Gareth
“What’s your opinion of coincidences?” Conall climbed down the ladder and moved to stand beside Gareth to look down with him at the coins as they lay in the mud. “It seems strangely coincidental that Erik is killed on the very day we arrive at St. Asaph.”
Gareth scoffed. “They happen, but I don’t trust them.”
“Nor do I.” Conall gazed around the paddock, his eyes searching. “If I had been more mindful of them in Shrewsbury, I might not have been captured.” He glanced at Gareth out of the corner of his eye. “But then, we would not have met, and I am wondering more and more if what we might see as a chance meeting was destined from the start.”
Gareth grunted. “It is at times hard to discern the difference between coincidence, chance, and destiny.”
Conall turned to look directly at Gareth. “I attribute the fact that I live to your stubborn refusal to accept coincidence. If I haven’t thanked you properly for my life, I apologize. Words are inadequate to convey what I owe you.”
Gareth made a dismissive motion with his hand, but Conall wasn’t done.
“If you need anything of me, you have only to ask.”
Gareth swallowed hard, realizing that Conall’s reasons for staying in Wales might have more to do with the life debt he felt he owed Gareth than curiosity or possible diplomacy with Gwynedd. In retrospect, that Conall was too injured for a sea journey was a rather feeble excuse for not returning to Ireland. “I understand the debt you feel you owe me,” he found himself saying, matching Conall’s grave tone, “and I understand why you feel it, but I did my duty. Finding you in that mill was coincidental.”
“You were at the mill because you believed the villains had made it their hideout.”
“True—”
“The debt remains,” Conall said. “As you said a moment ago, it is hard to discern at the time when it is destiny sitting on your right shoulder rather than chance.”
Gareth held out a hand to Conall and met his eyes. Among the Irish and Welsh, a life debt was never to be taken lightly by either party. Conall might think he owed Gareth his life, and Gareth couldn’t deny the truth of it, but saving a man’s life incurred a responsibility in the other direction too. A connection had been formed between the two men, and Gareth now had a responsibility for the life Conall led from this point on. All of this Conall knew without either of them needing to articulate it, and he grasped Gareth’s forearm and shook.
But then Gareth grinned. “We are both alive, and that’s what matters. Work beside me for long, and you may find any debt paid off very quickly.”
Conall smiled with his eyes and shook his head. “I’m beginning to understand why that might be. You could no more turn away when you are needed than you could stop breathing.”
“I’m thinking I could say the same about you.”
Conall opened his mouth, prepared to protest, but Gareth forestalled him with another laugh. He moved his right hand to Conall’s left shoulder and shook him a little, careful not to hurt him. “Friends.”
Conall canted his head thoughtfully, but he put an even more gentle hand on Gareth’s left shoulder. “Friends.”
Satisfied that the exchange had cleared the air between them, Gareth released Conall and gestured to the coins. “I don’t know about you, but I find it very hard to believe that finding silver coins in the mud near where the body of a servant to a prince of Wales was found is a matter of chance.” He finally bent to pluck the coins from the mud. Straightening, he rubbed the dirt off with his thumb and turned one over in order to peer at the faded lettering and image. “This is seventy years old, issued under King William.” He held it out to Conall.
Conall gingerly took the coin. “It’s a long way from home.”
Gareth waggled his head back and forth. “Maybe. Few Welsh kings have issued coins. If a Welshman is to have one, it is likely to be English in origin.”
The rain hadn’t at all lessened, but the pounding of hooves of a horse ridden hard along the track to the barn could be easily heard, coming from the south, the direction in which the monastery lay. Gareth didn’t actually say what now? because it seemed a pointless question, and a moment later, a young monk reined in near the fence. “My lords! My lords! I have a summons from the abbot!”
Gareth and Conall exchanged a look—resigned and wary at the same time. The monastery had few riding horses, so even without the monk’s urgent words, Gareth would have known that the reason he’d been sent was important. Abbot Rhys wouldn’t have known how far his messenger might have to ride before he found them.
“Just tell me.” Gareth took the horse’s bridle to hold him steady and looked up at the monk, who was breathing hard with excitement and the effort of his ride.
“Another dead man.” The monk put his hand to his heart. “He was found in a field to the north of here. The abbot is already on his way, and he asked that you meet him there.”
“We will follow you,” Gareth said.
With a whistle, Gareth rounded up Llelo and Dai, who were already on their way to him, having heard the horse’s hooves too. It seemed pointless to leave the boys on guard at an empty barn, and their purpose was to watch Gareth’s and Conall’s backs, not the murder site. As befitting the sons of Hywel’s captain of the guard, Llelo and Dai had their own mounts and, in short order, they all cantered after the young monk.
The spot where the body had been found was a mile and a half from the barn and, as promised, Abbot Rhys was already there when they arrived. Neither Lwc nor Anselm was beside him: Lwc might still be helping Gwen question the monks, and the position of the sun indicated that mid-afternoon prayers might have started. As with dawn prayers, Anselm would be needed to lead them.
Two oxen and a plow were stopped ten yards from where Abbot Rhys was standing, having curved from the straight path they’d been laying. It seemed the monk who tended this field had been going over the ground for planting when he’d come upon the body lying in the dirt on the edge of the field.
Their small party reined in and dismounted near the oxen. With a jerk of his head, Gareth indicated that Llelo and Dai should make a circuit of the area, as they had at the barn. Then he and Conall walked to where Rhys waited for them next to the body, which was wrapped in a rough sheet. The dirt was loose from the plowing, but if the men who’d left the body had tried to bury it, their attempts had been half-hearted at best. More likely, they’d simply dumped it. Rhys flicked out a hand indicating that the monk who’d escorted Gareth and Conall should move back. He obeyed with alacrity.
“The plowman saw the body when he turned at the corner of the field.” Rhys bent to the wrappings and flicked back the sheet where it covered the dead man’s face.
Gareth let out a burst of air, unable to contain his disbelief. “Erik!”
“Indeed.” Rhys’s tone was as dry as a king’s wine.
Conall went into a crouch beside Erik, studying the dead man’s face.
Gareth stepped closer too, remembering that Conall hadn’t been in attendance that morning when they’d been called to the barn the first time. “Have you ever seen him before?”
“No, I don’t believe so. He may have come to Ireland, but not to a place where I was. Then again, he may have been there most of the time I was here.” Somewhat absently, Conall lifted up the edge of the sheet, but then he drew in a sharp breath and recoiled. Dropping the sheet, he looked up at Abbot Rhys. “What madness is this?”
“Madness is right,” Rhys said. Some of the onlookers had stepped closer to better hear the conversation, and Rhys motioned with his hand as he’d done to the messenger to shoo them away. Once his underlings obeyed, Rhys gestured Gareth closer and pulled back the cloth, exposing Erik’s torso.
Gareth drew back with a gasp. He wasn’t often shocked, but what had been done to Erik’s midsection was unsettling to say the least. The men who’d stolen him had expanded on the stab wound Gareth had seen, cut him down the middle, pulled back the outer layers of skin and muscle, and sliced into his stomach and intestines.
Conall cleared his throat. “I gather he didn’t look like this the last time you saw him?”
“No,” Rhys said curtly.
Conall was still crouched beside the body. After collecting himself, Gareth knelt to get a closer look, even though that was the last thing he wanted to do. “It’s a desecration, but at least he didn’t suffer.” The wounds were ragged, but since Erik had already been dead, they hadn’t bled. It was still raining too, and with the dampness all around—on the trees, the ground, and the grass that grew against the stones of the field—whatever smell Erik was putting out was minimal.
Gareth grimaced. “I confess in all my years of service to my prince, I have never seen anything like this before.” He rose to his feet, sickened by what had been done to Erik. Murder was one thing, but being hacked apart was another. It wasn’t as if Gareth didn’t have experience with the criminal mind, but the man who did this was as cold and foreign to Gareth as any villain he’d ever encountered.
Conall took in a careful breath. “I have.”
“I have also.” Abbot Rhys turned away from the body to stare east. “In the course of my duties in past days, I came upon a courier from Empress Maud, who’d been captured by the enemy. He’d swallowed the Empress’s ring rather than allow it to be taken from him. They cut it out of him. Unlike Erik, they hadn’t bothered with killing him first. He suffered.” Rhys cleared his throat, disturbed by the memory.
“I have seen something similar, though in Ireland.” Conall looked at Gareth. “I didn’t know Erik nor his duties for Prince Hywel, but—”
Gareth cut Conall off. He wasn’t angry at Conall but at the situation, which had the hairs on the back of his neck standing straight up, and his stomach was churning worse than Gwen’s in the morning. “Erik would have known to swallow evidence that he worked for Prince Hywel if he was hard pressed. He was expert at hiding his identity and allegiance, though I don’t know if Prince Hywel gave him a token as proof that he was under his command.”
“You might ask the prince, when next you see him,” Conall said. “It would be unfortunate if his token has fallen into the hands of evildoers. They could do great harm in the prince’s name.”
Gareth himself had been impersonated at the behest of Prince Cadwaladr last autumn, though the ruse had been far more elaborate, in that the man had been made to look like Gareth. Many men would pay a significant sum to acquire a ring or signet of an enemy lord. It was why such tokens were guarded closely. A man with the seal of the king spoke for the king.
Gareth frowned at the abbot, who was still looking away. “I can tell there’s something else. What is it?”
Rhys turned back, his lips pressed together, and then his eyes skated past Gareth and went straight to Conall. “I know of two other reasons for a man to be so mutilated.”
Conall had risen to his feet by now, and the way he was looking intently at Rhys had Gareth feeling like he was missing something. Then, when Rhys didn’t continue speaking, Conall bobbed his head. “I have encountered such blasphemy in Ireland, but those monsters eviscerate animals not—”
Gareth found his head swiveling from Conall to Rhys and back again. “What are you two talking about?”
“For one, pagans.” Conall spat on the ground. “Those who worship the old gods split open an animal and use his entrails to predict the future.” He pointed with his chin to Rhys. “I’ve never seen it done to a man before, though.”
“Sacrilege is everywhere,” Rhys said, “especially in times such as these when a man feels uncertain in his own home and the four horsemen of the apocalypse ride unchecked. The war in England has unleashed the devil in many men’s hearts.”
Gareth had no patience for this kind of talk, especially coming from two otherwise reasonable men. “Someone murdered Erik, stole him from us, cut him open, and then dumped him here. Why they did any of that remains a mystery, but it was a human hand that held the knife—and that is the man I will apprehend.”
Rhys’s expression cleared. “If any of the good people of St. Asaph were involved in something so sinister, I would know of it.”
“Of course you would,” Gareth said. “Erik wasn’t a druid. He didn’t care for rituals, satanic or otherwise. He was a spy for Prince Hywel and was killed because of it. Our task is to find out who—and then why. The souls of the men responsible I leave to you.”
Rhys nodded jerkily at Gareth. “Of course. You are right.”
Conall gave a low laugh. “Perhaps some of the Devil’s Weed our captors gave me has addled my mind.”
“You see clearly enough most times.” Gareth was disturbed by the condition of Erik’s body, but even more so at how much the sight of it had shaken his friends. He narrowed his eyes at Rhys. “You said two reasons. What is the second?”
“Certain men are fascinated by the human form. Men have been known to dig up the newly dead in order to cut into their bodies. They say the purpose is to better understand what goes on inside, leading to an improved ability to heal the sick.” Rhys pursed his lips, just marginally less disapproving than he’d been when they’d discussed pagans.
For Gareth’s part, he could understand the quest for knowledge, and he knew something of the innards of men because he’d fought in wars and tried to save the lives of companions on the field of battle. He himself wouldn’t be opposed to knowing more about how the body worked and could see its use in healing and in his investigations. Given the gruesome state of Erik’s body, however, he wasn’t going to say as much to Rhys, who, for all his worldly ways, was still a churchman and would not want to see anyone’s body so defiled.
They’d fallen down the trapdoor of speculation again, and it was time to get on with the real business of investigating murder. He pulled the coins from his purse and showed them to Rhys. “We found these in your paddock. I think they give us a far better and more mundane motivation for Erik’s death: greed.”
Rhys accepted the coins, eyebrows raised. “Five silver pennies? The monastery keeps a bag of coins in our treasury—” He broke off, his face paling and his mind going to a place Gareth’s hadn’t yet traveled. “If these came from our—” He spun on one heel and pointed to one of the other brothers who’d been lurking twenty feet away. “Brother Fidelus, I need you!”
The monk hastened forward, and Rhys spoke to him in succinct sentences, asking him to take another brother and the horse and return to the monastery posthaste. If the coins had come from the treasury, it was already robbed, but if the treasury was unlocked, someone needed to stand in front of it. Anything else would be a gross neglect of duty. At the same time, Gareth’s thoughts went again to Conall’s supposition that Erik could have been killed for Hywel’s ring. The coins could have been offered in payment, and when Erik spurned them, he was killed instead.
Rhys held out the coins to Gareth.
“What if they’re yours?” Gareth asked.
“Keep them until I’m sure,” Rhys said.
Conall tipped his head towards the body. “Shall we escort Erik together?”
“Likely he’s safe from predation now,” Gareth said, “but it’s the least he deserves.”