The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery)

don’t get used to me saying so.”

Chapter Nineteen

    “ G wen! Gwen!”
    Gwen eyes popped open. It was almost as if she’d been expecting someone to come and wake her up. She couldn’t say that she’d had a full night’s sleep since she left Dolwyddelan.
    She sat up, clearing the last of the sleep from her mind. Then, the voice came again. “Gwen! Gwen!”
    “Hywel?” She whispered his name and then thought better of how loud it sounded in the quiet room, fearing she’d wake the other women. One rolled over as Gwen waited, breath held, and then stilled. Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, Gwen got to her feet, tiptoed to the door, and slipped out of the room.
    Three men waited for her, none of whom were Hywel. She had a flash—only an impression really—of cloaks and hoods before one of the men put a hand over her mouth, pulled her to him, and whispered, “Come with us quietly or Hywel dies.”
    Gwen tried to swallow but her mouth had gone dry. She wanted to ask what they had done to him, and if they realized what kind of trouble this would bring them, but couldn’t speak around the man’s hand. And then she had to focus on her feet as he urged her down the stairs, through the sadly deserted kitchen, and towards the postern gate. Once outside, in the narrow space between the kitchen garden wall and stables, the man removed his hand. She opened her mouth to scream, but before she could, he shoved the open end of a flask between her teeth and poured.
    She choked and coughed as the liquid sloshed into her mouth. “What is this?” She tried to twist away, but another man held her head with a forceful hand to the back of her neck. The man holding the flask grabbed her jaw and cheeks and forced her teeth apart. He upturned the flask and she swallowed. And then swallowed again.
    By the time the third man grasped her around the waist and hauled her towards the postern gate, the drink was taking hold of her. And by then she knew what it was, too, not that it mattered except it implied that they meant to subdue her, not kill her. Poppy juice , she said to herself, and then didn’t remember anything more.

    * * * * *

    Gwen groaned, her hand to her head. The room in which she found herself was plain, with an unlit fireplace, wooden beams that supported the roof, and little else. It wasn’t the room in which she slept at Aber. Gwen blinked—and then remembered. I’m not at Aber!
    That she was alive, Gwen considered to be something of a miracle, given the bodies that Anarawd’s murderer had no apparent qualms about strewing across Gwynedd. It was why she was alive that concerned her. Not that she wasn’t happy about it; obviously the man who ordered this had his reasons. She didn’t know—and didn’t really want to find out—what a man might think a credible reason for abducting her.
    Or a woman , Gwen supposed, though the notion that any woman, even Cristina, was behind her captivity seemed vanishingly remote. She lay as they’d left her, on her side and curled into a ball, in a room that was entirely empty except for her. Her head and stomach hurt so badly, just the thought of standing made her nauseous. She tried to piece together the course of events since Aber, but couldn’t recall more than passing emotions and vague shadows.
    At least they hadn’t put her at the back of the stables where Gareth had found himself. Wherever she was, she was in a house of some kind, and a well-kept one at that, given the fine wood floor on which her pallet rested. She also, now that she could feel her body better—and see it—wore a finely woven blue dress over the night shift she’d worn to bed. She really didn’t want to know how they’d gotten her into it while she’d been unconscious.
    What troubled her most about her imprisonment was the extent to which none of this made any sense at all. Where had she gone wrong? To whom had she given the false impression that they were near to finding the killer? Neither she, Hywel, nor Gareth had come close to discovering who’d murdered Anarawd, much less killed all those other people.
    Gwen amused herself with the idea that multiple people had worked at cross-purposes, running into each other in their attempts to cover up their crimes and cast blame on someone else, until she remembered that the ‘someone else’ in question had been Gareth. Worse and worse.
    She couldn’t help Gareth, not from wherever she was now, so she forced thoughts of him to the