Chapter Twenty-seven

St. Kentigern’s Monastery, St. Asaph

Hywel

 

 

Hywel stepped out from behind the pillar, stopping Prior Rhys in his tracks. The prior hesitated before raising his lantern. “Are you here to kill me, Prince Hywel?”

“Have you done something worth killing over?” Hywel said, and then amended, “Recently, I mean?”

“I didn’t expect you to be the one to come.” Rhys gestured with one hand, indicating that Hywel should walk with him. They left the cloister and headed along the pathway that led through the monastery gardens. “Or rather, I was expecting someone else.”

“Gareth,” Hywel said.

Prior Rhys canted his head, not giving anything away, but agreeing nonetheless.

“Before our last parting, you answered his questions to his satisfaction,” Hywel said.

“But not to yours?” Rhys said, with a sideways glance at Hywel.

“He has his questions; I have mine.”

Rhys stopped and turned. “Don’t you have some place to be? You’ve been married all of two days. Don’t tell me your wife won’t notice your absence from her bed.”

Hywel pulled up with him. “She is sleeping. Rhuddlan Castle is not far away. I will return to her before the sun rises.”

Rhys peered at Hywel. “This is customary for you, isn’t it? How long have you passed off your nocturnal activities as liaisons rather than give voice to what you’re really doing?”

Hywel tsked through his teeth. “A while.”

“You cultivate a guise of willful promiscuity to hide … what … secret meetings with your spies?” At the expression on Hywel’s face, Prior Rhys went on, “Don’t get me wrong. I’m sure you’ve had your share of women, but—”

“Gareth warned me about you,” Hywel said.

“What did he say?”

“That if I came to see you, I might end up giving more than I got.”

Rhys laughed, and this time it was genuine. “I like that boy.”

“So we have now spent valuable time talking about me instead of about you,” Hywel said. “I have questions, as I said.”

“So ask them.”

Now that it came to it, Hywel wasn’t sure where to begin. He had important questions, ones that Rhys wasn’t going to want to answer. Perhaps it was better to start with an easy one: “Just to be clear—who was the archer that shot Amaury?”

“Ah. Everyone seemed to have forgotten about him. I hoped you had too. I should have known better.”

“Well?” Hywel said when Rhys didn’t continue immediately. He could waste a little time wooing the prior, but the man was right that he had Mari to get home to.

“The hours lay heavy in my hands after I was injured and gave me too much time to think,” Prior Rhys said. “I began to wonder, merely by the process of elimination, if Amaury could be at the heart of the crimes we witnessed. But of course, I was injured enough that I had little ability to find proof of treachery on my own.”

“I wish you’d spoken to me or Gareth,” Hywel said.

“You were suspicious of me, as you may recall, because of what I’d hidden about myself,” said Rhys. “To accuse another, a friend, might make me appear disingenuous. In addition, you weren’t telling me everything either. I didn’t know you had an emerald until after the incident at the abandoned chapel.”

Hywel bowed slightly at the waist. “That is true. My apologies.”

Prior Rhys looked down at his hands.

When he didn’t continue speaking, Hywel prodded him for a second time. “The archer?”

Prior Rhys nodded. “I saw him when we entered Newcastle that first day, that very first moment, in fact. He was standing by the gatehouse, speaking with one of the guards. I have a good memory for faces, but I didn’t need it in this case, since I’d used him a time or two.”

“He was an assassin,” Hywel said.

Prior Rhys lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. “Think of him as the best shot in your arsenal. You use him if you can.”

Hywel folded his arms across his chest, ready to hazard a guess. “You got to him, didn’t you? You ordered him to miss Ralph!”

Prior Rhys laughed. “Not quite. He told me that Philippe, via our friend Amaury, had tasked him with bringing down Alard—not to kill him, mind you, but to injure him just enough that he could be captured. A nice leg wound would have done very well. I merely suggested that he was on the side of the devil if he followed that order and that he might find life more hospitable in the court of King Owain in the land of his birth. I was very persuasive.”

Hywel was glad it was dark because his jaw had dropped at Prior Rhys’s audacity. Hywel would do well to take lessons on intrigue from this man.

Prior Rhys went on: “Before Amaury led you through the tunnel, he ordered my archer to the woods outside the abandoned chapel, in the hopes that Alard would put in an appearance. The site was remote enough, and exposed enough, to be the perfect place for an ambush.”

“Did you suggest that he shoot Amaury instead?” Hywel was incredulous, near laughter at the outrageousness of it.

“Certainly not! That was his own initiative. Still—may the Lord forgive me—once it was done, I was not sorry,” said Rhys. “While I had no evidence against Amaury beyond instinct, I was curious to see if the action stopped when he did.”

“But it didn’t,” Hywel said.

“It was too little, too late,” said Rhys, “though I didn’t realize it at the time. I absolved Amaury of any wrongdoing, other than overzealousness in his pursuit of a man his master had declared a traitor and lying about his loyalties to Gareth. You and Mari almost lost your lives because of my failure.”

“Too bad for the archer that he ended up dead,” Hywel said.

Prior Rhys bit his lip, suppressing a smile. “Oh … he’s not dead.”

Hywel’s eyes narrowed. “What about the dead archer Gareth found?”

“Oddly, Philippe was half-right about that man not being the archer. The dead man Gareth found was some poor soldier, one of Philippe’s men, whom the real archer brought along as a spotter. He killed him to throw you off his scent.”

Hywel growled deep in his throat as understanding rose in him. “Your archer is the man we picked up on our way home as we entered Wales. You vouched for him, and I let him join our company.”

“Cadoc is a very good shot,” said Rhys.

“You should have told me more of this at the time,” Hywel said.

“Old habits die hard, keeping secrets being one of the last to go. I had revealed myself to you as a Horseman by then, but I didn’t want you asking questions of me, not before it was safe.”

“You didn’t want Gareth asking questions, you mean,” Hywel said.

“You do realize what you have in him, and Gwen too, don’t you?” said Rhys, as usual diverting Hywel from something he didn’t want to answer with a question of his own.

“Believe me, I do.” Hywel gave a mocking laugh. “You’d be surprised what they know, and what they have been willing to forgive.”

Prior Rhys studied Hywel. “You are speaking from experience.”

Hywel wasn’t going to respond to that. It was his turn to ask the questions. “Why did you leave the empress’s service? And don’t tell me it was because your commission sickened you. It has to be more than that.”

Rhys looked away. His eyes followed the line of the orchard wall, just visible in the moonlight, and he began walking again. Hywel came with him, and when they reached a bench set against the wall of the orchard, Rhys lowered himself onto it. It faced south, and on days when the sun peeked through the cloud cover would provide the gardeners a warm place to sit. “I spoke the truth.”

“But not all of it.” Hywel sat beside the prior and leaned back against the wall.

“Why do you want to know?” said Rhys.

“You know why. Because without it, I am missing a piece of the puzzle.”

“And that’s important to you?”

“The past informs the present,” Hywel said. “If I know this, then it might help me someday with that.”

“I don’t know why I’m even talking to you. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but I know that you are good at keeping secrets.” Prior Rhys eyed Hywel again. Even in the moonlight, Hywel had the sense that the prior could see right through him. “This tale isn’t really about me at all but about Ralph.”

“Ah.” Hywel smiled, satisfaction coursing through him. He had been right to come.

“Yes.” Prior Rhys glanced at Hywel again in that way he had, assessing. “Your new father-in-law has more secrets than I do. What he told Mari about leaving her to spy for the empress in King Stephen’s court was true as far as it goes.”

“But again, not the whole truth,” Hywel said.

“Ralph didn’t have a choice but to leave. It would have been unsafe for him to stay. Myself, I’m surprised the empress hasn’t had him murdered long since.”

Hywel sat up straighter. “Go on.”

“It was I who helped Ralph fake his own death and then ensured my own. Mari hasn’t realized yet that she knew me as a child. When she sat with me at Newcastle, after Amaury sent his mercenary to incapacitate me, I was sure she would recognize me, but she never did.” Rhys clasped his hands together. “It was a long time ago.”

The questions spilled over in Hywel’s mind so fast, he was at a loss to articulate even one. Finally, he managed, “Why?”

“Old King Henry didn’t die from eating too many lampreys. It was poison.”

The word poison echoed in Hywel’s ears. “Ralph murdered him?”

“For many years I assumed so, though now I’m not so sure. If it wasn’t him, he knows who did.”

“Philippe,” Hywel said on impulse, pulling the name out of nothing but a hundred impressions and questions he hadn’t yet thought to ask.

“Very good. If not Ralph, that would be my guess too. Philippe and Ralph moved in the same circles, far above mine. And as you know, Philippe replaced Ralph as spymaster when he left.”

“If it was Philippe, his secret will never be safe as long as you and Ralph live,” Hywel said. “As you wondered, why are any of you still living?”

“Initially, we were allowed to live as long as we were useful, and now we are old and discredited. Philippe and Ralph would never betray each other; they were friends once, and among spies, friends are few and far between.”

“That still doesn’t—”

“You have to understand what the atmosphere is like at the empress’s court, my prince. At times, it is poisonous. She plays men off one another, encouraging them to vie for her favor.” At Hywel’s expression, Rhys hastened to add, “Not that kind—I’m talking about land, power, money. She wields men like weapons, even her own against her own.”

Hywel straightened his legs in front of him. “Knowing that, why didn’t Ralph defect to King Stephen in truth as well as name?”

Prior Rhys canted his head as he looked at Hywel. “You really don’t understand the Norman mind if you have to ask that.”

“Enlighten me.” Hywel felt like he was ten again and being instructed by Gwen’s father in a particularly difficult Latin conjugation.

“To those who follow her, the empress is the rightful heir to the English throne. Stephen is a usurper. No matter how much they might fear her, even despair of her as a queen who cannot bend even for a moment for the good of her people, to follow Stephen would be to turn away from God.”

“Do you feel that way?” Hywel said.

Rhys smiled. “I am Welsh and far more practical than Ralph. Still, what did I do? I chose to leave England and my chosen profession entirely rather than serve another earthly master.”

“I find it incredible that all of you are still keeping these secrets after all these years, even Ranulf, about whom far too little has been said so far.”

Prior Rhys coughed a laugh. “Ranulf keeps many secrets.”

That brought Hywel’s eyes to Rhys’s face. “His loyalty is in question, isn’t it? Gareth brought that information from Amaury, but the man is an excellent liar, and I didn’t know whether or not to believe him.”

“I have a feeling that when my brethren write the history of King Stephen’s reign, it will never be entirely clear as to which side, other than his own, Ranulf was ever on during this war.”

Hywel stared down at his hands. From the very beginning, the scope of this investigation had been beyond anything he’d experienced before. “So Maud had her father murdered.”

Prior Rhys jerked his head to look at Hywel. “What? No. Did I say that?”

“Didn’t you?” Hywel said.

“I apologize for giving you that impression, but that isn’t it at all. Maud loved her father. Philippe and Ralph served Geoffrey of Anjou, Maud’s husband, before they came to England to serve her.”

The last piece of the puzzle fell into place, and it was one that Hywel had no difficulty reconciling with what he knew, even if it was entirely unexpected. “Geoffrey had King Henry killed because he didn’t support Geoffrey’s territorial ambitions in France.”

“King Henry did not, but Geoffrey knew that his wife would if she were on the throne, straddling the English Channel between England and Normandy.” Prior Rhys nodded. “Gareth—and you—were deceived from the beginning in this.”

“How so?”

“The four horsemen weren’t Maud’s men, not at the start. We were Geoffrey’s.”