The Uninvited Guest (29 page)

“
Didn’t it strike you as
odd that your prison was so flimsy?” Gareth said.

“
Who was I to question my
good luck?” Pedr said. “It had been bad for so long, I deserved a
little.”

Dafydd
leaned in to whisper in Gareth’s ear. “I think he’s telling
the truth.”

“
Enough truth that the lies
don’t stand out.” Gareth rubbed his chin as he studied the youth.
“Where did you get the money to buy your mead?”

Pedr’s expression turned mulish. “Caradoc
gave it to me yesterday.”

“
Why?”

“
He took pity on
me.”

Gareth was through being nice. “It wasn’t in
partial payment for the attempted murder of King Owain?”

“
No!”

“
Give me your scrip,”
Gareth said.

“
You can’t have it—!”
Pedr’s voice had gone high as he choked on his fear.

Gareth reached across the table and yanked
the boy’s purse from his waist, breaking the strings that held it.
He sat back and opened the pouch.

“
I told you not to open
it.” Pedr shook his head,
no, no, no
and his eyes teared. He’d gone from an angry drunk
to a weepy one.

Gareth glanced up, noting
how young and pathetic Pedr’s voice had become, and then back down
at what he’d removed: a ring, one that a man would wear on his left
hand because of its weight, one with the raised image of a lion’s
head, worked in gold. The sight of it rocked him back. He gazed at
it, so surprised that he spoke without thinking,
“
You
murdered
Enid?”

Pedr was still sniveling. He wiped at his
nose with the back of his hand. Then Gareth’s words penetrated.
“Who?”

“
Enid.” Gareth held up the
ring. “We found an impression of this lion’s head in Enid’s
skin.”

Pedr stared at Gareth, a blank expression on
his face. “Who’s Enid?”

That sounded like true confusion. “The dead
girl at Aber. The one you killed before you fled.”

Pedr shook his head and his jaw firmed,
despite the drink. “I don’t know anything about any dead girl.” He
pointed to the ring in Gareth’s hand. “Caradoc gave that to me the
night before last!”

“
And how did it get from
Aber to him?” Gareth said.

“
I don’t know.” Pedr held
out his hand, palm upward, for Gareth to give him back the ring.
Gareth didn’t comply. “Maybe the killer sent it to Caradoc so you
wouldn’t find it on his person.”

“
The killer—” Gareth’s mind
was in a whirl.

“
Caradoc gave it to me and
told me to leave Wales and never return. Give it back. It’s
mine.”

Gareth studied the ring and victory was acid
in his mouth. King Owain would pay for trusting where it was not
warranted. Gareth clenched his fist around the ring.

“
I will keep it.” Gareth
got to his feet and stood gazing down at Pedr. “You deserve
hanging, you know that.”

“
I didn’t do anything!”
Pedr said.

Gareth studied the boy. “One more thing …
did you shoot an arrow at King Owain a few weeks ago? One that
missed?”

Pedr stuck out his bottom lip. “I’m not
saying anything more.”

Gareth snorted a laugh. “I take that as a
‘yes’.” Gareth pointed a forefinger at the wayward youth, who gazed
up at him, open-mouthed. “I, Gareth ap Rhys, do formally charge
you, Pedr ap Marc, with the attempted murder of King Owain
Gwynedd.”

“
You have no writ
here!”

“
But I do.”
Dafydd
grabbed Pedr’s arm
and pulled him to his feet. “Stand up.”

Pedr’s legs trembled and
wouldn’t hold him so
Dafydd
signaled to another man-at-arms who’d been waiting
nearby. He took Pedr’s other arm.

“
Wh-what are you going to
do to me?”

“
The sheriff will
decide,”
Dafydd
said.

“
Help me!” Pedr struggled
as
Dafydd
and one
of his men hauled him out of the tavern.

“
If you set foot in Wales
again, it will be your life.” Gareth followed behind them. It was
late enough now that the street outside the tavern was deserted.
“Your image has been well-circulated.”

Dafydd
hauled Pedr the dozen steps to the night gate. In another
moment, he’d thrust Pedr through it. Although he should have been
grateful for his life, Pedr was still howling about injustice
as
Dafydd
closed
the door in his face. Admittedly, Pedr was very drunk.

Gareth came to a halt a few paces away. This
was not what he’d expected at all. “I thought you were going to
take him to the sheriff?”

“
He doesn’t want
him,”
Dafydd
said.
“Sir Amaury told me before we left the castle that unless we had
proof Pedr had murdered someone, he didn’t want him in a cell. Bad
precedent.”

Gareth laughed. “You were very convincing.
You had me fooled.”

Dafydd
wiped his hands on his pants. “He’ll end up in the River Dee
by morning. You can count on it. Pathetic bastard.”

Gareth hoped that Pedr wouldn’t cause him
any more trouble, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
Pedr was right: Gareth had no writ here. So instead, he clapped his
new friend on the back. “Thank you for your help. Please inform the
sheriff that I got what I needed.”

“
You’re going back to
Wales?”
Dafydd
said. “Now?”

“
It’s a long way to Aber,
and I have a murderer to catch.”

Chapter
Twenty-Three

B
y
the time Hywel and Gwen got back to the great hall, Cristina had
the entire castle moving in the direction she wanted. Two hundred
people couldn’t fit easily into the chapel, but everyone could
watch the wedding which would take place on the front stoop. The
couple would hear mass afterwards inside the church.

Gwen, for her part, would just as soon not
have been involved, but to her dismay, both Cristina and Mari
remembered Cristina’s expressed wish for Gwen to take Enid’s place
in the wedding party.

Gwen protested all the way down the corridor
to Cristina’s room where the other bridesmaids were getting
dressed. “I don’t have a gown—”

Mari looked her up and down, not letting go
of her arm. “You and I are of a size. I know just what will fit
you. Cristina and I have talked about it already.”

Even more, Gwen was annoyed that when she
was to wear the finest dress she’d ever worn, Gareth wouldn’t be
there to see her in it. In the end, however, she had to admit that
the dress Mari chose for her was beautiful. Deep green, and
embroidered at the wrist and bosom, it complemented Gwen’s eyes and
hair.

A knock came at the door. Mari reached it in
two strides and pulled the door open only wide enough for her to
see through the crack between the door and the frame. “What do you
want, Lord Hywel?”

Gwen heard Hywel laugh at Mari’s rudeness
and then say, “I need to speak to Gwen. It’s import—”

“
I’m sure it is very
important and you’ve kept her very busy these last few days,” Mari
said, “but
right now
she is dressing for a wedding. You can speak to her
after.”

“
But—”

Mari shut the door in his face.

Beside Gwen, Cristina smirked and the other
women in the room, including the maidservant who was stitching a
quick seam in Gwen’s gown, had smiles on their faces. Mari glared
at them all, a foot from the door. “What?”

“
Nobody talks to Prince
Hywel that way,” Cristina said.

“
I don’t see why someone
shouldn’t.” Mari picked up a comb and worked it through her hair,
though her tresses were perfectly aligned as it was. “He is far too
full of his own importance. Everyone does his bidding all day long.
Whatever has happened this time, it can wait.”

Gwen wasn’t so sure about that, but didn’t
object. It was nice to be in the company of other women who were
friendly to her, even if her station was so much lower than all of
theirs.

It took longer than Gwen would have thought
possible for all the women to dress, in part because Cristina tried
on four different gowns before settling on the replacement for the
one that Enid had ruined. Eventually they managed to get themselves
in order. As they exited the room, Hywel’s tenor carried towards
them all the way from the great hall on the other side of the wall.
Everyone stopped to listen.

“
The man can sing, I’ll
give him that,” Mari said.

Gwalchmai’s soprano joined the song two
octaves higher. Gwen turned to agree with Mari, but never got the
words out. Her soon-to-be-queen, walking between them, had burst
into tears.

“
My lady.” Gwen put her arm
around Cristina’s shoulders.

“
After all that has
happened, I never thought this day would come,” Cristina said.
“First the assassin, and then Enid’s death … I was sure, Owain
would decide our wedding was a lost cause.”

“
He loves you, my lady,”
Gwen said. “Anyone can see that.”

“
We could have
died
today if it weren’t
for you!” Cristina turned towards Gwen and sobbed into her
shoulder.

Gwen stared wide-eyed at Mari over
Cristina’s head. She didn’t know what to say. Cristina was
over-dramatizing again, since she would have been made ill from the
mandrake, but not to death. Gwen was ashamed to admit that what
concerned her most was the possibility of walking behind the queen
to the ceremony with a huge wet spot on her dress.

“
My lady.” Mari rubbed up
and down on Cristina’s arms, trying to get her to stop crying.
“King Owain is waiting.”

Cristina managed to get control of herself,
wiping at her cheeks with the back of her hands. Somehow, she’d
managed to cry without reddening her eyes, though it was a good
thing that she wore no powders or creams on her face like some of
the Norman women did. Cristina knew, and few would disagree, that
she didn’t need them, which meant that today she had no cosmetics
to smear.

“
I’m ready,” Cristina
said.

The women processed into the great hall. At
the sight of them, Gwalchmai and Hywel began to move towards the
main door, still singing, and Lord Goronwy took Cristina’s arm. He
patted her hand and she smiled at him. They walked across the hall,
down the stairs, and into the courtyard. The cold wind hit Gwen
full in the face as she came through the door, but her father was
there to wrap a cloak around her shoulders.

“
Foolish idea to get
married in front of the chapel when the hall has been good enough
all these years,” he said. “You and Gareth could do
better.”

Gwen squeezed her father’s hand. “We’ll
try.”

King Owain was getting married in front of
the chapel to thumb his nose at the Norman Church, and her father
knew that. Nobody, high or low, would care about where Gwen and
Gareth got married. The Church would have nothing to do with it.
Meilyr just had to sign the papers giving his daughter to
Gareth.

King Owain stood on the bottom step of the
chapel stairs. As groomsmen, Taran and Rhun stood to his left, on
the hard-packed earth of the courtyard. Hywel and Gwalchmai
finished their song and Hywel moved to join his brother. Goronwy
escorted Cristina forward, to stand on the same step as King Owain,
while the priest stood one step above them. Gwen, Mari, and
Cristina’s two other bridesmaids lined up on the other side,
opposite the groomsmen. Torches lit the courtyard. Gwen was very
glad it wasn’t raining.

The priest began to speak but Gwen closed
her ears to him. His voice was of a pitch that grated, and she was
more interested in watching the crowd. Like Gwen, the guests had
worn their finery but had covered it with heavy cloaks and hoods.
Her eyes traveled to Hywel, standing beside Taran, with his hands
behind his back. He winked at her and then canted his head, ever so
slightly, towards Rhun and Taran who stood between Hywel and his
father.

What was he trying to say?

And then she saw it. Cristina had four
bridesmaids, with Gwen standing in for the dead Enid. King Owain
had only three groomsmen. Where was Lord Tomos of Rhuddlan?

Perhaps because the priest was cold too, and
it was getting late, he didn’t linger over the blessing. He made
the sign of the cross over the bowed heads of Cristina and King
Owain, and then gestured that they should follow him into the
chapel.

The instant his father moved, Hywel pulled
Gwen from the line of waiting worshippers and hauled her with him
into the great hall.

“
What about
mass—”

“
We can hear mass any day,”
Hywel said. “My father was almost poisoned an hour ago. We can’t
waste any more time on this ceremony. Come with me to the
kitchens.”

“
We’ve questioned the
kitchen staff so many times, for so many murders, it’s a wonder we
have any staff left,” Gwen said.

Hywel managed a laugh at that, but it didn’t
lessen the urgency within him. “What did you see that made you fear
for my father and Cristina?”

“
It was Mari,” Gwen
said.

Hywel stopped short, halfway down the stairs
to the kitchen. “Mari?”