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Day Three
Conall
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The scene inside the hut was worse than even Conall, who’d seen plenty of death and murder too, had feared. Both Carla and Hans had been stabbed. Hans was already dead, but Carla was still alive. Her neighbors had lifted her onto a pallet, and three of them hovered around her.
One of them looked up as Conall and Gareth entered, hope in his face, but then he sagged in disappointment.
“Did you send for Sheriff Holm?” Conall asked.
The man nodded.
“Then he should be on his way. Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“This is Gareth the Welshman. There is no better man for catching whoever did this. Leave us with her, please.”
How she was still alive Conall didn’t know. There was blood everywhere. But while Hans’ throat had been cut, she’d merely been stabbed in the belly. Likely, because it was hard to see in the darkened hut, the murderer had mistakenly left her for dead.
In the face of Conall’s authority, the neighbor acquiesced. Conall looked at Gareth for guidance, but he gestured with one hand. “Don’t worry about me. She doesn’t have much time. Find out if she knows who did this.”
Conall picked up Carla’s hand to hold it and looked into her eyes. They were bright blue, and she still had enough life in her to look back at him and speak. “Tell King Brodar I’m sorry. I brought shame upon Dublin.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“A man came to us with coin. He said we were to harvest shellfish—it didn’t matter what kind. We could eat some of them, as I told you we did, but we were to chop up several into fine bits and bring them to the kitchen.”
“You denied doing that yesterday,” Conall said. “You lied to me.”
“No.” She coughed, bringing up blood. “You asked if I brought the shellfish to the kitchen. I didn’t. Hans did.”
Conall wasn’t impressed with the hair-splitting, but she was dying, so there was no point in chastising her further. “And then what? Banan had pie in his mouth when he died. Is that what you poisoned?”
She nodded. “I’m in charge of chopping vegetables. When the cook was ready to add mushrooms to the pie, I had already mixed in the shellfish.”
“It never occurred to you to ask why the man wanted you to do this?”
“I did ask. He said he wanted to spoil the meal. I didn’t see how adding shellfish could spoil anything, since every type is delicious, but he said never you mind how.”
“So you took his money.”
Carla turned her head to one side, struggling to breathe, but she still managed to answer. “The rest of the hall ate stew. The cook makes pies for everyone only when we have fewer folk present. They take too long to make and need to be watched, so the pie was the one thing at the meal that was only for the high table.” Tears leaked out the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t know what harm it could possibly do! That poor man! To watch him die in such pain.”
She meant Banan, the food taster, though it seemed she was dying in pain too. If Conall had been on a battlefield, he would have eased her passing, but he couldn’t do it for an old woman—and worse, he needed information.
“Who was the man? Was he someone you knew?”
She gave the slightest shake of her head.
“Irish?”
Again the headshake.
“So he was a Dane?”
“I thought so. He spoke like one of us. He wouldn’t tell us his name.”
“Can you describe him?”
Her breathing was becoming more and more labored, with bloody air bubbles on her lips, but she managed to mouth a few last words: “Short. Balding. Middle-aged.”
“Did he come back this morning? Is it he who stabbed you and your grandson?”
Her eyes had closed, but she managed one more nod. “I’m so sorry.”
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Holm arrived, and Conall allowed him to take over. Carla didn’t open her eyes again and, within a few heartbeats, she was gone. Conall found Gareth looking at him with sad eyes and made a motion with his head for the two of them to join Evan, who was outside, keeping the onlookers at bay with the few words in Danish he knew. But now that Holm and his men had arrived, he was no longer needed.
Conall led both men a few paces away, farther up the alley, where they couldn’t be overheard, though he spoke in Welsh so likely it wouldn’t matter, and told them Carla’s dying words.
Evan let out a grunt of disgust. “The man she described could be anyone.”
“Me included, though my red hair does tend to get noticed.” Conall’s chin was in his hand.
“You’re hardly balding,” Gareth said.
Conall grunted. “So says the man with a full head of hair. Perhaps there’s a witness among the people who live in this alley. If so, Holm will find him.”
“If she’d lived, I could have worked up a sketch,” Gareth said. “As it is, we have very little to go on.”
“The thing about poisoning that has always bothered me,” Evan said, “is it tends to affect too many people or utterly fail. How likely was it really that King Diarmait would have eaten the pie and died?”
Conall shrugged. “Without Banan, the food would have reached the high table. If the king had eaten it, he would have died. Of that I have no doubt.”
“But Evan’s right that it wasn’t a sure thing. I see three possibilities, none of which are necessarily mutually exclusive.” Gareth started to tick the items off his fingers. “One, the killer intended to murder the king, but didn’t know Banan also had the same affliction and his arrow might hit the wrong target.”
“That means he had some knowledge of Leinster’s court but not complete knowledge,” Conall said.
“And if there’s a traitor in Diarmait’s court, he isn’t very close to the king,” Evan added.
“Two,” Gareth continued as if he hadn’t been interrupted, “he would have been happy if Diarmait died but not so much that he had a clear plan to ensure it. He was willing to use a knife on Carla and Hans, but not to risk his own life to kill the king.”
Conall nodded. “I’m with you so far.”
“Third, he assumed his plan would fail, so killing the king wasn’t the point. He wanted to distract us.”
“Which he has done,” Evan said.
“You’re saying he tried to murder the king to distract us from the investigation of Harald’s death?” Conall laughed mockingly. “That’s a big leap.”
“Not if he fears what we will find the deeper we dig,” Gareth said. “What if Harald’s death wasn’t suicide and instead is only the first line in a much longer song, as my father-in-law would say.”
Conall was silent a moment, struggling to see how that could be true, but respecting Gareth enough to consider it. Then they all started walking. Rather than heading for the palace, they made their way to Godfrid’s house, where Gwen would be, and where they could confer further in private.
They found Gwen rocking a sleeping Taran while watching Tangwen kick an inflated pig’s bladder around the house. Taran appeared to be one of those children who could sleep through anything, a not uncommon trait in a second child. Gareth went straight to his daughter and scooped her into his arms.
She accepted his kiss before wiggling to get down. “Let me go, Tad!”
Then Godfrid arrived too. The joy that filled Cait’s face at the sight of him rocked Conall backed on his heels a bit. He knew the two of them loved each other, but the way they clasped hands, as if both had been drowning and now had pulled each other onto the dock had his heart breaking a bit—not for them, but for himself. No woman had ever looked at him like Cait looked at Godfrid. It was a good thing their uncle had agreed to the match. If he’d disapproved, Conall had a strong feeling the pair would have married anyway. Best not to force them into defiance.
Nobody else seemed to notice—or if they did, they gave no sign of it—and the little group gathered around the table in the center of the hall, though Gwen remained rocking steadily in her chair. Conall took in the open trunk, the weapons inside, and the papers and books stacked on the table, and said, “You’ve been busy.”
“More than busy.” Cait held up a book. “We found Harald’s personal journal.”
Conall could feel the sharpening interest of everyone in the room, and Cait didn’t make them wait to learn more. “He writes about the fights, about his friendship and rivalry with Arnulf—” she looked at the men darkly, “—and furthermore that Templar regalia was a favorite fighting garb for both of them.”
“They were churchmen,” Gwen said. “It makes a certain kind of sense.
Cait nodded and continued, “Towards the end, he writes mostly about his regrets. At first, he expresses disillusionment with Bishop Gregory, whom he feels is betraying the Danish Church by uniting it with the Irish bishoprics—never mind that it is at the behest of the pope. But then he pivots to talking about the fighting rings. He was deliberating in his last entry as to whether or not he should confess to the bishop what he’d been doing.”
“We have much to tell you too.” Gareth told them about the murders of Hans and Carla and their thoughts about the mind of their killer.
“I don’t see the connection between Harald and these new deaths,” Evan said. “What does the attempted murder of King Diarmait have to do with the fighting rings?”
“Harald writes that the focus of the fighting rings started out being about defending Dublin but had shifted to being more about getting out from under Leinster’s yoke.”
“I don’t like it, but I can understand it,” Conall said. “It’s essentially what Carla said to us yesterday in the yard.”
Cait still held Harald’s journal in her hand. “Harald was concerned that, while the sentiment was hardly new, it was becoming more focused and strident. And more recently, the discussion had shifted to the benefits of allying with other Irish kingdoms.”
“Did he mention which one?”
“He was secretive even with his journal, as if he was afraid someone would read it.” She paused. “But I’m sure we can guess.”
Conall felt his anger, which had been banked since speaking to Carla, rising again, and he said into the heavy silence that had descended on the room, “Connaught.”
