The Unexpected Ally (4 page)

Regardless of the abuse he was taking, he
continued to struggle and scream, desperate to get away. In
Shrewsbury, men had made him captive for a time—and had almost
killed him in the process. That was more than enough helplessness
for a lifetime, but Gareth’s attempts to fight off these men came
to nothing. However, instead of carrying him away—or killing
him—the men rolled him into a little stream that ran to the right
of the path.

The recent rains had raised the water level
from what might in the summer be next to nothing to a running
torrent a foot and a half deep, and as Gareth’s face went under the
water, his anger and fear turned to utter panic. The weight on his
back prevented him from rising. He knew he should preserve his
strength and his air, but inside his head he was screaming that he
was not going to die as Erik had. He was as desperate as he’d ever
been in his life.

But within a few heartbeats, the weight on
his back lifted. He couldn’t see or hear anything underwater and
inside the sack, but he got his knees under him and surged upwards
out of the stream. The sacking pressed on his face but he shook his
head to loosen the cloth and took in his first gasping breath that
was more akin to a sob. A few more breaths and he was able to start
working at the rope that bound his hands behind his back. It seemed
that the men had sought to contain him only temporarily, because
the bonds weren’t tight, even if they were stiff from being
submerged in cold water. After a few moments of effort, he was able
to pull his hands loose.

He ripped the sacking off of his head and
threw it aside. He remained on his knees at the edge of the path,
the panic fading—though as his breaths came more easily, the pain
in his wounded ribs and his left shoulder rose, and he didn’t have
to look at his wound to know that it was bleeding again.

He spat on the ground to rid himself of the
last of the stream water and pushed to his feet. Ben lay in the
middle of the path, curled up in a ball with his hands to his head.
He was moaning in pain and bleeding from a gash in his forehead.
The right side of his face was red and puffy.

And while the horse and cart were where Ben
had halted them before the attack—Erik’s body was gone.

Hywel

H
ywel stopped two
steps outside of the gatehouse, his mouth falling open at the sight
of Gareth and a young monk leaning drunkenly against one another as
they struggled to walk. Gareth wouldn’t be drunk at this hour of
the day, or any day for that matter—Hywel knew that like he knew
himself—and a second look had Hywel hastening forward. The monk was
bleeding from a gash along the line of his scalp, and Gareth was
holding his left arm bent and pressed to his belly. He was
shivering and every item of clothing he was wearing—from shirt and
breeches to cloak and boots—was soaked.

“What happened to you? I mean … I can see
what happened to you, but why are you out here at this hour,
wounded again and sopping wet? It’s raining, but—”

The gatekeeper must have been watching too
because he was only a step behind Hywel. Sputtering his protests at
the state of Gareth and the young monk with him, he hastened past
Hywel and ducked under the monk’s arm to support his other side.
Once beneath the gatehouse, the gatekeeper waved an arm to signal
to other monks in the courtyard that he needed help.

Now that the sun was up and Lauds was over,
the monastery was alive with activity, and two monks responded,
hurrying forward with the hems of their robes raised so they
wouldn’t trip in their haste to help. Hywel caught a glimpse of the
sandals they wore beneath their robes as a sign of poverty and
affinity with Jesus Christ. Hywel would have liked to point out to
them that the Lord Christ had lived in the Holy Land, where
Crusaders reported that it was hot most of the time. Nobody had
asked him, of course, so it was just as well he’d never had a
vocation for the Church. He had little patience with impracticality
and, regardless, didn’t approve of men having cold feet. But then,
he had cold hands and feet no matter how careful he was to keep
them warm.

Once the two monks took their brother from
Gareth, Hywel ducked under Gareth’s good arm to support him and
followed after them. St. Kentigern’s monastery consisted of a
cluster of a dozen buildings surrounded by a ten-foot-high stone
wall. Named several hundred years ago for its founder, the
monastery lay on the eastern bank of the River Elwy, not far from
the bridge they’d crossed in the middle of the night to reach St.
Asaph. Other than the wall and the church itself, the monastery
buildings were constructed in wood, a far less expensive option for
a relatively poor parish.

With its location in eastern Wales, St.
Asaph was the intersection of more than just a river and many
roads. For six hundred years it had sat at the crossroads between
countries: first between Welsh and Saxon lands, later between Welsh
and Norman ones, and now between Gwynedd and Powys. The current
conflict was merely one episode of a much larger, long-running
war.

St. Kentigern’s had suffered because of it.
Hywel didn’t know if the stone wall that surrounded the property
had been built since Rhys had become prior a few years ago, but it
was newer than the rest of the monastery—and had been added for
good reason. The church had burned to the ground in war at least
twice, and it was only since King Owain had risen to power in the
last ten years and more or less stabilized relations with Chester
and Powys that the monastery had achieved a degree of
prosperity.

With war looming again between Gwynedd and
Powys, that peace might be at an end. It was little wonder that
Rhys was endeavoring to do everything within his power to stop the
fighting before it started.

As he helped Gareth hobble along towards the
guesthouse, Hywel said in an undertone, “Tell me what
happened.”

“Did you hear about the murder?” Gareth
said.

Hywel nodded gravely. “Erik. Gwen told me.”
He shook his head. “My father knows too, and we are both worried.
If someone killed Erik, it was for a reason that doesn’t bode well
for us.”

“You’re assuming he was doing your work?”
Gareth said.

“I would have thought so.”

“Did you know he had left Ireland?”

“No—only that he’d found no sign of
Cadwaladr there. But of course, we know now that Cadwaladr never
went to Ireland.”

“When did you last hear from Erik?” Gareth
said.

Hywel gave Gareth a sharp look. “Do you
suspect me?”

Gareth huffed a laugh. “No, my lord. I
genuinely want to know what he could have been doing in the village
of St. Asaph.”

“I have no idea.” Hywel glanced at his
friend’s profile. Gareth was in obvious pain, but as they crossed
the monastery courtyard, he got his feet under him better and was
able to walk a little straighter. “So, are you going to tell me
what happened to the horse and cart that was hauling the body to
the church?”

As with every church or monastery Hywel had
ever been to, St. Kentigern’s church was oriented on an east to
west axis, so that the sun rising in the east on the spring equinox
would shine through the high windows behind the altar. Because the
monastery lay to the north of the road that ran from east to west
through St. Asaph, when one came through the southern gatehouse
from the road as they just had and entered the central courtyard,
the church occupied the entirety of the courtyard’s north side,
while the guesthouse was to the left and the stable to the
right.

The monks’ cloister and all its associated
buildings were on the other side of the church, accessed by a
narrow passage on the east side past the stables and by a broader
path to the west that took parishioners to the main door of the
church.

“We still have the horse and cart, which we
left where it was. It seemed like too much effort to drive when it
was empty anyway—” Gareth cleared his throat, “—but unfortunately
we have been robbed of the body.”

Hywel gaped at Gareth for a heartbeat and
then released yet another involuntary laugh. “What is it with you
and missing bodies?”

Gareth shook his head, laughing under his
breath himself. “As you may recall, my lord, that one time the loss
was
your
doing.”

“So you say.” Hywel stayed smiling. “But you
still haven’t explained why you are so wet. It looks like you
climbed right into the trough with Erik.”

“Not quite. When the body was taken, three
men came at me. More attacked Ben, and that means there had to be
still more to steal Erik’s body and get away successfully. My
attackers held me face down in a stream with my arms tied behind my
back and sacking over my head. They let me go before I drowned,
obviously, but by the time I got free of my bonds, they and the
body were gone.”

Hywel was aghast. “Where did this
happen?”

“On the path leading north from the barn.
There was no entrance onto the road for a good hundred yards or
more, and they were waiting for us in the bushes on either side of
the gate.”

“So they could be anywhere by now.” Hywel
made a disgusted sound at the back of his throat.

“I can tell you only what I saw, which
wasn’t much. They left the cart behind and took the body.”

“Erik isn’t exactly a lightweight either,”
Hywel said.

“That’s one reason they needed so many men.
Just lifting him requires at least three people.”

“That means they had horses close by, though
I suppose with the river just across the road, they could have put
him in a boat.”

Gareth cleared his throat. “At this point,
we’re better off not assuming anything.”

They’d reached the guesthouse door, and
rather than go through it, Gareth reached with his right hand for
the frame of the door for support and settled himself into a
sitting position on the top step leading up to it. He let out a
sigh and leaned back against the door.

“Gwen said Erik was strangled and drowned,”
Hywel said.

“Stabbed, strangled, and drowned, actually.”
Gareth’s eyes stayed closed.

“Always important to be thorough.”

Gareth opened his eyes and gave Hywel a wry
look. “I wasn’t expecting a brush with death quite this soon after
my last one. I did promise Gwen I’d do better.”

“Some things can’t be helped.”

“Apparently not.” Gareth shook his head. “I
would have been dead if the men who attacked us had wanted to kill
me. Why didn’t they? They’re already into this for one murder.
What’s two more?” He leaned forward slightly so his weight was no
longer on the door. It wasn’t intuition—merely that he’d heard, as
Hywel had, the thudding of footsteps on the floor of the room
behind him. Then the door opened to reveal Gwen standing on the
threshold.

She looked down at the top of Gareth’s head.
Even from that angle she would be able to see that he was soaked to
the skin. “You’re bleeding! Why? What happened? You were just
supposed to bring the body to the church!” She dropped to her knees
beside her husband.

Gareth leaned his head against the frame of
the door, exhausted. “It turned out to be a harder task than
anticipated. I’m really glad you weren’t there.” He reached out and
took Gwen’s hand, stopping her from patting him down in a quest for
more wounds. “I’m all right,
cariad
.”

“I’ll be the one who determines that!” Gwen
pried her fingers out of Gareth’s hand and moved them to his left
shoulder. She gingerly peeled back his shirt to inspect the damage.
“Do I dare ask if Erik’s body made it to the church?”

“It didn’t,” Hywel said, deciding it was his
duty as Gareth’s lord to deflect her ire.

Gwen stopped what she was doing and looked
up at him. “Really?”

He nodded. “A group of men stole it. It’s
too early to say who they were or why they did it. Your husband is
wet because the perpetrators threw him into a stream beside the
road while they absconded with the body.”

“Sweet Mary.” Gwen rested her forehead on
the side of Gareth’s head for a moment, and he reached out again to
grasp her hand as it rested gently on his chest.

“I really am all right,” Gareth said. “I
took a hard fall, but I didn’t hit my head.”

She sighed and went back to her
ministrations. “Did you see which way they went?”

Gareth had closed his eyes again. After a
pause, when no response seemed forthcoming, Hywel answered for him,
“He didn’t.”

“This is all very strange.” Gwen had
Gareth’s shirt off by now and was studying his wound. It might seem
an odd location to tend to him, but the light was better outside
now that it was daylight than it would be in the guesthouse common
room, which even on a bright day had only the one window and the
fireplace or candles to light it. “It doesn’t make sense that they
would steal the body now. Why didn’t they take it after he was
murdered? If they had done so in the first place, we never would
have known that Erik was dead or that a crime had been
committed.”

Hywel moved under the eaves of the
guesthouse to get out of the rain, which had begun to fall with
some intensity again. “I’m afraid we don’t have enough information
to answer that question.” He eyed his captain. “Will he live?”

“I suppose so.” Gwen looked up at Hywel.
“Would you mind helping me get him inside? He’s starting to
shiver.”

They got Gareth to his feet, through the
doorway, and over to a low stool by the fire. As Gareth sat,
seemingly exhausted by even that short walk, his wet clothes
dripped water onto the floor, forming a puddle at his feet. The
fire was blazing in the hearth, however, and Hywel was glad to go
to it too with his hands out to warm them. Gwen disappeared up the
stairs in the direction of their room on a quest for bandages and
dry clothes for her husband.