The Renegade Merchant (12 page)

Gareth put his hands on his knees and bent
to look more closely at the woman, who the watchmen had settled
face up in the grass. Gwen looked with him, and said, after a
moment, “Back at the inn, I wondered if Roger’s murderer could be a
local man because of how the body was oriented east to west. This
implies local knowledge too.”

“We have no indication that this girl is
connected to Roger,” John said.

Gwen shot him a wry look. “When was the last
murder you had in Shrewsbury?”

John rubbed his nose with his palm.
“Adeline, I suppose, though she didn’t die here. Before that—it’s
been a year at least.”

“In that case, it’s hard to believe that two
in one day could be a coincidence,” Gwen said.

“We should assume nothing as yet,” Gareth
said, feeling like he was mediating between them again.

John glanced around somewhat furtively. The
two watchmen who’d removed the body from the river had been
dismissed to find dry clothes, and the others who’d come to watch
had moved away to control the few onlookers—or simply because they
felt uncomfortable with a dead woman on the ground. At the moment,
there was nobody within hearing distance but Cedric, Gareth, and
Gwen. “Perhaps we have a third murder to consider. We can’t be sure
that this girl is connected to the blood either.”

“I grant you that we can’t be sure yet about
her connection to Roger, not without even knowing her name, but—”
With a heavy heart, Gareth moved into a crouch beside the girl’s
body. It wasn’t that she looked like anyone he knew—praise the
Lord—but simply that now he was really looking at her, he saw how
young she was. From her unlined face and hands, she was more a girl
than a woman. “—we can determine easily if the blood was hers by
finding a wound.”

The girl’s skirt was stained with blood, but
even more, it had been jaggedly ripped, as had the girl’s
underskirt. Pulling the fabric aside revealed a gruesome gash in
her upper thigh, the tissue mangled and torn, with the remains of
splintered wood still in it. It gave Gareth the shivers just
looking at it. “I don’t think you need to concern yourself that
there’s been a third murder, John.”

John moved closer to Gareth, his expression
pained. “The crate slat from the alley—”

Gareth nodded. “A major avenue for blood
flows just below the surface right where she was wounded. When a
cart overturned in a river last year and I lost my belongings, one
of the men went with it. He fell on the rough corner of the cart
bed as it splintered on hidden stones beneath the water’s surface
and bled out before we could get to him.”

“That’s horrible.” Gwen’s shoulders
convulsed with the same shiver that had gone through Gareth, and
her eyes were sad. “No wonder she bled so much.”

 “That means that whoever killed her
and dumped her in the river knows something about the human body,”
John said.

Gareth put a hand on Gwen’s shoulder and
squeezed. “We’ll find him.”

“I almost don’t want to.” Gwen shook her
head. “He must be as cold as Cadwaladr inside.”

“We should get her to the monastery,” John
said. “She can lie in the room with Roger until her burial.
Hopefully, we will have a name for her by then.”

Gwen felt at the cloth of the girl’s dress.
“Her dress might have been pretty before the river water spoiled it
and leached the color.”

“She was a pretty girl.” Gareth stood and
looked north, his hand shading his eyes as he inspected the course
of the river. The Severn River meandered as it flowed, such that it
passed the west gate going south, looped around Shrewsbury and the
fields adjacent to the town—common land for the production of
fruits and vegetables in small plots, each worked by a family in
the town—and then turned north.

At that point, it flowed under the east gate
bridge and past the castle on its eastern side, before finally
turning east again. After leaving Shrewsbury, the Severn continued
to meander north and south in long circular loops for many miles
until it straightened out somewhat in its ultimate journey south to
the sea.

“If the girl ended up here, near the
southernmost point of the river,” Gareth said, “she would have gone
in the water somewhere upstream, likely near the west gate, which
wasn’t far from where the pool of blood was found.”

“I will make sure my men pay special heed to
activity or footprints by the river along that side,” John
said.

“I don’t understand how the murderer got her
out of the town,” Gwen said. “What did he do—throw the body over
the wall?”

“Oh—you don’t know.” Gareth looked down at
her. “Many of the houses abut the river and have access to it
through narrow doorways and gates.”

Gwen frowned. “Doesn’t that defeat the
purpose of the wall? What kind of protection can it provide if just
anybody can walk through it?”

Gwen had been speaking in
Welsh, which John understood, and he made a
maybe
motion with his head. “People
need access to the river. They do their washing in it, they cook
with it, the town boys swim in it. Besides, the private gates are
inspected annually for their security and sturdiness, and it would
be impossible to truly batter any down with a siege engine, seeing
how the river prevents access.”

Gwen gave an unladylike snort, as skeptical
as Gareth, who’d already had this conversation with John. Still,
when King Stephen had attacked the town nearly ten years before, he
hadn’t tried to force the river and instead had taken it from the
castle side in the traditional manner. So maybe there was something
in what John was saying. One or two spies sneaking in a back door
could disable the guards at the main gates and let in an army, but
that weakness was always the worry for a defending force,
regardless of how many holes in the fortifications they had to
contend with.

The vagaries of Shrewsbury’s defenses
weren’t Gareth’s problem today. They had two murders now, a missing
Irishman, who was looking less like a suspect and more like a third
victim with every hour that passed, and a murderer who, as Gwen had
said, might have a heart as cold as Cadwaladr.

Gareth hadn’t thought that anyone could be
cold as the traitorous prince. Without a doubt, they had a villain
on their hands.

Gwen

A
s
John’s men loaded the dead girl into the cart, Gareth turned to
Gwen. “What have you heard from your father?”

“Nothing.” Gwen had been trying not to think
about her father all day. He’d left the monastery early that
morning, after John Fletcher’s boy had come to fetch Gareth about
the pool of blood and just before Gareth had sent for Gwen herself.
Here it was, getting on towards evening, and she still hadn’t seen
him.

“Should I ask John Fletcher where Adeline’s
father has his shop?” Gareth said. “I hadn’t thought to
inquire.”

“I was with my father when he spoke to the
prior, so I have an idea where it is.” Gwen tucked her hand into
Gareth’s elbow, and they set off behind the cart, back through the
main gate that allowed access into the town from these fields and
the southern sweep of the Severn. “Maybe we should walk by it on
our way to the monastery.”

“On second thought, this is your father’s
business,” Gareth said. “You shouldn’t meddle in it unless he asks
you to. When he is ready to talk about it, he’ll come to you.”

“You seem very sure of that,” Gwen said, not
liking Gareth’s advice but knowing he was right. They were here in
Shrewsbury for her father, even if she and Gareth were using it as
a cover for Prince Hywel’s inquiries. Adeline may have been
Meilyr’s daughter, and even if Gwen had been her half-sister, she
had fewer rights to her than Meilyr, and she certainly needed to
respect his privacy for one day at least. She could always pin him
down later and make him tell her what had gone on in his meeting
with Tom Weaver. “There was a time he wouldn’t have told me
anything at all.”

“He is no longer that man,” Gareth said,
“and you are no longer that daughter.”

Except, a moment later, Gareth was proved
wrong as a very familiar voice, raised in song, came to Gwen’s
ears. It wasn’t Gwalchmai this time, singing praises to God for the
abbot’s pleasure, but her father, bellowing out a bawdy ballad.
Fortunately, he was singing in Welsh, which would at least reduce
the number of people who understood the words.

After entering the town, Gareth and Gwen had
been following the river road towards the east gate, but now Gareth
guffawed and started forward at a quicker pace, darting down a
different street that led more to the center of town. “Meilyr boxed
Hywel’s ears once for singing that song in the hall.”

“How did you know that?” Gwen hustled to
keep up with Gareth’s long legs as they left the cart behind them.
“You weren’t at Aberffraw back then.”

Gareth glanced down at her. “Hywel told me
about it just the other day.”

Gwen laughed with genuine pleasure. The
prince’s mind had been closed to her since Rhun’s death. That Hywel
had told Gareth about his childhood meant that Hywel might speak to
Gareth about his thoughts and feelings when he was ready.

They came around a corner, some distance now
from the east gate, and spied Meilyr weaving on his feet in the
middle of a street. Even drunk, his voice was impressive, rich in
tone and fully supported, so it wasn’t any wonder a crowd had
gathered around him to listen—and maybe to see what spectacle he
might create of himself next.

Gwen approached Meilyr from the front, to
make sure that he saw her and didn’t startle away or become angry.
“Father, it’s time to return to the monastery.”

“Don’t want to go home.” Meilyr sounded like
Gwalchmai when he was five and hadn’t wanted to leave the warmth of
the hall for his bed.

Gwen moved closer and cautiously put a hand
on his arm. “You don’t have to go home if you don’t want to.
Perhaps you and I can walk a bit instead.” She hadn’t seen her
father drunk like this in years, though at one time it had been a
nightly occurrence. A rush of memories returned to her, mostly of
the despair and sadness she and her father had felt after her
mother’s death. They’d grieved separately, however, and that, more
than anything else, had created the rift between them that hadn’t
healed until a few years ago.

Meilyr had sought relief from grief in mead
and wine. At times, Gwen had been relieved to see him drinking,
because he wasn’t a sour or angry drunk, as some men were and which
she might have expected, given his normal gruff personality.
Instead, alcohol softened him around the edges and made him easier,
rather than harder, to deal with.

Still, it hadn’t helped his singing or
composing and, in retrospect, Meilyr blamed too much mead for his
falling out with King Owain after old King Gruffydd’s death. It
wasn’t that he’d said things he’d regretted. He’d been sober when
he’d argued with the king. It had been his slow incapacitation for
which Owain had held no patience.

Thankfully, Meilyr responded now to Gwen as
he had then, most of the time anyway. His belligerence faded, and
he put a hand on her cheek. “Daughter, you look just like your
mother.”

Gwen smiled. “Yes, Father.”

She met Gareth’s eyes and gestured with her
chin towards the east, indicating that Gareth should continue as
they had been, returning to the monastery with the girl’s body
while Gwen handled her father. Gareth, seeing that she did, in
fact, have things in hand, nodded and turned away. John Fletcher
had stopped the cart at the bottom of the road where they were
standing, and Gareth raised a hand to him, indicating that he could
now continue.

The onlookers, seeing that the concert had
ended, dispersed as well, though not before several took a second
look at Gwen herself. She would have explained to them who she was
if they didn’t already know, but right now her father was her first
concern.

Gwen glanced upwards, noting how low the sun
had fallen in the sky. She wasn’t worried about their safety on the
streets of Shrewsbury, but she knew that at some point the guards
closed the gates and were reluctant to open them again to just
anyone. She steered her father in the direction Gareth had
gone.

“Has something happened, Father?”

“I spoke with the weaver.”

Gwen heaved a sigh, grateful that she wasn’t
going to have to beg him to tell her what had happened that day.
“What did he say?”

“He wasn’t Adeline’s true father.”

“Oh.” Gwen didn’t know whether she was happy
or sad to hear it. Either way, Adeline was dead, and Gwen would
never know her now. “Does that mean—”

Meilyr shook his head back and forth in the
way he did when he wanted to say ‘no’ and was too drunk to realize
he was still doing it. “He doesn’t know who her father was. Said he
didn’t mind telling me, seeing as how I might have been him.”

“So he didn’t resent you coming to talk to
him?”

Her father shook his head again, and this
time the motion made him weave on his feet such that Gwen was
afraid he might fall over.

She gripped his arm tighter to steady him.
“Who was Adeline’s mother?”

“He hardly knew that either. He met the
woman one night at a tavern. She had the baby with her. This was
when he was still working a cart, peddling his wares from place to
place and weaving on a small loom. He didn’t have a wife—didn’t
have anyone. They spent the night together.” Her father’s words
came in a long stream with no inflection and barely any pause. He
said the last sentence as if it was of no more importance than the
first.

Gwen’s brow furrowed, confused by the
disjointed way her father was telling the story. “So, the woman
fell pregnant, and Adeline was Tom’s child?”