The Fourth Horseman (26 page)

“
Exactly my point.” Hywel
had been looking around the hall as he was speaking but now turned
his gaze fully on Gareth. “What’s wrong with you
tonight?”

“
Excuse me?”

“
You spent most of the meal
glaring at me.”

“
Gwen is concerned …”
Gareth snapped his mouth shut, knowing instantly that he shouldn’t
have brought Gwen into this.

“
This is about Mari, is
that it?”

“
Yes, my lord,” Gareth
said, taking refuge in formality.

Hywel snorted under his breath. “What does
Gwen think I’m going to do to Mari?”

Gareth cleared his throat. “I—”

“
Don’t answer that. Gwen is
a married woman now, but even before that, my liaisons never
concerned her.” Hywel narrowed his eyes at Gareth. “Does she—do
you—think so little of me as to believe that I would harm Mari in
any way?”

Gareth found himself coloring. This had
become a disconcertingly frank conversation. “She did not ask me to
speak to you. I urged her to accept your relationship with Mari.
You are our liege lord and we have no business interfering.”

“
How kind of you to be so
understanding.” Hywel studied Gareth for a moment and then looked
at Mari. His expression softened.

Gareth recognized what was in his lord’s
eyes, for Gareth felt the same when he looked at Gwen.

“
I haven’t felt this way
about a woman since …” Hywel didn’t finish his sentence, but Gareth
didn’t need him to. He’d been among those who’d had to pick up the
pieces three years ago after Hywel had lost his lover and her babe.
Love and loss were entwined in Hywel’s world as much as they were
in Gareth’s.

Hywel turned back to Gareth. “My intentions
are honorable, my friend.” He clapped Gareth on the shoulder. “I’d
appreciate it if you would put Gwen’s mind at rest.”

“
Yes, my lord,” Gareth
said, relieved that he’d escaped the conversation
unscathed.

Gareth escorted Mari upstairs as Hywel
requested and then felt himself at loose ends, unsure of how to
proceed at such a late hour. The princes were occupied with the
empress, Gruffydd in attendance, and at Hywel’s insistence, Evan
was posted in the hallway outside the women’s solar until Hywel
could come to check on Mari himself. Gareth found himself in the
bailey, where the crowd was just as large as ever. Half the knights
in Newcastle were being housed in the town because there was no
more room in the friary or the castle.

Gareth decided he would check on Amaury.
Taking his horse’s reins from the stable boy, he headed for the
gatehouse. Such was the crush of men and horses entering and
exiting that Gareth was jostled several times. The third time
someone elbowed him in the back, he turned, trying to control his
temper, and found himself facing a man who studied him with keen
eyes from underneath his hood. It was Alard.

Gareth faced front again and continued
walking, very aware of how closely Alard was following him. While
Alard kept his face averted, Gareth lifted a hand to the guard
watching the entrance, who by now knew him by sight. The guard,
trained to stop men from entering the castle as opposed to leaving
it, waved them through.

Gareth paced a dozen yards away from the
castle entrance before he turned on the Norman spy. “What are you
doing here? What if someone had recognized you?”

“
Now that Empress Maud has
arrived at Newcastle, I must speak with her, to plead my case. I
hoped that you could get me in to see her.”

“
Not I,” Gareth said.
“Abandon the idea. Earl Robert’s orders are to arrest you if we can
or to kill you if you resist.”

“
I must try.”

“
She’s meeting with her
brother and counselors right now, including my princes. You’ll
never get past the guards at the door, not even if I accompany you.
Such is the feeling against you that I fear they would cut you down
and say you were killed trying to escape.”

Alard cursed and kicked at a clod of dirt in
the road. “Might Prince Hywel defend me?”

“
All of us have been
defending you,” Gareth said. “It has done no good.”

“
Has the empress spoken yet
with Philippe?”

“
You should assume that she
has,” Gareth said. “During the evening meal, before the messenger
arrived from Lincoln, her expression could have curdled
milk.”

Alard looked down at the ground. “Once the
empress gets an idea in her head, it is nearly impossible to unfix
it. I am a condemned man.”

“
You’ve been a condemned
man for some time now. You may have had hope, but I wouldn’t view
your current situation as changed in any way.” Gareth turned away
and began walking down the road to the friary, leading his horse.
Alard fell into step beside him, behaving as if he wasn’t a hunted
man and could walk wherever he pleased. Because Alard appeared
unconcerned about getting under cover, Gareth didn’t broach the
subject.

Huts clustered to the left of the road, and
the bell at St. Giles, the village church, tolled for compline.
Most of the village’s huts and its market stood between the church
and the castle, with the friary on the southeastern outskirts. As
they left the village behind, the entrance to the friary came into
view, lit with torches.

“
You’re taking a risk, not
turning me in,” Alard said.

Gareth kept walking. “Am I? My obligation is
to my prince and after that to my king.”

“
The empress might not see
it that way,” Alard said. “If you were to arrest me, it might raise
her estimation of your princes; she might favor them.”

Gareth pulled up. “Is that really what you
think of us?”

Alard licked his lips. He hadn’t pushed back
his hood, even in the dark of the road, and the lower half of his
face was all Gareth could see. “What do you mean?”

A party of knights rode by them, heading for
the friary. Alard took a step towards the trees that lined the
right side of the road, turning his head away so he wouldn’t be
recognized.

Once the horsemen were past, Gareth started
walking again. He shook his head, thinking about Alard’s query. At
times, the difference between his mindset and a Norman’s was vast
and unbridgeable.

Alard took a couple of extra steps at a trot
to catch up. “I apologize, Sir Gareth, if I offended you, but I
don’t see the offense.”

“
Prince Hywel and Rhun
didn’t come to Newcastle to curry favor,” Gareth said. “There is
nothing that Earl Robert or the empress can do for them that will
aid them, other than rein in some of their more belligerent lords
whose lands abut Gwynedd. They don’t want a place in the royal
court. They don’t need the empress’s favor.”

“
I see,” Alard
said.

Gareth wasn’t sure that he really did, so he
explained further: “We came here at Earl Robert’s request. King
Owain hopes for an alliance of some kind, but would rather have
none than appear as a petitioner. The King of Gwynedd wants peace
and the freedom to govern his domains without interference from
England. Prince Hywel and Rhun are ambassadors, not
supplicants.”

Alard nodded. “I might
suggest that you are naïve, but I do not wish to offend again.
Still, you owe me nothing either. Why
not
turn me in?”

“
If Prince Hywel returns to
Gwynedd without learning the truth of these events,” Gareth said,
“his father will be disappointed.”

Alard made to scoff, but when Gareth didn’t
amend his statement, he swallowed it back down. “You’re
serious?”

Gareth shrugged. “At the very least, Prince
Hywel wants to shed light on David’s death so that his father can
calculate the size of his losses. It is David’s death, however,
that seems to be the least of anyone else’s concerns.”

“
David attacked me; I
killed him,” Alard said. “What more do you need to
know?”

“
But why did he attack
you?” Gareth said. “Who sent him?”

“
Philippe, of
course.”

“
Philippe told me
forthrightly that he didn’t,” Gareth said.

Alard rubbed his chin. “Why would he lie
about something like that?”

“
Thus, my point,” Gareth
said.

“
Philippe is a dying man,”
Alard said, as if it was something he was loath to admit. “His mind
isn’t what it once was.”

“
Are you suggesting he
doesn’t remember sending David after you?” Gareth said.

“
No … no. You’re right.
He’s lying.”

“
I wouldn’t be so sure.”
The voice came from the trees to the right of the road, and then
Ralph stepped out in front of Gareth and Alard.

Gareth was getting used to the way these
spies appeared out of nowhere. “You were waiting for us.” He turned
to Alard. “Were you really trying to see the empress, or did you
merely use me as a means to exit Newcastle safely?”

“
Does it matter?” Alard
said softly.

“
I suppose not.” Gareth
looked at Ralph. “Now that you’re here, I’d like to finish our
conversation from the chapel. It’s long past time I knew all that
you know.”

Ralph and Alard exchanged a look, which in
the darkness Gareth couldn’t interpret, but they seemed to decide
to go along with what Gareth wanted for now.

“
Alard and I have known
each other a long time,” Ralph said. “When I came to him with the
news of the plot against Prince Henry, he and I agreed to pool our
resources to learn what we could about it. Since I no longer
existed—and almost immediately he learned that he was a wanted
man—our task was made doubly difficult.”

“
I knew that if I wasn’t
the traitor, someone else had to be,” Alard said, “but I didn’t
know who that might be. When David asked to meet me, I agreed and
suggested the castle, whose inhabitants had swelled sufficiently in
number for me to lose myself among them. David had lied about
wanting to talk, however, because he attacked me on the wall walk
without warning.”

Ralph nodded. “I came too late to see
anything but the end.”

“
While Alard escaped by
rope, you made your way downstream to meet him, is that right?”
Gareth said.

“
Yes,” Ralph
said.

“
Why didn’t you mention the
emeralds when we spoke at the farmhouse?” Gareth said to
Alard.

Alard’s brow furrowed. “I
was gathering information while imparting as little as possible.
Since I didn’t have the emeralds, and I didn’t know at the time
that David had been given one, it wasn’t something I was willing to
discuss with a possible enemy. I certainly never thought
that
you
might have
one.”

Gareth nodded, admitting that he would have
behaved no differently. He looked at Ralph. “Yet you chose to speak
of the gems at the chapel. Why?”

“
Alard’s situation had
grown even more imperiled,” said Ralph. “I needed your
help.”

“
It was a good choice to
trust us, given that we now appear to be your only hope,” Gareth
said, unable to keep an edge of bitterness out of his
voice.

Ralph gazed west towards the castle.
“Perhaps Earl Robert—” He stopped and then shook his head,
dismissing the thought.

“
Robert wants the truth,”
Gareth said, “but not at the expense of men and time he doesn’t
feel he has. I get the sense that he is a very pragmatic
man.”

“
That he is,” Alard
said.

“
Unlike his sister,” Ralph
said, as if stating an obvious truth. Then he lifted his chin. “You
should come with us to find Philippe now and get to the bottom of
this.”

“
Back at the abandoned
chapel, you said that only Alard and Prior Rhys knew you were still
alive, but that was a lie,” Gareth said. “Philippe must have known
all this time, too.”

“
He did.”

“
But he didn’t think to ask
you—the man imbedded in King Stephen’s court—if you had come to the
same conclusions about Alard as he had?” Gareth said.

“
He may have,” Ralph said,
“but since Alard was my liaison and Philippe no longer trusted him,
such a discussion could only be held in person. Philippe is too ill
to travel, and he would never have jeopardized my mission by
summoning me here.”

Gareth ran a hand through his hair. “The
friary must be in an uproar now that the empress has arrived. How
are you going to get past all those people who not only know you,
but who work for Philippe and know that Alard is the man he most
wants to find?”

“
If you came with us—”
Alard said.

Gareth closed his eyes. These men had no
sense of self-preservation.

“
What would you have us do
instead?” Alard said. “Return to the farmhouse for our safety or
find our way to the Welsh camp?”

“
Nobody there knows who you
are except for Gwen and Prior Rhys,” Gareth said.

“
We cannot hide,” Alard
said, “not while Prince Henry remains in danger.”

Gareth hated his choices, but they weren’t
going to change just because he wanted them to. He sighed. “We’ll
go in the back way, across the fields.”

“
Thank you,” Ralph
said.

They left the road, threading their way
between the village and the adjacent fields which belonged to the
friary. They followed the line of the hill upon which St. Giles
Church perched until the wall that surrounded the abbey proper gave
way to field markers and a split rail fence. It was a matter of a
moment to hop the fence and then take a pathway between the fields.
They could see well enough without a torch, since the sky remained
clear and the moon had risen. May was one of the driest months of
the year in England. Gareth was glad he’d left off his cloak.