* * * * *
The next morning, King Owain stood in the center of his hall, his nobles surrounding him. He held a staff in both hands. “My brother, Cadwaladr, ordered the death of King Anarawd, my friend and the man who would have been my son.” His voice carried throughout the hall. “Rather than face what he has done, and the choices he has made, he has fled, we believe, to Dublin.”
The majority of the people listening had heard some of this before. Nobody gasped in horror or dismay.
“Most here already knew what kind of man Cadwaladr was,” Rhun said, sotto voce.
Gareth turned to find the prince at his right shoulder. But Rhun was only repeating Gareth’s own thoughts: that even if someone hadn’t heard the news, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. And that thought gave Gareth pause too, for if everyone had known what Gareth himself had faced in Cadwaladr’s service, why had so few understood and forgiven Gareth for his summary dismissal?
Rhun gave him a smile. “Do you know why I knighted you?”
Gareth shook his head. “We’d won the battle—”
Rhun didn’t wait for him to finish. “It was time.” He tipped his chin towards the crowd of men listening to King Owain. “It isn’t that men couldn’t forgive you for disobeying Cadwaladr, or at least, that’s not the full story. Your very existence revealed to them their compliance and dishonor. They shunned you because you had more courage than they, even if they prettied it up with talk of loyalty.”
Gareth swallowed hard.
Rhun smiled again and returned to watching the room.
“I hereby strip my brother of his inheritance. I reclaim the lands in Ceredigion, Anglesey, and Lleyn that I gave him.” King Owain took the staff, split it over his knee, and tossed the smaller half into the fire. “Henceforth, I have no brother.” He turned to Hywel, who unlike Rhun had stood with his father throughout the ceremony, his hands behind his back. “Go.”
Hywel did as he was told. By noon, he’d gathered half his father’s personal guard (his teulu) along with all of Hywel’s own men and every other knight or man-at-arms the remaining nobles at Aber could spare.
King Cadell planted himself in front of Hywel. “I will ride with you to Ceredigion before continuing to my own lands.”
Hywel turned to him, surprise etched in his face. “Aren’t you staying for—” His voice trailed off, one of the few times Gareth had ever seen Hywel nonplussed.
“I will marry your sister in a year’s time, if all goes well. It is unwise to be hasty in these matters, and I would prefer to clear up the details of my brother’s murder first.” Cadell paused, his eyes narrowed at Hywel. It was the first time Gareth perceived the steel behind Cadell’s smarmy façade. “I would like to know that no suspicion falls on me in this matter.”
“It is all my uncle’s doing, as far as we know,” Hywel said.
Thus, the company of two hundred, Hywel and Cadell in the lead, left Aber and rode east to Caerhun and then south. It was a distance of some twenty miles to Dolwyddelan, a journey Gareth knew well, and then a further fifty to their ultimate destination: Aberystwyth Castle, Cadwaladr’s seat in Ceredigion. From the look of determination on Hywel’s face, they’d be resting little and pushing the horses, even in the mountains.
The company spent that first night at Dolwyddelan and a second in a rough camp near Machynlleth. To reach Ceredigion, they then followed the Roman road to the west of the mountains that took up much of central Wales—a road that was difficult to traverse with an army and which slowed them considerably.
So it was just after noon on the third day when they reached the ford in the river below Aberystwyth and gazed the quarter of a mile—straight up—to the castle. As one of the few large fortresses in Ceredigion, it was well positioned to guard the entire coast of Wales.
It sat at the crest of a large plateau, a hundred feet above the floodplain. The castle was larger and better defended than a manor house, more on the scale of Dolwyddelan than Aber, but with no stone to protect it. Anarawd’s father had burned the original castle in 1135, and Cadwaladr rebuilt it in earth and wood.
Ditches surrounded the wooden palisade, making a siege difficult, not that any army had a hope of getting close to it in a frontal assault. It wasn’t any easier from the rear: the plateau dropped off sharply behind the castle, straight into the sea.
Hywel pulled his horse close into Gareth’s. “I expect you to accompany me when I speak to Cadwaladr’s wife.”
“Yes, my lord,” Gareth said. “But what about King Cadell?”
“He has chosen to remain in the background.” Hywel cast a glance to where Cadell had dismounted in the midst of his men.
Gareth followed his gaze, still not sure what to make of this new king. He turned back to his prince. “You don’t believe that Cadwaladr is here, do you?”
“No. Although I suppose he could still surprise me. I certainly didn’t anticipate him taking Gwen, nor that he’d believe she carried my child.” Hywel gazed into the distance for several heartbeats, before seeming to shake himself out of the brief reverie. “Let me do the talking.”
“Of course,” Gareth said.
“Will Cadwaladr’s wife surrender the castle, do you think?” Evan reined his horse in on the other side of Gareth.
“No, she won’t,” Gareth said. “Not necessarily for his sake, but for hers. Alice believes she has as much—if not more—right to Ceredigion as her husband does.”
Cadwaladr, in one of those strange, royal alliances, had married Alice de Clare, the daughter of the man whom Owain Gwynedd, Cadwaladr, and Anarawd had defeated for control of Deheubarth back in 1137. At least her father had died near Abergavenny, fighting against the men of Gwent, rather than by Cadwaladr’s own hand. Still, it was a stretch to think theirs was a love match.
Gareth had left Cadwaladr’s service shortly thereafter. Alice, for her part, was not a beauty, though purportedly far more intelligent than her husband. To Gareth’s mind, that wouldn’t be difficult.
“Come to within two hundred yards—no further—and aim to stay in the trees by the river,” Hywel said. “They’ve seen us coming but right now she doesn’t know why we’re here or how many men I’ve brought. I’m just her nephew, traveling through Ceredigion. Right now her greatest concern is how she’s going to feed us all.”
“We could deceive her,” Gareth said. “Enter the castle and take it from the inside.”
“We could.” Hywel gave Gareth a piercing look. “And if her garrison refuses to surrender? It will be hand to hand in the courtyard. I value my men more than that—and Cadwaladr’s for that matter—far more than he does.”
Choosing six other men he trusted, Evan among them, Hywel led the way up the road to the castle. The path doubled back on itself twice before coming out on a flat area in front of the castle gate. The portcullis was up as they arrived, but Hywel hesitated on the threshold.
“Please ask my aunt to come to the gate,” he said to the guards. “I have news she should hear.”
The guards murmured among themselves, and one of them ran for Alice who appeared shortly thereafter. She was in her late twenties—and heavily pregnant. Gareth blinked at that. Fighting this woman was surely not what they wanted. At the sight of her, Gareth and Hywel dismounted and walked forward to greet her.
“Why is it that you do not come inside?” Alice spoke in French, which both Gareth and Hywel understood—though Gareth couldn’t speak it as well as his lord.
“I am here on a less than pleasant mission, Aunt.” Hywel took her hand and bowed over it. “I would speak to your lord husband.”
Alice looked bewildered, and Hywel did not release her hand, even as she tried to tug it away without seeming to. “He’s not here, Hywel. He—” She hesitated as she looked from Hywel to Gareth, perhaps searching for some kind of reassurance, which she didn’t find in Gareth’s eyes. “He went to Aber for your sister’s wedding.”
“He has left Aber, Aunt,” Hywel said.
Alice shook her head. “I’ve not seen him.”
“Then I ask you to call your son, and come with me,” Hywel said.
Now Alice backed away—just one small step, but enough to show that she didn’t necessarily trust Hywel or his motives, even if she’d been polite up until now. “Why?”
Hywel moved with her, still clasping her hand. “My lord father, the King, has sent me to seize these lands, including this castle. Your husband has fled to Dublin.”
Alice’s face paled. Her control was good, however, because the expression lasted only for a heartbeat. Then she whirled on one heel, dragging Hywel with her. “Close the gate! We must defen—”
Hywel didn’t let her finish. He grasped her around the shoulders and pulled her against him, his sword suddenly unsheathed. He pointed it at her guardsmen who’d been slow to react behind her. Perhaps they hadn’t understood French enough to grasp her conversation with Hywel. She’d screamed her orders in Welsh, however.
Holding Alice, much as Cadwaladr had held Gwen, Hywel backed away from the gate. Unlike Cadwaladr, however, he held no knife to her throat and didn’t threaten her men with her death. “I will not hurt her but I will take her with me if you do not do as I ask. She has commanded you to defend the castle but it is your choice whether you do so or not. Do you yield? I am sent by my father, Owain, the King of Gwynedd. His seal is on this action.”
The captain of the guard, an older man named Goronwy, whom Gareth knew from his days in Ceredigion, skidded to a halt just on the castle side of the wooden gates, which the guards had half-closed at Alice’s warning. They wouldn’t have wanted to drop the portcullis until she was safely back inside.
Goronwy flicked his gaze from Alice to Hywel, and then past them to Gareth. His eyes widened. Gareth canted his head in acknowledgement of an old friendship but didn’t say anything, since Hywel had asked him not to.
“We defend,” Goronwy said.
“Send out the boy,” Hywel said. “Now. For his own safety.”
“Why do you do this?” Alice said. “We’ve done you no harm.”
“Your husband paid mercenaries to murder Anarawd, the King of Deheubarth, and all his men,” Hywel said. “As Cadwaladr has fled and left you and his men to face the consequences of that decision, my father has disowned him.”
Alice stared straight ahead, absorbing this news without apparent emotion. She believed Cadwaladr had done exactly as Hywel said. She had to know him well enough for that. Perhaps she knew of his numerous other crimes. This time, however, he’d been found out, and there were consequences in that for her.
Hywel saw it too. “Cadwaladr thinks only of what he wants and getting it, whether or not his wants are good for him or Wales. I’m sorry you’ve been caught up in it.”
“Mama!” A boy of five raced out the gate, which Goronwy then closed behind him. Gareth scooped him up before he could reach Alice and carried him to Braith. Hywel, meanwhile, boosted Alice very gently onto his horse.
“Then why did you not let me defend Aberystwyth as I intended?” Alice said. “Surely your father wishes that Cadwaladr and I should share the same fate.”
Hywel gave a derisive laugh. “Do you know my father as little as that? We will take your castle, but I would not do it with you and the boy in it.”
And that, right there, was all anyone needed to know about the difference between serving Hywel and what Gareth’s time had been like under Cadwaladr.