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Day Two
Gwen
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Dai and Llelo had brought Banan to the palace’s laying out room, which had the laundry on one side and the chapel on the other, so it was convenient for both. It wasn’t as airy as the room designed for that purpose at Christ’s Church, but it had doors that opened in the front and back, which, were it day, would have let in light. As it was, they had brought lanterns, two of which hung above the body, and a third which had been placed on a nearby table.
Gwen had been happy not to stand over Harald’s body, but this time she had questions she wanted answered for herself. As Gwen stepped into the room, having returned from nursing Taran and getting both children to bed, Llelo looked up from where he was braced against the wall in a corner. Prince Hywel, interestingly, was in the opposite corner, both men with their arms folded across their chests and an almost identical contemplative expression on their faces.
“Why are you here?” she said to Prince Hywel, perhaps more abruptly than she could have.
He didn’t take offense. “A man was murdered by food intended for the high table—food intended for the king, my ally. I have to be here.”
“King Diarmait is an ally now?”
“I certainly hope so,” Hywel said.
Gwen stepped closer. “Are things that bad at home? You really think you’re going to need him?”
“After my grandfather lost his throne to Norman invaders, he retreated to Ireland three times. If I need an army of fighting men, Diarmait has one, and he’s more at the ready today than Brodar.”
Gwen let it go. Even in adulthood, both married with children by other people, she and Hywel had an abiding friendship that went to the very core of both of them. She could say things to him nobody else could, but she was also aware of the differences in their stations and preferred to use her influence sparingly. To his great credit, Gareth understood without being jealous.
“What did I miss in the hall?” Gareth asked.
“After the meal, King Brodar finally announced that Banan had been killed in an attempt to murder King Diarmait,” Hywel said. “He made it sound like it was a question of mistaken identity rather than because of what he’d eaten.”
Gwen thought back to her jest with Cait and Dorte about surviving the night without a death and felt a little abashed. “What did Rory say?”
“He expressed shock, horror, and innocence.” Hywel shrugged. “Rory is the son of the High King. He can say and do what he likes. And Donnell’s representatives are hardly better. They know their safety is guaranteed. I expect we’ll get nothing from any of them.”
“We need to determine by what means the shellfish poison was introduced.” Gareth stood at the head of the table, looking into the dead man’s face. “Nobody in the kitchen could tell us which dish was tainted. How are we to discover it, since the only people who could tell us—King Diarmait and Conall—would die in the process?”
Gareth’s question had been designed for Llelo to answer, and he obliged. “Is there anything in Banan’s mouth?”
Obediently, Gareth leaned forward and pried open Banan’s mouth. It was too soon for rigor, but Banan’s face was so swollen, the tissues didn’t want to move. As it turned out, Banan did genuinely still have food tucked into his cheek.
Gareth frowned. “I’m seeing pastry.”
“From the pie as the cook suggested?” Llelo put his head next to his father’s. “Could the poison have acted so quickly that he never spit out the food that killed him?” He looked up at Gwen and Hywel. “Has anyone ever seen someone die from poison that fast?”
Hywel uncrossed his arms, interested too. “It wasn’t really poison, though, was it? Shellfish aren’t deadly to anyone but members of Conall’s family.”
Gwen wished her stepmother, Saran, was with them. As a healer, she might have had something to add. Before coming over, Gwen had collected her journal that detailed the investigations she and Gareth had conducted, along with those she’d heard of. She set it on a nearby table and started flipping through the pages.
Then, with her finger on a line, she read out what Bristol’s healer, who otherwise was a useless drunkard, had told her: “There is an uncommon condition resulting from the sting of a bee where within the space of a few moments the victim’s heart begins to beat too fast, his throat closes, his face swells, he develops a rash all over his body, he faints, and then dies.” She stopped reading, her finger still on the words. “That describes exactly what we’re looking at here.”
“What’s the relationship between a bee sting and eating shellfish?” Llelo asked.
For a moment nobody in the room spoke, and then Gwen said slowly, “They both introduce something into the body that the body reacts badly to.”
Hywel snorted. “Badly is the word.”
Gareth’s eyes narrowed as he thought. “Once I met a man who said every time he drank milk or ate cheese he experienced diarrhea. I didn’t believe him at first, since I’d never heard of it, but he insisted. It obviously isn’t the same reaction as we see here, but it is still a reaction.”
Earlier, Jon’s expression at the idea of not eating fish had been typically Danish; now, Llelo’s at not eating cheese was hilariously similar. No Welshman could survive a winter without milk and cheese. “Dai won’t eat apples because he claims they make his mouth itch and his throat close.”
That prompted his parents to look up sharply. “I didn’t know that!” Gwen said.
Llelo shrugged. “He just doesn’t eat apples.” He gestured to Banan’s body. “They don’t do that to him!”
Gareth rubbed his chin. “But you could see how they might if he ate enough of them or—”
“Or if his body hated them as much as Banan’s body hated shellfish,” Gwen said, finishing the sentence for him.
Hywel’s arms were folded across his chest again as he gazed into Banan’s face. Gareth had tried to close the dead man’s eyes, but the lids had receded into his head so far he couldn’t. Since she arrived, Gwen had been trying not to look at the body at all, so grotesque had it become in death, but now she forced herself to do so. “What are you thinking, Hywel?”
Hywel gave a low laugh. “I’m thinking King Diarmait better find himself a new food taster—sooner rather than later.”
