The Unexpected Ally (27 page)

The chapter house was nearly full already,
with more men than earlier in the day. Likely, word had spread, not
only of Rhodri’s capture and accusation against King Owain, which
had happened this morning, but Gareth’s comedown was something men
wanted to see. He had never intended to place himself above anyone
else. He’d done his duty. He’d strived to be a good knight in all
things. But sometimes people interpreted a man’s behavior as an
indictment of their own.

Evan appeared on Gareth’s wounded side.

“This isn’t going to come to anything,” he
said before Gareth could speak.

“You told me once that I could be found
standing over a dead body with a bloody knife in my hand, and
nobody would accuse me of the crime.”

Gareth meant to keep his tone light, as a
jest, but Evan didn’t think it was funny. “I still believe it.
We’ll see what kind of evidence they bring against you, besides the
word of one man who helped sack a monastery.”

King Madog clearly believed it. He was
holding court in the main circle. The table that had been placed in
the center for the morning conclave had been removed. Rhys stood
beside Madog, listening gravely and nodding at everything he said.
With the arrival of the main party from Gwynedd, Rhys turned his
attention to the audience and lifted a hand, asking for quiet.

The kings arranged themselves in positions
similar to where they’d sat that morning, but without the table
between them. Gareth sat directly behind King Owain, buttressed on
one side by Hywel and by Evan on the other. Again the conclave
began with a song from Meilyr and Gwalchmai and then a prayer from
Rhys.

Because the seats were full, the men who
ranged behind Gareth, between him and the door, had to remain
standing. One glance back showed Gareth that instead of standing to
prevent him from leaving, they had arranged themselves such that
the path was clear from him to the door. If at all possible, they
were going to ensure his free flight if it became necessary.

He turned to face front just as Madog rose
to his feet. “This assembly was witness to my accusation earlier
against King Owain, and I repeat it again here.” He made an
expansive gesture with both hands. “A fortnight ago, men paid by
the King of Gwynedd did sack the monastery at Wrexham, stripping it
of its wealth. I have a man in custody, who will testify not only
that what I say is true, but that this man—” here he pointed a
finger straight at Gareth, “—was the paymaster.”

A wave of chatter swept around the room. It
was one thing to have Rhodri shout across the courtyard. It was
another to accuse a man in open court—for that’s what the peace
conference had turned into, just as Hywel had predicted.

Gareth gazed back at Madog as impassively as
he could, but Hywel leaned into him and whispered, “Note how the
real crime here, Madog’s attempted murder of me, has been
completely eclipsed by your supposed crime. Even more, because you
are accused, you are silenced in this court—even though it is you
who uncovered
his
crimes. It’s clever, really. Cleverer than
I would ever have given my uncle credit for.”

“Could be it wasn’t his idea.” Gareth’s eyes
went to Queen Susanna, who was present today, the only woman in the
room. But she was a queen, and as far as he could tell, nobody was
questioning her right to be here.

Rhys again raised his hand to quiet the
crowd, but before he could speak, Hywel rose to his feet and
stepped forward into the silence. “Uncle, could you enlighten us as
to when this meeting with Rhodri was supposed to have
occurred?”

Rhys subsided, realizing perhaps that the
conclave was out of his hands, but as it hadn’t yet turned violent,
it could be left to the main protagonists: Hywel and Madog. Madog
looked at Rhodri and nodded, so the younger man spoke for himself.
“November.”

Hywel gave a sharp nod. “That would be
before my brother, Rhun, was murdered by Prince Cadwaladr’s
men?”

“Yes, my lord. A few weeks before.” Rhodri
paled at the mention of Rhun, as he was meant to, and the murmuring
in the crowd dissipated. Some might not have known the exact
circumstances of how Rhun had died, but now everybody did, and it
was a bold reminder on Hywel’s part of who was really the injured
party here.

“Where was this meeting?”

“He found me in Corwen, my home.”

“And the sacking of Wrexham. When did that
occur?”

“Just after St. Dafydd’s Day. Tuesday the
fourth of March, it was.”

Gareth gave an internal grunt. On Tuesday
the fourth, he hadn’t yet left Aber, as any man here could attest.
If the sacking had been any later, it would have posed more of a
problem, since Gareth had then traveled to Shrewsbury with his
family at Prince Hywel’s behest. They’d arrived there only to
become involved in another investigation. Even ten days after it
happened, nobody in Shrewsbury had heard about the sacking. They’d
had their own problems, of course, and an absent sheriff. Gareth
assumed they knew about it by now.

“So he came to you in November, but you
didn’t raid Wrexham until March? Why the delay?”

“Now see here!” Madog stepped between Hywel
and Rhodri. “That’s enough questions.”

Rhys stepped forward himself, his hand out,
and spoke mildly. “We need to ascertain the facts, and Prince Hywel
is within his rights to question his captain’s accuser.”

Madog’s eyes narrowed, and Gareth sensed
that it occurred to him only now that Rhys’s mildness of earlier
was a permanent state, not an indication that he favored Madog’s
position. Nevertheless, Madog subsided, and Rhys gestured to Hywel
that he should continue.

Hywel raised his eyebrows at Rhodri, and for
the first time, Rhodri hesitated. “I don’t know the reason for the
delay. It wasn’t supposed to be that long. He just wanted my
agreement to do it at first, and he told me that he’d be in touch
as to when I was to go to Wrexham.”

“What did you think when you didn’t hear
from him again?”

Rhodri shrugged. “His money was good, and if
what I was paid to do never came about, it was no loss to me. But
then I got a message that it was time.”

“What do you mean
a message
? You can
read?”

“No!” Rhodri scoffed. “He paid one of the
village boys to tell me. I never saw him myself.”

“You never saw him again?”

“Not until after the raid.”

“When and where did you meet?”

“Our final payment was on the fifteenth, the
Ides of March, back in Corwen.”

Gareth eased out a sigh that he tried not to
show. On the Ides of March, he’d been in Shrewsbury within moments
of being captured by a very different band of ruffians. The next
day had been Sunday, and Gwalchmai had sung at mass in the church
of the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul. They’d left Shrewsbury on
Sunday evening, the sixteenth, ridden three days to Aber, taking
the path through the mountains to avoid Powys. Upon their arrival
at Aber on Wednesday afternoon, King Owain had been ready to ride,
and they’d left with him, reaching St. Asaph’s just past midnight
on Friday morning. And here it was Saturday again. No wonder Gareth
was exhausted.

“And it was Gareth who met you?”

Rhodri hesitated again. “Yes.”

Hywel’s eyes narrowed. “You saw his
face?”

Rhodri seemed to think better of his
assertion. “I thought it was him. He wore a cloak and hardly spoke,
but he knew all about what we’d done. He said to meet him here, at
St. Asaph, and he would have another job for me.”

“Just you?”

“Yes.” Rhodri stuck out his chin, back to
defiance.

“What about the other men he hired? Where
are they?”

“I don’t know!” Rhodri said, as if it was
obvious. “We scattered.”

“Had you known them before?”

“N-n-no. We met at an abandoned farmhouse
outside Wrexham a few days before the raid. Everything we needed
was there when we arrived.”

“Including the surcoats with the crest of
Gwynedd?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to the treasure?”

Rhodri looked down at his feet, and somehow
Gareth knew exactly what was coming. “I spent my share.”

The man was a naïve fool and an idiot. A
criminal too, with no sense of right and wrong—or of
self-preservation, apparently.

Madog intervened again. “Surely, that’s
enough to know that Rhodri speaks the truth. Gareth paid him and
other men to sack Wrexham. What more do we need to learn, and why
isn’t that man in chains already? Arrest him!”

Madog’s men surged towards Gareth, and an
equal number of men from Gwynedd were there to meet them. It was a
good thing that nobody had been allowed a sword because there would
have been bloodshed.

King Owain still hadn’t moved or spoken, and
neither had Gareth. Hywel and Evan stepped in front of him, but
again, it was Rhys who raised a hand and diffused the moment. “Sir
Gareth is here of his own accord, and the case has not yet been
proven, not to my satisfaction, not on the statement of one man who
happens to be a thief. Do you have more of these men to bring
forward?”

“I call Brother Deiniol and Brother Lwc of
Wrexham, whom my men found in neighboring cells next to Rhodri.
Apparently, men of Gwynedd put them there!”

That sent the room into an uproar again, but
Hywel threw back his head and laughed. It was such an incongruous
thing to do that some of the righteousness on Madog’s face
disappeared, to be replaced by suspicion.

Hywel waved a hand. “By all means, let’s
hear them.”

In due course, Deiniol and Lwc were paraded
before the conclave and each told the story of the sack of Wrexham
in his own words, though they made no mention of the theft from St.
Asaph and their role in them, and nobody from Gwynedd interrupted.
During Lwc’s testimony, Hywel did take a moment to step near to
Rhys and whisper a lengthy passage in his ear, after which Rhys
nodded. Once both prisoners had finished their statements, Rhys
made sure they stayed sitting in the front row of benches,
well-guarded and with no possibility of escape.

Finally, Hywel stepped to the fore again.
His expression was somber, and his hands were clasped behind his
back, but Gareth knew him well enough after all these years to know
what the tightness in his shoulders meant. He wasn’t fearful—he was
excited, and if he’d allowed himself to show it, he would have been
bouncing on the balls of his feet.

Hywel looked down at the floor while the
room quieted, and then he let the silence lengthen. Gareth reminded
himself that Hywel had begun performing for audiences larger than
this, testing the temperature of a room and his effect on the
people gathered before him, from when he was nine years old when
his incredible voice had manifested itself. He’d become expert at
reading a crowd before he’d become a man. Gareth let out a
breathless sigh, forcing his shoulders to relax and telling himself
that he needed to trust his prince. If anyone knew what he was
doing in such circumstances, it was Hywel.

The prince looked up. “For the moment, I am
willing to put aside Gwynedd’s accusation against Powys that King
Madog ordered his men to kill me just over a week ago. It is an
accusation that Powys hasn’t even bothered to deny. But if
dispensing with the current matter of the treachery of the captain
of my guard, Sir Gareth, is necessary before we can discuss the
true matter at hand, then so be it.” He turned to Abbot Rhys.
“First, I want to make clear that Gareth was in no way involved in
the payment of these men, Rhodri among them. If I prove that, I
believe that it will go a long way towards proving that Rhodri was
paid by a third party with the intent to impugn Gareth’s—and my
father’s—name. Are we agreed?”

Rhys lifted both hands to the conclave. “I
am agreed. What say you?”

General murmurs of approval swept around the
room with many nodded heads, even among the men of Powys. A waft of
cool air swept across Gareth’s neck, and he glanced behind him to
the door to see Conall slip in late and find a place among Hywel’s
men. He met Gareth’s eyes and made a fist, implying that all was
well, or so Gareth hoped that’s what the signal meant in Irish. He
turned back to face the front.

Rhys looked at Madog. “What says Powys?”

Madog was looking murderous, but he nodded
jerkily. “Agreed, if the logic is sound.”

Hywel clenched his hands into fists down at
his sides, and then relaxed them. “I call first Lord Bergam of
Dyffryn Ceiriog!”

Gareth blinked as his old employer rose to
his feet and made his way down to where Hywel waited. He stopped
beside Hywel, clearly puzzled at being called forward. “My
lord?”

“Lord Bergam, you employed Sir Gareth for a
time some years ago. Is that correct?”

“Yes, my lord, for a short while.”

“I understand that he left your service
after an incident involving your son.”

Bergam wasn’t liking where this was going,
but the truth was required in court, not to mention on holy ground,
and he told it. “Yes.”

“Did Gareth tell you why he was
leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us?”

Now Bergam canted his head to one side, as
it dawned on him what he was expected to say, but again, he didn’t
balk at saying it. “Gareth told me that honor wasn’t lost in a day.
It was lost over weeks and years of taking the path that was easy
rather than the one that was right. He said he hadn’t left Prince
Cadwaladr’s service only to find himself beholden to another man
who didn’t know the difference between right and wrong, and while
he didn’t claim to have God’s ear, he knew enough of the difference
to know that he couldn’t stomach another moment in my son’s
presence. If he had to starve, so be it. He’d go to hell for his
own deeds, not for standing by while another man paved the
way.”