The Unlikely Spy (4 page)

Prince Rhun’s brows came together. “That
would make the murderer a newcomer to the area—”

“Since the alarm hasn’t been raised about
the dead man’s absence, he appears to be a stranger too,” Prior
Rhys said. “Plenty of strangers here for the festival.”

“Yes,” Prince Rhun said, “but if the
murderer is one of the visitors to the festival he won’t have left
yet. Gwen told me that if our dead man had drowned, he would have
stayed under the water for days, giving the murderer enough time to
see the festival through and depart before the body was found.”

“How do we know the stab wound was what
killed him? Not all such wounds are fatal.” The prior had turned to
face Rhun, and it was with a small degree of surprise that Rhun
realized the prior was taking him seriously. Rhun had always felt
that Rhys considered him something of a spoiled princeling,
dismissing him in favor of Hywel, who was more clever and less open
than Rhun.

It had never bothered Rhun that the prior
had assessed him thus and found him wanting—or at least it hadn’t
bothered him very much. Rhun knew that his father looked upon him
with favor. He was the
etifedd
, the first born son and heir
to the throne. It was his birthright to be favored. Rhun could give
way in favor of his younger brother once in his life.

Still, in his own mind, Rhun had never meant
to play the princeling or take for granted what God had given him,
which was why he was pleased to see Prior Rhys speaking to him
man-to-man. Rhun didn’t like having his qualities questioned,
especially by someone whom he himself admired.

“Gwen says the man was dead before he went
into the water,” Rhun said.

Rhys made a
huh
sound at the back of
his throat. “Regardless, there doesn’t appear to be much
blood.”

“If he died quickly, there wouldn’t have
been,” Rhun said.

“Why is that?” Prior Rhys said.

“Because corpses don’t bleed.”

Prior Rhys’s eyes actually twinkled. “You
learn quickly.”

“Gwen is a good teacher.”

Ignoring their exchange entirely, Gwen had
been standing with one arm around her waist and the fingers of the
other hand to her lips, studying the crushed vegetation. Then she
bent into a walking crouch and began moving around the small space,
her hands on her knees and her eyes on the ground. “Gareth tells me
that if you really want to kill a man without leaving a trace, you
slice him between the bones at the back of his neck.” She rubbed at
the back of her own neck to show the two men where she meant. “He
will immediately drop to the ground, and his death will be nearly
instantaneous. There will be very little blood to scrub away, and
you’d hardly have touched the body.”

Prior Rhys moved out of Gwen’s way, looking
upon her with amusement. Rhun didn’t know whether to be horrified
or impressed anew that she knew so much about effective methods of
killing men. He was glad, regardless, that she was with them today.
Though he’d sent Prior Rhys to find Gareth, Gwen was proving to be
more than adequate to the task before her.

Thinking to help, Rhun bent to observe the
soil and dead leaves that had been scraped in a path from the base
of a tree to the pond. The marks ended at the water’s edge. He
frowned. “Is the level of the pond higher than it was last night or
earlier today?”

Gwen remained bent over, but she turned her
head to see where Rhun was gesturing to the plants growing beneath
the level of the water—plants that wouldn’t normally have grown
under water at all.

“The water clearly ebbs and flows,” Prior
Rhys said, understanding Rhun’s point immediately. “Would the
murderer have known that and could he have used it to his
advantage?”

“You have good eyes, my lord,” Gwen
said.

“Perhaps I should ask the mill master,”
Prince Rhun said. “It should be he who controls the level of the
water coming from the river through the sluice gates.”

Gwen straightened. “That’s a good idea.”

Rhun didn’t feel like Gwen was mocking him,
though he could tell that his assumption of responsibility amused
her. He hadn’t been able to hide how surprised—even shocked—he’d
been at her knowledge of death, and how little about it he knew
himself, despite his experience with war. He’d been beside her for
all of an hour and already he knew more about murder than he’d
learned in the dozen battles he’d led and from the men he’d
killed.

He was ashamed to realize it.

Whether a man died in battle or of old age,
Rhun had viewed death as a definitive process. But he’d been wrong
about that. Death in battle might be violent, but death by murder
was an evil thing, with darkness at its center.

“Please come find us when you’ve spoken with
him. Prior Rhys and I will continue to search.” Gwen glanced at the
prior, who nodded. “Even if the others found nothing of interest,
it might be worthwhile to look again. We can’t pass up the chance
that the murderer left a token of himself here. A cloth caught on a
branch or a footprint could help us discover who he is.”

“You’re assuming the murderer is a man.”
Rhun was turning away as he spoke, but he caught Gwen’s
whuf
of surprised laughter. Smiling, Rhun continued through the trees
back towards where the dead man lay.

Gwen called after him. “I was assuming, my
lord. We would do well to remember not to!”

Still laughing to himself, Rhun waved a hand
above his head in acknowledgement of her comment but didn’t turn
around. This murder had well and truly caught his attention. He
wanted to help with the work. And truthfully, the miller might
respond to his authority better than to Gwen’s. Gwen was the wife
of a knight, but Rhun had met the miller in his ramblings around
Aberystwyth over the last few months, and the man had an attitude
that was common to many middle-aged men: he’d reached a point in
his life where he was sure of the world and his place in it. A
young woman investigating a murder might very well rub him the
wrong way like a cat stroked tail to head.

The miller hadn’t been present at the
discovery of the body, making it unlikely that Rhun would find him
in the mill itself. But as Rhun came out of the trees near the
clearing, a few yards from where the monks still guarded the dead
man, the miller drove a one-horse cart into the clearing and
halted. Spying the monks, he leaped from the cart and loped towards
the water’s edge.

Then he caught sight Rhun and pulled up,
blanching. “My lord! I heard there’s been some trouble.” He looked
from Rhun to the monks and back again.

“You could say that,” Rhun said.

To Rhun’s mind, the miller was currently at
the top of his (admittedly short) list of suspects. The miller knew
his pond well. He could have killed the man and raised the level of
the water in the pond in hopes of hiding evidence of where the body
had gone in. Prior Rhys had so quickly discovered the exact spot
where the man had died, despite the water level, because Gwen had
been on hand with a working knowledge of what was to be done. If
Prior Rhys hadn’t hastened to bring her to the scene and prevented
the monks from carting the body back to the monastery right away,
much of the evidence that could ultimately point to a killer could
have been lost.

In addition, if Rhun himself hadn’t known
that a dead body thrown into the water wouldn’t sink to the bottom,
it was easy to believe the miller wouldn’t have known it
either.

The miller had moved a few more paces
towards the monks, his eyes on the body on the ground. “Is that—?”
He couldn’t take his eyes off it. He put a cloth to his mouth, and
his throat contracted.

“A dead man, yes,” Rhun said. “Would you be
so kind as to look into his face and tell me if you recognize
him?”

“Of course, of course.” The miller mopped
his sweating brow.

Rhun might have read guilt in the action,
but it was a hot afternoon. He should delay any conclusion until he
learned more. One of the monks had laid a handkerchief across the
dead man’s face, and now he removed it.

“Do you know him?” Rhun said.

The miller bent over the body for a moment
and then straightened, clear relief sweeping across his face. “No,
my lord. No, I don’t.”

“Are you sure?” Rhun said.

“I’m sure. I was afraid for a moment—” He
stopped.

Rhun pounced on the man’s hesitation. “What
were you afraid of? If you know anything about his death, I need to
know it right now.”

“I know nothing.” The miller shook his head
vehemently back and forth. “I was going to say that I’ve been
waiting for my apprentice to return from his aunt’s house in
Borth.” He gestured helplessly to the body. “Even were I unsure of
this man’s features, this body isn’t missing a hand.”

“Excuse me?” Rhun said. “Your apprentice is
missing a hand?”

The miller waved a hand dismissively. “He’s
a good worker nonetheless.”

Rhun was sure that Gareth or Gwen would have
done a better job at hiding their surprise, but he took a breath
and soldiered on nonetheless. “Did you have some particular reason
to think this was your apprentice?”

“Not-not really. I expected him back from
Borth this morning, but he hasn’t come. When I learned a body had
been found, I feared the worst. But this isn’t he.” The miller
clasped his hands in front of him to stop himself from wringing
them.

The miller was genuinely concerned, and Rhun
felt his sympathies rising, despite the fact that the miller’s
information was turning out not to be worth very much. The miller
put the cloth back to his mouth. He had turned a distinctive shade
of green.

Rhun pointed to the water’s edge a few feet
away. “If you are going to be sick, please move away.”

The miller swallowed hard and lifted his
eyes towards the sky. “I am well enough.”

“What can you tell me about the millpond?”
Rhun said.

“What do you need to know about it, my
lord?”

“Is the water level higher today than
yesterday?”

“Ach, yes.” The miller flapped his cloth. “I
always raise it when I have a large amount of grain to grind. And
with the orders from both the monastery and the castle that came in
two days ago because of the festival, I knew I’d be grinding day
and night throughout the week.”

“How quickly does the water level rise once
you increase the width of the sluice gate?”

“It takes some hours,” the miller said.
“It’s a constant battle to get it right, and don’t get me started
on what it’s like in the spring during the floods.”

“I’m sure it isn’t easy,” Rhun said
appeasingly. “Does anyone guard the mill at night?”

“My apprentice sleeps in the loft,” the
miller said.

“The one who went to Borth?”

“The same,” the miller said.

Rhun just managed to refrain from rolling
his eyes. “So you’re telling me that nobody was sleeping in the
mill last night.”

“No, my lord. Nobody.”

“Where were you just now?”

“I had business in the village. My
journeyman is more than capable of running the mill in my
absence.”

Rhun was convinced that the miller’s
business had included more than one tankard of mead, but he didn’t
mention it. He wanted to keep the miller cooperative, not confront
him with shirking his duties. Rhun glanced at the body, thinking of
what question to ask next. So far the miller had explained about
the water level in the millpond, which Hywel probably already knew
but had been able to add little else. Rhun wasn’t going to have
anything much to show Prior Rhys and Gwen when he saw them next.
Then he consoled himself with the fact that at least they wouldn’t
waste their time questioning someone who couldn’t help.

“May I go, my lord? I have business to
attend to.”

Rhun nodded, waving a hand to dismiss the
miller. “We know where to find you if we need to speak with you
again.”

The miller ducked his head and departed.

“My lord!”

Rhun spun around to see Gareth urge his
horse off the road and into the clearing in front of the mill.
Almost at the same moment, Gwen and Prior Rhys appeared out of the
trees and crossed the clearing towards him.

Rhun felt a rush of relief and wasn’t
ashamed to admit it. Without help, this murder investigation would
have had
him
in over his head and drowning.

Gareth dismounted, looking every inch the
captain of the guard he was: tall and broad-shouldered with
close-cropped dark hair and intelligent blue eyes. He grasped the
much smaller Gwen by her upper arms and held her as he looked down
into her face. If they weren’t in the middle of a murder scene,
Rhun would have wagered his best horse that Gareth would have
wrapped his wife up in a hug and kissed her. They’d been married
for nearly three years, and a blind man could see how much they
loved each other.

Rhun wanted that for himself. He hoped that
he might find it someday. Maybe even—he allowed himself a sliver of
hope and anticipation—with Angharad.

Gareth

“W
e have a murder,”
Gwen said.

Gareth refrained from wondering aloud how it
was that Gwen had managed yet again to be on the scene of a murder
before he’d even learned there was a body. Then he looked around
the clearing, a feeling of unease rising in him that had nothing to
do with the murder. “My lord,” he said, turning to Rhun. “Where are
your guards?”

“I dismissed them.”

“My lord, how could you—”

Rhun raised a hand. “I know, I know. I am a
prince of Gwynedd. But this isn’t Gwynedd—”

“That’s right this isn’t Gwynedd!” Gareth
said, and then he swallowed, working hard to modulate his tone.
“It’s Ceredigion, with Normans and spies and common folk who
haven’t forgiven Cadwaladr for his misuse of them and your father
for putting him above them.”