The Unexpected Ally (28 page)

While Bergam was speaking, Gareth kept his
eyes on the floor. When he’d left Cadwaladr’s service, he’d been
afraid. The day he’d left Bergam’s, however, he’d been angrier than
he’d ever been in his life, and he’d allowed his temper to get the
better of him. He’d known he was going to be on his own again, but
he’d felt he’d had no choice.

Evan laughed low in Gareth’s ear. “By God, I
do believe he’s telling the truth.”

“What did you reply?” Hywel said.

“I told him he was a smarmy, self-righteous
son-of-a-bitch and he could take his holier-than-thou attitude and
get out of my sight.” Bergam immediately put out a hand to Abbot
Rhys and bowed. “My apologies, Father.”

“Will you tell the conclave what your son
did that Gareth wouldn’t countenance?” Hywel said.

“He took a girl against her will before her
wedding day.”

The silence in the room was so profound,
Gareth himself couldn’t breathe or swallow. He hadn’t told more
than a handful of people what had made him leave, less not to shame
Bergam and his son, but because he was ashamed to have ever stood
at the son’s side. God knows he wasn’t a saint, but truth be told,
leaving Cadwaladr and Bergam hadn’t been all that hard once he saw
what he had to do. Standing up to outright sin was easy. It was
standing up to it when it was far subtler that was the
challenge—and not a challenge that Gareth felt he always adequately
met.

“Where is your son now?” Hywel said.

“He died at the retreat from Lincoln, in the
service of Empress Maud.”

Conall

G
ruffydd bumped
Conall’s shoulder. “Good that you’re here. Gareth might need
you.”

Conall coughed. “I’m not bored yet.”

“You’re never bored.”

Conall smirked, since what Gruffydd said was
most likely true. Conall found the poor behavior of people
endlessly fascinating. His time in Wales had so far been an
education. And
peace conference or legal court,
the conclave was something Conall recognized, because his people
had a similar system of settling disputes. In his duties for
Diarmait, even though he hadn’t been the one to do the actual
investigating, he’d testified against murderers before and expected
to do so again. This was the first Welsh court he’d been in, but he
understood their laws to be not far off in principle from his
own.

Having gained his audience’s attention with
Bergam’s riveting testimony, Hywel moved on to his next witness. “I
call Lord Morgan and Father Alun to the floor.”

Gruffydd tilted his chin to look up at the
ceiling, a slight smile on his lips. “This will be good. Just
watch.”

“I believe you.” Conall so far had had no
trouble watching. He’d known from his first meeting with Gareth
that here was a man who couldn’t be bought. He might be tested, as
all men were tested, but in the end he could be relied upon. Madog
never should have chosen him as the man against whom his case
should be made. But then, Madog had been shocked by Hywel’s
questioning of Bergam. Maybe he didn’t know Gareth at all. Maybe
the choice of Gareth for the man to take the fall for Wrexham had
not been his decision.

Instead of watching Hywel as he began his
questioning of the two men he’d brought to the front, Conall kept
his eyes alternately on Madog and his wife, Susanna, who sat in the
row behind him. If Gareth’s foster son was right that it had been
she who had met Derwena last night, then her testimony might be the
key to everything. Chances were, however, that she would not
testify against her husband, if the conversation ever turned to the
attempted murder of Hywel—or the slave ring in Shrewsbury. Even if
Conall had known her once, he knew her no longer, and she had no
reason to tell him what she knew about Erik’s death.

Then again, he hadn’t asked either.

To the conclave’s silent witness, Alun and
Morgan related a tale of mistaken identity and false trails,
preposterous on the surface but relentless in the telling. It left
the listeners with no doubt that the man who’d met with Rhodri in
November in Corwen was the imposter, not Gareth himself.

Throughout the tale, Madog’s expression grew
more ruddy, as if he was holding his breath, though more likely it
was his temper that he was reining in. Meanwhile, Susanna’s
expression grew more serene. It was only as Hywel reached the end
of his questioning and Morgan and Alun drew their tale to its
conclusion that it dawned not only on Conall but on even the
daftest listener where this was leading.

The man who’d looked like Gareth had been
hired by Prince Cadwaladr, whose name Conall was already sick of
hearing, as a ruse in his negotiations with the Earl of Chester. It
was no leap at all to wonder if it had been Prince Cadwaladr who’d
paid that same imposter to hire Rhodri and the other men to sack
Wrexham—all in an attempt to bring down his brother and gather to
himself a sack of silver while he was at it.

“For my next witness, I call
Conall, nephew to Diarmait mac Murchada, King of
Leinster.”

That caused a buzz in the room. Conall
pulled on his ear as he made his way to the front. “Lords.” He
bowed to the audience and then looked expectantly at Hywel. This
was a new side to the prince, and he could only marvel that Hywel
had his audience eating out of the palm of his hand like a tamed
horse.

“Can you tell me where Gareth was on the
fifteenth of March?”

Conall didn’t hesitate to answer. “He was
tied up with me in an old mill in Shrewsbury.”

That was news to almost everyone. Those
involved had kept their mouths closed about both their adventures
and their injuries, and that discretion was paying off now.

“What were you doing in Shrewsbury?” Hywel
asked.

Conall gave an involuntary rumble deep in
his chest. This was not going to be what Madog, for one, wanted to
hear. “I had been sent by my king to track down a band of slavers
who’d been stealing women from Leinster. Instead I found a
conspiracy run by men of Powys, incited by King Madog and Prince
Cadwaladr, selling women from Powys as a means of generating silver
quickly.”

Conall’s words rang around the room, and the
silence couldn’t have been more complete. Hywel’s eyes were alight
with triumph, though he had so far managed to keep the emotion out
of his face as a whole. Then everyone started talking at once.
Madog was on his feet, shouting, his face so red Conall was afraid
he would expire on the spot. Rhys had his hands raised, trying to
quiet everyone down.

Then, into the uproar rose Susanna, Queen of
Powys. Chin high, she left her seat and walked to stand in front of
Hywel. Her voice rang out, and if the men in the room missed the
first few words, they didn’t miss the conclusion.

“You need to stop this,
Hywel. If the time for telling the truth is here, then here it is:
this is all
my
doing. Madog didn’t have a hand in any of these things of
which he is accused. To allow you to think it for a moment longer
would be to perpetuate a lie.”

Hywel

H
ywel looked at his aunt with what he hoped was an unreadable
expression. He never had any intention of calling her as a witness,
because he would never ask her to testify against her own
husband—or in Hywel’s favor, which might well have been worse. He
would never betray her trust that way.

As it was, she was standing before him, and
he made a welcoming gesture with one hand. “By all means, aunt. The
floor is yours.” He backed away, moving not behind her, however,
but more towards the semi-circle of seats so that he could watch
her face. The tension in the room was such that one misstep because
he misunderstood the situation could ruin all.

Susanna gave him a piercing look before
turning to face the other men in the room. Every one of them,
including her own husband, was staring at her with a stricken
expression.

“Susanna!” Madog had been on his feet
already, and now he took a step towards his wife. But if it had
been a blade, the look Susanna gave him would have sliced him in
half. Hywel had not found Susanna to be an assertive wife, but in
this she was unbending. Madog put up both hands and tipped his head
as if to say, “All right. Do what you must.” He sat down again, and
with his capitulation, the entire delegation from Powys sat
too.

After that, the room quieted quickly,
without Rhys needing to do or say anything. When she had the full
attention of her audience, Susanna lifted her chin and began to
speak. “You have heard testimony today that has shocked you.” She
nodded. “I understand your dismay at the events of the last few
months. But what you think you know—” she gestured to Hywel, “—what
has been revealed here is only part of the truth. The missing piece
to this puzzle is that I, and I alone, am responsible for not only
the sacking of Wrexham but the slave ring as well.”

An indrawn breath of shocked silence
followed this announcement. Hywel might have expected a clamor, but
everyone just stared at Susanna instead while she looked back with
calm eyes and an easy assurance. For his part, Hywel couldn’t stay
silent and moved closer. “Aunt, surely you can’t expect us to
believe—”

She whirled on him, her finger pointing, and
shook it in his face. “Be quiet, Hywel. You don’t know
everything.”

This time in the face of her ire, when he
stepped back, he held up both hands, like he might if he was
showing an enemy he was unarmed. “Yes, aunt. But please don’t do
this.”

His aunt glared at him. “Father Rhys, if
Hywel interrupts again, the law dictates that he should be removed
from the room, is that right?”

Rhys glided closer. “Yes, my lady.”

“See to it.” She bit off the last word.

Hywel backed away far enough that he was
within arm’s length of his father, who reached out a hand to him.
“Let her be, son. You’ve done all that you can.”

As the little drama among the family members
of Gwynedd’s royal house had gone on, Madog had remained in his
seat, his expression blank. As Hywel looked at his uncle, he
realized that Madog hadn’t expected this from Susanna either. He
had thought she was going to betray him, and instead she was
prepared to take the blame for everything he had done.

Which she proceeded to do. “You must
understand that what I did, I did for love of my husband and my
brother, Cadwaladr.”

At the mention of the prince’s name, a
murmur, louder than any before, swept around the room. Susanna was
making a woman’s argument, which was somewhat disappointing to
Hywel, but it was one that the men in the room were predisposed to
believe.

“Even though Cadwaladr is my older brother,
I have felt much of the time like a mother to him. I am not in any
way going to apologize for Cadwaladr’s crimes, of which he has
committed many. I know that my brother, Owain, has overlooked
Cadwaladr’s misdeeds many times, and when presented with his exile,
I could do no less.”

Hywel felt his father stir beside him, but
he didn’t speak. Susanna was right, of course, and if Owain had
known that his overlarge heart would lead to this, he might have
reconsidered his treatment of his brother. Hywel could be thankful
that while she claimed responsibility for the slave ring and the
thefts, she didn’t say that it was she who’d found the man to
impersonate Gareth or had anything to do with Rhun’s death. Even
she couldn’t come up with a convincing argument as to how she’d
managed that.

“I know my brother well—” and here again she
was referring to Owain, not Cadwaladr, “—and he loathed the need to
choose between Cadwaladr and his kingdom. He did what was necessary
in exiling him. I understand that—” she shot Owain a look of
apology, “—but with nobody to turn to Cadwaladr came to me. I could
not refuse to help him, especially when the men he might go to for
help might be so very much worse.”

Hywel knew without her needing to articulate
who those men might be: men like Ranulf, Earl of Chester, his
wife’s uncle, to whom Cadwaladr had gone so often in the past; and
the earls of Lincoln, Pembroke, and Hertford, siblings or close
relations of his wife, Alice, and powerful Norman magnates in their
own right. Or even the son of Robert of Gloucester, the most
powerful man in England aside from King Stephen. Robert’s body and,
more importantly, his mind, were fading. Ranulf, who was married to
Robert’s daughter, had wormed his way back into his good graces,
which would never have happened if he were well.

“I could not put all Wales at risk because
of Cadwaladr’s ambition.” Again, she threw a look of apology at her
brother. So far, she hadn’t looked at Madog once, not even with a
flick of the eyes—and Hywel had been watching for it. “It is I who
must do penance for these crimes that have been enumerated here. It
is I who arranged for my husband’s men to murder Hywel rather than
allow my nephew to uncover what I was helping Cadwaladr do in
Shrewsbury. It is I who am to blame for the sacking at Wrexham,
which was another attempt to fund my brother’s exile.” She turned
fully to face King Owain. “Madog would go to war rather than let me
be exposed and shamed, but I cannot see the two men I love the most
kill each other over something I have done. Owain, you know I am
equally in a position to do all these things of which you have
accused my husband. It is I who deserve your anger, not Madog. It
is I who must beg forgiveness and pay
sarhad
. Please be at
peace, Madog and Owain.”

Complete silence greeted this statement.
Even Abbot Rhys seemed struck dumb by her confession. Hywel, for
once, had nothing to say. His aunt had swept all arguments from the
table.

And so it was that Hywel’s father was the
first man to rise to his feet—as in truth he should have been, and
as was his right. He moved to stand in front of Susanna, blocking
the view of most of the men in the room, though still not of Hywel,
who sat a few seats to one side of center.