Gareth
“What are you doing—” Gwen closed her lips on her protest before it was fully realized, and allowed Gareth to tug her out of the street and around a corner.
Gareth stopped a little way down the alley, keeping his arm around her and his head bowed in the darkness until Luke passed. The wall behind him felt cold at his back, and he tried to ignore the rank smell in the alley. As he held Gwen, his overriding need was to protect her from where this investigation was heading. More than when they’d gone to Newcastle-under-Lyme and found themselves saving the life of Prince Henry, he felt out of his depth in this English town.
After Luke had gone by, Gareth stayed where he was through another count of ten, and then he finally released Gwen.
She looked up into his face. “Am I to guess what this is about, or do I already know?”
“You said it earlier,” Gareth said. “That’s the brothel, the one that goes with the coin we found in Conall’s room. According to John Fletcher’s information, if I show it to the man at the door, it will gain me entrance.”
Both of them peered around the corner of the alley again, looking towards the house where the doorman still stood in shadow, watching the street and obviously on guard.
“We aren’t far from where the girl died,” Gwen said. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I sincerely hope not and fear to ask,” Gareth said.
“What if nobody will admit to knowing the girl because she worked at this brothel?” Gwen gestured towards the house. “How many of the townspeople with whom we spoke would willingly admit they knew her from there?”
“Not many,” Gareth said. “The town council and the good citizens of Shrewsbury tolerate whores out of necessity, but they don’t like them.”
“If she was a whore, and she escaped, why kill her? Why not simply bring her back to the brothel?”
“I don’t know.”
“And why the bruising?”
Gareth didn’t want to answer, but it wasn’t information he felt he could keep to himself. “From what I understand, not from experience but from what others have told me, that guard we see there in the doorway is employed by the brothel to keep the girls who work there in line.”
Gwen contemplated that piece of information for a few heartbeats. “In case any decide they want to earn their living another way?”
“Yes. Beating would not be outside his purview,” Gareth said. “Such men also are called upon to control unruly patrons.”
“Oh.” Gwen nodded. “They probably serve mead in there, don’t they.”
“Wine and beer, rather, since we’re in England.” Out of a desire to fleece the men who patronized them to the fullest extent, brothels served alcohol as well as women, but too much beer in a violent man could be dangerous to a woman, a fact which Gwen would have seen for herself often enough.
Gareth closed his eyes briefly, forced for honesty’s sake to add a final comment to the conversation. “It isn’t uncommon for girls to be forced into this life, Gwen, and once in it, they have no means of getting out. They’re whores. Who’s going to marry them?”
Gwen chewed on her lower lip as she studied the house in front of her.
Except for the guard, the brothel looked nothing out of the ordinary. That was probably on purpose, so the worthies of Shrewsbury could walk by without having to think about what went on inside.
“Here in England, a child produced out of wedlock is such a shame that it might leave a girl without a home,” Gareth said. “Or the child herself might be abandoned. Alternatively, a father might be so in debt that he sells his daughter to free himself of it.”
Gwen drew in a breath. “I feel like a child who’s just discovered that the puppets at an Easter fair aren’t real but hang on strings pulled by men.”
“I don’t see it that way, Gwen,” Gareth said. “It’s just that you have no experience with a town like Shrewsbury, with all the darkness that goes on beneath the surface here.”
“I investigate murder!” she said. “How could I not have known any of this before?”
Gareth put his arm across her shoulders and turned her away from the brothel, heading back towards the east gate and the monastery. “We have done what we came to do tonight. I will speak to John Fletcher in the morning.”
“And it will be with John that you visit the brothel—in daylight,” she said. “Without me.”
“Without you, cariad,” he said to her. “I cannot express to you how unwilling John was to take you in there. I confess, I’m starting to share his opinion.”
To Gareth’s relief, Gwen gave way. “I will not argue. Is it possible, however, to discover how many girls don’t want to be there? Is there any way to free them?”
“You can’t save them, Gwen,” Gareth said. “We are strangers here, and those are questions I cannot ask, not even for you.”
Gwen looked down at her feet as she walked. While a Welsh woman could divorce her husband if he beat her, in English law, women had no rights at all. These women weren’t wives, but at one time they might have been. Certainly they’d been daughters. The dilemma preoccupied them both for the whole of the walk back to the east gatehouse.
As they passed through the wicket gate, Gareth said to the guardsman on duty, the same one they’d spoken to earlier on their way into the town, “I’m going to walk my wife to the monastery, and then I intend to return. I need to speak to John Fletcher at the castle.”
“Of course, my lord.”
“You’re going back to speak to John?” Gwen said as they headed across the bridge towards the monastery. “Can’t it wait ‘til morning?”
“I don’t think so. Spare me that long.” Gareth lifted a hand to Gwalchmai, who was hovering in the entrance of the monastery. At the sight of them, he hurried out.
“Tangwen’s asleep,” he said before Gwen could ask where her daughter was. “I’ve been waiting for hours!”
“Hardly,” Gwen said. “We weren’t gone that long.”
“What did you find?” Gwalchmai’s expression was eager.
Gwen looked at Gareth, and then she put her arm around her brother’s shoulder and turned him underneath the archway. “Let’s get inside, and I’ll tell you everything.” She glanced back over her shoulder at Gareth.
“A quick word with John, and then I’ll come home to sleep. I promise,” he said.
Gwen let go of Gwalchmai and came back to her husband, standing on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. “Do what you must. I will be waiting.” She disappeared into the darkness of the courtyard.
With a lighter heart, Gareth turned on his heel and paced along the road back to the bridge. The guards admitted him without argument, and soon the imposing bulk of Shrewsbury Castle rose up before him. Even at this late hour, the gate was open and the portcullis was up, and the guards, seemingly recognizing Gareth, waved him through.
As he approached John’s quarters, however, Gareth heard the bark of an angry voice coming through an open doorway. It cut off almost immediately as if the owner had thought better of his words.
Gareth quickened his pace, and as he turned into the last corridor, he came face-to-face with Martin Carter.
Both men pulled up short, and then Martin ducked his head. “Excuse me, my lord.” He brushed past Gareth and disappeared around the corner Gareth had just turned.
Curious, Gareth stepped back in time to see Martin disappearing into the courtyard. With concern furrowing his brow, he continued onto John’s rooms, where he found the deputy sheriff seated behind a table, his feet sprawled out in front of him, staring at the fire.
“What was that about?” Gareth said.
John released a low groan. “Martin Carter came here asking for details of the investigation, and he was angry that I wouldn’t give them to him. I don’t blame him for that.”
“He had to have known you couldn’t tell him much,” Gareth said.
“Apparently not.”
John had a rumpled look to him that made Gareth think the investigation was getting the better of him—and it had been only one day.
“Never mind him. Tell me what you’ve discovered.” John straightened in his seat. “I know you’ve discovered something, else you wouldn’t have come.”
Gareth eased onto a cushioned bench near the fire. The stone walls of the castle kept the interior far colder than if they’d been wood. A chill hung in the air that had Gareth tucking his cloak closer around himself, glad he’d worn it, for all that the day itself had been warmer than normal.
“I’ve just come from the brothel.” Gareth held up the coin, which he’d been carrying around in his purse since they’d discovered it. If he hadn’t been with Gwen just now, he probably would have presented it to the guard in the doorway of The Lady’s Slipper. “Gwen and I followed two merchants, who are staying at the monastery guest house. They went directly there and, as they entered, your watchman Luke was coming out.”
John’s expression didn’t change. “He is a single man.” But he turned to look into the fire for a moment before moving from his seat behind the table to a chair nearer to Gareth.
“He’s a watchman,” Gareth said, unable to keep his suspicions to himself. “Don’t tell me that it wouldn’t be in keeping with Luke’s character to take payment in kind for keeping the council and the sheriff from bothering the brothel or its patrons.”
As before, John looked affronted at any maligning of his sheriff’s honor. “That is not the way we function. We don’t take payment, in kind or otherwise. As long as those involved break no law and keep to themselves, we don’t bother them.”
“Yes, but Luke may have told them a different story,” Gareth said. “Your sheriff has been gone over a week. The mice are merry—”
“—where there’s no cat.” John sank lower into his chair, his hands dangling between his knees. “The English have that saying too.”
“Something more,” Gareth said. “One of the merchants goes by the name Flann MacNeill. He says he’s never been to Ireland, but he’s an Irishman. It’s a connection to Conall—not a strong one, I admit, but I can’t ignore it.”
John’s brow furrowed. “That is more worrisome than anything you’ve said so far. I can’t say I’ve met more than one or two Irishmen in the whole of my life, and now we encounter two in the space of a day? Is that too much of a coincidence to be believed?”
“Coincidence is always possible, but Conall had a coin to that brothel, and now Flann and his partner, Will, have gone to the brothel,” Gareth said. “Is the owner, by chance, Irish?”
John shook his head. “No.”
“Who owns it?”
John licked his lips. “The Lady’s Slipper is owned by a group of merchants in the town who went into business together.”
Gareth threw back his head and laughed. “You’re telling me that by day these men are respectable business people? Was Roger Carter by chance one of them?”
“No!” John looked shocked.
Gareth raised his eyebrows. “Can you get me their names?”
“I-I don’t know them all.”
“But you can find out?”
John nodded. “I confess that I am in no way looking forward to questioning them.”
“It will have to be you who does it,” Gareth said. “You can’t leave it to one of your men, or even to me. They’ll appreciate your discretion, I’m sure.”
“And every one of them will report back to the sheriff the moment he arrives.” John sighed.
Gareth couldn’t think of anything to say that would make John feel better, so he said, “Shrewsbury has other brothels, correct?”
“Two more in the town and, as I said, a third beyond the town limits.”
“Owned by the same group that owns The Lady’s Slipper,” Gareth said, remembering.
“Yes,” John said, and he drew the s out in a long hiss. “You and I will attend to this together in the morning. The manager of the brothel will be less wary then and won’t be angry because we disrupted her customers. I will collect you.”
Gareth rose to his feet. “As you wish.”
“Can I convince you not to bring your wife?” John looked up at him hopefully.
“It’s hard for us to understand why visiting a brothel is worse than investigating a murder, but—” Gareth snorted laughter, “I have already persuaded her.”
The look on John’s face was one of pure relief.