Gwen
Gwen wasn’t pleased to be relegated to questioning the monks as she had at Aberystwyth and Shrewsbury, but she understood why Hywel had given her this task and Gareth had backed him up: they were genuinely afraid of losing her.
She understood too why the men felt that way and couldn’t add to their burden by knowingly putting herself in danger again. Staying behind at the monastery did mean that she could check in with Tangwen and Gwalchmai (who were still asleep) every so often. Above all, she was a mother, so she couldn’t be sorry that she would remain safe—for her own sake, for Tangwen’s sake, and for that of her unborn child.
She also wasn’t sorry that staying behind gave her a chance to speak to Abbot Rhys again. He’d been a monk for only ten years, but that Rhys would become the abbot of his monastery had been a foregone conclusion from the moment he’d chosen the Church as his vocation. Gareth had trusted him almost from the moment the two had met, and Rhys had become a friend to both Gwen and Gareth in the subsequent years. Although Rhys had initially balked at Gwen’s participation in the investigations that came their way, he had grown to accept her presence, learned from her, and now treated her in the fashion of a proud and beloved uncle. As a rule, priests and monks didn’t get to have children, and she was pleased to have adopted him in some measure into her own family.
Thus, after she’d eaten and checked on Tangwen again—and resisted the temptation to lie down on the pallet beside her daughter—she went in search of Rhys, finding him in the abbot’s quarters. These were a suite of rooms in the west range of the cloister. As she arrived, he was finishing breakfast.
At the sight of her entering the room, Rhys pushed away his bowl with its remains of porridge and rose to his feet to greet her. “Did you find something?”
His expression was so hopeful, Gwen hated to disappoint him, but she shook her head sadly. “Not yet, but I did want to congratulate you on your rise to abbot.”
Rhys made a huh sound in the back of his throat and gestured that she should sit in the chair on the other side of his desk. Then he sat too and clasped his hands in front of him. “I don’t know if congratulations are really in order, my dear. Some would say that my job and that of a sheepdog are much the same.”
“But you are so good at it,” Gwen said. “It’s always nice when someone outside your immediate friends or family acknowledges your particular skills. Just because you were a warrior once doesn’t mean you didn’t have a head for managing money and men.”
Rhys smiled. “You are as sweet as ever. Now—it was kind of you to congratulate me, but that isn’t really why you’re here, is it? Tell me what you need from me.”
“I think you already know the routine, Father. We need to question everyone in the monastery about Erik. We don’t know anything about his movements over the last months, never mind the last few days. We don’t even know if he arrived last night, or weeks ago.”
“And you don’t have a body to examine for clues.” He grimaced. “Despite that lack, did Gareth get enough time with it to estimate when he died?”
“No, except that the condition of the body tells him that Erik wasn’t in the water for more than a few hours. That could mean he died shortly after midnight and was put in the trough directly, or if he died longer ago, that the body was moved.”
“How does he know that?”
“It has to do with the way the blood pooled, discoloring Erik’s back, and the extent to which the skin wrinkled and loosened on his fingers—” Gwen broke off as Rhys raised one hand.
“I understand. No need to explain. I accept Gareth’s judgment in this matter.”
Gwen smiled gently. “I’m sorry. You’ve been involved in these deaths before, and sometimes I get carried away with my explanations.”
“I must be growing squeamish in my old age. Don’t mind me.”
Gwen moved a hand dismissively. “It’s fine. For now, we’re working on the premise that Erik died during the night between sunset and when your milkman found the body this morning. We’re hoping that among all the people in St. Asaph last night, someone will have noticed something amiss.”
“Men can be restless during those hours, myself included, though I saw and heard nothing that could be useful.” Rhys eyed her. “While you question my brethren, what will Gareth be doing?”
“He and Conall—that’s the Irishman we’ve befriended—are going to survey the murder site, speak to the monk who found Erik, and try to find some sign of the men who took the body and where they might have taken it. Why they might have taken it will have to wait.”
“I can tell you the answer to that: they took it to cover up wrongdoing,” Rhys said, speaking like the churchman he was. “I’ve just come from talking to Brother Ben, the monk who was driving the cart. Ben says he never saw the faces of the men who attacked him. They wore their hoods pulled down over their foreheads. He was not subdued quite as forcefully as Gareth, however, and he was able to count five of them.
“Gareth couldn’t even tell us that much. Three attacked him at once. He almost drowned.” She shuddered.
“Your husband does have a knack for finding trouble, doesn’t he?” Rhys reached a hand across the desk, and she took it, squeezing once.
Despite her worries about Gareth’s wellbeing, Gwen managed a smile, though inside, her heart quailed again at how badly injured he was. Since Shrewsbury, with the long journey on horseback home to Aber, the two-day ride to St. Asaph, and then this new attack, Gareth was pushing the edge of what his body was capable of recovering from without real rest. He needed to be in bed.
She and Gareth had resolved to take the investigations they encountered in the path of service to Prince Hywel with a lighter heart, if at all possible, and also to strive to avoid entangling her family members in them more than could be helped. That they were faced with another murder so soon after the last one was troubling, and it was even more troubling that they not only knew the dead man, but that his profession was akin to theirs: there was no getting around the fact that Erik had been a spy, and he may well have been killed for it.
“It’s going to be all right, Gwen. Will you tell me what happened in Shrewsbury?”
It was as if Rhys could read her mind, and to have him so solicitous had tears pricking at the corners of Gwen’s eyes. She closed them for a moment, forcing her shoulders to relax and the lines that had formed on her forehead without her realizing it to smooth.
And then she told him all about the couple who’d impersonated her and Gareth; the quest to discover the impersonaters’ identities; how it had led her whole family to Shrewsbury where they’d become embroiled in another investigation; and how the end result implicated Cadwaladr and Madog in nefarious activities.
When she finished and met Rhys’s eyes, she found him studying her, more concern in his expression than she’d ever seen.
Gwen lifted one shoulder in imitation of Gareth. “Gareth and Hywel want to keep me out of danger. We came close to dying in Shrewsbury, and they don’t want to risk me again.”
“We men can’t help feeling protective of you, Gwen. You know that.” Rhys frowned. “I too am concerned about what happened in Shrewsbury and particularly about the wounds you and your husband sustained.”
Gwen opened her mouth to say that she herself hadn’t been injured, but Rhys had already thought of that and forestalled her. “I’m not talking about just physical wounds, Gwen. You cannot survive what you endured and remain unchanged.” But then he sighed. “Unfortunately, right now I have duties to attend to or I would be the one to take you around the monastery. I assume Prince Hywel has thought far enough ahead that he has assigned a guard to you?”
“That he has. Gareth’s friend, Evan, has consented to come along. I think he’s angry at Gareth for leaving him behind as much as he has in recent weeks. Otherwise, the number of fighting men you have in the region means they’ll be tripping over themselves this week, seeing danger in every shadow. Wait until you meet Hywel’s foster father. He isn’t a large man, but he’s ferociously protective of Hywel.”
“As well he should be.” Rhys slapped both thighs sharply and stood. “They rode east expecting a war and got a peace conference and a murder instead.”
Gwen tipped up her chin to look at him. “Only the youngest among them could be sorry about peace.” Then she hesitated, biting her lip. She hadn’t risen to her feet yet, even though Rhys was implying that their meeting was over by rising himself.
“What is it, Gwen?”
“King Owain is very angry. It is hard to see how Madog could be in the right in any way. He tried to kill Hywel.”
“I understand that Madog’s offense against Hywel cannot go unanswered,” Rhys came around his desk and looked down at her, “but Madog’s grievances against Owain and Gwynedd run deep and are not limited to what occurred this month. You know that.”
Gwen nodded. “I suppose I shouldn’t complain about my task today. Solving a murder is easy compared to what’s in store for you.”
Rhys laughed and held out his hand to help her to her feet. “I am aware that King Owain is here only out of respect for me. I think he wants a war.”
“He lost a son,” Gwen said simply. “But peace or war, I can be grateful that Gareth’s injuries will keep him out of the fighting for the foreseeable future.”
Rhys smiled broadly. “God works in mysterious ways, doesn’t he? A week ago, you would never have said that Gareth taking a blow like he did would be a blessing. And now—”
Gwen’s eyes lit. “And now I would! Thank you for reminding me that good can come from any setback. In truth, we rode here with King Owain because we could do nothing else, but if the king had realized how unfit Gareth was, he would have left him behind at Aber.”
“Then it is just as well he didn’t know, since I have need of Gareth. Again, we can be thankful even when circumstances don’t seem to call for it.”