Gwen
The first thing that was obvious about the burned man was how tall he was. Even in death and slightly shrunken from being burned, his feet hung off the end of the table. His boots were larger than any man’s she’d ever seen, and—his missing fingertip aside—his hands were the size of serving platters. Few men would have been strong enough and large enough to get the jump on Erik, but this man was among those who could have.
Gwen began by cutting what was left of his coat and shirt off him, and she was immediately struck by a series of cuts on his forearms. She’d noticed the slashes in his coat, but hadn’t looked closely since large parts of it were burned anyway. With a lantern in one hand for light, she lifted up the arm to see it better.
“Defensive wounds.” Abbot Rhys’s voice spoke from behind her.
Gwen turned at the sound. “It looks that way to me too.”
“I won’t bother telling you that you shouldn’t be here and that you promised not to, so instead I’ll just ask if he was more wounded than what we see here? Particularly, did he have a wound that would have made him unable to leave the barn?”
“He was stabbed in the back.” Gwen swept the light over the man’s body. “I’ll show you if you help me turn him over.”
Rhys took the man’s shoulders while Gwen pushed up on his hip and rolled the corpse onto its side. The skin was badly charred along the whole length of his back, indicating to her that he’d been face down on the ground when the fire had reached him.
The abbot sighed. “He could have killed Erik but been wounded in the fight, resulting in his death at a later hour.”
“It would be convenient if our two murdered men murdered each other.” Gwen settled the body back onto the table. “It might even be true, but we would still be missing the most important piece of the puzzle.”
“What would that be?”
“Why he killed Erik and, once he was dead, what happened to Erik’s possessions?”
Footsteps sounded outside the room, and Prior Anselm poked his head between the half-open door and the frame. “It is almost time for Compline, Father.”
Anselm’s warning was as much for her as for Rhys. It wouldn’t be appropriate for her to be examining a body while the monks were at their prayers. From the passing sneer on Anselm’s face, he didn’t think her being here had ever been appropriate. It was his right to think so, and Gwen was enough used to that attitude by now that she was able to (mostly) ignore it. “I’ll be off to check on Tangwen.”
Gwen flipped the sheet back over the top of the dead man, and the two men moved out of the way to let her precede them into the cloister. She walked along the flagstones a few yards and then stopped near a pillar. Alone in the dark, she debated waiting for the monks to leave and then returning to finish her examination.
Then Rhys and Anselm exited the church, and she heard Rhys say, “How are you feeling Anselm? You’ve been ill for a few days now, haven’t you? You have a strong singing voice that we’ve missed at the last few night vigils.”
That was pure flattery, but Anselm didn’t seem to know it. “I am much better, thank you, Father. These illnesses befall me every now and again.”
Rhys and Anselm had turned in the opposite direction, heading towards the dormitory so they could process into the church with their fellow monks. Their voices echoed among the stones, and Gwen stayed where she was so they wouldn’t know that she was eavesdropping.
“I’m glad to hear you’re better. The other night after Matins, I went to the infirmary to check on you, but you were not there.”
“What day was this?”
“It must have been just before King Owain’s party arrived at the monastery.”
“I was probably in the latrine,” Anselm said. “I’ve been on the mend since then.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
Their voices echoed away down the passage, and Gwen moved out of the shadows, listening and wondering. Anselm might not realize it, but any time a man said, I’m sure you’re right, what he was really saying was, I don’t believe it for a heartbeat, but I’m not going to argue with you about it.
She stood alone in the covered walkway, hesitating not because she was unsure of what she needed to do but because she was struggling to find the courage to do it. It might even be that Rhys guessed she was still in the cloister and inquired of Anselm’s whereabouts so she could overhear. Anselm hadn’t appeared ill that first morning when Mathonwy had found Erik’s body. He didn’t appear ill now. Was that what Rhys was trying to tell her?
Anselm was the one man throughout everything that had happened whom nobody had questioned—and yet, he’d arrived at St. Kentigern’s with Lwc only a week ago. He’d been a constant fixture at Rhys’s side since they arrived, and because he was a smaller than average man with perfectly formed hands and fingers, soft and unused to manual labor as appropriate for a prior at a monastery, she hadn’t seriously considered him to be a part of this.
Maybe it was time to reconsider that assumption.
The monastery bell began to toll, and then the Latin processional rose in chorus from the monks’ dormitory. The sound decided her. With hasty steps, though on tiptoe so they wouldn’t echo, she hurried down the passage to the west side of the monastery where Prior Anselm had his quarters adjacent to Abbot Rhys’s. The brothers were still processing when she reached his door, looked both ways down the walkway, and slipped inside. In a monastery, no door but the treasury was ever locked.
As befitting a monk’s sensibilities, the room was neat and clean, with few possessions: a table, stool, and bed, and three hooks on the wall, one empty. A monk’s robe and a fine, soft wool cloak hung from the others. A quick look in the trunk in the corner revealed nothing more than a few spare garments. Gwen swung around to survey the room. She didn’t know what she’d hoped to find, but she wasn’t seeing anything out of place.
Deciding she could afford a few more moments of looking, she unfolded and refolded the blanket on his bed and then lifted up the pallet to see what was underneath. It was a basic rope bed surmounted by a mattress stuffed with sacking and cloth. Down would have been more comfortable but was inappropriate for a monk, even a prior.
However, as she moved around the bed to make sure everything was in place, she noted a lump in the mattress near the head of the bed. Lumpy mattresses were more normal than not, but she pulled the sheet away and lifted up the mattress to reveal a mostly flattened leather satchel, which couldn’t have been comfortable to sleep on. It was the kind of bag that a man would wear on his lower back with the strap at a diagonal across his chest.
On her knees beside the bed, she opened the satchel. Inside lay a packet of letters bound with a ribbon, along with another that was loose. Beneath them in one corner of the bag was a gold signet ring.
Hywel’s signet ring.
She clenched it in her fist, her heart pounding, and then slipped it into her purse. For the first time, she understood why a spy might choose to swallow their lord’s token rather than allow it to fall into enemy hands. It didn’t appear that Anselm had done anything with it yet, but he hadn’t had it very long either.
She eased out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and pulled off the ribbon that held the documents together. All of their seals were broken. The first one was addressed simply to ‘A’, which could have been Anselm, but a quick scan of the letter revealed that it was a detailed list of the writer’s activities in England over the last month, some of which Gwen already knew about. It was signed with the words, your devoted husband and a flourished ‘C’. She put the letter aside, and with trembling hands picked up the one that had been loose. It had been sealed with the crest of the Deheubarth and was a letter of introduction for Anselm from King Cadell to the Bishop of Bangor.
“I should have memorized the contents and burned them. More to the point, I should have left immediately after I acquired them.”
Gwen had become absorbed in reading and thus negligent of her surroundings. Now she gaped at Anselm as he stood in the doorway. The door was open, so she could hear the monks’ chorus from the church. She hadn’t been wrong to think that Compline was ongoing, but Anselm had left early, and she was frozen on her knees on the other side of his bed. She put her hand on the hilt of her knife and then slowly eased it away again. She didn’t want him to think she was going to fight him. The letters were evidence of wrongdoing but not worth her life.
She looked past him to the cloister. Nobody moved in it. “Why didn’t you?” It was a stall for time, though she really did want to know the answer.
“Hubris, mainly, and the feeling that if I
left, I would leave too much undone.”
Anselm gently closed the door, blocking her view of the cloister
beyond and dashing whatever hope she might have had of calling for
help. The monks were singing so loudly that she could hear them
even through the door. If she screamed, nobody was going to hear
her.
Anselm lifted the cloak from its hook, swung it around his shoulders, and then crossed to the trunk. He opened it and removed the clothing, which he rolled into a tight bundle and tucked under his arm. “There was more happening here than I supposed when I first came to the monastery. St. Asaph is the crossroads of Wales.”
“You killed Erik.”
“I did no such thing.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You serve King Cadell.”
He glanced down to where she knelt by the bed with the letters in her lap. The one from King Cadell was on top, his seal plainly visible. “King Cadell sent me to pick up the trail of Prince Cadwaladr, who betrayed my king as he has betrayed so many others.” He bowed. “I came highly recommended from my king and the Bishop of St. Dafydd.”
Gwen held up the letters. “One of these is from Prince Cadwaladr to his wife, Alice. What are the others?”
“Communication between Susanna and Alice; several missives from Cadwaladr to various lords in Gwynedd, asking for their support in his quest to regain his lands; and a letter from Cadwaladr to King Cadell, discussing a return to their alliance.”
“How can you say you didn’t kill Erik when you have his things?”
“Because I didn’t kill him. I witnessed his murder. To his credit, Erik fought back. He managed to stab his companion, but not before he himself was so weakened, he couldn’t fight anymore. While they were arguing, I took the bag.”
The calm way he denied the murder but confessed to thievery was disconcerting. She also didn’t know that she believed him. Jerome could have been stabbed in the back in a fight with Erik, but she found it equally likely that Anselm had done it himself, either in defense of Erik or so he could take the bag without resistance. Regardless of whether or not Anselm was telling her the truth, she was determined to continue asking questions, to keep him here as long as possible and to distract him. “Why would his companion kill him?”
“Why does any man kill another?” Anselm tsked through his teeth. “Greed. They were arguing about money, or the apportionment of money that was yet to be made. Erik’s friend wanted more, and Erik wanted out. He’d fallen in with a common thief and lost his life because of it. He used to be smarter.”
Gwen didn’t know about that, but the Erik she’d known had had a strong sense of self-preservation. Not enough of one, apparently. “Why were you there at all?”
“Erik and I had arranged to meet in the barn, so he could give me the letter to King Cadell. Before I could show myself, Erik’s killer surprised him.”
“Why didn’t you bury the bodies, or hide them, or … or something? You could have disappeared, and nobody would ever have been the wiser.”
Anselm scoffed. “Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a body on short notice? Really get rid of it?” He shook his head. “Better to leave things as they were.” He eyed her sourly. “I didn’t know about your husband—or you—at the time. I left Erik in the trough where he died and piled hay on the other fellow, who’d managed to crawl back into the barn to nurse his wound, but then bled out where he lay. You’ll have to find someone else to blame for the fire. Your husband neglected to leave a watch in case the culprit returned to the scene of his crime.” He cocked his head at her. “I imagine he won’t make that mistake again.”
Then he stepped closer, true menace emanating from him for the first time. He held out his hand. “I need my letters back.”
Without arguing, Gwen handed him the bundle of letters. He quickly went through them, taking out the ones he wanted and tossing the rest onto the bed. Then, he grabbed the bag from where it lay beside her and stuffed his bundle into it.
Gwen kept both hands up, knowing she couldn’t keep him any longer. He knew better than to stay when Hywel and Gareth, not to mention Abbot Rhys, could return at any time.
He backed towards the door. “It was a pleasure doing business with you, Gwen. I haven’t met many women quite like you. Give my regards to your lord.” Anselm saluted her with a hand to his temple—and then was gone.