Chapter One

Carreg Cennen Castle

January 1141

Gwen stopped short when she reached the bottom rung of the ladder that descended into the pantry. She didn’t want to go on. Out of a childish curiosity that she tried not to indulge too often, she and her brother, Gwalchmai, had explored the castle three months ago when they’d first arrived. This pantry lay at the near end of a hollowed out cave in the rock that supported Carreg Cennen Castle. It was little used, being less accessible and too moist compared to the other storage areas. Gwen touched a hand to the stones of the wall, feeling the damp beneath her fingers.

Edain, the serving boy who’d come to find her, urged her onward, waiting for her to step past him. But she couldn’t make her feet move. Two lanterns lit the room, and a half-dozen men crowded into it. Among them were Robert, the castle steward, Gruffydd, the captain of the garrison, and several soldiers. All were bundled against the cold of the pantry, with thick cloaks, scarves, and gloves.

Her father sat on a low stool before her, his head bent and his hands hanging off his knees. He must have been freezing because he wore no cloak and his hands were bare. He was also unkempt in that his graying hair was mussed, and he had stains on his tunic.

In front of him on the floor lay the sprawled body of Collen, a merchant whom they’d often met on the road, walking from castle to castle and tiny village to tiny village hawking his wares. Since coins were rare in Wales, he bartered more often than he sold. It was from him that a girl could acquire a new needle or a fine ribbon. Gwen touched the top of her head, tracing the green silken length in her hair that was one of her most prized possessions. She’d bought it from Collen, quite literally, for a song.

Gwen didn’t have to ask if Collen was dead. Blood trickled from underneath his head, staining the uneven stones of the floor around his body. Next to Collen lay one of her father’s iron harp strings, as if the murderer, having done his work, had discarded it carelessly on the ground. Red stained the length of it, matching the blood covering her father’s hands.

“You must come with me, Meilyr.” Gruffydd stood before her father, his fists on his hips. The captain of the guard was tall and distinguished, in his middle thirties, with the thick shoulders and legs of a fighting man. Edain had come for her so quickly that she had arrived on Sir Gruffydd’s heels.

Gwen squeezed the boy’s arm, hardly able to keep her feet.

“What did you say?” Meilyr peered at Collen’s body and then up at Gruffydd. “I don’t want to come with you. My friend is dead. I should stay with him.”

“Collen is dead by your hand,” Gruffydd said.

Meilyr’s mouth fell open. “Wh-wh-what?”

Gwen clenched her hands into fists and brought them to her lips. She couldn’t take it in. Her father couldn’t have murdered Collen. He couldn’t have. “Please, Sir Gruffydd!” Gwen’s voice went high as tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. “My father didn’t do this!”

“Does this belong to him?” With the toe of his boot, Gruffydd indicated the bloody harp string.

Gwen swallowed. “Yes, but—”

Gruffydd tucked the gloved fingers of one hand under Meilyr’s arm, surprisingly gently under the circumstances, and pulled him up from his stool. Meilyr didn’t protest.

Robert tucked his cloak more closely around his body. “I suppose that’s that.” He strode towards where Gwen stood at the exit. When he reached her, he rested a hand her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Gwen.”

Gwen nodded dumbly, though her attention was still on her father. For Meilyr’s part, he didn’t seem to realize what was happening. Gwen stepped further into the room to let all the men file past her but one guard, who remained leaning against the far wall of the pantry. As her father came abreast of her, she looked directly into his eyes. He was a short, stocky man—a good six inches shorter than Collen—so hardly taller than she.

He brought up one bloody hand to block the light from the lantern which one of the soldiers held high in front of him. In spite of the bright light, his pupils were dilated.

And when he passed her, she was afforded a whiff of his breath.

“He’s drunk,” Edain said, with all the tactlessness of a fourteen-year-old boy. “And at this hour of the morning.”

A moan rose in Gwen’s throat. She wanted to go back in time to the moment before Edain had come to find her. He’d stood panting in the doorway of the herbalist’s hut, where Gwen and Gwalchmai had been practicing their scales. The hut lay in a far corner of the kitchen garden and had the benefit of being out of the wind, although, since it had no windows, they had been working by the light of a low burning brazier and a single candle. But for the cold and the square of pale light coming through the open doorway, which Edain’s slender figure had blocked, it could have been a summer’s day at noon and Gwen wouldn’t have known it.

Edain had demanded that she come with him. At the time, she’d stared at him, a denial forming in her throat. She swallowed it down, however, as she swallowed down most of her retorts these days. She was a grown woman and should be beyond petulance.

Gwen turned her head to watch her father go. “More likely he drank so much mead last night that it has yet to wear off.”

Edain brushed a lock of light brown hair out of his eyes and shrugged. Usually, he was so talkative it was difficult to get in a word between his stories.

In retrospect, Gwen thought her guess more likely than Edain’s. Her father had been struggling with drink since her mother died, conquering it for months at a time, only to sink back into despair and begin the cycle anew. Even on his worst days, however, he made an effort not to drink until the sun had set—which was easier in winter, with its short days and long nights.

Gwen rubbed at her temples with her fingers. Her father had been much more in control during this last year, as Gwalchmai’s singing voice had begun to manifest. She had actually believed that he’d finally mastered himself for good.

Gruffydd’s barking order to find a board so they could get the body out of the pantry echoed from above. Pounding feet indicated that men were obeying him. Gwen stared at her own feet, feeling herself a coward for not protesting more that her father couldn’t have murdered Collen and for allowing Gruffydd to lead her father away.

Gwen pressed her forehead into the cold stones of the wall, her eyes shut tight. “What am I to do, Edain?”

“You genuinely don’t think your father did this?” Edain said. “How could you doubt it, given what lies before us?”

“Of course, I doubt it.” Gwen tipped her head to look up at Edain. He loomed over her. He’d added two inches to his already lanky frame since Gwen’s family had arrived at Carreg Cennen in the autumn and would probably grow more in the next six. “You saw my father. He could barely stand.”

“Mead makes some men stronger than when they’re sober.” Philip, the guard who’d been left behind, straightened from his position against the wall. He was one of Gruffydd’s more able and reliable soldiers.

“Even if I admit that my father could have overcome Collen,” Gwen said, “it couldn’t have been that easy. How could my father have wrapped that string around Collen’s throat without Collen fighting back? My father is half his size and twice his age—and ended up without a mark on his face or arms.”

“Meilyr’s hands have Collen’s blood on them.” Philip said. “You have to prepare yourself, Gwen. If your father is convicted of Collen’s murder, you know what comes next.”

Gwen gazed down at Collen’s body. She did know: shame, mortification, banishment. The fine—galanas—that he would owe Collen’s family would pauper them. Norman law stated that a man must hang for the murder of another man, but the laws of Hywel Dda said that each individual person—each man, woman and child—had a value. In Wales, a man paid galanas—compensation—to the family of the one he’d killed.

Gwen swallowed down those thoughts. Her father hadn’t murdered Collen, and if he hadn’t murdered him, then someone else had.

“I would have blood on my hands too if I came upon a friend who lay dead on the floor,” she said. “My father touched Collen. He’s drunk enough that maybe he thought Collen was asleep at first. That is all.”

Neither Philip nor Edain looked convinced. Edain pursed his lips. “I don’t know, Gwe—”

Gwalchmai hurtled down the ladder and collided with Gwen, unable to stop his headlong rush. “I saw Gruffydd take Father away!” Gwalchmai wrapped his arms around Gwen’s waist. “What’s happening? What did he do?”

Gwen’s brother was ten years younger than she and developing a soprano voice that her father swore would shake the rafters of every hall in which he sang. To Gwen’s ear, it already did. Gwen took in a deep breath, knowing that she had to be strong for him, and she then eased back enough to bend and put her hands to either side of his face. “Collen is dead. That’s all we know so far. I will come find you in a moment.”

“Father has been accused of murdering Collen, hasn’t he, Gwen? I heard someone in the kitchen say it.” Gwalchmai gazed into Gwen’s face, eyes wide and his expression supplicating. He had long lashes that fluttered over eyes near to weeping.

Since he’d heard it already, there was no point in attempting a denial. “You and I both know that he couldn’t have done anything like that, but it is what Gruffydd and Robert believe.”

“What if he did it?” Gwalchmai edged sideways, his eyes flicking all around the room, trying to look past Gwen to Collen’s body.

Gwen shifted her body to block his vision. “Gwalchmai! How could you even think such a thing of Father?”

Gwalchmai tried to pull away. “Everyone else is thinking it. How do you know Father is innocent?”

“I just do! Regardless, you shouldn’t be here.”

“But Gwen—”

“Not now, Gwalchmai. Wait for me in the kitchen.” Gwen forcibly turned her brother around and marched him towards the ladder.

Gwalchmai’s face wore a mutinous look, but he allowed her to shove him up the steps. His feet stomped at each rung in turn until he disappeared. Once she couldn’t see his heels any longer, Gwen turned back to the room. She hated seeing Collen this way and hated even more that Philip now crouched beside the body.

“Do you—do you see anything that could help my father?” she said.

“Not from here.” Philip glanced up at her. “It could even be a hanging if Lord Cadfael is in a vindictive mood.”

Gwen and her family had spent the winter singing for Lord Cadfael, the ruler of Carreg Cennen. From here, Lord Cadfael oversaw Bychan, a cantref in the Welsh kingdom of Deheubarth, and was himself subject to the oversight of Deheubarth’s king, Anarawd.

The lump in Gwen’s throat was so big now that she couldn’t swallow. Thank goodness Collen lay face down so she couldn’t see the wound at his throat. Her eyes teared again as she gazed at him, and she was honest enough with herself to admit that the tears were less for Collen than for herself and her family. If this accusation stuck, no man would ever respect her father again. And who would hire the son of a murderer to sing in his hall?

“How long ago did he die?” Edain said.

Philip lifted up Collen’s wrist and dropped it. “He’s warm but stiff.”

“What does that mean?” Edain stepped closer, bending forward with his hands on his knees, all eyes.

“If he were warm but not stiff, Collen would have died within the last few hours. As it is, the stiffness implies that he died sometime after midnight, but before dawn.”

Gwen wiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand. She found herself trembling at how casually Edain and Philip discussed Collen’s demise.

Edain touched a finger to a spot on Collen’s breeches.

“Here! What are you doing?” Philip said.

“That’s not blood,” Edain said.

“Of course it’s blood. There’s blood all over him.”

This wasn’t strictly true. The pantry sloped away from its highest point by the ladder and the blood had drained from Collen’s wound towards a far corner, without sullying the floor under the rest of Collen’s body. Ignoring Philip, Edain leaned in and sniffed at the stain.

“What is it?” Gwen said.

“It smells somewhat sweet, maybe nutty,” Edain said.

Philip snorted in disgust. But then, with a manner similar to the way Gruffydd had been with her father, though perhaps with even more understanding, he took Edain’s arm to pull him up and out of his way. “This is no place for you, boy. For neither you nor Gwen.” He turned to her. “You should see to your brother.”

“He’s right, Gwen,” Edain said.

Gwen backed away as two guards awkwardly lowered a body-sized board down the ladder. Philip caught one end and set it on the floor of the pantry.

“Excuse us, Gwen,” one of the other guards said.

Philip nudged Edain and Gwen, urging them to one side. “I know you’re curious, but even if Meilyr isn’t guilty, there’s nothing you can do for him. Leave this to your betters.”

“Yes, sir,” Edain said.

Gwen didn’t answer, just tugged her cloak closer around her shoulders, feeling colder than she should have in the protected pantry. She was thankful for her thick woolen leggings and two petticoats that kept the worst of the winter air from freezing her to her bones. She stayed a moment longer to watch the guards lift Collen onto the board before she turned away. There was no going back to a time before Collen’s death. A wail rose in her chest.

What am I going to do?