Candace Robb - A Spy For The Redeemer

‘I should like to talk to Hywel.’

‘You do not want to meet him. It is Yvain de Galles you wish to meet. Hywel is not of the same stuff. You may find yourself with a liege lord you would dislike as much as the Duke of Lancaster.’

‘I should find it a pleasant change, to fight for my own people.’

‘Yvain has allied himself with the French. You lost your eye fighting against them. He may have been in the field against you. Have you thought of that?’

‘I asked to talk to Hywel, not to take up arms for Owain Lawgoch.’

Martin laughed. ‘Oh, my friend, if you could see your face. You are already imagining heroic deeds that would free your countrymen. Enough of this. You must rest if you are to ride back to St David’s in the morning.’

‘Ride? You will loan us horses?’

‘I would guess you could ride your own horses beyond the wood. I told you — Hywel will have them. My men Deri and Morgan will take you to him.’

‘You will not accompany us?’

‘I keep my distance from Hywel. We share no love for one another.’

‘Then Deri and Morgan shall take me to him.’

Ilar announced their arrival, barking and scampering as if she thought they carried a bowl of meat for her. Deri and Morgan followed, and quickly told them of the visitors.

‘Iolo heard their approach before we did. He hid himself well. There were three — two of the bishop’s retainers and Tom, your man.’ Deri nodded to Owen.

‘Young Tom was with the archdeacon’s guard?’ Owen asked.

‘Not willingly,’ said Deri. ‘He kept his mouth shut to help me in a lie.’ He explained what had happened. ‘They will ride back slowly, searching for you along the way. I think they expect to find you lying somewhere in the brush overcome by llar’s vicious attack.’

Enid apologised for not thinking of the shirt. Math fumed about the archdeacon’s sending out his men to search for Owen, but never a bother about his son.

‘This is all about Cynog,’ Owen said, trying to calm him.

‘It is about Owain Lawgoch,’ Enid said. ‘I curse the day I ever heard his name.’

Archdeacon Rokelyn threw Owen’s bloodstained shirt on to the table in front of Tom. ‘I find your friends asleep on watch, and now this. Where is he? Where is Captain Archer?’

Tom opened and closed his mouth without a sound. He tried again. ‘I do not know. As the others said, the captain and Iolo left in time to make it here by curfew last night.’

Rokelyn glanced at the two guards who had ridden with Tom. They nodded.

‘Go then. You will find your friends by the palace stables. In one of the horse troughs.’

Hoping to escape quickly, Tom reached for the shirt.

‘Leave it!’ Rokelyn barked.

‘But it is a good shirt,’ Tom protested.

‘If the captain returns, he may have it back,’ the archdeacon said.

Sam awaited him outside the palace gatehouse. ‘I have permission to return to the stables with you. Thanks be. I want no more of that man’s temper.’ He glanced over at the gatekeeper.

‘Is it true that Edmund and Jared are in one of the horse troughs?’

‘So I hear. They were found asleep on watch, stinking of ale.’

‘It is not like them to do such a thing.’

‘No,’ Sam said, hurrying past the keeper. As soon as they were in the palace courtyard, Sam turned and demanded, ‘Whose was the bloody shirt? Where is the captain?’

Tom told him what little he knew.

‘Savaged by a dog? Captain Archer?’ Sam shook his head.

‘I for one do not believe it,’ said Tom. ‘But the man was relieved that I pretended I did so.’

‘Then where is the captain?’

‘I do not know. The horses were not there. Nor Iolo. That is all I know.’

The evening shadows chilled the stable yard. The troughs were deserted. Tom and Sam found their comrades snoring in a corner of the stables, blankets wrapped round them, their clothes draped over a line, drying. Someone had been kind.

Sam, whose mother was a midwife, knelt, smelled the breath of each.

He waved Tom over. ‘Smell them.’

Tom knelt beside him. Sniffed. ‘Bitter,’ he said.

‘Aye. They drank more than simple ale. A sleep draught, I think.’

Tom wished the captain were here. ‘The captain would warn the men who guard Piers the Mariner now.’

‘Aye, he would do that.’

‘Then we must.’

Tom had a queasy feeling in his stomach as he ran across the yard, but he tried to ignore it. Sam led the way, taking the steps of the bishop’s porch two at a time. The porter barred their way.

‘Has the archdeacon ordered you in? I was not told if he has.’

‘We need to warn the guards,’ said Tom.

The porter shook his head. ‘You must speak to the archdeacon.’

‘That will take too much time, man!’ Sam cried.

‘I have my orders.’ The porter stood firm.

The old, rickety donkey cart wheezed and rumbled along the track. Magda Digby dozed in the sunlight on the seat beside Matthew the Tinker, smiling to herself each time he reached over to make sure she was not slipping off. It was always a pleasure when a patient still valued her after a particularly painful treatment, and his tooth, for all its rot, had been very stubborn about coming out. Magda snorted awake as Matthew brought the cart to a halt in front of a damaged gatehouse.

‘We have arrived at Freythorpe Hadden,’ said the tinker. ‘They had a terrible fire in the gatehouse. Outlaws set it.’

The sun shone through holes in the roof and lit up a crumbling side. Several men climbed about with hooks, tearing down blackened thatch and sooty walls.

‘Outlaws?’ Magda wondered what they had thought to gain by such destruction. The stone manor house was intact. And the stone and timber stables.

‘Mistress Wilton will be glad to hear they have begun repairs,’ said Matthew.

A man emerged from the shadowy archway of the gatehouse, shaded his eyes to look their way, then turned and ran back towards the stables near the manor house.

Magda was not eager for trouble, but it boded well for Lucie’s property that the approach of strangers had been noted. ‘The borrowed steward set a watch, begins the repairs. Perhaps he is wise.’ Magda wondered at how little Lucie had said about this. Damage to the gatehouse , she had said, and my aunt’s favourite tapestry stolen . Some silver plate, some money. The gatehouse was not so precious to her as the tapestry. But such destruction must have made cold her heart. She did not like that Lucie had not wished to talk of it.

‘I am not easy about being looked on as a dangerous intruder. But it is wise to set a watch,’ said Matthew. ‘The men might return.’

‘In a creaky donkey cart?’

Magda’s barking laugh startled the tinker into laughing also. ‘Outlaws with a herald,’ he muttered, wiping his eyes, then grabbing at his jaw as the pain returned.

‘Magda begs thy pardon. She forgot thy tooth.’

‘A good laugh is worth the pain,’ Matthew said.

He was a wise man to know that. Magda climbed out of the cart, retrieved her pouch from the back. ‘Thou hast been kind.’ She squinted up at the tinker’s swollen cheek. ‘Without the rotted tooth the swelling will ease. Remember to let the brandywine Magda gave thee sit in thy mouth before swallowing it.’

Matthew nodded. ‘God go with you, Riverwoman.’

‘Thou art not selling thy wares at Freythorpe Hadden?’

‘I do not bother folk who have had such troubles.’

‘They must live.’

‘I do not want trouble.’ His eyes were on something behind Magda.

‘Then be off,’ Magda said.

She turned round. A fair-haired man approached, striding with authority. Two others followed close. ‘Harold Galfrey?’ Magda shouted over the noise of Matthew’s cart loudly rumbling behind her.