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Day Two
Gwen
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Gwen’s Danish was rudimentary, but she had learned some basic words and phrases by now and caught the last thing Lena said. “Fighting ring? What on earth is a fighting ring?”
Cait was already asking Lena the very same thing, and received a long explanation, which Gwen did not interrupt. She watched Lena’s face, however, and it was obvious she knew what she was talking about.
When Lena wound down, Cait turned to Gwen and explained: “It’s a gathering of men who practice their warrior skills together. She first heard of it six months ago. Admission is by wooden coin.”
“I’m not sure I understand. Why couldn’t they meet openly? Why the coin?”
Cait spoke to Lena again and received a short reply.
“She doesn’t know for certain. They change the location of their meetings often, moving around the city and the surrounding countryside. She thinks they aspire to turn themselves into an elite group, like the Dragons.”
Gwen could have told them there wasn’t ever going to be anyone like the Dragons, but that would have been rude and unhelpful. “Does she know where the next meeting is? Or when?”
“She does not.”
“How does she know about all this?”
When Cait asked that question, Lena shrugged. “We may no longer be slaves, but we hear things. People talk in front of us.”
“Or we listen in doorways.” This was said in Welsh, by a woman who swept aside the curtain that blocked the far doorway to the pantry. She was close to fifty in age, buxom but not unfit, with a halo of red curly hair she didn’t appear to be trying to tame, beyond a headband to hold the bulk of it back from her face. She set the wrapped block of butter she was carrying on the table.
“Iona!” Cait greeted the woman with a huge smile and then spoke in Danish, since she herself had no Welsh to reply to Iona’s initial greeting.
Iona gave Cait a beatific smile and approached and curtseyed low, also speaking in Danish, but this time something Gwen could understand. “It is wonderful to see you, my lady.”
Cait scoffed, indicating this was an old jest between them. “It’s nice to see you too.”
Iona laughed. “You look lovely.”
Remembering her manners, Cait gestured to Gwen and said something along the lines of, This is Gwen, wife to Sir Gareth the Welshman. We are investigating the death of that monk, Harald.
“I know.” Iona bobbed a genuine curtsey in Gwen’s direction and returned to Welsh, “You must forgive my manner. I was cruel to this child when I learned she had deceived us as to her identity. But she more than made up for it by doing what only she could.”
Gwen’s brow furrowed. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. What could only Cait do?”
Iona looked from Gwen to Cait, her own expression puzzled, and said, “Doesn’t she know?”
Cait made a helpless gesture. “I-I don’t know.”
Iona turned back to Gwen. “It is our Caitriona who convinced the bishop and King Brodar to free all the slaves in Dublin.” She squeezed Cait’s hand affectionately. “She spoke for us when nobody else would.”
Gwen translated that into French for Cait, her head spinning at the three language conversation.
“My brother spoke for them too,” Cait said in French, obviously embarrassed to be singled out and praised. “As did Godfrid.” Then she repeated her words in Danish for Iona.
Iona nodded and then said to Gwen in Welsh, “That may be, but she was the first to say what nobody else would dare.” She scrunched some of her curls at the back of her head with a satisfied smile. “What do you want to know about the fighting ring?”
“Anything you can tell us.”
“I’ll say it first in Welsh and then in Danish, yes?”
“That would be helpful.”
Then Iona tipped her head to a table around which stools and benches had been set, and the three of them sat. Lena continued to work at her dough, while another worker was tasked with laying out mead, bread, and some of the butter Iona had brought.
Gwen put up a hand. “May I ask first how you know about it?”
A saucy look crossed Iona’s face. “Earlier this summer, I had a lover who was injured during training. He told me what he’d been training for and took me to watch.”
“So men train, and then they fight?”
“They train on their own or in small groups. The fights occur every few weeks, on an irregular schedule the men are only told about a few days before.”
Iona was as good a witness as it was possible to find. “Please go on.”
“Maybe two years ago, before Cait’s time, there was an incident down at the docks. Two sailors got into a scrap at a tavern, which isn’t unusual, but one pulled his knife and killed the other. A foreman saw it happen and told the sheriff. That was Sheriff Holm’s first murder, I think, but since there were witnesses, the murderer was hanged, and that was the end of it.
“Except the foreman got to thinking that the sailor who’d been killed had failed to defend himself properly. These were sailors, who, in previous times, would have been the first on a beach to sack a village. I was captured by men such as they. But no longer. This younger generation has never been a Viking. The foreman decided he would teach them.”
“Is that foreman still the organizer?” Gwen asked.
“As far as I know. His name is Goff.”
“Why the coin?”
Iona raised her eyebrows. “Men like their secrets, don’t they?” She shrugged one shoulder. “From what I saw, it was well-intentioned. So this monk had a coin, eh?”
“From his bruises and old wounds, he was fighting,” Gwen said. “Have you been to a fight since that first one?”
“No.” Iona shrugged again and stood up, ready to get back to work. “Personally, I don’t see the appeal. Though—when my suitor went to sea he left me his wooden coin.” Her smile widened as she saw the surprise on Gwen’s face. “I still have it.”
The news of the door the coins opened was momentous enough for Cait and Gwen to thank Iona and Lena for their help and set off immediately for Godfrid’s house. Iona assured them she would repeat what she knew again to Gareth later if he needed to hear it directly from her—and would surrender the coin if they wanted it. She also wouldn’t speak of it to anyone else. Her comment as they departed was, “Who would I tell?”
Gwen didn’t want to tell Cait her business, but the fact that Iona had spoken so openly to them about the fighting ring in front of Lena and the two other servants in the kitchen indicated it was an open secret. Those in the upper echelons of Danish society were simply too far removed from the common folk to know what was really going on in Dublin.
As they left the warehouse district Cait stumped along, clearly in a bit of a pique. Gwen thought she knew what was wrong. “There’s no way you could have known about this.”
“Isn’t there? I was supposed to be keeping an ear to the ground about what was going on in Dublin.”
“You were supposed to be infiltrating Rikard’s organization, which you did. Even if you’d heard about a fighting ring, would you have thought anything of it?”
Cait’s eyes took on a faraway look, and she stopped her stomping walk. “I suppose not. And if I had heard about it, I wouldn’t have thought it was important. I might not even have known it wasn’t a long tradition.”
“We know about it now,” Gwen said soothingly. “And really, would Brodar or Godfrid have stopped them?”
“Godfrid would have kept an eye on them, but let them be.” She nodded sharply. “You’re right. If Harald died because of something that happened there, it couldn’t have been prevented by us.”
