The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery)

tone of dry amusement in the King’s voice, color had yet to return to his face. But he took the knife, and then passed it to his steward, Taran. “Keep this safe for me, will you?”
    Taran nodded. Like everyone else, his eyes were too wide and the lines at the corners of his mouth were accentuated as he gazed down at the youth from beside the king. “This is my fault—”
    Cristina pushed past her father to reach King Owain. He saw her coming and put out his arm to draw her to him. “I’m all right, my dear.”
    She seemed genuinely distraught and pressed her face to his chest. The cynical part of Gareth believed she was upset because someone had tried to kill the king before he married her. If he’d died, she would never have become the Queen of Gwynedd. “How-how-how could this happen?” she said.
    “That is something we will have to find out,” King Owain said, his eyes on Hywel.
    The uproar in the hall was ongoing. Ten people had been seated at the high table, but the dais had fifty on it now. Even Prince Cadwaladr appeared shaken, with a pinched look to his eyes and mouth. He held his arm around Alice, his wife, who like King Owain, seemed to have forgiven him his past misdeeds. Or rather, she had chosen to ignore them.
    Lord Tomos had risen and come closer to support the king. He reached for Cristina, whom King Owain gratefully passed off to him. “My dear, let me get you away from all this,” Tomos said.
    Cristina pressed Tomos’ hand and even managed a small smile. “Thank you, my lord.”
    Lord Goronwy, Cristina’s father, still sat in his chair to the left of the king’s, a stunned expression on his face, incapable of aiding his daughter. Gareth found it curious the different ways in which people responded to unexpected events. Some, like Tomos, seemed to recover smoothly no matter what happened. It didn’t look to Gareth as if Goronwy was a good man in a crisis.
    “There’s blood on your shirt, Father.” Rhun pointed to a blotch of red on his father’s otherwise spotlessly white shirt. King Owain had forgone his customary mail vest in favor of finery in honor of the occasion. The assassin must have known that would happen and taken his only chance to bring Owain Gwynedd down.
    “Do I?” King Owain twisted to look at his shoulder, but the place where the point of the knife had gone in was too far down his back and near his spine for him to see it. “I didn’t even feel it.”
    “It would have entered your heart, but for Gareth.” Hywel held out his hand to Gareth who clasped it and used Hywel’s strength to haul himself to his feet. His knees trembled at the effort of staying upright but he locked them so as not to sway. Hywel’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t comment or make Gareth find a chair.
    The youth remained as he’d fallen, arms and legs akimbo, still unconscious. Or was he feigning it? Now that the initial shock had passed, Gareth’s heart began to slow and instead of his muscles, his brain, with its investigative instincts, began to function. He wanted to know who this boy was and whether this act had been his own idea or if he was working for someone else. Why would a peasant boy want to murder the King of Gwynedd? From the threadbare state of his breeches and shirt, he didn’t come from money, and that made it more likely that the boy hadn’t conceived the idea to kill the king on his own, but that someone had hired him.
    In point of fact, the boy was lucky to be alive at all. Silently, Gareth ran through what had happened: seeing the knife come out of its sheath, the youth raise it high, and advance towards King Owain. Gareth had only noticed the boy’s actions because he’d been watching Gwen, not the King. The bulk of Owain’s body would have blocked the youth from the view of most of the people in the hall until it was too late.
    If the youth hadn’t tried to murder the king in the middle of the great hall, the king’s men might have already put a sword through his belly to finish what Gareth had started. Hywel, whose mind often ran on similar paths to Gareth’s, put a not-so-subtle boot on the boy’s chest, just in case he chose that moment to awaken and try to get away.
    “You’re not bleeding under all that armor, are you, Gareth?” Gwen ran her finger along a wicked slice in the leather of his left bracer.
    “I don’t think I am,” Gareth said. When he’d hit the assassin, the knife must have driven into Gareth instead of the king’s