Chapter Fourteen

Gwen

 

 

Stunned at Alard’s abrupt departure and hoping for his quick return, Gwen kept her eyes on the opening in the ceiling. “What just happened?”

Gareth put his arm around her. “Don’t worry. We’ll get out of here.”

Gwen rested her cheek against his chest. “I know we will. I’m not worried about that.” She gestured to the weaponry in the storeroom. “We can dig our way out if it comes to that. But I’m still confused as to what, exactly, Alard was telling us and what he hopes we can do for him.”

“Nothing more than discovering the real reason Philippe has accused Alard of treason, finding out who stole David’s body, and saving Prince Henry,” Gareth said, grinning.

“Is that all?” Gwen laughed and then tucked her hand into Gareth’s. His attention remained on the floor above them. They both strained to listen for any sound of Alard’s return. It suddenly struck Gwen that having the trap door open exposed them to anyone who might come along. “Did you hear what drew Alard away?”

“No, but I don’t think he’s coming back.”

“You know what we never got him to tell us?”

“Who helped him out of the brook, I know. Believe me, I’m kicking myself right now.”

Gwen cast around the room, looking for something that would help them to escape. Nothing came to mind, short of digging through the dirt that formed the walls of the house and tunneling up to ground level. Unfortunately, a stone foundation supported the farmhouse. It wouldn’t be easy getting around that.

“Help me move the table.”

Gwen laughed as she took up one end of the table. “I would have cooled my heels down here for hours before I thought of something so simple.” They maneuvered the table underneath the hole. The tabletop was a little more than two feet off the ground, so when Gareth stood on it and stretched, his fingers could just reach the opening.

“Come here.” Gareth gestured that Gwen should join him on the table.

Gwen put her knee on the tabletop, but as soon as she got both feet under her, the table gave an ominous creak. Gareth froze, bent forward with one hand on her arm and the other reaching for her waist.

“Just take it slow,” Gareth said.

Gwen carefully stood, and then Gareth crouched so she could clamber onto his shoulders, her skirt scrunched up around her thighs. When he straightened to his full height, her head poked through the trapdoor. She grasped the edge of the hole with both hands—and then screamed as Gareth suddenly disappeared out from under her. The table legs had given way, dumping him to the ground and leaving Gwen hanging from the opening.

“Gareth!”

She looked down. He knelt on the dirt floor, his hand on his left shoulder and his head bent. Gwen twisted her hips, fighting to maintain her hold on the edge of the floor, but even that movement cost her whatever grip she had, and she fell. She landed in a heap beside Gareth, letting herself roll onto her side to better take the force of the fall. As she sat up, she realized that she’d hurt her ankle.

Gareth hovered over her. “I’m so sorry!”

“What happened to you? Are you all right?” she said. They faced each other, both still on the floor, getting back their breath.

Gareth continued to rub at his left shoulder, and then he rotated his arm, working at the muscle and joint. “I’m fine. Stupid, but fine.”

“You couldn’t know the table was going to break in that instant,” Gwen said. “I almost made it out of the cellar.”

Gareth grimaced as he moved to help her upright. “I shouldn’t have risked you at all. I should have pulled myself up. At the very least, I should have caught you before you fell.”

Gwen rotated her ankle; it wasn’t broken. “Why didn’t you? What’s wrong with your shoulder?”

Gareth twitched his shoulder again. “It gives me trouble when I ask it to bear my full weight. It has for a while.”

“Why didn’t you say something?” Gwen stared at her husband, appalled. “I could have been working on it with a salve all this time.”

Gareth shrugged. “You know how it is. I have aches and pains much of the time that come from working with the men. It seemed a small thing.” He made a rueful face at Gwen’s continued glare. “It won’t happen again.”

“Especially not if it means that we’re stuck here all night.” Gwen scrutinized the trap door, which looked farther away than ever.

“Let’s look through what the horsemen have left us,” Gareth said. “I already have a few ideas about what might get us up there.”

But Gwen couldn’t see a way. They had rope but nothing to tie it to. None of the trunks were as large as the table, and they were built even less sturdily. The lone chair couldn’t get Gareth close enough to the hole to grasp the edge, and his weakened shoulder meant he couldn’t pull himself through the hole even if he could reach it.

“Why don’t you lift me up to stand on your shoulders?” Gwen said.

Gareth observed the hole ruefully. “I could manage that, but your ankle isn’t quite right.” Gwen made a face and paced around the cellar with determination. Every time she put her foot down, she winced. Gareth found a length of cloth and wrapped her ankle tightly, which helped.

“You sit here. I have an idea.” Gareth found a length of rope and took three spears from the rack on the wall.

Gwen sat in the chair with her foot elevated on a trunk and watched him. Then she said, “What’s going to happen when we get home?” She’d thought about asking him this a hundred times since they’d left Wales but never quite managed to get the words out. It wasn’t that she thought he wouldn’t answer, or would be angry, but that she hadn’t decided if she really wanted to know.

“What do you mean?” Gareth sat cross-legged on the floor and began to tie a knot in the rope at every foot. When Gwen didn’t answer right away, he lifted his head. “You’re talking about my duties to Prince Hywel, aren’t you?”

Gwen nodded and within the space of a single breath found her throat constricting. It was a stupid time to be in tears and a stupid thing to be in tears about. Gareth put down his rope and crouched in front of her, rubbing a thumb along one of her cheeks and coming away with a salty droplet. He kissed her forehead and then her lips.

“Likely I will go south with the prince,” Gareth said. “I do not yet know if I can bring you with me.”

“I don’t want to be parted from you,” Gwen said.

“I know. And I want to be with you. But whether or not it can happen will depend on how restless our Norman and Welsh neighbors in Ceredigion continue to be. It would be one thing to bring you south if I am to assume my regular duties over Prince Hywel’s teulu. It’s quite another to bring you into an ongoing war. The castle at Aberystwyth has burned twice already.”

Gwen found that she could look into Gareth’s eyes. “What’s wrong with our Welsh allies? Is King Cadell not the ally King Owain hoped for?”

“He has settled into his inheritance.” Gareth returned to his work. He put the three spears together and began to wind the rope around them. “And he has voiced his opinion that Gwynedd should have no hold in Deheubarth.”

“Anarawd gave Ceredigion to Gwynedd as thanks for King Owain’s help in the 1136 war,” Gwen said.

“That’s a nice way to think about it,” Gareth said flatly, “but the truth is rather that Owain and Cadwaladr annexed it. I do not believe Anarawd was given a choice in the matter. His father was dead—”

“—because Anarawd himself murdered him,” Gwen said.

“Yes, but nobody but Prince Hywel knew it at the time. Regardless, as the new king of Deheubarth, put there by King Owain, he was in no position to argue. That was years ago, and seeing how Anarawd is dead too—” Gareth broke off.

They didn’t need to speak of what had happened last August, since solving that case had brought the two of them together, and neither of them was in any danger of forgetting. Prince Cadwaladr had paid mercenaries from Ireland to murder Anarawd and had then abducted Gwen when he thought she was getting close to uncovering his secret. While King Owain had punished Cadwaladr by taking Ceredigion from him, he hadn’t given the region to Cadell, Anarawd’s heir and brother, but to his son, Prince Hywel.

“I need the chair, cariad.” Gareth put his hand to the rail at the back. “How’s the ankle?”

“Better.” Gwen rotated it and found to her surprise that it was better. She stood and let Gareth take the chair. He put it under the hole. In his right hand he held the three six-foot spears, now tied tightly together with a long length of rope.

“You just needed to sit and let some of the swelling go down.” Gareth stood on the chair and tossed what he’d created through the hole so it landed with a thud on farmhouse floor. Then he tugged the spears back towards him at an angle and ended up with the spears across the hole and the rope hanging from their center like a candle maker with a fresh wick.

“That’s very clever of you,” Gwen said, admiring his creation.

Gareth laughed. “Prince Hywel counts on me to figure things like this out.” He waved an arm at Gwen, who got up on the chair with him. “I don’t know how much weight the spears can hold. A great deal I would think, but if I stand under you and help you up, can you climb this rope?”

“Of course.” Gwen hadn’t climbed a rope since she was ten—Hywel’s doing, naturally—but she reached up to grasp a higher knot and began to shimmy up it. The knots really helped, though she found that, proportionate to her adult body, her arms were far less strong than they had been when she was a girl.

She reached the top and hung suspended, catching her breath. “Now what?” She looked down at Gareth.

“I’m going to put the palms of my hands on the soles of your feet while you haul yourself over the edge,” Gareth said.

It sounded easy when he said it. And as it turned out, it wasn’t as difficult as she had thought it might be before she started. A moment later, she lay on her back on the floor of the farmhouse, gasping a little for breath but happy to be out of the cellar.

“Are you all right?” Gareth said.

“Just getting the ladder.” Gwen pushed it across the floor to the trapdoor and tipped it downward. Then Gareth climbed out too.

“Excellent,” he said. “Let’s put everything back the way it was and get out of here.”

Gwen agreed with that plan and marveled at how perfectly crafted the house had been, such that when the floorboards were properly arranged, it looked again as if the cellar wasn’t even there. They left the farmhouse, collected the horses, and led them west through the screen of trees. They arrived on the path—and walked right into Llelo and Dai.