“Come here, Godfrid. We have a present for you.” Gwen was practically hopping up and down in her glee as the big Dane made his way towards where she, Hywel, and Gareth had gathered at the far end of one of the long tables near the dais.
Godfrid halted two paces away, his gaze taking in each of them and then the wrapped package on the table. Disbelief and hope warred together in his expression. “That’s not—”
Gwen clasped her hands together and went up on her toes. “It is! It is!”
Hywel reached out and carefully unfolded the wrappings that had kept the Book of Kells safe on its long journey.
Godfrid moved forward, dropping a hand onto Gareth’s shoulder as he stopped beside him. “You are a miracle worker.”
“It wasn’t my doing,” Gareth said.
“That’s not true, Gareth,” Gwen said. “Prioress Nest sought you out because she trusts you.”
Godfrid growled. “You’re starting the story at the ending again.”
Gareth grinned.
In addition to not witnessing Gareth’s encounter with Prioress Nest, Godfrid had also missed all but the very end of the drama with Gruffydd and Sioned. Once the Book of Kells was stowed safely in Aber’s treasury until such a time as the winds turned favorable and Godfrid had concocted a strategy for its return, he demanded they tell him that story from the beginning too. Many of the guests had already departed for their homes, the story of Tegwen’s death and its resolution on their lips, and everyone left in the great hall was well into a mellow mood. Feeling charitable towards all, Hywel sprawled in his seat, his ankles crossed in front of him and his arm across the rail of Mari’s chair.
“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” Godfrid said. “According to Dewi, Tegwen died after Bran struck her and she fell against the corner of a table. Bran, Dewi, and Erik left her in Wena’s hut—I must see this place before I leave, Gareth—and put out that she ran off with a Dane.”
“Yes,” Gwen said.
“I am offended that Bran blamed one of my own for the loss of his wife,” Godfrid said, “but then, we Danes are the stuff of legends.”
Gwen smacked Godfrid’s shoulder, but his look of self-satisfaction didn’t leave his face. Hywel couldn’t blame the big Dane for his contentment. His quest had ended in success, barring the loss of Erik, who had yet to be caught.
“Three years later,” Gareth said, “Dewi tells Brychan a tiny piece of the story. Brychan turns to Gruffydd, who begins asking questions he hadn’t known to ask before and learns more about her disappearance. Both Brychan and Gruffydd believe absolutely that Bran killed Tegwen and concoct a plan to murder him.”
“By ambush.” Godfrid nodded. “Brychan, who loosed the arrow, gets away clean.”
“Moving to the present day, once Tegwen’s body is found and our investigation moves into full swing, Sioned, who knows the full story even if she wasn’t a participant in the ambush of Bran, panics. She’s afraid that we are close to uncovering the truth about her husband’s role in Bran’s death and convinces Brychan to take a shot at me.” Hywel straightened in his seat at the memory. “Having failed, Brychan returns to Sioned and demands payment to keep quiet. She slips a knife between his ribs instead.”
“Why would Brychan be so foolish as to listen to her in the first place?” Godfrid said.
“She threatened to expose him as Bran’s killer if he didn’t help deflect the investigation,” Gareth said.
“What about Dewi?” Gwen said.
“Dewi told Brychan of his involvement in Tegwen’s death, and Brychan told Sioned. So Sioned poisoned Dewi,” Gareth said. “If Erik wasn’t still at large, he would have been in danger too.”
“And the fire?” Godfrid said.
“Sioned saw Gareth and me move Brychan’s body,” Hywel said, “but she didn’t know that we’d recognized it in the darkness nor that Brychan had talked to Gwen at length about his relationship with Tegwen. That conversation, if not the one with Dewi, Brychan had kept to himself.”
“Plus, a fire is always a good distraction,” Gareth said, “with the added benefit of murdering us if she got lucky.”
“If not for Dai and Llelo, she might have succeeded,” Gwen said.
Gareth shot Gwen a questioning look. “Did we ever find out where those scalawags had been, and why they were still awake?”
Gwen laughed. “Dearest husband, I think we don’t want to know the answer to that question.”
“Sioned then confessed all to Gruffydd,” Hywel said, continuing the story, “and when Gruffydd saw Prioress Nest in the hall with Gareth, he panicked. Once caught, he chose to take all of the blame.”
“The fact that Sioned had killed Brychan with Gruffydd’s knife made his confession much more credible,” Gareth said, “not that I would have ever suspected her of any of this.”
“Sioned did what she did because she wanted to protect her husband,” Gwen said. “She loves him.”
“And Gruffydd loves her,” Hywel said, “which is why he did what he did.”
“It is astonishing that she attempted so much in so short a time,” Godfrid said, “but I can see how as a woman and a grieving grandmother, she was above suspicion. Who would question her movements or her absence from the hall in her time of grief?”
“Last night, Sioned asked her husband and maid to leave her alone in the chapel, when what she was really doing was meeting Brychan in the woods and murdering him,” Gwen said. “Who would gainsay her request to be left alone during the revelry? No one.”
“What is to become of Sioned and Gruffydd?” Godfrid said.
“Payment for their crimes will pauper them. They will lose everything,” Gareth said. “But for the fate of Tegwen’s daughters, I suspect neither would care.”
Hywel tapped a finger to his lips. “I will speak to Ifon. He will take the girls in.”
“I think your father, my lord, would have preferred not to have learned any of this,” Gwen said. “But I’m sure he’s happy to know that Cadwaladr was not at the heart of it.”
“This time,” Hywel said darkly. He still couldn’t decide if that fact was a relief or a disappointment.
“That’s the problem with secrets,” Godfrid said. “Given time, they fester.”
Gwen nodded. “The core of their lives was rotten, and it proved their undoing.”
“There’s a lesson there for us all,” Godfrid said.
At Godfrid’s last words, Hywel straightened in his seat. A lesson. A lesson for us all. He stood abruptly. “I have to see my father.”
Hywel felt Mari’s curious look, but he simply kissed the top of her head and left the room. Certainty had taken hold of him. He’d been struggling for weeks with his burdens, worrying continually about the two lords he’d left in charge of Ceredigion. They had been deposed from their lands by Normans and regained them only at Hywel’s hand, so their commitment to Hywel was absolute. Or so he hoped.
But a kingdom wasn’t won or maintained on hope.
He found his father going over the kingdom’s finances with Taran, discussing the cost of rebuilding the manor house and what tithes might come in from the upcoming slaughter of sheep and cattle in each cantref. Hywel stood in the doorway for a moment without them seeing him.
He knew he was hesitating and cleared his throat to get their attention. “Father.”
King Owain had been bending over the table, reading the papers in front of Taran, who was seated. The king straightened to his full height and looked at Hywel. “Son.”
Hywel took a step into the room. “I have been a coward and a fool, Father.”
Owain jerked his head at Taran. The steward rose hastily to his feet and departed, though not before resting his hand on Hywel’s shoulder as he passed by him on his way into the corridor.
Hywel’s father remained standing where he was, waiting.
Hywel spoke again. “I have told you of our gains in Ceredigion, and of the sacking of Cardigan, but what I haven’t told you is what I have failed to do. What I am failing to do.” And then like when Gruffydd had confessed his crimes, Hywel found his next words tumbling out of his mouth: his decisions, many of them wrong; the forces arrayed against him, which the attack on Cardigan Castle was unlikely to stem; the losses of men and horses that he had avoided elucidating clearly to his father for months; and his stark awareness of his own inexperience.
“If you remove me from my position because of my failures, it would be far better than for me to lose Ceredigion for you entirely,” Hywel concluded. “My hope is that it hasn’t quite come to that and that you can forgive me for coming to you for help. Or rather, not coming to you for help sooner.”
Hywel’s father rubbed at his chin as he thought about his answer. Hywel shifted from one foot to another. His stomach had fallen into his boots when he’d entered his father’s office initially, but Hywel had meant what he’d said. Finally admitting that he didn’t know what to do or how to do it had lifted a huge weight from his shoulders.
Then his father came around the desk, and to Hywel’s astonishment, walked right up to Hywel and embraced him. Then, taking a step back, he said, “It takes a brave man to admit to his own ignorance. You are neither a coward nor a fool, son. To say that I am proud of you would be to understate the case.”
Hywel gaped at his father for a heartbeat, and then cold relief flooded through him. Suddenly, he could breathe again.
“Now, why don’t you get Taran back in here, and between the three of us, we can solve our little problem of Ceredigion.”
Hywel had hoped that a return to Aber would provide him with a respite from his troubles. As he pulled up a chair opposite his father and Taran, he decided that he’d been looking at this journey the wrong way around. Trouble wasn’t something he could run from or to. It followed him everywhere he went. It hadn’t been a respite from trouble that he’d needed, or that he’d come to Aber to find.
It was clarity.
And it was a rare man who could find that all by himself.