Hywel
The messenger spoke to Abbot Rhys, and the news of the burning barn swept through the conclave with hardly a pause from speaker to listener. He’d barely opened his mouth to announce what was happening before the chapter house was deserted.
Hywel instantly sent Gareth off with Gwen and Conall. The barn was where Erik had died, so they might truly regret its loss, depending upon what they’d missed seeing inside it the first time around. Within a few moments, the only people who remained in the chapter house were members of Hywel’s own family. Abbot Rhys himself had walked away with Madog, bending his ear with soothing tones, thanking him for sending his own men to assist in fighting the fire.
Hywel had never experienced quite this amount of disarray at the end of any meeting in which his father had participated.
Eventually, the only people left in the room were King Owain, Hywel, Taran, Cynan, and a few retainers, including Gruffydd, who stood at the door, as far away from the action as possible. After sitting back in his chair with a sigh, King Owain looked down for a moment, one hand smoothing his mustache, and then he started to laugh. Hywel looked at Cynan, whose eyes widened as he stared at their father, and then Cynan shook his head, making clear that he had no idea why Owain was laughing, and he wasn’t going to be the one to ask.
Hywel sighed. Such was the fate of the edling. That thought, again today, made him smile rather than despair. If nothing else, his father’s amusement was contagious. He pulled out the chair Rhys had abandoned and sat in it, his eyes on the king.
By now, King Owain was laughing so hard that tears were leaking out of the corners of his eyes. It wasn’t until he put both hands on the top of his head and leaned back to look up at the ceiling, trying to gain control of his laughter, that he finally managed to speak. “Old Madog really pulled that one out of the sack, didn’t he? Whoo!” He rocked back in his chair, still struggling for control.
“What are you finding so funny?” Hywel said.
Owain wiped his eyes. “We had him, you know. We had him completely in our net.” Within the space of a heartbeat, the amusement vanished entirely, and Owain leaned forward to look intently at Hywel. “He tried to kill you. You. My. Son.” He poked a finger on the table to emphasize the last three words.
But then he calmed and sat back again. “There really should have been no counter to that. He gambled with your life, and he lost. He should have had to pay a price for his ambition.”
Hywel opened his mouth to speak, but his father put up a hand to stop him.
“Cadwaladr’s ambition. I know that’s what you think.” He sighed. “I think it too.”
“That wasn’t exactly what I was about to say,” Hywel said. “You know—and Rhys knows—about what happened in Shrewsbury. But Madog doesn’t know that we know it. That Madog and Cadwaladr conspired to sell Madog’s people as a quick way for Cadwaladr to raise money so that he can pay someone—Ranulf, perhaps, or one of Alice’s other brothers or cousins—to attack Gwynedd remains Cadwaladr’s end game. He still wants the throne. Madog must have seen my arrival at Dinas Bran as a way to clear away one more impediment.”
“Not that either Madog or Ranulf needs an excuse to attack Gwynedd,” Owain added. “We did just take Mold and the surrounding lands.”
Hywel nodded. “Nevertheless, though we shouldn’t assume it quite yet, I truly believe that Madog himself hired these men to attack that monastery in order to come to the conference with a grievance that was credible and new. Bringing up the death of his father or what happened fifteen years ago before Uncle Cadwallon died might be relevant in the long run—and Madog surely keeps those grievances against Gwynedd fresh—but they would not be enough to convince the conclave that you are in the wrong in the matter of the attack on me.”
King Owain tapped his fingers rhythmically on the table. “And that is why Madog truly came to this conference, isn’t it? Not for peace, per se.”
“It was to convince outsiders, Normans, maybe even King Stephen or Robert of Gloucester, that you are out of control.”
“With grief, still, you mean?”
Hywel canted his head to one side, saying yes without saying it.
“Rhun’s death has repercussions far beyond the actual loss of him, which is distressing enough,” Owain said. “It is time, however, that the other lords of Wales and the March stopped thinking I’m in my dotage. I have many years of rule in me yet.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Hywel said. “In truth, I hope for it.”
His father shot him a piercing look. “You mean that.”
“Of course I mean it!”
“Not all sons would,” Owain said.
Hywel snorted in disgust. “This son has always felt that way. If something were to happen to you, I would lead, and I would want to, but I’m patient. Rhun was too, you know.”
“I know.” Owain rubbed at his chin. “So, how do we get the better of Madog?”
Hywel smiled. Intrigue was to him like mead was to another man—his lifeblood, even if he’d been neglectful of that side of him of late. “First of all, there are a few things you don’t know.” He proceeded to relate everything they knew about the investigation into Erik’s death, which on the surface appeared peripheral to the situation with Madog, up until last night, when Susanna had seen Derwena away with the man who might be his killer.
“And this is the sister of the woman Gwen knows, who came here looking for her?” Owain said.
“Yes. It feels coincidental that Gareth, Conall, and Gruffydd witnessed Rhodri’s capture last night. If Rhodri really was a member of the marauders, paid for by Madog, then he should have been with them already. Why arrest him and abuse him now? But if I’m wrong, and Madog didn’t set this all up, how did they know that Rhodri—a common boy from Corwen—was involved?”
“Puzzling, but not insurmountable,” Owain said. “We need to get to Rhodri.”
Hywel rose to his feet. “I’ll do it. He knows more than he’s telling, that is certain. If he will confess to the raid on the conclave, and if he was the one who rode to St. Asaph with Erik, then perhaps he will tell me some detail that will help us discover who murdered Erik and why. In fact, I’ll go see him now before anyone else has time to start thinking about what he knows and while most everyone is still at this fire.”
Owain pushed to his feet too and jerked his head at Cynan. “With me, son. We will make our unhappiness known to everyone within hailing distance. They will remember us, and nobody will wonder what has become of Hywel.”
Cynan grinned. “It will be my pleasure, sir.”
The two men transformed their faces into the very epitome of discontent and stalked from the room, mirror images of each other except that Cynan was several inches shorter than his father. Hywel went out the other way, in the direction the monks had taken Rhodri when they’d left the chapter house.
Hywel had been to the monastery before and had made it his business to know how it was laid out. The monks’ dormitory was on the second floor above the chapter house and attached to the church at the north transept, so during the night offices the monks could descend into the church by the night stair without having to go outside. At the same time, while the vast majority of monks participated in the daily life of the monastery, there were times when a brother wanted solitude or was under penance, and such a man moved into a cell in the northern range of buildings, adjacent to the infirmary block.
The cells weren’t really cells in the prison sense of the word, but while the dormitory was exactly that—a long, open room where the monks at the monastery slept—the cells were private, each with its own door. There were three of them, tucked between the infirmary pantry and the warming room for the sick. They had their own anteroom, to protect the inhabitants of the cells from weather and the wind that might blow through the window, perhaps a foot square, in their individual wooden doors. Each cell had a second window high up in the back wall. It meant they couldn’t see out of it, but daylight could light the cell and save on candles.
Rhodri’s cell was being watched by the same two monks who had taken him away. Either Madog really did trust Abbot Rhys to keep Rhodri safe, or he’d been distracted by the fire and hadn’t yet given thought to how thoroughly his prisoner might be guarded. Last Hywel had seen, Madog been walking away with Rhys, and somewhere in the back of Hywel’s mind, he had a stray thought that Rhys had meant to distract Madog and his men so they left the field clear for Hywel. But then he gave a dismissive shake of his head. Rhys was an old soldier and spy, but he wasn’t omnipotent.
The two monks who guarded Rhodri wore hooded robes, hands hidden inside their sleeves. Both were dark and lean in their middle twenties, and they could have been brothers in life as well as vocation. Perhaps they were.
Hywel’s boots scraped on the threshold to the anteroom, calling the attention of the two monks to him. “May I speak to the prisoner?”
The expression on the monks’ faces would have made Hywel laugh if things were a bit less serious. The brothers knew who Hywel was, and they didn’t want to deny him, but they hadn’t been given orders regarding who might talk to Rhodri.
“I will be only a moment.”
When the two men still hesitated, Hywel put up his hands. “I assure you that I won’t harm him! And if anyone asks, you are free to tell him that I came calling.”
“Yes, my lord.” The two monks left the cell anteroom, instead posting themselves on either side of the exterior door, which remained open. Hywel didn’t mind. This wasn’t a secret meeting, since the monks had obviously seen him. If word got back to Madog that he’d been here, he wanted there to be no questions about what he’d come for.
The window shutter in the door that blocked Rhodri’s cell could be opened from either side, and Rhodri’s window lay open flat against the outside of the door, allowing his guards to see what he was doing inside. At the moment, that was nothing, other than sitting on his pallet on the floor, looking, if anything, more miserable than he had in the conclave.
Hywel put his nose to the window. “Come here, boy.”
Rhodri looked up. He couldn’t have missed Hywel’s conversation with the monks, but he was putting on the appearance of caring little for it one way or the other. “I was told to speak to nobody.”
“Told by whom?”
“King Madog.” As Rhodri said the king’s name, he lifted his left hand in a dismissive gesture, and Hywel instantly revised his approach. Though the last finger on Rhodri’s left hand was completely normal, his hands were the size of serving platters. Hywel had been going to try to sweet-talk him, but now he decided that amused dismissiveness was a better tactic.
“I don’t want to talk to you about the sacking at Wrexham. I already know you weren’t paid by my father to do it.”
Rhodri was on his feet in an instant. “But I was! We all were! I swear it!”
Hywel was again derisive. “How much did Madog pay you to swear it?”
Rhodri’s expression went blank for a moment as he tried to figure out what Hywel had just asked, and then he launched himself at the door. “Nothing!”
Hywel backed off. “How much did Owain pay you, then?”
“Ten pennies each!” That was a fortune for a peasant.
“Do you have those pennies on you now?”
Rhodri stuck out his chin in stubborn defiance. “I spent them.”
“Is that why you’re here? To get more money out of King Owain?”
“No! He summoned me!”
Hywel looked darkly at Rhodri. “How so?”
“I received a message to meet my contact here at St. Asaph. He had another task for me, one that didn’t mean sacking a monastery. That was why I was on the road north of the monastery last night.” Rhodri looked down at his feet, seemingly having forgotten about not talking to anyone. “I was supposed to meet one of King Owain’s captains there, but King Madog’s men appeared instead.”
“What was the name of Owain’s captain who paid you?”
Rhodri’s head came up. “So you believe me?”
“I believe that you were paid, and if it was one of my captains who did it, then I want his name so I can get to the bottom of this quickly—hopefully before the conclave starts again this afternoon.”
The boy finally remembered to look mulish again. “I shouldn’t tell you.”
“You really should. Perhaps it will mean that we go easy on you when you’re accused of murder.”
Rhodri jerked backwards. “I didn’t kill anyone!”
“Your own hands say otherwise.”
Rhodri held his hands out in front of him, turning them back and forth.
“I have a dead body in the chapel, one of my men. He was strangled by someone with unusually large hands, and yours would fit around his neck perfectly. And then, a noose will fit around yours.”
“A-a-a noose!” Rhodri’s horror and confusion seemed genuine.
“In addition, I have a man who will swear that he saw you in the dead man’s company three days ago.” Hywel’s words were a mix of half-lies and outright untruths, but he didn’t care as long as they got a reaction out of Rhodri.
Which they did.
“No!” Rhodri staggered away from the door. “I-I-”
“If it wasn’t you, then you should tell me the name of the man who paid you, and maybe we can discover together what is really going on here.”
Rhodri was still staring at Hywel. Then he moved forward and grasped the sill of the window with both hands. “This is a church! I claim sanctuary!”
“You can claim sanctuary all you want, but only after you tell me this man’s name.” If Hywel had been inside the room, he would have thrown Rhodri against the wall, and Rhodri seemed to know it, because he cowered before Hywel’s wrath, both arms moving to cover his head as if Hywel was about to hit him, which wasn’t an illogical assumption. “Gareth! His name was Gareth!”
Hywel so wanted to laugh, but now that the name had been given, he realized he was completely unsurprised to hear it, and that was why he was able to keep his expression serene. Rhodri had just told him far more than a name. He’d given him the identity of the man behind the plot, even if that was a name Rhodri didn’t know. Hywel bobbed his chin in thanks and stepped back from the door.
Rhodri lowered his arms, his eyes on Hywel and disbelieving that the questioning was over. “What about me?”
Hywel studied him from several paces away. “Tell your story to the conclave just as you told me. I won’t interfere.”
“You really do believe me.” Rhodri’s shoulders sagged.
Hywel scoffed. “Every word you’ve told me is a lie, but that lie didn’t come from you, and I believe that you believe yourself to be telling the truth. Go ahead and tell it. Obey Madog, do as you are bid, and you will survive this.”
“Thank you.” Rhodri breathed in and out as if he’d just run a mile.
“No.” Hywel gave a low laugh as he turned away. “Thank you.”