Conall
Gruffydd bumped Conall’s shoulder. “Good that you’re here. Gareth might need you.”
Conall coughed. “I’m not bored yet.”
“You’re never bored.”
Conall smirked, since what Gruffydd said was most likely true. Conall found the poor behavior of people endlessly fascinating. His time in Wales had so far been an education. And peace conference or legal court, the conclave was something Conall recognized, because his people had a similar system of settling disputes. In his duties for Diarmait, even though he hadn’t been the one to do the actual investigating, he’d testified against murderers before and expected to do so again. This was the first Welsh court he’d been in, but he understood their laws to be not far off in principle from his own.
Having gained his audience’s attention with Bergam’s riveting testimony, Hywel moved on to his next witness. “I call Lord Morgan and Father Alun to the floor.”
Gruffydd tilted his chin to look up at the ceiling, a slight smile on his lips. “This will be good. Just watch.”
“I believe you.” Conall so far had had no trouble watching. He’d known from his first meeting with Gareth that here was a man who couldn’t be bought. He might be tested, as all men were tested, but in the end he could be relied upon. Madog never should have chosen him as the man against whom his case should be made. But then, Madog had been shocked by Hywel’s questioning of Bergam. Maybe he didn’t know Gareth at all. Maybe the choice of Gareth for the man to take the fall for Wrexham had not been his decision.
Instead of watching Hywel as he began his questioning of the two men he’d brought to the front, Conall kept his eyes alternately on Madog and his wife, Susanna, who sat in the row behind him. If Gareth’s foster son was right that it had been she who had met Derwena last night, then her testimony might be the key to everything. Chances were, however, that she would not testify against her husband, if the conversation ever turned to the attempted murder of Hywel—or the slave ring in Shrewsbury. Even if Conall had known her once, he knew her no longer, and she had no reason to tell him what she knew about Erik’s death.
Then again, he hadn’t asked either.
To the conclave’s silent witness, Alun and Morgan related a tale of mistaken identity and false trails, preposterous on the surface but relentless in the telling. It left the listeners with no doubt that the man who’d met with Rhodri in November in Corwen was the imposter, not Gareth himself.
Throughout the tale, Madog’s expression grew more ruddy, as if he was holding his breath, though more likely it was his temper that he was reining in. Meanwhile, Susanna’s expression grew more serene. It was only as Hywel reached the end of his questioning and Morgan and Alun drew their tale to its conclusion that it dawned not only on Conall but on even the daftest listener where this was leading.
The man who’d looked like Gareth had been hired by Prince Cadwaladr, whose name Conall was already sick of hearing, as a ruse in his negotiations with the Earl of Chester. It was no leap at all to wonder if it had been Prince Cadwaladr who’d paid that same imposter to hire Rhodri and the other men to sack Wrexham—all in an attempt to bring down his brother and gather to himself a sack of silver while he was at it.
“For my next witness, I call Conall, nephew to Diarmait mac Murchada, King of Leinster.”
That caused a buzz in the room. Conall pulled on his ear as he made his way to the front. “Lords.” He bowed to the audience and then looked expectantly at Hywel. This was a new side to the prince, and he could only marvel that Hywel had his audience eating out of the palm of his hand like a tamed horse.
“Can you tell me where Gareth was on the fifteenth of March?”
Conall didn’t hesitate to answer. “He was tied up with me in an old mill in Shrewsbury.”
That was news to almost everyone. Those involved had kept their mouths closed about both their adventures and their injuries, and that discretion was paying off now.
“What were you doing in Shrewsbury?” Hywel asked.
Conall gave an involuntary rumble deep in his chest. This was not going to be what Madog, for one, wanted to hear. “I had been sent by my king to track down a band of slavers who’d been stealing women from Leinster. Instead I found a conspiracy run by men of Powys, incited by King Madog and Prince Cadwaladr, selling women from Powys as a means of generating silver quickly.”
Conall’s words rang around the room, and the silence couldn’t have been more complete. Hywel’s eyes were alight with triumph, though he had so far managed to keep the emotion out of his face as a whole. Then everyone started talking at once. Madog was on his feet, shouting, his face so red Conall was afraid he would expire on the spot. Rhys had his hands raised, trying to quiet everyone down.
Then, into the uproar rose Susanna, Queen of Powys. Chin high, she left her seat and walked to stand in front of Hywel. Her voice rang out, and if the men in the room missed the first few words, they didn’t miss the conclusion.
“You need to stop this, Hywel. If the time for telling the truth is here, then here it is: this is all my doing. Madog didn’t have a hand in any of these things of which he is accused. To allow you to think it for a moment longer would be to perpetuate a lie.”