The Unexpected Ally (30 page)

Gwen had known that she’d been on borrowed
time in regards to staying with Gareth beyond these last weeks, and
she was opening her mouth to agree to Hywel’s request when the
outside door opened and King Owain himself entered the room. He was
alone, which was rare enough to remark upon, though neither Gwen
nor Hywel did. Both got immediately to their feet.

“My lord.” Gwen curtseyed.

“Father.” Hywel straightened first. “What is
it?”

“Your Aunt Susanna has already left for
Llanfaes.”

Hywel drew in a breath. “I was waiting for
her, hoping to speak to her one more time.”

“You can visit her at the convent,” Owain
said. “For now, you have something more important to attend
to.”

“I know. You want me to ride with you to
Mold—”

King Owain was shaking his head before Hywel
had finished his sentence. “She has paid the
sarhad
as her
debt for the attempt on your life. It includes a patch of land a
mile to the south of St. Asaph that came with her on her marriage
as part of her dowry. She said you would want to inspect it.” He
handed Hywel a rolled up piece of parchment. “Taran has already
made over the land to you.”

Hywel took the deed his father offered and
unrolled it. “What is this about?”

King Owain spread his hands wide. “I don’t
know anything more than I’ve told you.”

“What exactly did she say?”

King Owain pursed his lips as he thought and
then said, “
Tell my nephew that if he and that fine captain of
his should visit the place sooner rather than later, they might
find themselves well rewarded for their efforts
.” He laughed.
“You know how she is when she’s trying to tell you something
without actually telling you, but I don’t know what this
means.”

Hywel looked at Gwen, who shook her head and
said, “I don’t know either, but you ought to do as she asks, don’t
you think?”

“I’ll keep a few men with me—Gareth, of
course. Evan and Gruffydd. Conall, if he will come.”

King Owain’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure
about keeping Conall at your side?”

Hywel shrugged. “It’s seems a little late to
second guess his presence, and I don’t think we’ll be sorry to have
someone we know well among Diarmait’s court in the coming
years.”

“I give way to your
judgment
in this, son. Your brothers and I will move
out at dawn tomorrow. Catch us up when you can—after you’ve sorted
out everything here.”

“Yes, Father.” Hywel bowed again, looking
pleased that his father had accorded him such confidence. His
approval had been casual, as if this kind of trust in his son was
an everyday occurrence.

King Owain left, and Gwen could hear him
shouting for his horse in the courtyard. Gwen and Hywel looked at
each other appraisingly. “You should go look at that farmstead,”
Gwen said.

“Doing what my aunt asks has always been the
wise choice,” Hywel said. Then Gareth’s voice telling Rhodri to
stand up straight resonated outside the door. “First, however,
we’ll talk to Rhodri.”

Gareth entered the room holding Rhodri by
the scruff of the neck. The young man wasn’t resisting exactly, but
he had a sullen look on his face that Gwen recognized. He’d been
deceived, and he didn’t like it. If she had to guess, never having
spoken to him before, his mother had spoiled him, and he’d never
taken on the responsibilities of a man, despite being one.

Gareth dumped him onto a stool in front of
Hywel, deliberately making Rhodri look up to see the prince’s
face.

Hywel studied him for a moment, no more
impressed than Gwen, and then he said abruptly, “Would you like to
earn back a portion of your lost honor?”

Gwen wasn’t sure that Rhodri knew what honor
was, but his expression cleared slightly, and he nodded. “Yes, my
lord.”

“The two monks beside you in the cells—have
they spoken?” Hywel said.

Rhodri scoffed. “One blubbers constantly
about how he was made to steal and he never meant it. He goes on
and on. The other I’ve heard from less, since his is the first cell
and mine’s the last, but all he does is pray.”

Hywel kept his gaze on Rhodri, but Gwen and
Gareth exchanged a glance. The two monks were staying in their
respective roles. It wasn’t going to be easy to catch them changing
their story.

“We are going to arrange for you to escape,
and then we want you to free them and go with them to wherever they
go.”

“How am I to escape?”

Hywel raised his eyebrows at Gareth, who
answered, “When we return you to your cell, I will throw you
roughly inside, Prince Hywel will haul me off of you—and then
forget to lock the cell. The monks will be called away for Vespers,
at which point you can free your fellow captives and escape with
them. We will follow the best we can, and we’re counting on you to
find us and tell us where their hideout is.”

Rhodri looked from Gareth to Hywel and back
again. “You’re asking me to risk my life for you.”

“We can leave you in that cell until my
father decides what to do with you. Maybe Conall wouldn’t mind
taking you back to Ireland with him and selling you,” Gareth
said.

Rhodri’s eyes widened. “He wouldn’t!”

“I would if the alternative was to leave you
at Denbigh, which has real prison cells, and throw away the key.
It’s seems such a waste when you could be put to work.” Hywel
paused. “Do I really have to threaten you to get you to
cooperate?”

Rhodri looked down at his feet. “No. I’ll do
it. We’ll go at Vespers like you said. But you’ll have to stay well
back. If they really are villains and they find out I talked to
you, they’ll kill me.”

“We will do our best.” Hywel nodded at
Gareth, who lifted Rhodri to his feet, and the two men hauled him
back out to the courtyard.

Gwen followed to find Saran standing
somberly by herself at the entrance to the church, watching them
go. Gwen stopped beside her. “What will you do now? Will you return
to Carreg Cennan?”

Saran shook her head. “That part of my life
is over.”

“Would you like to come to Dolwyddelan with
me and Tangwen? Hywel’s wife, Mari, is there, and Hywel
specifically suggested that when I go to visit her, you come with
me.”

Genuine hope lit Saran’s eyes. “Thank you. I
would like that.”

Gareth

“D
o you see them?”
Gareth ran back and forth alongside the monastery wall, looking for
the three ‘prisoners’, who had disappeared without a trace. Though
the initial escape had gone off without a hitch, and the three men
had headed straight for the northeast corner where the wall was
lowest, Gareth and Conall had been forced to hang back. By the time
they arrived at the wall, the trio were gone. Even Deiniol, who was
older and less fit than the other two, had disappeared completely.
“Did they double back?”

Conall cursed fluently in Gaelic and swung
himself into the same tree that overhung the wall, which Gareth had
climbed the other day. “I don’t see them.”

Gareth managed to get himself up onto the
wall too, not without some curses of his own, and gazed into the
darkness.

“Puts me to shame, it does.” Conall said in
an undertone. “I’m not as young as I used to be.” And yet, with an
agility that still eluded Gareth, he dropped to the ground outside
the monastery.

“None of us are.” Gareth sat on the wall to
minimize the distance he had to drop and pushed off, landing with a
thud beside Conall. “Which way should we go?”

“East. Madog’s men are gone, and going that
way means they could leave the monastery grounds behind them all
the more quickly. Going west takes them to the river, which has one
bridge across it, and the next ford is all the way at Rhuddlan. Lwc
would know that. They’ll head in any direction but west, by my
guess.”

Gareth loped along beside Conall, who’d
started across the pasture before Gareth had even agreed that east
was the way they wanted to go. A faint light remained in the sky
behind them, but the sun had set, and it would soon be full dark.
They hurried as quickly as they could through the woods to the road
that ran along the east side of the monastery grounds, coming out
slightly south of where Rhodri had been arrested by Madog’s
men.

Knowing that once the prisoners left the
monastery grounds, it would be easy to lose them, Hywel had
recruited twenty men to follow them. These men included Gruffydd
and Cadoc, the assassin-archer, as a first look at what an elite
fighting force might look like. Hywel hadn’t counted on Gareth
losing his prey before they’d gone a hundred yards.

“Has Rhodri betrayed us?” Conall said.

“There was always a chance of that. He
willingly sacked a monastery after all. If the bandits here are the
same men, then he knows them, despite all his denials. He could
even be their leader.”

“I wouldn’t have said he was that smart—or
that good of a liar,” Conall said.

“We have been fooled before.”

Conall laughed mockingly. “And will be
again, it seems.”

Gareth and Conall came out onto the road,
and a moment later Gruffydd stepped out of the woods on the other
side and tilted his head to point south. “They went that way. I was
waiting for you before I followed.”

Gareth let out a breath. Rhodri may be
double-crossing them, but Hywel had planned for that, posting men
on the roads all around the monastery, as well as in the fields and
pastures. That caution had paid off. “Did you have any
trouble?”

“There must be a secret passage through the
eastern wall, because they crossed the road a hundred feet south of
where you came out. We almost missed them.”

“Did you warn Hywel?” Gareth said. The
prince had been posted on the other side of the monastery, guessing
that Lwc and Deiniol would choose to run south, as it appeared they
were doing.

“I did.”

With Gruffydd at their side, Hywel and
Conall went straight through the crossroads rather than turning
right to reach the entrance to the monastery. A few yards farther
on, Gareth spotted Hywel, who was standing on a three-foot-high
stone wall to the left of the road, waving at them. Gareth had been
so focused on the road before him that he hadn’t seen the prince
until they were almost upon him.

Hywel jumped down from the wall. “We are the
last. Everyone else is following ahead.” He shook his head,
laughing a little under his breath. “They are moving fast. Rhodri
is making no effort to slow the other two down.”

“Conall and I lost them before they’d even
left the monastery, so either Rhodri thinks we’re better than we
are, or he is really trying to lose us,” Gareth said.

“Or one of them is,” Hywel said. “I have
horses waiting.”

Gareth grunted his thanks. He could run, but
he would really rather not have to. “We should stay far back and
make even Rhodri think he’s lost us.”

“Those were the orders I gave,” Hywel
said.

“Do we have any idea where they’re going?”
Conall said.

“I don’t. That’s why we did this,” Hywel
said.

They kept to the margins of the road to hide
the sound of their horses’ hooves. One by one, they caught up to
the rest of Hywel’s men, who’d continued to follow on foot. Most
were men-at-arms, used to riding. To a man, they were breathing
hard and happy to be overtaken. Gareth was in no way surprised to
learn that it was only his two foster sons who’d been able to keep
up with the three fugitives.

After a quarter of an hour, Llelo himself
appeared from a side road and put up a hand to stop them. “There’s
an old farmstead up ahead. I counted a dozen men in and around it.
Lwc and Rhodri ran right up to them as if they were
recognized.”

“Lwc and Rhodri? Where’s Deiniol?” Hywel
said.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know. You told us to
hang back, and it was hard to judge how far that needed to be. We
came around a corner, and he was no longer with them.”

“Where’s Dai?” Gareth said.

“He’s set up on a rising hill to the north
of the farm. It’s on the other side of a pasture with a good view
of the front door and the barn. Unfortunately, fifty yards on every
side of the house is pastureland and fallow fields, with nary a
tree to hide behind. If they weren’t on watch before, they surely
will be now that Lwc and Rhodri have joined them. They’ll see us
coming long before we reach the house. But I can lead you at least
as far as Dai without being seen.”

“Lead on. Let’s see what we have to work
with.” Hywel gestured to the men who’d gathered around him. “Spread
yourselves out and keep your heads down.” He indicated the eastern
horizon. “The moon has risen, and I don’t want to spook them.”

Llelo had given a good description of the
layout, and Gareth was more than pleased at how mature his son had
become. He could take only a modicum of credit for it, since all
he’d done was set him on a course, and the boy had done the rest
for himself. They left the horses in a thicket invisible from the
house with two men to guard them and crept forward until they were
crouched in a stand of trees behind a stone wall at the base of the
hill Llelo had mentioned.

Gareth had observed for only a moment,
however, before a voice spoke from behind him. “I think these are
the thieves you were looking for.”

Gareth swung around. “Rhodri?”

A head popped out from behind a tree a few
feet away. “Rhodri? No. It’s Deiniol.”

Gareth sprang on him and dragged him down
behind the wall. Hywel noted the commotion and came over, along
with Conall and Evan.

“What are you doing here?” Gareth said.

Deiniol’s eyes were wide by the light of the
moon, which was three-quarters full and waning. “What do you mean
what am I doing here?” He pointed across the field. “Those men are
villains!” At the last word, his voice rose, going high in his
outrage. Gone was the austere, superior monk with whom they’d all
been acquainted, to be replaced by a frightened man. Gareth still
didn’t know if Deiniol was frightened because Hywel had brought an
army to stop the thieves, or because his time among them had made
him finally understand the seriousness of the charges that had been
brought against him.