They entered the stables. The guards had dumped the youth in the cell that took up the right rear of the building. Gareth had spent far too many hours in it last summer. He couldn’t help but be glad it wasn’t his bruised body in there tonight.
Two guards blocked the doorway but moved aside as Gareth and Hywel approached. “Stay here,” Hywel said to them. “I don’t want anyone entering who doesn’t belong.”
“Yes, my lord,” both men said.
Two more men stood over the would-be assassin, and at a wave from Hywel, they bowed and left the cell, leaving Gareth and Hywel alone with the youth. If his odd pose on the dirt floor of the cell was an indication, he hadn’t moved since the soldiers had dumped him there. Gareth closed the door behind him but didn’t lock it since the boy wasn’t in any condition to escape. Hywel gazed down at the prisoner for a count of ten, but he still didn’t move, so Gareth prodded him with the toe of his boot. “Wake up.”
“I don’t know that he can.” Hywel stood with his hands on his hips, his lips pursed, studying the boy.
Since Gareth had been housed here the previous summer, the cell had reverted back to a storage room. Filthy hay littered the floor and someone had stacked wooden crates in a precarious pile in one corner. It still smelled strongly of horse and urine.
Gareth glanced at his prince, made uneasy by Hywel’s intense focus on the boy’s face. “Do you know him?”
Hywel slowly shook his head. “No.” But his denial lacked assurance.
“I hear hesitation in your voice,” Gareth said.
His lord, though he strove to keep his face impassive, had a tell when he was eliding the truth—or lying as Gwen would more straightforwardly say. Even if he gazed straight at you as he lied, the corner of his mouth would twitch, and then when you nodded your agreement and appeared to accept his lie as truth, his eyes would skate to the left. It was only for an instant, but Gareth had learned to watch for it. Hywel had very rarely lied to him, but he lied to other men routinely.
Gareth had learned to search for similar responses in the men he questioned. Most men were honest, as it turned out, and bad liars. The men to be most concerned about were the ones who’d so convinced themselves that their lies were truths, that they felt no guilt and had no tells. Cadwaladr was such a man.
Gareth didn’t mention any of this to Hywel.
Hywel glanced at him. “Is this a way of asking if I had anything to do with this? Am I a suspect now?”
Gareth searched for a way to respond without offending. “I didn’t say so. And yet, why am I here if not to read between the lines?”
Hywel barked a laugh. “You have me there.” He crouched to brush the hair out of the boy’s face so he could see it better. “The occasion of our meeting tickles at the back of my mind, but I can’t tell you more right now. I have a feeling I’ve seen his face before.”
Gareth wondered why his lord hadn’t just said so in the first place. He crouched over the youth and began going through his clothing. The boy’s coat had three inner pockets which revealed nothing beyond lint. He had no scrip, either, nor anything to identify him beyond his face. Gareth sat back on his heels. “He’s a ghost.”
“Or rather, one who planned to become one,” Hywel said.
“Do you think he went into the hall expecting never to come out?” Gareth said.
“That makes more sense than the idea that he thought he could get away with murdering my father.”
“As we were leaving the dais,” Gareth said, “Taran told the king that the boy was one of the many extra servants hired for the wedding. When we return to the hall, I’ll talk to him.”
Hywel looked up from studying the boy’s supine form. “Taran will blame himself.”
“That is a fact, my lord, and one that you cannot talk me out of.” Taran pushed open the door and hurried into the cell. His face was red and he was out of breath.
“You’ve had a busy week,” Gareth said. “Nobody blames you.”
“I should have been more careful,” Taran said.
“Is there something we can do for you now?” Gareth said.
“Your lord father sent me to speak to you, to tell what I know, little as that may be.”
“Do you remember the circumstances of his hiring?” Hywel said.
If possible, Taran’s face got even redder. “Yes, my lord, in the sense that I took him on when he presented himself. I remember him particularly because all he had was what he stood up in—no bedroll, no pack, nothing. He was one of a dozen men who came to offer their services in the hall and stables. The harvest is over, you see, and many men like him have no real homes …” Taran’s voice trailed off as the force of Hywel’s attention became apparent.
“But did you know him yourself?” Hywel said. “Before this week?”
Taran shook his head. He wiped the moisture from his forehead with a handkerchief, sweating even though the stables were many degrees cooler than the hall. “He was one of several who arrived at the same time as Cristina’s family. He is from Powys, I believe.”
“Does my father know he arrived with Lord Goronwy?” Hywel’s gaze was piercing. “Or at least appeared to?”
“No. I would have answered all his questions but he didn’t care to listen. I tried … but it would have meant interrupting him. He is much occupied with his guests. He sent me to you instead.”
Gareth ran a hand through his hair. “That someone tried to kill the king is bad enough without bringing the complication of Cristina’s family into it.” Cadwallon, Owain’s older brother, had led a campaign through eastern Gwynedd and Powys in 1132. His mandate had been to bring these lands, that had once belonged to Gwynedd, back into his father’s hands.
In carrying out these orders, he slew several of his own maternal uncles (his mother’s brothers, who were also Cristina’s uncles) before dying himself. This left Cristina’s ancestral lands bereft of lordship and King Owain’s father annexed them back into Gwynedd. Cristina’s father had escaped the familicide by marrying into a Norman family in Flintshire and wisely renouncing his holdings in Gwynedd.
King Owain hoped that this marriage, rather than opening old wounds, might heal them.
“To which of Cristina’s relatives did the man owe allegiance?” Hywel said.
“I don’t know.” Taran scrubbed at his hair with both hands as he thought, and then dropped them. “I have failed you all.”
“You couldn’t have known what the boy would do,” Gareth said. “Unless, perhaps, you paid him to do it?”
“Gareth—” Hywel said, but then he stopped himself. He knew as well as Gareth that these questions had to be asked.
Taran gaped at Gareth. “You can’t think that I had anything to do with this? That I would conspire to murder my king?”
“It’s all right, Taran.” Hywel put a hand on Gareth’s arm as if holding him back from an imminent assault on the steward. The two of them had slipped effortlessly into their well-practiced roles of friendly questioner (Hywel) and unreasonable interrogator (Gareth). “He’s only doing his job.”
“It is my job to ask,” Gareth said. “And I note that you didn’t answer, Taran. Did you hire the boy to kill King Owain?”
“No!”
Hywel patted Taran’s shoulder but spoke to Gareth, though for Taran’s benefit. “There’s no point in speculating when we have so little information. The boy will wake soon and we can question him then.”
The three men gazed at each other, and then at the youth on the floor. “He’s coming around.” Taran crouched next to the prisoner.
To Gareth’s eyes, the steward had aged considerably in recent months. Owain Gwynedd rode out with his men from time to time, still vibrant in his forties despite the thickening around his waist. For all that Taran was of an age with his friend and lord, he looked fifteen years older. His once nearly black hair had gone mostly gray, and his shoulders were no longer those of a fighting man, but rounded. Of late, he’d spent too much time at his papers and ledgers.
The prisoner coughed once and then opened his eyes. He stared up at the three men, blinked, and pushed himself to his elbows. “Where am I?”
Hywel met Gareth’s cynical look with one of his own. “In the stables at Aber Castle,” Hywel said. “What is your name?”
“I-I-I can’t say.” The boy’s eyes widened in panic at this lack of knowledge. Or seemingly so. Gareth, for his part, remained skeptical.
“Why did you try to kill King Owain Gwynedd?” Hywel said.
“What?” The failed assassin struggled to sit up but couldn’t manage it on his own. After watching him try to shift himself without success, Gareth helped him, half dragging, half-carrying him to rest with his back to the rough planks of the wall.
Hywel’s hands were on his hips again. “You’re telling us you don’t know who you are?”
The boy gazed around the small room. “N-n-no. I can’t remember! What happened to me?”
Gareth was disgusted. “You took a hard fall.”
“I did?” The youth put a hand to the back of his head and came away with blood.
Hywel crouched in front of the boy. At the sight of Hywel’s intense face, the boy dug his heels into the dirt floor, scrabbling and pressing his back to the wall. “Wh-what’s going on?” He looked away, presenting his cheek to Hywel. Pathetic.
“That’s what we’re trying to get out of you,” Hywel said. “You entered the hall just now with a knife and tried to stab the king with it. You don’t remember?”
“N-n-no, my lord! Please tell me this is a jest! It can’t be true!”
“I don’t believe this.” Gareth kicked at a clump of dirty straw at his feet.
Hywel gazed at the boy for a count of three and then straightened. The boy’s eyes remained wide and he breathed rapidly, as if in a panic. Of course, if Gareth had been caught with a knife in the act of trying to murder the King of Gwynedd, he’d be panicking too.
Hywel backed off and turned to Gareth, lowering his voice as he spoke. “It could be true. We’ve seen it before in men who have taken a fall.”
“It could, but it’s mighty convenient—for him and for the one who paid him to kill the king, if he was indeed paid.” Gareth surveyed the boy, who put his hand to the back of his head again, feeling under his hair. “Men have landed harder and fallen farther with fewer ill effects.”
“And some have died,” Hywel said.
“Who are you?” the boy’s voice trembled and he pointed towards Gareth with a wavering finger.
Gareth glowered at him. “Someone you should be very afraid of.”
“Let’s try this another way.” Hywel’s eyes glinted.
Gareth understood what Hywel wanted without needing him to articulate it. He smirked at his prince and then stepped up to the youth, grasped him by his shirt, and hauled him to his feet. He pushed him against the planks of the wall and shook him once.
“Who is your lord? Who paid you to kill Owain Gwynedd?”
“I d-d-don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Gareth thrust him against the wall again. The back of the boy’s head snapped into the wood. His eyes rolled. Given that he was already bleeding in that spot, it had to have hurt. The boy was so convincing, Gareth began to wonder if he wasn’t faking ignorance. He had fallen hard.
Hywel crowded close, getting right in Gareth’s face. “Let him go! Can’t you see he’s hurt!”
Gareth glared at Hywel, and then released the boy, who dropped to the floor like a child’s doll, legs and arms splayed.
“Listen to reason, my lord!” Gareth said. “Have you gone as soft in your head as in your heart? Your father could have died!”
“But he didn’t, and this boy, here, obviously isn’t the mastermind behind the plot.” Hywel crouched beside the boy again. “Someone will tend to your wounds shortly. Can’t you remember anything? Anything at all about why you brought a knife to my father’s hall?”
“Prince Hywel—” Gareth managed a good growl and Hywel’s lips twitched. At that point, Gareth figured he’d better shut up or they’d both give the game away.
“I will see to this, Sir Gareth.” Hywel pointed to the doorway. “Stand over there.” He turned back to the boy. “Now. Tell me what you do remember.”
The youth licked his lips, glanced from Hywel to Gareth, who continued to glower at him. The boy cowered against the wall until Hywel shifted to block Gareth from his view. “I-I-I remember coming into the castle with many other people. It was mid-morning, I think.”
Gareth glanced at Taran, who was standing with his arms folded across his chest a few paces from the boy. He nodded. “That’s right.”
The boy turned his head as if seeing Taran for the first time. “I spoke with someone about serving the king. He gave me a piece of warm bread with butter before I started work … was I hired to work in the kitchens?”
Taran stepped closer. “Yes, you were. I hired you. Do you remember my face?”
“It is you! I do remember you!” The boy’s eyes widened. “You were the one who ordered me to kill the king!”
Taran’s mouth fell open. “What? That’s ridiculous!”
“No! No! It was you!”
Hywel swung around, gazed at Taran for six heartbeats and then stood. He waved a hand at Taran and Gareth, indicating that they should follow him, and marched from the room. “I’ll be back.” He kicked the door closed behind him.
“Make a note of what he says,” Gareth said to one of the guards, a friend named Alun. “But don’t believe it.”
Alun nodded. “Yes, my lord.” The other guard nodded nervously.
“And don’t tell anyone what has passed here tonight,” Gareth said. “Either Prince Hywel or I will return before your relief and speak to both of you.”
Hywel locked the door behind him and pocketed the key. “No one goes inside without my permission, is that clear?”
“What about food and water?” Alun said. “And his head wound—”
“Not for anything!” Hywel said. “Not unless I am there to witness it!”
Another nod and two yes, my lords. Hywel waved again at Gareth and Taran. “Come.”
They came, with Taran hurrying to come abreast with Hywel. “I had nothing to do with this. King Owain has been my friend—”
“He has been your friend,” Hywel said. “I am willing to believe the boy is lying—about this and the fact that he can’t remember anything. I’m not going to throw you into a cell, as my father did to Gareth last summer, not on the word of that boy.” Hywel stopped and grabbed Taran’s arm. “If you know more than you’re telling, however, speak now. I can give you the benefit of the doubt because you have been a friend, but I will get to the bottom of this. You know that.”
“I do, my lord.” Taran swallowed hard. “I swear to you, the boy lies.”
Gareth fell in behind them. Taran had sweated enough for all four men, and that meant he was nervous. Maybe he didn’t hire the boy to kill the king … but was that the whole truth? And what about Prince Hywel? Gareth couldn’t get the idea out of his head that Taran wasn’t the only one who knew more than he was telling.