Gwen
Gwen bent to the wheel, which was no longer attached to the cart, her fingers reaching for the dark stain that marred its surface. The blood had dried. She glanced surreptitiously to her left. Her father, proving himself to be an able investigator in his own right, was speaking innocently to Flann about his business at the cartwright’s yard.
“Too bad about the wheel,” Meilyr said.
Flann shrugged. “It happens now and again. Wheels last only so long before they need repair, but I’m assured that I brought my custom to the best cartwright in Shrewsbury.”
Martin’s apprentice looked pleased at the compliment. Gwen stepped away from the wheel, moving towards the cart itself. She was sure that the stains on the wheels were blood, but she didn’t think she could prove it, and she would love to return to Gareth with a bit of evidence that would link this cart to the girl. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any obvious blood in the cart bed itself.
She glanced over at Flann, who was still speaking to her father. Meilyr distracted him with a question about his travels throughout the March. “I’m interested professionally, you see.”
Seeing as how her father was the bard for King Owain of Gwynedd, he couldn’t possibly be interested in whom he might sing for in the March, but he was trying to be polite, and Flann responded in kind.
Gwen still had Tangwen on her hip, and she sighed loudly, shifted the little girl in her arms, and then plopped her onto the empty bed of the cart a moment later. In an undertone, Gwen said, “Can you find something in the back to play with?”
No stranger to carts, Tangwen pushed to her feet and toddled away from Gwen, towards the driver’s seat.
Gwen let Tangwen nearly reach the back before she said, “Come back here, Tangwen!”
Tangwen turned to look at her mother, a distinct frown on her face and her chin wrinkled up, not understanding what game Gwen was playing. With a muttered apology to Tangwen for using her in this way, Gwen hitched up her skirt, scrambled into the bed of the cart, and then crouched beside her daughter, her arm around her waist.
“Sorry, cariad.” Gwen kissed Tangwen’s cheek. “Let’s see what there is to find up here, eh?”
Behind her, Flann had finally noticed that Gwen and Tangwen had climbed into the back of his cart, and he started towards them. “Miss! What are you doing?”
Gwen turned to look at him, all innocence. “Retrieving my daughter. I’m sorry if I inconvenienced anyone.”
She tightened her grip on Tangwen at the same moment Tangwen bent to the side of the cart and plucked a square of cloth off a slat that had splintered. Gwen could hardly believe her luck, or that Tangwen had remembered what she’d been sent to do. She didn’t dare look to see what her daughter had clutched in her fist, but merely scooped her up and carried her back to the end of the cart, where her father met her to help her down.
His face was a thundercloud, but he didn’t chastise her in front of Huw and Flann as he could have. Instead, he spoke in a low voice, “What are you doing?”
“Investigating,” Gwen said. “This is the cart we were looking for.”
Meilyr’s expression instantly cleared as he turned to face Flann, his arm across Gwen’s shoulders. “We’ll get out of your way now.” He gestured to Jenny who was hovering in the doorway to the house, a flagon in her hand. “We’ve been invited inside. It was nice to speak with you. Will we see you at dinner?”
“I expect so. We have one more night here before we’re off.” Flann’s Irish brogue was particularly noticeable at the end of his sentence, making Gwen fear that he wasn’t as calm about Gwen’s incursion as he implied. But as long as he let her go, Gwen didn’t care. And as long as he had nothing to hide—if his cart had indeed rolled through the puddle of blood in complete innocence—then he should have nothing to worry about.
“Until we meet again.” Meilyr hustled Gwen and Tangwen towards the doorway where Jenny and Martin waited. Before they reached it, however, he whispered to Gwen, “What’s in Tangwen’s hand?”
“I don’t know.”
Tangwen was looking stricken, dirty tear tracks on her cheeks, though she hadn’t openly cried. Thankfully, Flann appeared to have lost interest in what they were doing and was now speaking to the cartwright’s apprentice.
“It’s all right, love.” Gwen rubbed her daughter’s cheek with the back of one finger. “What did you find?”
Tangwen looked down at her fist, and Gwen gently pried her fingers open. A piece of pink cloth lay wrinkled in her palm. Gwen plucked it up and showed her father.
“It’s a torn piece of fabric,” Meilyr said, with something like astonishment. “Would it be too much to hope that it matches the clothing of the dead girl?”
Gwen rubbed at the fabric with her thumb, comparing it to her remembered feel of the girl’s skirt. “She was wearing a dress that could have once been pink, but it’s hard to be sure that it’s the same, since the girl’s dress was ruined by blood, mud, and water from a day spent in the river.”
“I’ll keep it for you until we can see if the cloth matches.” Meilyr pocketed the scrap. Then he added, “It would be better if we could extricate ourselves from this quickly.”
“We can be thankful Martin and Jenny aren’t Welsh, or we might find ourselves encouraged to stay all day to share their grief at the loss of Roger,” Gwen said.
Meilyr squeezed her arm, and then they allowed Martin to usher them into the heart of his house, consisting of a main room with a loft above, accessed by a narrow stair along the far wall. The house was larger than Tom Weaver’s, however, in that it also had an adjacent room, visible through an open doorway.
Jenny gestured Gwen to the table, which was entirely covered with foodstuffs: bread, cheese, onions, carrots, tarts, several pies, and two jugs of beer. “Please sit.”
Gwen wanted to be polite, but she hesitated. “We really shouldn’t. You’ve suffered a loss—”
“It would be helpful to me if you stayed,” Jenny said, with a glance at her husband, who nodded. “As you can see, many of our neighbors have brought food that we can’t possibly eat all of, and it would be nice to have something to think about besides Roger’s death.”
Having spent the last four months mourning Rhun, Gwen could understand how she felt, so she acquiesced. Tangwen was hungry again, so she was given a sliver of meat pie. Once again, Gwen and Meilyr accepted cups, though this time they were filled with beer. Martin had his own cup, which he drained and held out to Jenny, who filled it again. Gwen sipped hers tentatively, not enjoying the earthy flavor. She was used to mead, which was lighter and sweeter.
Trying to find something nice to say, Gwen put a hand out to Jenny. “When is your child due?”
Jenny gaped back at her. “How did you know I was with child?”
“Those of us who’ve had children know the look.” Gwen put a hand to her own belly.
Actual joy shone in Jenny’s face. “September.”
“Mine as well.”
Jenny leapt to her feet, came around the table, and hugged Gwen, tight enough to make Tangwen, who was between them, squirm. “I am so happy to hear that. It will be as if a little piece of Adeline is alive again in both of us.”
Gwen met her father’s eyes, which had crinkled in the corners. She herself wasn’t sure that she liked Jenny’s sentiment. Adeline may have been Jenny’s closest friend, but Gwen hadn’t known the girl at all. Still, having lost loved ones herself, Gwen could understand the desire for a connection beyond the grave.
Jenny released Gwen, and returned to a seat beside Martin, who leaned forward to speak. “Your husband came by yesterday with Jenny’s brother. Has he shared what he knows with you? Do you have any idea who might have murdered Roger?”
“No.” Gwen’s eyes skated to Jenny to see how she felt about discussing the specifics of Roger’s death, but her eyes were on the table in front of her.
“What about this Irishman?” Martin said. “Have you found him?”
“No to that, also,” Gwen said. “Do you have any idea why your brother might have been at Rob Horn’s inn?”
“Your husband asked me that,” Martin said. “It feels terrible to know that I was asleep when he died.”
Gwen’s eyes tracked to Jenny. “Jenny, did Roger say anything to you?”
The girl shook her head. “I was awake for much of the night, but I didn’t hear him leave. He was with us for supper, but after that, I never saw him again.”
“Why were you awake?” It was Gwen’s experience that, in the early stages of pregnancy, she couldn’t get enough sleep.
“I had aches and pains,” Jenny said. “You probably know all about that. I don’t know what hour it was when I rose from my bed, but it was well before dawn. I didn’t want to wake Martin with my tossing and turning.”
Martin grunted his thanks. “We have a rooster who crows every morning before dawn. I need to sleep as much as I can before then.”
Jenny managed a laugh. “Martin keeps threatening to make him into rooster soup.”
Martin directed a gentle smile at his wife. “I slept through his call yesterday morning and woke when she returned to the room.” The amusement gone, Martin stared towards the fire, which was burning low in the grate in the center of the room. Smoke wended its way half-heartedly towards the hole in the ceiling. The draft was good, with the open rear door, and the room was all but clear of smoke. “We would have lived here all together, had my brother married Adeline. Instead, he moved into a room off the carriage house, saying he didn’t want to disturb us. It meant we never heard his comings and goings.”
“I am so sorry.” Gwen sighed inwardly, finding the losses difficult to bear too and wondering how much longer she could sit here and be polite. Ever since she’d realized that she wasn’t responding to murder like she normally did, she’d found tears constantly pricking at the corners of her eyes. Reason told her she was naturally more emotional because she was pregnant—but it wasn’t emotion she was feeling so much as weariness.
Martin ducked his head in thanks, but Jenny stood abruptly, looked like she was about to speak, but then burst into tears. She ran towards the doorway to the adjacent room, which Gwen guessed was the bedroom. That left Martin alone with Meilyr, Tangwen, and Gwen. They’d been asked to stay, and Gareth might have wanted Gwen to learn more from Martin about his brother’s death, but circumstances made it impossible to do so—and Gwen couldn’t leave quickly enough. “Thank you for your hospitality. We’ll take our leave now.”
“Would you mind seeing yourselves out?” Martin disappeared in the direction Jenny had gone, and as Gwen departed through the back door with Meilyr and Tangwen, she could hear his soothing words between Jenny’s sobs.
Once outside, Meilyr didn’t stop to chat with the apprentice, who was the only one in the yard, but strode away, heading towards the monastery.
“When were you going to tell me you were with child again?”
“Only when I had to,” Gwen said. “As with Jenny, it’s early days. At first I wanted to be sure, and then I wanted us out of Aber, and then the days just seemed to pass without me saying anything.”
Meilyr grunted. “I don’t know what Gareth was thinking, allowing you to travel so far from home.” Although his tone was grumpy, she knew by the way his mustache quivered that he was pleased, and he kept glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.
“I don’t mean to worry you, Father.” She shifted Tangwen to her other hip so she could hook her arm through Meilyr’s. “But to tell you the truth, I’m starting to worry about me too.”