The Unlikely Spy (30 page)

“You know, we should ask the cook—” Hywel
began.

But then the man himself appeared in the
doorway. He held out a signet ring. “Are you looking for this?”

Gwen put a hand to her heart. “Dear
God.”

The cook dropped the ring into Hywel’s palm.
Hywel’s hand shook slightly as he showed it to Gwen, and she felt
the same shakiness inside her. Her heart started beating so hard it
felt like it was about to explode out her ears.

“The serving boy found that not half an hour
ago,” the cook said. “The abbot hasn’t risen yet, and I was going
to show it to him, but I’m thinking that this might be what you
were looking for.”

“Do you know to whom it belongs?” Hywel’s
hand formed a fist around the ring. It had to be burning a hole in
his palm.

“Of course, my lord,” the cook said.

Hywel nodded and took Gwen’s elbow, guiding
her out of the pantry, through the kitchen, and back into the
courtyard.

She walked with him in a daze. “Do you think
Iolo knows Gryff took the ring as well as the cross?”

“I’m certain he does,” Hywel said.

“If Gryff found out what Iolo was doing and
confronted him—” Gwen said.

“I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.”
Hywel kept walking.

They reached Prince Rhun and the others, and
Hywel silently handed the ring to his brother.

Rhun took it, stared at the signet for a
moment, and then looked at Hywel. “What if the letters don’t stand
for Cadell ap Gruffydd at all—” Like Gwen, he seemed to have
trouble finishing his sentences.

“—but for Cadwaladr ap Gruffydd,” Hywel
said.

“If Uncle Cadwaladr was conspiring with
Cadell to take Ceredigion from you,” Rhun said, “he wouldn’t want
any hint of a connection between the two of them to come to light
any more than Cadell would.”

Hywel nodded. “Gryff could have died because
he was willing to stand up and say there was one.”

“And he had proof,” Gwen said.

Gareth

G
areth raced
towards the fairgrounds, feeling as if the hounds of hell were at
his heels. To know that Iolo had pulled the wool over their eyes so
completely—told them lie after lie, probably laughing to himself
all the while—burned in his gut. He could stand being wrong. He
could even admit it when he was. But he hated being played the
fool. And Iolo had played them.

“Almost there, Gareth,” Evan said.

Gareth nodded. His friend knew what he was
thinking. He might even have been thinking it himself, except that
he’d joined the investigation only yesterday, so he hadn’t
experienced the particular joy of interviewing Iolo or Madlen.
Gareth ground his teeth as they splashed across the ford of the
Ystwyth River.

Dawn had come and gone, and people were
stirring, though fewer than would have been if this were a regular
market fair instead of a music festival. Like most of the
festival-goers, Gareth had found his bed after midnight. That was
fewer than six hours ago. Even merchants whose livelihood depended
on an open stall were reluctant to rise.

Rhodri’s stomach growled, causing both
Gareth and Evan to look at him. Rhodri shrugged. “I can’t help
it.”

“Rhodri has more need to eat than a
fifteen-year-old,” Evan said to Gareth. “We’ve grown used to
it.”

Gareth barked a laugh, and then he slowed
his horse to a trot as they approached the entrance to the market
fair. He was pleased to see that the men on duty were upright and
alert as they should be. The guard would have changed two hours ago
in the gray of first light.

They stopped at the entrance and
dismounted.

“All quiet here, my lord,” one of the guards
said. Gareth didn’t know his name, but he wore the livery of King
Owain.

“Have you seen Iolo this morning?” Gareth
said.

“He slept in his stall last night and has
not come out,” the man said.

“Good,” Gareth said. “We’ll go check on
h—”

A scream split the air—not of joy but of
pain and shock. It went on, long and caterwauling.

Gareth pointed at the guards. “Stay there!
It could be a diversion.”

They had started moving but immediately
subsided at Gareth’s command. Gareth, Rhodri, and Evan raced down
the aisle towards the sound, which had abruptly cut off. They
pulled up, having arrived at the aisle that led to Iolo’s tent.
Gareth didn’t see the two guards who were meant to watch the tent
itself. Everyone had been so diligent this week, knowing how
important the festival was to Prince Hywel, that their absence
stood out starkly.

They could be responding to the scream
except Gareth was pretty sure the scream had come from somewhere
near here, maybe even from Iolo’s tent. The air around them still
rang with the force of it, even though it had ceased.

“My lord?” Evan whispered. “Where is
everyone?”

“That is a very good question,” Gareth
said.

The food stalls were closer to the market
entrance. Back here, nothing moved but a tent flap in the morning
breeze. None of the merchants had even made the attempt to open
this early. Yesterday their tables had been out at dawn. But again,
it had been a late night.

A tent flap flipped up to Gareth’s right,
and the face of a frightened man looked out. “What was that—?”

Gareth put a finger to his lips, and the man
stopped talking. Evan made a soothing gesture with one hand. “Go
back inside. We’ll take care of it.”

“Yes, sir.” The tent flap dropped back.

They reached Iolo’s stall, and Gareth made a
circling motion in the air with his finger to indicate that the
three of them should surround Iolo’s tent on all sides. As the
others moved away to do his bidding, he approached the entrance. It
was closed. The grass under his feet made him completely silent,
which for some reason he urgently felt he should remain. A crack
had opened between the two pieces of fabric that made up the door,
and he peered inside.

Iolo lay on the ground near the entrance,
his face turned away from Gareth. It was hard to see what was wrong
with him in the dim light that came through the fabric of the tent,
but Gareth had a pretty good notion that he was dead, especially
given who else occupied the tent: a large, blond man lay on his
back on the ground. He was wrestling with Madlen, who was on top of
him, wielding a knife, her screams having settled into a low
grunting as she fought to stab him. With the name,
Erik,
exploding in the forefront of his mind, Gareth launched himself
through the tent opening, caught Madlen around the shoulders, and
rolled with her off of Erik.

Unfortunately, the tent was a very confined
space. Rather than rolling all the way over, which would have
brought Gareth on top of Madlen, their roll was impeded by a stack
of crates, and Madlen ended up on top of Gareth, still with the
knife in her hand and murder in her eye.

“No!” she said as he grasped her right wrist
with both hands to stop her from skewering him. “He killed my
uncle!”

Gareth managed to shout Evan’s name, even as
he took a surprisingly strong left cross to the jaw from Madlen’s
other fist, which he hadn’t been paying attention to. Fortunately,
that one punch was all Madlen had in her. Just as Rhodri and Evan
invaded the tent from opposite directions, Rhodri having
half-ripped his side of the tent open, Gareth managed to twist his
leg around both of Madlen’s and flip her over.

Rhodri and Evan converged on Gareth’s
position while Madlen continued to buck and twist beneath him. Evan
removed the knife from her hand, and then Gareth and Rhodri flipped
her onto her front and pulled her arms behind her back to tie them
at the wrists.

“I didn’t do anything.” Madlen gasped the
words into the grass. “You don’t understand.”

Rubbing at his jaw, knowing that Rhodri and
Evan were smirking at him for allowing a woman to get the better of
him, Gareth stood up. Erik was sitting up too and holding his left
bicep in his right hand as blood seeped between his fingers.

“What are you doing here?” Gareth said.

Erik gave him an exasperated look. “It was a
mistake to come, obviously.”

“The men meant to watch the stall are down,
unconscious but not dead,” Rhodri said.

“Held around the neck from behind, I’d
guess,” Evan said. “We would have come inside whether or not you
called.”

Gareth looked at Erik. Only a strong man
could have subdued those men.

Erik shrugged. “My doing. Sorry, but I had
to see Iolo.”

“How did you get past the guards at the
entrance to the market grounds?” Gareth said.

“I have a stall owner who’s a friend. I
spent the night in the market.”

Erik was being surprisingly talkative, which
made Gareth very wary. Breathing more easily now, though his jaw
throbbed and would surely bruise and swell shortly, Gareth bent to
where Iolo lay sprawled on the grass and put his fingers to the
merchant’s throat, feeling for a beat. It wasn’t there, which
Gareth had known would be the case before he touched him. Iolo
wasn’t breathing, and the residue of vomit around his mouth and on
the ground beside him told Gareth the cause of death. He’d been
poisoned.

Gareth looked back to Evan, who held out the
knife.

Somehow Gareth wasn’t surprised to see a
notch in the narrow blade, which had been worn thin from repeated
sharpening.

Gareth squatted in front of Madlen. “This is
the knife that murdered Gryff. Would you care to tell me why you
took his life?”

“What did you say?” Madlen gaped at him.

Now it was Gareth’s turn to be surprised.
“Didn’t your uncle tell you?”

“No! No! Gryff drowned!” Still on her belly,
Madlen was in near hysterics.

Gareth swiveled on the ball of his foot and
held up the knife up to Erik’s eyes. “I’m surprised a warrior such
as yourself wouldn’t have exchanged this for a newer blade long
ago.”

“It isn’t mine either.” Erik pointed to the
leather sheath at Iolo’s waist, which was ancient, weathered, and
worn. And empty. Gareth handed the knife back to Evan. “Treat this
as the murder weapon.”

Rhodri had pulled Madlen to her knees, and
she knelt in the grass, shaking her head back and forth, much as
Carys had done when she’d learned of Gryff’s death. “No, no, no. He
couldn’t have.”

“I assure you Gryff was murdered,” Gareth
said.

“My uncle couldn’t have done it,” Madlen
said.

Gareth didn’t really have anything to say to
that, so he turned back to Erik. “What about you? You admit to
subduing my guards. Why shouldn’t I arrest you for murder too?”

“I needed to speak to Iolo in private. I
arrived to find him already dead.” Erik pointed at Madlen. “She
tried to murder me. I fought back in self-defense.”

Erik outweighed Madlen by a hundred pounds,
but Gareth himself could testify to her determined strength. He
looked from Madlen to Erik, uncertain all of a sudden because it
felt like both could be telling the truth of what they knew. After
all the lies he’d heard so far, it was disconcerting.

Erik indicated his bleeding arm. “Do you
think I could get some help here?”

* * * * *

Gareth ordered Evan and Rhodri to truss Erik
and Madlen and take them to the castle. Both continued to protest
their innocence. Fortunately, the two guards had regained
consciousness before Gareth left the tent, with no obvious ill
effects. Unfortunately, both Gryff and Iolo were still dead and the
problem of determining who’d murdered them remained.

While Gareth sent a rider to fetch Gwen from
the monastery, Evan found a cart to transport the body to a place
where Gareth could examine it. Once presented with Iolo’s death,
both Gwen and the castle’s healer concurred that Iolo had been
poisoned, probably by monkshood delivered in his wine.

“Any fool knows not to touch it,” the healer
said.

“A few grains are all that would have been
needed in the whole bottle, and he’d have been dead,” Gwen said.
“Anyone who drank with him would have been dead too."

Even though Gareth hadn’t dragged anything
more about either Gryff’s death or Iolo’s out of Erik, he allowed
the healer to bind Erik’s wound, thinking he might get as much out
of him with honey as with fists. And then, in the hope that he
would learn something that would give him leverage with Erik,
Gareth decided to hear Madlen’s side of the story first.

To that end, the interested parties crowded
into Hywel’s office, having evicted the castellan of Cardigan
Castle and his large family, who’d been its residents the previous
night.

Hywel placed a stool in the middle of the
room and then sat in his chair behind his desk. The sleeping
pallets that had been spread across the floor were stacked against
one wall, and Gwen found a soft seat there. Gruffydd posted himself
by the door. Declaring that he’d been in on this from the beginning
and wasn’t about to miss the end, Prince Rhun brought a stool in
from the hall to sit on, and Gareth leaned against the wall to one
side. He wanted to be able to see Hywel’s face and Madlen’s too. He
expected her to lie to them again.

“Why don’t you start from the beginning,
Madlen?” Prince Hywel said.

“What do you know already?” Her hands worked
in her lap, nervous and with the appearance that all the fight had
gone from her.

“I think I know a great deal,” Hywel said,
“none of which I’m going to share with you. You lied to me. Your
uncle lied to me, God rest his soul. I know more now than I did
then.” He leaned forward. “I suggest you choose your words
carefully.”

Madlen put her hands up to her lips as if in
prayer. “I didn’t kill Gryff.”

Hywel sat back. “Go on.”

“Uncle Iolo didn’t either,” she said.

Hywel’s expression was stony. “Tell us what
he did do.”