Hywel
Hywel looked at his aunt with what he hoped was an unreadable expression. He never had any intention of calling her as a witness, because he would never ask her to testify against her own husband—or in Hywel’s favor, which might well have been worse. He would never betray her trust that way.
As it was, she was standing before him, and he made a welcoming gesture with one hand. “By all means, aunt. The floor is yours.” He backed away, moving not behind her, however, but more towards the semi-circle of seats so that he could watch her face. The tension in the room was such that one misstep because he misunderstood the situation could ruin all.
Susanna gave him a piercing look before turning to face the other men in the room. Every one of them, including her own husband, was staring at her with a stricken expression.
“Susanna!” Madog had been on his feet already, and now he took a step towards his wife. But if it had been a blade, the look Susanna gave him would have sliced him in half. Hywel had not found Susanna to be an assertive wife, but in this she was unbending. Madog put up both hands and tipped his head as if to say, “All right. Do what you must.” He sat down again, and with his capitulation, the entire delegation from Powys sat too.
After that, the room quieted quickly, without Rhys needing to do or say anything. When she had the full attention of her audience, Susanna lifted her chin and began to speak. “You have heard testimony today that shocked you.” She nodded. “I understand your dismay at the events of the last few months. But what you think you know—” she gestured to Hywel, “—what has been revealed here is only part of the truth. The missing piece to this puzzle is that I, and I alone, am responsible for not only the sacking of Wrexham but the slave ring as well.”
An indrawn breath of shocked silence followed this announcement. Hywel might have expected a clamor, but everyone just stared at Susanna instead while she looked back with calm eyes and an easy assurance. For his part, Hywel couldn’t stay silent and moved closer. “Aunt, surely you can’t expect us to believe—”
She whirled on him, her finger pointing, and shook it in his face. “Be quiet, Hywel. You don’t know everything.”
This time in the face of her ire, when he stepped back, he held up both hands, like he might if he was showing an enemy he was unarmed. “Yes, aunt. But please don’t do this.”
His aunt glared at him. “Father Rhys, if Hywel interrupts again, the law dictates that he should be removed from the room, is that right?”
Rhys glided closer. “Yes, my lady.”
“See to it.” She bit off the last word.
Hywel backed away far enough that he was within arm’s length of his father, who reached out a hand to him. “Let her be, son. You’ve done all that you can.”
As the little drama among the family members of Gwynedd’s royal house had gone on, Madog had remained in his seat, his expression blank. As Hywel looked at his uncle, he realized that Madog hadn’t expected this from Susanna either. He had thought she was going to betray him, and instead she was prepared to take the blame for everything he had done.
Which she proceeded to do. “You must understand that what I did, I did for love of my husband and my brother, Cadwaladr.”
At the mention of the prince’s name, a murmur, louder than any before, swept around the room. Susanna was making a woman’s argument, which was somewhat disappointing to Hywel, but it was one that the men in the room were predisposed to believe.
“Even though Cadwaladr is my older brother, I have felt much of the time like a mother to him. I am not in any way going to apologize for Cadwaladr’s crimes, of which he has committed many. I know that my brother, Owain, has overlooked Cadwaladr’s misdeeds many times, and when presented with his exile, I could do no less.”
Hywel felt his father stir beside him, but he didn’t speak. Susanna was right, of course, and if Owain had known that his overlarge heart would lead to this, he might have reconsidered his treatment of his brother. Hywel could be thankful that while she claimed responsibility for the slave ring and the thefts, she didn’t say that it was she who’d found the man to impersonate Gareth or had anything to do with Rhun’s death. Even she couldn’t come up with a convincing argument as to how she’d managed that.
“I know my brother well—” and here again she was referring to Owain, not Cadwaladr, “—and he loathed the need to choose between Cadwaladr and his kingdom. He did what was necessary in exiling him. I understand that—” she shot Owain a look of apology, “—but with nobody to turn to Cadwaladr came to me. I could not refuse to help him, especially when the men he might go to for help might be so very much worse.”
Hywel knew, without her needing to articulate, who those men might be: men like Ranulf, Earl of Chester, his wife’s uncle, to whom Cadwaladr had gone so often in the past; and the earls of Lincoln, Pembroke, and Hertford, siblings or close relations of his wife, Alice, and powerful Norman magnates in their own right. Or even the son of Robert of Gloucester, the most powerful man in England aside from King Stephen. Robert’s body and, more importantly, his mind, were fading. Ranulf, who was married to Robert’s daughter, had wormed his way back into his good graces, which would never have happened if he were well.
“I could not put all Wales at risk because of Cadwaladr’s ambition.” Again, she threw a look of apology at her brother. So far, she hadn’t looked at Madog once, not even with a flick of the eyes—and Hywel had been watching for it. “It is I who must do penance for these crimes that have been enumerated here. It is I who arranged for my husband’s men to murder Hywel rather than allow my nephew to uncover what I was helping Cadwaladr do in Shrewsbury. It is I who am to blame for the sacking at Wrexham, which was another attempt to fund my brother’s exile.” She turned fully to face King Owain. “Madog would go to war rather than let me be exposed and shamed, but I cannot see the two men I love the most kill each other over something I have done. Owain, you know I am equally in a position to do all these things of which you have accused my husband. It is I who deserve your anger, not Madog. It is I who must beg forgiveness and pay sarhad. Please be at peace, Madog and Owain.”
Complete silence greeted this statement. Even Abbot Rhys seemed struck dumb by her confession. Hywel, for once, had nothing to say. His aunt had swept all arguments from the table.
And so it was that Hywel’s father was the first man to rise to his feet—as in truth he should have been, and as was his right. He moved to stand in front of Susanna, blocking the view of most of the men in the room, though still not of Hywel, who sat a few seats to one side of center.
The king looked down at his sister for a long moment, and then he reached for her and pulled her into his arms.
After that, there was no more talk of war. There couldn’t be. But that didn’t mean that every question had been answered. In fact, as far as Hywel was concerned, no questions had been answered. By taking the blame for her husband’s actions, Susanna had brought peace to Wales and cut short the conference, but Hywel still had a dead spy whose murderer was either lying alongside him or remained at large. And that didn’t even touch upon the theft of St. Asaph’s treasury, which Hywel believed now had been spawned by the sacking of Wrexham.
Several hours later, Hywel stood in the darkness of his aunt’s room. The feast that had followed the afternoon’s session had dragged on far too long, but Hywel had managed to escape with the unlikely excuse of desiring a private moment in the church to give thanks for the peace. He’d gone back to the guesthouse instead to wait for his aunt’s return. He didn’t think she’d be long, seeing as how she was prone to pleading a headache. He’d always assumed she’d done so to avoid her husband’s attentions. Now he wondered what else he’d misread if she was willing to sacrifice so much for him.
Light steps came from the corridor, and the door to the room opened. His aunt Susanna stood silhouetted in the doorway, and then she closed the door and crossed to the shutters. Opening them, she looked out, took several deep breaths, and then turned to where Hywel stood in a shadowed corner. “I thought I might find you here.”
Shaking his head to think that even for a moment he could have fooled the woman who’d lived a double life since her marriage, Hywel moved away from the wall. “We need to talk.”
“You know everything you need to—”
“Don’t lie to me,” Hywel said, more sharply than maybe he intended. It had been an emotional day. “You can lie to everyone else, but you have no need to lie to me.” He moved closer. “You and I are two of a kind. You can trust me with the truth. You didn’t order my death, and thus, I don’t believe you did any of those other things either, even for Cadwaladr.” When his aunt tried to interrupt, he forestalled her with a raised hand. “I understand why you did it, as does my father.”
“He knows?”
“Everything,” Hywel said.
“How angry is he?”
“If not for his concern for you, he’d be amused.”
“I can take care of myself,” Susanna said.
“That much is clear,” Hywel said. “What I need to know now is what role you or Madog had in the death of my servant, a half-Dane named Erik, and the theft of silver here at St. Kentigern’s.”
Susanna stared at him. The moonlight was coming in the window, lighting half of her face, but the other half was deeply shadowed. He could tell, however, that she was surprised by the question. “I-I don’t understand.”
Hywel had one arm folded across his chest, and he rubbed at the stubble on his chin with the other hand, watching his aunt. He recognized that his aunt was one of the few people he couldn’t easily read, and he didn’t know if she was lying. He decided that he needed to tell the truth himself, in hopes that it would prompt her to do the same.
“Last night, you were not in bed with a sick headache, but you dosed your maid with poppy juice and saw off Rhodri’s mother, Derwena, with a nine-fingered man. Erik, my servant, was strangled by someone missing strength in the last finger on his left hand and was left submerged in a trough at the barn that was burned today. Five silver pennies were found in the vicinity of the murder scene. When Erik’s body was being transported to the monastery to be examined, it was stolen by a band of men and then later that day turned up in a field nearby—cut open.”
Susanna listened to Hywel’s recitation with wary eyes, and she continued to look at him for a count of five before sighing. She turned to sit somewhat forlornly on the end of the bed, her hands in her lap, looking down at the floor.
“The young guard told you it was I?”
“Gareth and Conall witnessed Rhodri’s arrest on the other side of the monastery, picked up Derwena and questioned her, and then, after they released her, followed her to her meeting with you. Dai, the young guard, happens to be Gareth’s son.”
She looked up at that. “I didn’t know that Gareth had fathered a son.”
“I misspoke. Dai is his foster son.”
Susanna gave an unladylike grunt. “You see where lies have brought us.” She sighed again. “Derwena was your cousin’s wet nurse. Rhodri was just starting to walk when Llywelyn was born. Derwena and Rhodri were living in Llangollen at the time, her husband had died, and it seemed a perfect solution to the burden of having a young widow in the village to bring her into my service. I have known her these many years and, of course, this connection to our court was how Madog and Cadwaladr found Rhodri as one of the men to sack that monastery.”
She looked up at him. “I didn’t find any of this out until very recently, you understand? Not until after you were almost killed.”
“After your husband tried to have me murdered, you mean,” Hywel said—and then instantly regretted it. He put out a hand to her. “I’m sorry, aunt.”
“You speak no more than the truth. Very well, after Madog tried to kill you, I confronted him with it, and he confessed the whole sordid story. He feared that you might find Cadwaladr in Shrewsbury, you see. I don’t know that it occurred to him that you might uncover the slave ring too. He told me also of his agreement with the slavers and then his role in the raid on the monastery at Wrexham, all designed to line his and Cadwaladr’s pockets with easy silver and malign Owain in the process.”
“Did Rhodri believe all along that he’d been paid by Gareth?”
“Cadwaladr set up the raid before Rhun’s death and his own exile. It was the kind of mischief Cadwaladr liked well. Once the imposter was dead, Cadwaladr and Madog knew that Rhodri’s ignorance was still necessary for the deception to be complete. Rhodri had to believe he was telling the truth. Not only that, but our own men had to believe it.”
“So someone else tricked Rhodri into approaching Madog’s encampment, where he could be recognized and arrested.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know who?”
“Not for certain.”
Hywel stared at his aunt, waiting for more. When it wasn’t forthcoming, he said, “And Derwena?”
“She had no part in any of this other than confirming for me the details of the sacking of Wrexham, once Rhodri confessed to her that he’d been involved.” Susanna was firm in that. “She followed him here because she feared for his life. I promised her that I would do what I could for him and for her.”
“How could you know that we had questioned her, such that you would send her away so soon after?”
“I didn’t!” Susanna said. “I’d arranged for her to meet me, in order to keep her safe until I got to the bottom of the plot. It was because she was with you that she was late to meet me.”
“Who is the man you sent her away with? He was missing a finger on his left hand, and that implicates him in Erik’s murder.”
“He is one of my long-time servants, a man of Powys. He and Derwena have favored each other for years.” She looked directly at Hywel. “He could not have murdered Erik. I swear it. He was traveling with me until we arrived, which I believe was the afternoon after Erik died.”
“You are absolutely sure of it?”
“Yes.”
Hywel grimaced. “I hate coincidences.” He rubbed his forehead, feeling a genuine headache coming on. “Are you telling me that you know nothing of Erik’s death?”
“Not his death.” Susanna put her folded hands to her lips as she might have in prayer and looked at him over the top of them.
It had been a throwaway question, one that Hywel genuinely hadn’t expected any kind of answer to. “But you did know him?”
Her eyes didn’t leave his face. “Erik used to carry messages between Cadwaladr and Madog … and between Cadwaladr’s wife, Alice, and me.”
Hywel rocked back on his heels. “Could he have been doing that when he was killed?”
Now she grimaced. “He was carrying messages, of that I am certain, since he brought one from Alice to me.” She laughed without humor. “If I really did all the things I confessed to doing, I would know more, but I didn’t do those things, so I only know what my husband told me.” She leaned forward and looked intently at Hywel. “You should know, however, that Erik was first and foremost Alice’s man.”
Hywel blinked. “I have been blind, deaf, and dumb.”
“You have been preoccupied.”
“What will happen to you now, aunt?”
She canted her head. “Madog will put me aside for a time as punishment. Owain has agreed that I may confine myself to the nunnery at Llanfaes.” She paused. “I have friends on the island, you know.”
She was referring, without a doubt, to Alice, Cadwaladr’s wife. Clearly, Hywel had underestimated his aunt. He didn’t want to think about what those two women could contrive together either—and perhaps what they’d already contrived without his knowledge. “All the way to Anglesey? Madog doesn’t mind you returning to Gwynedd?”
Susanna canted her head. “He owes me.”