The Lost Brother (8 page)

“Now that I look closely, I can see why you
thought she was my sister, Father Alun,” Gwen said, finally coming
out of her reverie. “But it’s more that her hair is the exact color
of mine, and her skin has the same tone to it. Her features
actually remind me more of Gwalchmai than me.”

“They remind me of you,” Gareth said.
“Still, though she might well be a relation, she isn’t your twin.”
The woman had been several inches taller than Gwen, too, though
perhaps that impression derived from the fact that she was lying
full length on the table.

“Her feet are bigger,” Gwen said.

Gareth allowed himself a quick smile. Gwen
had dainty feet, dwarfed by his large hands when he kneaded them
after a long day. He was glad to see that she seemed to be
recovering from her initial shock and dismay.

“You say you never had a sister?” Father
Alun said.

“No,” Gwen said. “Nor cousins, nor anyone
that I have ever met who looked so much like me. That’s not to say
what you were all thinking back at the monastery couldn’t be
true—that my mother gave birth to a child before she married my
father, or my father loved another woman besides my mother.”

“The latter more likely, surely,” Gareth
said. “Children stay with their mothers.”

“I would have thought so,” Gwen said.

Gareth longed to be alone with Gwen so he
could delve into what was going on behind his wife’s calm features,
but with Father Alun here, any questions along that line would have
to wait.

He turned to the priest. “Was she put into
the grave fully dressed?”

“Yes.” Father Alun pointed to boots and
clothing that had been carefully folded and placed on the lone
chair in the chapel. “Those are hers. My housekeeper washed them
and must have returned them while I was gone.”

Gareth shot a look at Gwen, who nodded and
moved towards the pile, taking on their examination as her task.
“May I speak to the housekeeper?” she said over her shoulder to the
priest.

“Of course,” he said, but he didn’t move to
find her, mesmerized, it seemed, by what Gareth and Gwen were
doing.

Gareth bent forward to examine the wound at
the dead woman’s throat. Her neck had been slashed, probably from
behind and by a right-handed person, from the way the wound had
been cut deeper into her flesh on one side of her neck than the
other. The shift she now wore showed no blood, of course, since it
had been placed on her recently and her body had stopped bleeding
at death.

Gwen unfolded the clothing and held up the
woman’s dress to show Gareth what he expected to see: a pattern of
blood across the chest and shoulders, which even an enthusiastic
scrubbing couldn’t entirely get out. It indicated that once the
murderer had slashed the woman’s throat, she’d dropped to the
ground on her back, bled out, and died.

“Somewhere there should be a pool of blood
and no body. It would be nice to find it,” Gwen said.

“It could be anywhere,” Gareth said. “I
didn’t see any blood in the graveyard or where the horses were
tied.” He turned to Father Alun. “You didn’t notice anything
unusual during the last few days—either in the village or near the
chapel? Or perhaps someone behaving strangely, as if he knew a
secret he couldn’t tell?”

Father Alun shook his head. “Nothing like
that. I certainly didn’t notice anyone digging in the graveyard. I
was tending to the needs of my flock, I’m afraid, not looking for a
murderer.”

“They could have brought her body in from
anywhere,” Gwen said. “She could have been killed a mile away and
been brought to the church flung over the back of a horse.”

“But only in the dark,” Gareth said. “She
couldn’t have been carried anywhere—or buried in the churchyard for
that matter—in broad daylight.”

Gwen folded the woman’s dress, laying it
back on top of the pile of clothing, and then she picked up the
woman’s boots. Even from here, Gareth could see the dirt and scuff
marks on the backs of the heels, indicating that she’d been
dragged. But they could have guessed that.

Gareth gave a rueful laugh. “At least I
won’t have to sketch her face to show to the people we
question.”

“No, you won’t.” Gwen gave a little sigh as
she set the boots on the floor. “You’ll only have to show them
me.”

Gwen

G
wen had been taken
aback at the initial sight of the body, but she was getting used to
the similarities between herself and the dead woman. It helped that
the woman’s face appeared less like her own the more she looked at
it. She could see why Father Alun had been stunned to find her at
King Owain’s headquarters, however, and why Gareth had taken the
name of the Lord in vain.

“Now that you’ve seen her, do you still
think she was murdered yesterday evening?” Father Alun showed no
signs of leaving them alone to do their work, even after Gwen had
tried to get him to leave by asking to speak to his housekeeper.
After a quick glance at Gareth, whose face indicated resignation,
she resolved to ignore the priest’s wide eyes while she worked.

“It has to be that recently,” Gareth
said.

“How do you know?” Father Alun said.

“The body is cold and a little stiff,” Gwen
said.

Father Alun’s face went suddenly blank, like
it had out in the graveyard. It was a look Gwen recognized as an
instinctive balking at her bald statement.
So much for ignoring
his wide eyes.

She’d spoken without thinking and now put
out a hand to the priest. “Do you think I’m uncaring? I assure you
I am not.”

Father Alun shook himself, as if trying to
clear his head. “Your straightforwardness is refreshing. You are
thinking of this poor girl as a problem to be solved rather than a
lost soul whose life ended all too soon.”

“I am thinking of both,” Gwen said, “but her
soul is in heaven and was always your concern. Giving her justice
here is ours.”

Gareth grunted his agreement. “It’s as Gwen
said earlier. We did not choose this path, but now that we are on
it, our charge is to uncover the truth, especially when someone has
gone to such great lengths to hide it from us—and to hide from
it.”

“And in so doing, we have to remain
detached,” Gwen said, “or we can’t function.”

Over the years, she and Gareth had (quite
naturally) talked at length with each other about the murders
they’d investigated. At one time, Gareth had tried to protect her
from them, but he had mostly come around to seeing that they were
better off working together.

Gwen didn’t know that either of them had
ever before articulated to anyone, to quite this extent, the
why
of what they did. Gwen was surprised at herself for
revealing so much about what was going on in her head on such short
acquaintance with Father Alun. His easy manner must have come in
very useful when it came to confession.

Father Alun uncrossed his arms and gave them
both a little bow. “Perhaps it would be best if I leave you to your
work.” He turned on his heel and strode purposefully for the door,
his steps quickening the closer he came to it.

Gwen watched him go and then turned back to
her husband with a rueful smile. “He seems like a good man, a good
priest.”

“I wish we had more like him.” Gareth held
up one of the woman’s hands. “Look at this.”

Gwen peered closer. While the body had been
cleaned from head to foot, eliminating whatever dirt, blood, or
skin might have been left under the nails, the condition of the
nails themselves was permanent. And in this case, the nails on the
woman’s right hand were ragged and torn.

“She marked her killer,” Gwen said.

“She marked someone. We can’t say yet
whether or not he was her killer. The cut to her throat was clean
and very likely came from behind,” Gareth said. “I wouldn’t have
thought she’d have had the chance to hurt him.”

“She could have fought him earlier,” Gwen
said. “He might have had to subdue her before he killed her. He
could have tied her to a chair, for example.”

Gareth grimaced. “I’m torn,
cariad.
I
don’t want you to have these thoughts in your head, even as I need
you to think them. Worse, I keep seeing you in her. I don’t like
it—but I think you could be right. Her wrists are bruised as
well.”

“So she was held or tied,” Gwen said.

“Maybe both,” Gareth said. “Maybe she was
tied when she was brought to the woods and killed there, close to
the grave. We merely haven’t found the spot yet.”

Gwen shivered. The sense of violence that
hovered above the body was palpable to her, like a miasma in the
air, mixing with the scent of death. When Gwen had first seen the
woman’s throat, she’d viewed this murder as somewhat
straightforward—or as straightforward as murder ever got. But
thinking about the woman struggling against her captors and
fighting for her life before she was murdered had Gwen’s stomach
churning.

“Go get some air, Gwen,” Gareth said. “I’ll
finish up here.”

“But—”

Gareth canted his head towards the door.
“Go.”

Gratefully, Gwen went. Gareth still had to
see what other damage the killer had done to the woman, even to the
point of undressing her completely. Gwen knew she should stay with
him, but she hurried away anyway, mimicking the quick steps Father
Alun had taken in his last rush to the door. Even so, she resolved
to remain outside only briefly before returning to help.

Once she crossed the threshold of the
chapel, however, she found Father Alun sitting on a bench outside
the door. The air was even colder than before, and their breath
formed a fog in front of them. Gwen pulled her cloak close around
her body and approached the priest, her boots crunching on the
small stones that made up the pathway.

“You’re done already?” Father Alun started
to rise to his feet.

“No. No, we’re not.” Gwen put out a hand in
a request for him to stay seated. “I just needed some air.”

“I can understand that.” Father Alun
subsided, shaking his head. “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Sometimes I don’t know how either.” Gwen
took in several heaving breaths, trying to expel the smell that
lingered in her nostrils. She knew from experience that it would
remain in her clothes until she scrubbed it out of them. She was
thankful she had a spare dress in her saddlebag. “But it has to be
done, and if not by me, then by whom? And who better?”

“Some would say investigating murder is no
job for a woman,” Father Alun said.

“Women deal in life and death every day,”
Gwen said. “Occasionally, the killer is even a woman. Again, who
better than me to discover her?”

“That is a unique perspective and not one
I’d considered before,” Father Alun said. “Do you believe this to
be your calling?”

“I could never compare what Gareth and I do
to what you do,” Gwen said, a little embarrassed now. Yet again,
she hadn’t meant to speak so freely.

“But I could,” Father Alun said.

There was that self-satisfied look again,
but this time it didn’t trouble Gwen because she’d come to
recognize its source: Father Alun had reached a stage in his life
where he was sure of himself, the world, and his place in it. Gwen
surely couldn’t begrudge him that feeling of security. She’d had it
only since she’d married Gareth.

Then she frowned. “Is that the sound of
hooves I hear?”

Father Alun glanced up at her, his eyes
questioning, and then he stood up quickly. The drumming of hooves
on the road was definitely getting closer, and the rhythm of it
indicated it wasn’t just one horse coming, but a company of
riders.

“Get back in the church,” Father Alun
said.

“And leave you out here alone?”

“I am a man of God. Whoever these men are,
you should not be the one to face them. Get inside!”

Gwen obeyed his voice of command, flying
through the door and across the nave towards Gareth, but she
stopped halfway across the floor, barely managing not to heave up
the last meal she’d eaten at the renewed assault on her senses. The
smell seemed much worse after the fresh scents of the garden
outside.

Gareth, concern evident on his face, flipped
the sheet over the whole of the woman’s body and met Gwen a few
paces from the table. “What is it?”

“Horsemen are coming. At least four from the
sound of the hooves on the road. Father Alun sent me inside.”

Gareth took a last look at the body and then
moved towards the middle of the nave. Even though Gwen had meant to
slam the door shut, it was heavy, with stiff hinges, so she hadn’t
managed it. A four-inch gap remained between the door and the
frame. That, as it turned out, was just as well. The open door
meant they could hear Father Alun greeting the newcomers. His voice
was calm, even familiar in its manner, which eased Gwen’s breathing
some. A man with a gruff voice replied to him, though in words Gwen
couldn’t make out at this distance.

Gareth angled his body so he stood in front
of Gwen and waited fifteen feet from the door, his hand on the hilt
of his sword.

“Do you recognize the voice?” Gwen said in
an undertone.

“No. But I hear the authority in it.”

The chapel had no back door. There was no
place to which they could flee, and no time to do it anyway. The
door swung open to reveal a soldier dressed entirely in black, with
black hair and beard in the fashion of the English. He wore a sword
belted at his waist and a long flowing black cloak. He hesitated in
the doorway for a heartbeat, taking in the scene—and probably the
smell—and then his eyes focused on Gareth and Gwen.

He took two steps inside and said in a loud
voice that echoed around the chapel, “Father Alun tells me that you
are Sir Gareth ap Rhys, of the court of Owain Gwynedd.”

Gareth squared his shoulders, his hand
remained on his sword hilt, though he hadn’t drawn the weapon. “I
am.”