The Uninvited Guest (6 page)

“
If he’d hit his head, he
could have died from the impact!” Hywel said. “Or if the bath had
already been filled, even drowned in the water if he didn’t regain
consciousness.”

Gareth blew on his hands and rubbed them
together to warm them. “How could the culprit have known that the
king would be the first one in the bath room that morning? He could
have hurt anyone.”

Gwen shrugged. “King Owain is a man of
habit, and his habits are well known.”

“
That could have been an
accident too,” Hywel said.

“
We all thought so,” Gwen
said. “But from the first, something seemed strange about it. Why
were the tiles wet at the entrance to the bath, and not around the
pool?”

“
Simple,” Gareth said. “A
servant had cleaned them that morning and left them to dry, not
realizing there wouldn’t be enough time before the king entered the
room.”

“
I asked the servants,
believe me I did. They told me that the bath room had been cleaned
the night before, in preparation for turning on the fires in the
morning,” Gwen said. “If anybody had been in there for another
reason, they wouldn’t admit to it.”

“
Of course not,” Hywel
said.

“
I might as well tell you,
since you’ll find out soon enough, that the servants are whispering
among themselves. They say weddings at Aber are cursed,” Gwen said.
“The other day, I caught Taran removing a weaving of fronds that
someone had tacked above the door to the kitchen. For
protection.”

Hywel gazed towards Aber’s towers, watching
the two guards on duty pace the battlements. Then he shook himself.
“My father should have told me about this, especially about the
arrow.”

“
He dismissed it, as he has
dismissed everything that might hinder the wedding,” Gwen said. “If
the Church couldn’t stop him from marrying Cristina, an archer
certainly wouldn’t.”

“
When was the incident with
the bath?” Hywel said.

“
Last week,” Gwen
said.

“
Last week.” Hywel kept his
face expressionless, as was his wont when his mind churned with bad
news. “I will speak to my father of it. You two get some sleep.
I’ll see you in the morning.”

“
Yes, my lord,” Gareth
said. Gwen curtseyed.

Hywel headed up the stairs to the hall and
disappeared back inside. Gwen found Gareth’s eyes, and then his
hands, on her.

“
I missed you,” he
said.

Gwen slipped her arms around his neck. “I
missed you too.” In the courtyard when he’d first arrived at Aber,
Gwen had pecked Gareth on the cheek in greeting. This time, the
kiss Gwen gave Gareth was a real one, which he deepened as he
pressed her to him.

The door at the top of the stairs banged
open. Gareth and Gwen jumped apart, and then both laughed when
Hywel poked his nose around the frame.

“
Get to bed,
Gwen.”

“
Yes, my lord,” Gwen
said.

Gareth saluted. Then he bent his head to
Gwen. “He’s meddling.”

“
He can’t help it,” Gwen
said. Hywel wasn’t her father, but Gwen eased her hand out of
Gareth’s anyway. “I should go.”

“
I still want to hear what
you have to say about the events of last summer,” Gareth
said.

“
I want to tell you, too.”
The story was on the tip of Gwen’s tongue, but she shook her head.
“Now isn’t the time. It can wait.” She slipped away.

Gwen entered the corridor
that went past Hywel’s office and headed for the stairs to the
second floor. Her pallet lay in one corner of the room where the
maidens of the court slept (those who were not in the wedding
party). As she approached the door, Anna, a young woman of fourteen
whose father served in the king’s
teulu
, stepped through it.

“
Oh Gwen! Did you hear?”
Anna said.

“
Hear what?”

Anna leaned close and lowered her voice,
though she couldn’t temper the excitement in it. “One of the
servants slipped in the bath room and fell. He’s dead!”

Gwen did not want to hear this. Not now. Not
when they’d just been discussing King Owain’s brush with death in a
similar incident. “Which servant?”

Anna was practically dancing with the news.
“Ieaun, I think. He worked in the kitchen. Does it matter? It’s all
part of the curse!”

“
You must not speak of such
things, Anna ferch Gruffydd!” One of the matrons of the court, Lady
Jane, bustled towards them from the garderobe at the end of the
hallway. “There is no curse.”

“
But there is!” Anna could
not be stopped. “One of the housekeepers told me all about it. And
when I saw a raven perched atop the flagpole this morning, I
knew
!”

Gwen spun on her heel and headed for the
staircase. Half-way down, she met Hywel coming up. He peered past
her to the two women who remained in the corridor. At a wave of his
hand, Lady Jane urged Anna back into the sleeping chamber.

“
You’ve heard?” Hywel
said.

“
A servant is dead?” Gwen
said.

Hywel canted his head. “I examined
him—cursorily, I admit—but it looks like he slipped and fell. It
was a long enough drop to the bottom of the bath to kill him.”

A burst of laughter came from the hall. A
few hours remained before midnight, so the tables were still full.
“Nothing we need to worry about, then?” Gwen said.

“
Not tonight, leastways,”
Hwyel said. “Go to bed.” He backed down a step, but Gwen touched
his shoulder to stop him before he turned away.

“
This is only going to make
the rumors worse, you know,” she said.

Hywel grimaced. “I know. At what time is the
wedding planned for tomorrow?”

“
Early afternoon,” Gwen
said. “With a feast after.”

Hywel fisted a hand and slapped it into his
palm. “We just have to get through one more day.”

Chapter Five

“E
EEEEEEEEEEEE
.”

As the long wail faded into choking sobs,
Gwen shot up from her pallet, staring wildly around the room.
Although it was early morning, the fire still spit and smoldered in
its hearth, having been stoked sometime in the night. Its light
illumined half the room and reflected off the faces of the other
girls. Several had wakened too. Anna rubbed her eyes and queried
her neighbor. Gwen got to her feet.

“
What do you think it is,
Gwen?” Anna swept her hair out of her face.

“
I’ll find out.” Although
it meant taking extra time, Gwen tugged her dress over her shift.
She tied the front laces as she slipped into her shoes, and then
grabbed her cloak. She knew by now that entering the corridor
outside her room in a state of undress in the middle of a crisis
was a bad idea.

She poked her head into the passage and then
followed the babble of voices to a doorway three doors down. It
opened into a space that was more of a cupboard than a room, twelve
feet long by eight wide, deep and narrow. Instead of a bed, it
contained shelving and trunks piled with linens. Cristina sat on a
stool near the door, her body folded in half and her arms around
her waist. Three other women who belonged to the wedding party
crowded into the small space.

As she entered, Gwen’s hand went to her
mouth. Cristina’s wedding dress was draped over one of the trunks
that sat against the back wall. Long rents had been made in the
fabric, the trim at the bosom and wrists had been torn off, and the
fine lacing up the front had been ripped out. One look at the other
wide-eyed women in the room had Gwen shaking off her dismay to
crouch beside Cristina.

“
My lady, I’m so sorry!”
She risked putting an arm around her future queen’s
shoulders.

Gwen could understand
Cristina’s horror, but found herself swallowing down a laugh. After
all, nobody was dead. Still, the curse that Anna had spoken of had
to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind, though to
Gwen’s
mind, this wasn’t a
result of a curse but a deliberate, spiteful act. Someone had
ruined Cristina’s dress on purpose. It wasn’t as if it had become
torn all by itself.

Cristina lifted her head, brushing back the
tears on her cheeks. “You must find out who did this, Gwen!”

One of Cristina’s women, Mari, was the first
of her bridesmaids to recover. “Where is Enid, my lady? I think she
could tell us something about it.”

Gwen was shaping her mouth
to ask
which one is Enid?
when
Cristina surged to
her feet, stormed across the room, and swept the dress into her
arms. She turned on her women, anguish having turned to anger.
“What am I going to wear now?”

“
We’ll find something.”
Mari’s voice was soothing. “You wore that lovely green gown the
other day—”

Cristina stamped her foot. “But Owain has
seen it! It won’t be the same.”

“
This wedding is cursed.”
Rhiannon, another cousin, spoke
sotto
voce
but Cristina heard her and pointed a
finger at her.

“
Don’t you say that! Don’t
you dare say that!”

Rhiannon took a step back and then Cristina
swung away from her. She flung open the trunk upon which the dress
had been laid, perhaps meaning to stuff it away so she wouldn’t see
it any more.

“
Huh!”
All the air was sucked from Cristina’s lungs. She stood
frozen, her hand to her mouth. Gwen realized before the other girls
that something was wrong and was at Cristina’s side in three
strides. The body of one of Cristina’s bridesmaids had been stuffed
into the trunk.

Gwen reached for the lid to close it again,
but the other girls crowded around them before she could.

“
Dear
God
.” That was Mari again. “It’s
Enid!”

“
She’s dead!” Alis, another
bridesmaid, said.

“
EEEEEEEEEEEE!”
Rhiannon’s voice trailed off and she staggered
back, both hands to her mouth. Her heel butted into the stool upon
which Cristina had sat earlier and she plopped onto it.

Pounding feet sounded in the stairwell and
the corridor, accompanied by many more voices. Then to Gwen’s
relief, Gareth, bounded into the room, followed immediately by
Hywel. Gareth grasped Gwen by both shoulders and stared down at
Enid’s body with her. To Gwen’s relief, he encompassed the people
and events in one glance. “Are you all right?”

Gwen nodded, though she felt as if her feet
were frozen to the floor. Cristina hadn’t moved either. She had
screamed in surprise at finding her ruined dress, and then become
angry, but Enid’s death had silenced her.

Gareth gently touched Cristina on the
shoulder. “My lady, I’m sorry for your loss, but it would be better
for everyone, including Enid, if you returned to your room.”

Cristina lifted her head to look at him. Her
face was very white, but no tears tracked down her cheeks. She
still didn’t speak.

“
How can you be so calm!”
Rhiannon said.

Gwen glanced at her. She had no tears
either, and once the initial shock had passed, there was only anger
in her voice.

“
We must all remain calm,”
Gareth said, patience in every syllable, “and given that Enid
didn’t get into that trunk all by herself, we need to find out who
put her there. Either Gwen or I will speak to each one of you in
turn, but it would be better if we didn’t conduct the interviews in
here.”

Rhiannon opened her mouth—perhaps to protest
again—but then closed it and nodded. “I apologize, my lord. I
wasn’t thinking clearly.”

Mari had recovered enough to glide forward
and take Cristina by her shoulders. “Sir Gareth needs us to leave,
my lady. Let me take you to your room.”

Cristina swallowed hard and nodded, more in
control. Her eyes were clear as she looked at her friend. “Thank
you, Mari. We can trust Gareth to make things right.” With that
unexpected accolade, Mari and Cristina herded the other women out
of the room. When she reached the doorway, however, Cristina patted
Mari’s arm. “Give me a moment. See to the others and then wait for
me in the solar.”

“
Yes, Cristina,” Mari said,
shooing the other bridesmaids away from the door, along with the
rest of the hangers-on whom the screams had awakened and who
hovered in the corridor.

When they had all gone, Cristina turned to
Gareth. “Ask what you need to ask of me now. I’d prefer to get this
over with.”

Gwen was pleased to see the return of the
straightforward and competent Cristina, rather than the weak-kneed
woman who’d found her cousin’s body, even if weakness was perfectly
justified in this instance.

“
When did you last see
Enid, my lady?” Gareth said.

“
Before we went to bed last
night,” Cristina said. “All of us—the wedding party, I mean—stayed
late in the hall.”

“
How late do you mean?”
Hywel said, stepping forward. “We need to determine who was the
last person to see your cousin alive.”

“
We—the other women and
I—went to bed just before midnight,” Cristina said. “Owain had
departed earlier with Lord Taran, but Alis and Enid, and some of
the others too, wanted to finish their wine.” She gave Hywel a
half-smile. “I felt it unwise to leave any of my maids unchaperoned
in the hall.”