Gareth
“Where are you going?” Gwen said.
Gareth swung his cloak around his shoulders and tightened down the toggles that held it closed at his chest without answering. He knew she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.
The rain continued to fall, and everything was cold and damp. The funeral service had been followed by a mass for Roger Carter, paid for by his brother Martin, which in turn had been followed by dinner. Gareth and Gwen had invited John Fletcher to join them, in hopes that the two merchants, Flann and Will, would put in an appearance, but they had not.
Afterwards, Gareth had stopped the hospitaller to ask after them and had been told that Will had collected their things that afternoon—during the funeral, in fact.
“Did he say where they were going?” Gwen had asked.
The hospitaller had shaken his head regretfully. “Not to me. He left a generous donation to the abbey, however.”
As he might have.
Now, Gareth said to Gwen, “I need to have a look at the brothel again. If the cart is mended, that’s the only other place we know Flann and Will to have gone, and it’s the only piece of this puzzle that connects all the rest.”
“Is John going with you?”
“He had duties to attend to as Deputy Sheriff.”
“Let me come with you. Please. You should not be going alone.”
Gareth stopped in the act of pulling the hood of his cloak up over his head. “You cried in my arms not four hours ago about your involvement in this investigation. I’m not taking you with me.”
“Gareth,” Gwen said in her most reasonable voice, “I’ve been a part of this from the beginning, and you yourself said that we would see this through together.” She poked his chest with one finger. “That includes now.”
Gareth rubbed at the spot she’d poked as if it hurt. “What about Tangwen?”
“She’s asleep and need have no part of this.”
Gwen’s tears had gone, but even if they’d been a momentary aberration caused by her pregnancy, they still deserved respect. When he’d first stood over the pool of blood, he’d acknowledged within himself the extent to which investigating murders affected him. Gwen was right that they needed to reassess this particular service for Hywel—and with a second child on the way, what it did to them as parents.
Gareth studied his wife for a few more heartbeats and then nodded, if reluctantly. “I suppose, if I am truthful, it wasn’t my intent to enter the brothel. I simply had a thought to look around the outside of the town wall, where the gate opened onto the river.”
“What are you going to see in the rain and the dark that can’t wait until tomorrow?” Gwen said.
“I won’t know until I find it, but if I wait until tomorrow, there will be nothing to see, not with this rain,” Gareth said.
“I will tell my father and Gwalchmai that I’m off with you.” Gwen snatched up her cloak and hurried from the room before Gareth could protest that he hadn’t given his permission for her to come.
But then, having run only a few yards, Gwen pulled up short and spun around, such that Gareth, who had started down the corridor after her, almost ran her over. “What if the girl wasn’t at the brothel by her own will?”
Gareth caught her by the arms. “We discussed that. She could have run away from the brothel, but John Fletcher has been showing her picture all over town to no avail. If any man visited her there, he won’t admit to it, and the proprietor isn’t talking.”
“No, I mean—” Gwen took in a deep breath. “Conall was Irish, right? And Flann is Irish.”
Gareth felt himself on the verge of laughter. “I don’t believe being Irish is a crime, Gwen.”
Gwen shook her head vehemently. “No, I didn’t mean that. What if the girl came from Ireland too, or even farther afield, and not by her own will?”
“You mean someone stole her from Ireland to be a whore here?” Gareth scratched at his forehead. “It’s possible, I suppose. Though, if she was working at the brothel, it would have been a simple matter for her to tell one of her clients who she was and what had happened to her. It isn’t as if Shrewsbury has a slave market.”
“You and I both know that doesn’t mean all trade stopped. There were still slaves in Dublin when we were there four years ago, even if the slave market was closed. I know it’s a stretch, but I can’t stop thinking about that girl bleeding to death in the alley, and the fact that nobody will admit to knowing her. She was running away, and someone killed her.”
“There are far more reasonable explanations,” Gareth said.
“We just can’t think of any,” Gwen said tartly.
Gareth pursed his lips and stared at the wall above Gwen’s head. “She could simply be an unhappy English girl from somewhere else who ran away from her husband.”
“But what if she isn’t.” Gwen stepped closer. “Just think if she isn’t the only one, just like that brothel isn’t the only one. There could be other girls here against their will.”
“There are other brothels—” Gareth dropped his eyes to fix them on Gwen’s face. “John said that the owners of the brothel to which the coin gained entry had opened a second establishment outside Shrewsbury. It’s to the east of here, just beyond St. Giles.”
“We haven’t even looked at it,” Gwen said, “and with the departure of Flann and Will, I don’t think looking at it can wait until morning.”
Gareth wavered. Gwen had wanted him to discover whether or not the girls at the brothel were there by their own volition, and he’d refused her. Now, however, he didn’t know if he could walk away from her fears again. That girl had to have come from somewhere, and someone had killed her. Others might see her as no different from a hundred other girls, but she was Gareth’s responsibility now. She’d been buried without a name. She might as well have been faceless. She certainly had been afraid.
Still thinking, Gareth nudged Gwen to walk down the corridor towards the stairs. “I’m not taking you to the brothel. We have to respect John’s sensibilities in that regard, but you can come with me most of the way, maybe to that abandoned mill at the edge of abbey land, and wait for me there.”
Gwen wrinkled her nose, indicating that she didn’t like it, but she didn’t argue. “Even if I’m wrong, and she was here by her own free will, girls that age don’t wander the countryside by themselves. She had to have come to Shrewsbury with someone, stayed with someone, seen someone.”
Gareth froze in the act of taking a step. “Maybe she did. In addition to Flann and Will, she’s one of two people in this investigation who are complete strangers to Shrewsbury, Gwen. Maybe the reason nobody has come forward to identify her is because the one person she knew was Conall.”