s clever, really. Cleverer than I would ever have given my uncle credit for.”
“Could be it wasn’t his idea.” Gareth’s eyes went to Queen Susanna, who was present today, the only woman in the room. But she was a queen, and as far as he could tell, nobody was questioning her right to be here.
Rhys again raised his hand to quiet the crowd, but before he could speak, Hywel rose to his feet and stepped forward into the silence. “Uncle, could you enlighten us as to when this meeting with Rhodri was supposed to have occurred?”
Rhys subsided, realizing perhaps that the conclave was out of his hands, but as it hadn’t yet turned violent, it could be left to the main protagonists: Hywel and Madog. Madog looked at Rhodri and nodded, so the younger man spoke for himself. “November.”
Hywel gave a sharp nod. “That would be before my brother, Rhun, was murdered by Prince Cadwaladr’s men?”
“Yes, my lord. A few weeks before.” Rhodri paled at the mention of Rhun, as he was meant to, and the murmuring in the crowd dissipated. Some might not have known the exact circumstances of how Rhun had died, but now everybody did, and it was a bold reminder on Hywel’s part of who was really the injured party here.
“Where was this meeting?”
“He found me in Corwen, my home.”
“And the sacking of Wrexham. When did that occur?”
“Just after St. Dafydd’s Day. Tuesday the fourth of March, I believe.”
Gareth gave an internal grunt. On Tuesday the fourth, he hadn’t yet left Aber, as any man here could attest. If the sacking had been any later, it would have posed more of a problem, since Gareth had then traveled to Shrewsbury with his family at Prince Hywel’s behest. They’d arrived there only to become involved in another investigation. Even ten days after it happened, nobody in Shrewsbury had heard about the sacking. They’d had their own problems, of course, and an absent sheriff. Gareth assumed they knew about it by now.
“So he came to you in November, but you didn’t raid Wrexham until March? Why the delay?”
“Now see here!” Madog stepped between Hywel and Rhodri. “That’s enough questions.”
Rhys stepped forward himself, his hand out, and spoke mildly. “We need to ascertain the facts, and Prince Hywel is within his rights to question his captain’s accuser.”
Madog’s eyes narrowed, and Gareth sensed that it occurred to him only now that Rhys’s mildness of earlier was a permanent state, not an indication that he favored Madog’s position. Nevertheless, Madog subsided, and Rhys gestured to Hywel that he should continue.
Hywel raised his eyebrows at Rhodri, and for the first time, Rhodri hesitated. “I don’t know the reason for the delay. It wasn’t supposed to be that long. He just wanted my agreement to do it at first, and he told me that he’d be in touch as to when I was to go to Wrexham.”
“What did you think when you didn’t hear from him again?”
Rhodri shrugged. “His money was good, and if what I was paid to do never came about, it was no loss to me. But then I got a message that it was time.”
“What do you mean a message? You can read?”
“No!” Rhodri scoffed. “He paid one of the village boys to tell me. I never saw him myself.”
“You never saw him again?”
“Not until after the raid.”
“When and where did you meet?”
“Our final payment was on the fifteenth, the Ides of March, back in Corwen.”
Gareth eased out a sigh that he tried not to show. On the Ides of March, he’d been in Shrewsbury within moments of being captured by a very different band of ruffians. The next day had been Sunday, and Gwalchmai had sung at mass in the church of the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul. They’d left Shrewsbury on Sunday evening, the sixteenth, ridden three days to Aber, taking the path through the mountains to avoid Powys. Upon their arrival at Aber on Wednesday afternoon, King Owain had been ready to ride, and they’d left with him, reaching St. Asaph’s just past midnight on Friday morning. And here it was Saturday again. No wonder Gareth was exhausted.
“And it was Gareth who met you?”
Rhodri hesitated again. “Yes.”
Hywel’s eyes narrowed. “You saw his face?”
Rhodri seemed to think better of his assertion. “I thought it was him. He wore a cloak and hardly spoke, but he knew all about what we’d done. He said to meet him here, at St. Asaph, and he would have another job for me.”
“Just you?”
“Yes.” Rhodri stuck out his chin, back to defiance.
“What about the other men he hired? Where are they?”
“I don’t know!” Rhodri said, as if it was obvious. “We scattered.”
“Had you known them before?”
“N-n-no. We met at an abandoned farmhouse outside Wrexham a few days before the raid. Everything we needed was there when we arrived.”
“Including the surcoats with the crest of Gwynedd?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to the treasure?”
Rhodri looked down at his feet, and somehow Gareth knew exactly what was coming. “I spent my share.”
The man was a naïve fool and an idiot. A criminal too, with no sense of right and wrong—or of self-preservation, apparently.
Madog intervened again. “Surely, that’s enough to know that Rhodri speaks the truth. Gareth paid him and other men to sack Wrexham. What more do we need to learn, and why isn’t that man in chains already? Arrest him!”
Madog’s men surged towards Gareth, and an equal number of men from Gwynedd were there to meet them. It was a good thing that nobody had been allowed a sword because there would have been bloodshed.
King Owain still hadn’t moved or spoken, and neither had Gareth. Hywel and Evan stepped in front of him, but again, it was Rhys who raised a hand and diffused the moment. “Sir Gareth is here of his own accord, and the case has not yet been proven, not to my satisfaction, not on the statement of one man who happens to be a thief. Do you have more of these men to bring forward?”
“I call Brother Deiniol and Brother Lwc of Wrexham, whom my men found in neighboring cells next to Rhodri. Apparently, men of Gwynedd put them there!”
That sent the room into an uproar again, but Hywel threw back his head and laughed. It was such an incongruous thing to do that some of the righteousness on Madog’s face disappeared, to be replaced by suspicion.
Hywel waved a hand. “By all means, let’s hear them.”
In due course, Deiniol and Lwc were paraded before the conclave and each told the story of the sack of Wrexham in his own words, though they made no mention of the theft from St. Asaph and their role in them, and nobody from Gwynedd interrupted. During Lwc’s testimony, Hywel did take a moment to step near Rhys and whisper a lengthy passage in his ear, after which Rhys nodded. Once both prisoners had finished their statements, Rhys made sure they stayed sitting in the front row of benches, well-guarded and with no possibility of escape.
Finally, Hywel stepped to the fore again. His expression was somber, and his hands were clasped behind his back, but Gareth knew him well enough after all these years to know what the tightness in his shoulders meant: he wasn’t fearful—he was excited, and if he’d allowed himself to show it, he would have been bouncing on the balls of his feet.
Hywel looked down at the floor while the room quieted, and then he let the silence lengthen. Gareth reminded himself that Hywel had begun performing for audiences larger than this, testing the temperature of a room and his effect on the people gathered before him, from when he was nine years old when his incredible voice had manifested itself. He’d become expert at reading a crowd before he’d become a man. Gareth let out a breathless sigh, forcing his shoulders to relax and telling himself that he needed to trust his prince. If anyone knew what he was doing in such circumstances, it was Hywel.
The prince looked up. “For the moment, I am willing to put aside Gwynedd’s accusation against Powys that King Madog ordered his men to kill me just over a week ago. It is an accusation that Powys hasn’t even bothered to deny. But if dispensing with the current matter of the treachery of the captain of my guard, Sir Gareth, is necessary before we can discuss the true matter at hand, then so be it.” He turned to Abbot Rhys. “First, I want to make clear that Gareth was in no way involved in the payment of these men, Rhodri among them. If I prove that, I believe that it will go a long way towards proving that Rhodri was paid by a third party with the intent to impugn Gareth’s—and my father’s—name. Are we agreed?”
Rhys lifted both hands to the conclave. “I am agreed. What say you?”
General murmurs of approval swept around the room with many nodded heads, even among the men of Powys. A waft of cool air swept across Gareth’s neck, and he glanced behind him to the door to see Conall slip in late and find a place among Hywel’s men. He met Gareth’s eyes and made a fist, implying that all was well, or so Gareth hoped that’s what the signal meant in Irish. He turned back to face the front.
Rhys looked at Madog. “What says Powys?”
Madog was looking murderous, but he nodded jerkily. “Agreed, if the logic is sound.”
Hywel clenched his hands into fists down at his sides, and then relaxed them. “I call first Lord Bergam of Dyffryn Ceiriog!”
Gareth blinked as his old employer rose to his feet and made his way down to where Hywel waited. He stopped beside Hywel, clearly puzzled at being called forward. “My lord?”
“Lord Bergam, you employed Sir Gareth for a time some years ago. Is that correct?”
“Yes, my lord, for a short while.”
“I understand that he left your service after an incident involving your son.”
Bergam wasn’t liking where this was going, but the truth was required in court, not to mention on holy ground, and he told it. “Yes.”
“Did Gareth tell you why he was leaving?”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell us?”
Now Bergam canted his head to one side, as it dawned on him what he was expected to say, but again, he didn’t balk at saying it. “Gareth told me that honor wasn’t lost in a day. It was lost over weeks and years of taking the path that was easy rather than the one that was right. He said he hadn’t left Prince Cadwaladr’s service only to find himself beholden to another man who didn’t know the difference between right and wrong, and while he didn’t claim to have God’s ear, he knew enough of the difference to know that he couldn’t stomach another moment in my son’s presence. If he had to starve, so be it. He’d go to hell for his own deeds, not for standing by while another man paved the way.”
While Bergam was speaking, Gareth kept his eyes on the floor. When he’d left Cadwaladr’s service, he’d been afraid. The day he’d left Bergam’s, however, he’d been angrier than he’d ever been in his life, and he’d allowed his temper to get the better of him. He’d known he was going to be on his own again, but he’d felt he’d had no choice.
Evan laughed low in Gareth’s ear. “By God, I do believe he’s telling the truth.”
“What did you reply?” Hywel said.
“I told him he was a smarmy, self-righteous son-of-a-bitch and he could take his holier-than-thou attitude and get out of my sight.” Bergam immediately put out a hand to Abbot Rhys and bowed. “My apologies, Father.”
“Will you tell the conclave what your son did that Gareth wouldn’t countenance?” Hywel said.
“He took a girl against her will before her wedding day.”
The silence in the room was so profound, Gareth himself couldn’t breathe or swallow. He hadn’t told more than a handful of people what had made him leave, less not to shame Bergam and his son, but because he was ashamed to have ever stood at the son’s side. God knows he wasn’t a saint, but truth be told, leaving Cadwaladr and Bergam hadn’t been all that hard once he saw what he had to do. Standing up to outright sin was easy. It was standing up to it when it was far subtler that was the challenge—and not a challenge that Gareth felt he always adequately met.
“Where is your son now?” Hywel said.
“He died at the retreat from Lincoln, in the service of Empress Maud.”