Gareth
“What exactly are we doing here?” John said.
Gareth frowned, because he would have thought it was obvious, especially to someone who was gaining experience in murder as rapidly as John. “Looking for clues.”
“What clues?”
“We won’t know until we find them, will we?” Gareth said, and then at John’s uncomprehending expression, added, “Conall had a wooden coin that would admit him to this brothel, and the girl bled out not far from here. If we kick over enough hornets’ nests, we’re sure to get stung eventually.”
“Of course,” John said, though his expression remained dubious, “but I have to tell you that I’ve never actually been inside a brothel before.”
That fact had been made clear from the start by the twitchiness that had again overtaken John’s body. Last year in Wales, Gareth hadn’t noticed this tendency, but then, John hadn’t had to question anyone there either.
“You aren’t the only one,” Gareth said, deciding to make him feel better about his lack of experience.
John’s head jerked up to look at him. “Really?”
Gareth made a dismissive motion with one hand. “We don’t generally have establishments such as this in Gwynedd. In fact, there’s no ‘generally’ about it. We don’t have them.” And then at John’s continued astonished look, he added, “We have women, you understand, who might lie with a man for money or reward, but they don’t gather together in one location like this. There’d be no point, since nowhere in Gwynedd is there a town even as large as Chester, much less Shrewsbury.”
They were approaching the street upon which the establishment in question lay. John stopped at the corner near where Gareth and Gwen had hidden last night, stubbing his toe into the dirt between two cobbles. “I haven’t worked for the sheriff long, you know.”
“So I understood,” Gareth said noncommittally. If John wanted to talk, he’d let him talk.
“Last year I was an undersheriff, only a short step above Luke or Cedric or any of the other watchmen. I wouldn’t have been elevated to this position now if it hadn’t been for you.”
“How so?” Gareth said. “You told me earlier that you feared to lose your position if I didn’t help you.”
“That isn’t quite the case.” John had a disconcerting tendency to reveal information in dribbles and to withhold what might turn out to be the most important information of all simply because he didn’t want to impose or tell another man his business. It was aggravating and so very English.
“What then?” Gareth said. “Speak!”
“Do you remember me telling you about how the sheriff had to attend to King Stephen with most of the men of the garrison, leaving Shrewsbury with only the dregs?”
“Of course.” Gareth eyed the young man, who’d just implied yet again that he too was at the bottom of the barrel. It wasn’t something Gareth hadn’t thought himself, of course, but he was growing tired of having to bolster John’s confidence every hour. Gareth really did think that John was better than that and was capable of more than he was giving himself credit for. Gareth had been quite serious earlier when he’d told John as much.
“Before he left, the sheriff said that he’d elevated me to Deputy Sheriff because he didn’t have any other man among those left whom he could trust or had even the minimum experience required to run an investigation. He expected me to do my best, and to keep Shrewsbury together in his absence, but I was not to go off on my own or ferret out any wrongdoing among the men I oversee.”
“Such as Luke and this brothel,” Gareth said.
“Yes, sir,” John said.
“Why didn’t he take Luke with him?” Gareth said.
“He took four of the six whom he distrusted most,” John said. “The worst ones, actually.”
Understanding rose in Gareth. John had hinted at this earlier but hadn’t managed to state clearly what had been the sheriff’s intent. “You’re saying that for the sheriff to take all six men would all but have guaranteed dissent among his men where it could do even more harm—such as on the long march across England. How is it that the garrison contains so many bad apples in the first place?”
“The sheriff is the military authority in Shrewsbury, but even he doesn’t have free rein over his men. He serves the king, but he also must work with Shrewsbury’s town council and the Earl of Ludlow, and that requires a certain willingness to smooth ruffled feathers when he has to.”
“Thus, he took on one or more men, whom he would have preferred had been given other duties, in order to maintain friendly relations. Your sheriff would see it as a minor point,” Gareth said, “compared to possibly larger ones that have more significance in the long run.”
“It was of less significance when he was here to manage them,” John said. “My sheriff is a wise man, and this summons from King Stephen came at a bad time.”
“I am coming to see that.” Gareth understood those instances when duty warred with duty. A man had to choose the lesser of the evils presented to him. And nobody could disobey his king, no matter how important his duty at home seemed to be, especially not one such as the Sheriff of Shrewsbury who served entirely at the king’s behest. “You should be honored he left you in charge.”
“More than anything, I’m afraid to let him down.” John’s tone was no longer embarrassed—more matter-of-fact than anything else—as if confessing the whole of the truth of his elevation to Deputy Sheriff had relaxed him. It would have been easier if John had told Gareth all this from the start, but that wasn’t the Englishman’s way.
“To be honest, I know the feeling.” Gareth started walking towards the brothel again.
Even before this frank conversation, Gareth and John had concluded that they needed to leave John’s men behind. It seemed necessary, seeing as how Luke frequented the brothel himself, and there was no reason to think other guards wouldn’t as well. Neither Gareth nor John wanted to question the manager of the brothel in the presence of someone she knew—and especially not if she had bribed that person specifically to avoid awkward questions like the ones they intended to ask her.
It was one of those ironies of commerce that, while it was a consortium of men that owned the brothel, a woman managed it. Gareth didn’t know if that was because she’d once been a whore herself and had been promoted when she became too aged to sell herself, or if she’d been hired simply because the owners believed a woman would know best how to handle other women. Either way, it was a unique situation in Gareth’s experience.
Unlike the night before, no guard blocked the door at this hour of the morning, which gave John no recourse but to knock. His rapping at first brought no one running, but finally a frazzled maid, wiping her hands on a food-stained apron, answered the door.
She took the appearance of two men wearing swords and stern demeanors in stride, saying, “We’re not open at this hour. Come back after noon.” She made to close the door again.
John put a hand on the door and his booted foot between the door and the frame. “We’re not here for custom. We need to speak to the manager.” Other than John’s interaction with Luke, it was the most forceful Gareth had seen him. It was good to see that the younger man was capable of speaking authoritatively, and it gave Gareth hope that it was one aspect of being Deputy Sheriff that John had mastered, despite his inner misgivings. “Tell her the Deputy Sheriff is here.”
“She’s—” The girl stopped. “If you could wait.” She tried again to shut the door in their faces, but John had left his foot where it was, and the door popped open and banged against the inner wall.
Gareth poked his head past the doorway, but he couldn’t see anything beyond three curtains: one to his right, another to his left, and a third straight ahead, which the girl had ducked around without looking back.
Gareth brushed aside the curtain on the left and groaned inwardly when he saw that it enclosed a narrow space all of six feet long and three feet wide containing a single pallet on the floor. The curtain provided a bare minimum of privacy to watching eyes, and nothing to listening ears. The right hand curtain revealed the same arrangement. From what Gwen had said, Meilyr had disowned her mother’s brother, Pawl, because of his tendency to frequent places such as this.
John pursed his lips. “What do you say to us walking straight in without waiting for an invitation?”
“I have no objection,” Gareth said, “but perhaps we should wait a moment. No need to antagonize anyone unnecessarily, especially if the owners are the esteemed members of the town you say they are. We can offend them later if we need to.”
That got a slight easing of tension and even a smile from John, and he removed his foot from the threshold.
Fortunately, they didn’t have long to wait. Before John became impatient again, the same maid returned and beckoned them past the curtains. They walked through the central room, which bore a strong resemblance to a tavern common room—except for the curtains. Gareth counted six more enclosed areas around the perimeter of the room, presumably for the same purpose as the two he’d already noted.
The maid didn’t stop but continued on into what could have been the dining area for wealthier clients, also much like a tavern might have for serving noble or high-ranking guests.
More buildings were visible through the open, rear door. As with many homes and shops in Shrewsbury, the brothel included a large yard. A quick glance out the door revealed that it contained a small storehouse; what could be a common sleeping and dressing house for the girls—like a castle barracks; a stable where a man could leave his horse during whatever interlude he spent at the brothel; and a kitchen.
Due to the danger of fire, cooking generally took place a safe distance from the other buildings. It was the same everywhere—from the largest castle to the smallest croft, in the hope that if something did catch fire, or heaven forbid, the oven exploded, the damage could be confined to a small area and the fire contained before it spread to the rest of the complex.
That did not mean, of course, that fires were never lit inside the other buildings. People had to keep warm, after all. Most, if not all, croftwives cooked porridge or stew and roasted a rabbit over the same fire pit that warmed their house. A baking oven was another matter entirely, however, burning far hotter than any open fire. Thus, the danger of the fire getting out of control was that much greater.
A goat and a flock of chickens wandered around the yard too. With at least eight girls, the maid, and the manager, and who knew how many other employees, the brothel had many people to house and mouths to feed. And seeing as how the complex abutted the palisade, it also had a gate through which the residents could gain access to the river.
Gareth turned back to the room as a black-haired woman in well-maintained middle age entered. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall. “How may I be of assistance, my lords?” She took a seat by the fire and then looked up at them, her gracious smile a flash across her mouth, signifying politeness—nothing more. Her eyes were flat, revealing nothing either.
Faced with such politeness, John fell back on his own proper manners. He put his hand to his chest. “I am John Fletcher, Deputy Sheriff of Shrewsbury, and this is Gareth ap Rhys, of Gwynedd. I would be pleased to be informed of your name, madam.”
“Agatha,” she said immediately. “I understand you’ve recently been elevated to your position. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” John’s chest swelled.
Gareth could hardly believe that John had been won over so easily, but then, Gareth shouldn’t have been surprised that a woman of Agatha’s experience would know how to handle a young man such as John. She didn’t seem to want to direct her attentions to Gareth, however, for which he was grateful. Gwen would want to know exactly what had passed here this morning, and he would hate to think he would fail to maintain his dignity.
Thus, before John lost his head completely and forgot what they were here for, Gareth brought out Conall’s coin. “It is our understanding that this coin allows a man entrance to this establishment?”
“It does,” Agatha said.
“You are not the owner, however?” Gareth said.
“I am not.” She paused for a heartbeat.
Gareth looked at her curiously, noting the hesitation in her voice and posture. “But?”
Agatha gave a slight cough. “Recently I have purchased a small stake.”
“Who are the other owners?” John said.
She rattled off a half-dozen names, three he didn’t know and three he did: Rob Horn, the owner of The Boar’s Head Inn; Martin Carter; and Tom Weaver.”
John’s jaw dropped at the mention of his brother-in-law. Gareth eyed him. “You didn’t know?”
“Absolutely not,” he said.
Gareth turned back to Agatha, his mind churning. “You name Martin Carter but not his brother, Roger. He wasn’t involved?”
“No.” She frowned. “I heard he died yesterday. I’m sorry to hear that. He was a good man.”
Gareth’s brow furrowed. “What makes you say that?”
“He always treated me with respect. To him, money was money, and he didn’t hold what I did for a living against me. Or,” she amended, “if he did object, he didn’t allow me to know it.”
Gareth studied Agatha, knowing from her expression that she was in earnest. It seemed Roger had been a contradictory man. She was the second person to say that Roger had been kind, as Martin had said the same thing in regards to Jenny. But he’d beaten his apprentice for misdeeds, real or imagined, and he’d browbeaten many others, including members of the town council.
“Did he ever come here?” John said.
“No,” Agatha said.
“You are very sure,” John said.
“I am,” Agatha said. “It wasn’t his way. I respected that.”
“What about Martin Carter?” Gareth said.
Agatha narrowed her eyes slightly, but she answered willingly enough. “I’m sure that neither brother ever came here for entertainment.”
Implying that Martin, at least, might have come for business reasons, which would make sense given that he was part owner.
Gareth was more glad with every moment that passed that he and John had come to the brothel. He had a brief thought that, had Agatha’s profession been anything else than brothel keeper, Gwen would have liked her forthright nature.
“What exactly does this coin buy?” Gareth said.
Agatha smirked slightly before smoothing her lips into the polished smile again. “Are you interested in sampling our wares first hand? We don’t get too many Welsh knights here.”
Gareth kept his gaze steady on hers. “I wouldn’t have thought you’d get any.”
The woman’s lips pinched, as if she was holding back a genuine smile this time, instead of pretending to be amused. “You’d be surprised.”
“Would I?” A sudden shiver coursed down Gareth’s spine, prompting him to raise one hand to indicate a point even with the top of his own head. “Did a Welshman as tall as I but in his forties, blond going gray and thickening around the waist, ever come here? You might have noticed that he judges his own worth as very great.”
Agatha blinked.
Gareth couldn’t even say what had prompted him to describe Prince Cadwaladr, but the impulse had been there, so he’d followed it.
Then Agatha cast her eyes down so he couldn’t read what was in them. “I cannot reveal the identities of my clients, or soon I wouldn’t have any, would I?”
Gareth grunted his acknowledgement of that reality, frustrated because he wasn’t able to tell for certain if she had seen Cadwaladr or not.
“Do you have knowledge of this man?” John thrust the image of Conall under Agatha’s nose.
She reared back slightly, taking more of the light into her face, and Gareth realized that she was older than he’d first thought. Rather than in her middle forties, she was now revealed to be fifteen years older than that, and he could see more strands of gray amongst the black of her hair.
Agatha pushed away the paper. “He is unfamiliar to me.”
Gareth frowned. Her response to his description of Cadwaladr aside, for the first time since she’d smiled at John, he had a clear sense that she was lying. It also occurred to him only now that it was absurd for him to describe Cadwaladr when all he had to do was draw a picture of him. The treacherous prince’s supercilious smirk was burned into Gareth’s memory, and he could render it with his eyes closed.
John pressed on. “Are you sure? He would be a stranger to you. Irish, with hair like fire.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Irish? We don’t get many more of them here in Shrewsbury than Welsh knights.”
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” John said, “except that we’ve encountered our fair share in recent days.”
“Why would you show his picture to me?” she said.
“We found the coin among his belongings,” John said.
“But that means he didn’t use it,” Agatha said.
“But he bought it,” John said.
Agatha shrugged. “He could have done that at any number of locations. It wouldn’t have had to be at my front door.”
“Where could he have bought it?” Gareth said.
Agatha reeled off a list of taverns and inns with which her brothel had a relationship. Not for the first time, Gareth was glad he’d decided to stay with Gwen and his family at the monastery. Prostitution was a fact of life, but he would just as soon keep them all well away from what they didn’t need to know about. If Gwen had discovered that her innkeeper sold brothel coins, she would have wanted to know all about it.
Gareth brought out the picture of the girl. “Have you seen her?” He framed the question in such a way that Agatha would have a harder time eliding the truth than she had with Conall’s image. After her initial denial, she had asked them questions instead of the other way around, which was a classic diversionary tactic.
A ‘v’ formed between Agatha’s neatly manicured brows. “I don’t believe so.”
“She isn’t one of yours?” John said.
“No. Definitely not.”
That answer was definitive, surely given, and Gareth could hear truth in her voice when she spoke. But still, something about her demeanor caused him to doubt her.
John noticed the hesitation too. “A moment ago you said, I don’t believe so. Do you think you might have seen her somewhere?”
Agatha gave the paper back to Gareth. “I thought I might have when you first showed me, but the light is dim in here. Now I know that I have never met her before in my life.”
That was definitive too, except that Gareth had noticed the way she’d looked directly at him when she spoke, as if daring her own eyes to skate away and betray her. He bowed. Maybe she had never met the girl. Maybe she’d never seen her, but that didn’t mean she knew nothing about her. “Thank you for your time.”
Turning on his heel, he urged John out of the room, back through the common room, and out of the brothel. John didn’t protest, but once they were out of earshot, he turned on Gareth. “What was that? I feel like we were getting somewhere!”
“Oh, we definitely were, up until we showed her the picture of the girl who died. Agatha definitely knows the girl—or knows of her,” Gareth said.
“Do you think Agatha lied about the dead girl being one of hers?” John said.
“No,” Gareth said. “That wasn’t the sense I got. The girl wasn’t a whore, or at least not at that brothel. Agatha’s reply was so firm because she was pleased to be able to answer the direct question in the negative. It was her response before and after the denial that concerns me.”
“So why did we leave?”
Gareth regarded the young deputy sheriff. “Can you really not answer that?”
John stood chewing on his lower lip. “When you first showed her the picture, she hesitated.”
“Yes, and then after she declared the girl not one of hers, her resolve firmed and she was able to deny that she knew her at all—but even she couldn’t think so quickly as to deny all knowledge from the start,” Gareth said. “We surprised her.”
“You surprised her,” John said. “Is that why we left? You had unsettled her, and you wanted to give her time to think about it?”
“Essentially. I think the next step is to put a watch on her—maybe one of the young ones like Cedric or Oswin. I want to know which of the owners, if any, she contacts or comes to see her. I’m hoping that our questioning unsettled her enough to make her worried—and that worry might well give her away.” He paused. “You did very well in there.”
John looked disbelieving.
“I’m not just saying that. You were confident and straightforward. You asked follow-up questions with authority. I was impressed.”
John flushed slightly. “Thank you. I have had good teachers.”
“Sometimes it takes a while to find your feet.”
“That it does.” John turned back to look at the brothel. “I just hope I’m not finding them too late.”