The Unlikely Spy (23 page)

“Just after noon it was. I overhead him
telling her that she needed to get back to Goginan. He practically
pushed her out the door,” Pawl said.

“Did they meet with anyone else?” Gareth
said.

“Not that I saw,” Pawl said. “It seemed to
me that he hadn’t expected to see her here and was none too happy
about it.”

“I would ask that you keep this information
among the four of us for now.” Gareth hated to use up any favors,
but now seemed as good a time as any. “We are trying to establish
what Gryff did, where he went, and who he talked to on his last day
alive.”

“So he
was
murdered,” Pawl said.

“Yes,” Gareth said, deciding he wouldn’t
withhold that piece of information from the inn keeper, since he’d
guessed it anyway.

“I will not speak of it, my lord.” Pawl
wasn’t one to gossip, and like everyone else in Ceredigion, his
wellbeing depended upon Hywel. “If you like, I’ll keep an ear
out.”

“Thank you. I’d appreciate it.” Gareth had
clearly been remiss in not enlisting Pawl earlier. There couldn’t
be many other men in all of Aberystwyth who knew more about its
people than he did. “If you don’t mind, I’ll check back with you
later tonight or tomorrow.”

“And we’ll send a man or two to keep an eye
on your crowd,” Evan said. “It wouldn’t do for the party to get too
out of hand.”

Pawl dipped his head. “Thank you. I should
look into the potency of the beer. I might have made it a little
strong today.”

“Maybe a little,” Gareth said.

He thanked Pawl and bid him goodbye. Once
outside, Gareth was pleased to see that the crowd had, in fact,
dispersed somewhat. The sun was heading down into the sea. So far
the festival was a rollicking success (even if he hadn’t managed to
participate in any of it) and people were making their way out of
Aberystwyth along the road for the start of the evening
program.

Gareth ran his hand through his hair. “This
is mad. My head must be as thick as porridge for not seeing this
sooner. Madlen made a fool of me.”

“Of all of us,” Rhodri said.

“You’ve been distracted by the festival,”
Evan said.

Gareth rolled his eyes. “You’re being
charitable.”

“It has only been a day since we discovered
the body,” Rhodri said. “We’ve come a long way in a short
time.”

That made Gareth feel a little better. “More
lies unveiled anyway. Carys was here when she said she hadn’t been,
and Madlen and Gryff weren’t married.”

“Both women had to know their lies would
eventually trip them up,” Evan said.

“I can’t get my head around Madlen’s lie in
particular,” Rhodri said. “Why would she tell you that she was
married to Gryff? What could she possibly hope to gain from
it?”

“Perhaps she killed him,” Gareth said.

“Then I would have thought she would have
stayed as far away from the body as possible,” Rhodri said. “Why
call attention to herself?”

“Maybe she loved him. Maybe she wanted to be
married to him so badly that she pretended it was true,” Evan said.
“She got to play the grieving widow, and if not for that young
monk, we never would have known differently.”

“On a more devious note,” Rhodri said,
“playing the widow gave her access.”

Gareth raised his eyebrows. “You may have an
answer there.”

“Access to what?” Evan scratched at his
scruffy beard.

“To the body, certainly.” Gareth said. “To
his purse, since we allowed her to keep it.”

Evan nodded. “And to the progress of the
investigation.”

“Though she may have miscalculated there,
since we might never have learned who he was at all if she hadn’t
come forward,” Rhodri said.

“Everybody says Gryff was an affable
dreamer,” Gareth said, “but it seems more and more clear that there
was more to him than we’ve yet learned.”

Rhun

“Y
ou can’t have it!
It’s mine!” A young woman Rhun didn’t recognize shrieked and spat
at Madlen as the two women wrestled one another to the ground.

Madlen clawed back at her. “It belonged to
my grandmother!”

Rhun didn’t understand how he’d managed to
go from a pleasant afternoon strolling through the fair with
Angharad to breaking up a fight between two women. He and Angharad
had listened to a young man with a beautiful voice and no skill
with his instrument (but still, one whom Rhun meant to point out to
Hywel), purchased several honeyed treats, and up until now had
avoided any unpleasantness. He hadn’t even seen the Danish spy,
Erik, though Rhun was willing to admit that the search for him was
a parallel motive to this excursion with Angharad.

Rhun elbowed his way through the onlookers
who’d gathered in the aisle between the market stalls and put his
arms around the unknown woman’s waist. He tugged hard, attempting
to wrench her away from Madlen. Each woman clutched the shoulders
and arms of the other, scrabbling with their legs for purchase on
the hard ground.

“What’s going on here?” An enormous man
pushed aside three passersby and grabbed the arm of the woman Rhun
was trying to pry off Madlen. “Get away from her!” He shoved Rhun
so hard with his other hand that Rhun was forced to release the
woman and crashed into a nearby stall.

Unfortunately for the big man and the woman
he thought he was protecting, Rhun’s loss of control gave Madlen
the opportunity to pounce once again. While the big man was looking
daggers at Rhun, Madlen assaulted the woman whose arm the man was
holding, wrestled her away from him, and fell with her to the
ground.

Rhun’s eyes were watering from the pain in
his head where it had struck a tent pole, but he pushed to a
sitting position and suppressed the accompanying moan.

The owner of the stall he’d wrecked—a
merchant who’d set up his stall next to Iolo’s because he sold
incidentals for sewing—bobbed up and down beside Rhun, nervously
wringing his hands. He was bowing and apologizing profusely at the
same time, though what had happened wasn’t at all his fault. Rhun
allowed the man to help him up, trying to place his feet in such a
way as not to further ruin the man’s goods, which were on the
ground.

While Rhun was getting to his feet, the
women continued to roll around on the ground. Now, however, Iolo
arrived, and he and the big man waded into the fight together.

“My lord! My lord!” Angharad had been
standing with her hand to her mouth, but now she hurried to him.
Unlike the merchant who’d helped him up, she wasn’t averse to
touching him, and she patted him down, feeling for obvious wounds
and looking for blood. He’d seen Gwen do the same to Gareth a dozen
times.

Out of deference to the warm weather, Rhun
had worn only a leather vest as armor today rather than his full
mail. With a murderer about and Rhun involved in the investigation,
Hywel hadn’t wanted him to take the chance of going about without
any protection at all. Fortunately, the air was cooler today than
it had been yesterday, more like autumn than summer. It might even
rain by tomorrow, though everyone in Aberystwyth from Hywel on down
hoped that it wouldn’t.

Rhun caught Angharad’s hands. “I am unhurt,
or at least not very hurt.”

“You hit the post with your head and you
might have broken your ribs! That man should be put in irons!”

Angharad’s ire on his behalf warmed Rhun’s
heart, but he squeezed her hands and smiled, trying to assuage her
concern. He looked past her to the fight, which was ongoing. Iolo
shouted, “Madlen! Madlen!”

Angharad tried to prevent him from returning
to the fray, slipping her hand into his to draw his attention back
to her. Rhun brought their joined hands to his lips and kissed her
fingers. “I’m well, Angharad. Truly.”

Madlen stood up. “Ha!” Her fist was clenched
in triumph around something small attached to a jewelry chain.

The other woman screamed. By now Rhun could
make a good guess as to her identity. Iolo pulled Madlen back,
stepping in front of her and glaring at the big man, who helped the
woman on the ground to her feet.

Once upright, however, the unknown woman
launched herself at Madlen again. “It’s mine! You can’t have it.
Gryff gave it to
me
!”

Rhun decided it was time to reassert his
authority. He put his left hand on the hilt of his sword and strode
forward. “Enough!”

The barking tone was one he used to speak to
his men. Usually he saved it for the heat of battle, the times he
needed to call ‘to me!’ and had to be heard above the clash of
swords and screams of men and horses. Rarely had he used it to
call, ‘retreat!’, though the one time he’d done so had saved the
bulk of his men and enabled them to live to fight another day.

Regardless, his order had the desired effect
among these less well-armed combatants. Rhun shouldered his way
back through the cluster of onlookers to where the two women had
frozen in mid-fight, breathing hard and glowering at each other.
Three soldiers had also finally appeared, drawn by the ruckus the
women were creating. Rhun was happy to see that one of them was his
own captain, Gruffydd.

Rhun stepped between the two women and held
out his hand, palm flat, to Madlen. “Give it to me.”

Madlen was flushed red with temper and heat.
“No!”

Rhun didn’t ask again, just kept his hand
out. It occurred to him that she might be too fired up to recognize
him from when he’d questioned her with Gareth.

“Madlen!” Iolo whipped his hat off his head
and hustled towards Rhun with bowed head. “Please forgive her, my
lord. She is distraught with grief and doesn’t know what she is
doing.”

“Be that as it may,” Rhun said, “I want what
she has in her hand.”

“It belongs to Carys!” the big man said.

Rhun turned his head slowly to look at him,
hardly able to believe the man still hadn’t realized who he was.
But at Rhun’s look, the big man’s mouth snapped shut, his eyes
widened, and suddenly instead of glaring at Rhun he took a step
back. “I’m-I’m—” He was prevented from fleeing by the appearance of
two of Hywel’s men, who buttressed him on either side. The woman he
protected, who had to be Carys, clutched her brother’s elbow and
looked scared.

“I will deal with you two later. Now—” Rhun
turned back to Madlen, his hand still out, “—what is in your
hand?”

“It’s mine.” Madlen was still breathing
rapidly, her eyes wild with defiance and anger, but under Rhun’s
calm gaze, she finally blinked and faltered. As Iolo whispered
urgently in her ear, the fire left her. Nervous now, as perhaps the
realization of the spectacle she’d created occurred to her, she
opened her fist and draped what she’d been holding into Rhun’s
hand. It turned out to be a gold cross on a chain. “Gryff never
should have given it to her!”

“No, it’s mine—” Carys made a motion as if
to dart forward, but the big man—Alun—caught her arm and jerked her
back, cutting off her words in mid-breath.

Rhun closed his hand over the cross. With a
nod from Gruffydd, the soldiers began to disperse the crowd that
had gathered, leaving Iolo and Madlen standing to Rhun’s right, and
Carys and Alun standing three paces away to Rhun’s left.

Rhun studied each person in turn. Alun and
Iolo stood rock steady, staring at a point somewhere near Rhun’s
right shoulder. The two women shifted from foot to foot in
uncertainty. “Carys and Alun, I assume,” Rhun said, looking at the
second pair.

“Yes, my lord,” Alun said.

“So you know who I am now?” Rhun said.

“Yes, my lord.” Alun swallowed hard. “I’m
sorry—”

Rhun held up a hand, cutting the big man
off. “We will discuss your transgressions later. For now, I am
interested in why you allowed your sister to come within fifty
paces of Iolo’s stall and Madlen.”

“My lord—” Iolo began.

At Rhun’s frown, he too subsided. “I have
reconsidered. I will bring you before my brother, and you can tell
your story to him. Come with me.” Rhun held out his elbow to
Angharad, who took it. He set off without waiting to see if he
would be obeyed.

Cowed, the four culprits followed him
towards the market exit, herded forward by the soldiers and
Gruffydd. As Rhun had hoped, they found Hywel in the pavilion where
he’d left him several hours earlier. Hywel had always demanded
perfection from everyone who worked for him, but his current state
of frenzy had less to do with his natural proclivities than the
fact that their father should be arriving at any moment.

Hywel noted Rhun’s approach and came over to
the group before Rhun had to hail him. Looking past Rhun to the two
angry couples and the guards beyond them, Hywel pressed his lips
together for a moment, impatience flashing across his face. “What’s
happened now?”

“There has been an incident that I believe
requires your attention.” Rhun opened his hand to show Hywel the
cross. “What we have here are two grieving widows, both of whom
claim this cross belongs to them.”

Hywel picked up the chain upon which the
cross was strung and held it up, uncoiling it from Rhun’s palm.
“Carys was wearing it when she spoke to Gwen this morning,” Hywel
said.

“Madlen claims the cross belonged to her
grandmother, and that she gave it to Gryff as a token of her love
for him. She says he had no right to pass it on to Carys.”

Rhun had examined the cross on the walk to
the pavilion. As Gwen had indicated, an entwined ‘C’ and ‘G’ had
been etched expertly into the center back where the four arms
met.

Hywel looked over at Madlen. “What were your
grandparents’ names?”

“Catrin and Gwion,” Madlen said without
hesitation.

“Hmm.” Hywel glanced at his brother, half
turning his back on Madlen and Iolo. “What do you make of
this?”

“I don’t know,” Rhun said, keeping his voice
low so only Hywel could hear him. “I dearly wish that Gryff hadn’t
managed to get himself killed, because he could have cleared all
this up with a few words.”