The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery)

Aberffraw to the north. How she could have missed a ride across the Menai Straits she didn’t know, but she had. Cadwaladr had grown up here, as had she and Hywel.
    They were at Aberffraw.
    She pushed the shutter wider to better illuminate the room. Turning back, she studied the empty fireplace, the mantle, and the box that held the extra firewood, empty today since it was August. Crouching down, she traced the faded lettering that Hywel had carved into one of the box’s slats, long ago. She’d been there when he’d done it and been appropriately shocked at the time: Meilyr is an ass .
    She laughed.
    They’d taken their lessons together here. Her father had included her, with King Owain’s permission, more to keep Hywel company than because anyone thought it appropriate she learn to read. Even then, however, she’d the sense that Meilyr himself thought he would personally benefit from teaching her. Thus, every morning for two years, she and Hywel sat together in this very room, learning their Latin and Welsh from Meilyr. Along with their letters, he taught them figures, and, most importantly, music.
    In those years, it was music that had governed their lives, far above the hated Latin. Even King Owain, who paid far less attention to his second son than his first, had recognized Hywel’s capacity as a musician and acknowledged that to give him anything less than the best and most thorough instruction and guidance would be doing Wales—and by extension, King Owain himself—a disservice.
    Hywel had asked her to listen to the first song he’d ever composed. Just her initially, to help him gather his courage to show it to Meilyr. He’d said it was to her, as well, though almost immediately she doubted it as she overheard him telling one of the serving wenches the same thing three days later. He was only twelve and she ten at the time, but every woman in the room was fair game to him, even then. Meilyr had approved the meter and rhyme, if not the actual content, and Hywel’s career as a warrior-poet was born.
    Not long after, Gwen’s mother had died birthing Gwalchmai, and Gwen’s lessons ended, replaced by caring for the baby. Hywel, too, began splitting his time more between his swordplay and his lessons. He might be the second, bastard son of the second son of the King of Gwynedd, but to all concerned the ‘warrior’ part of ‘warrior-poet’ was ever the most important.
    As fate would have it, King Owain’s older brother, Cadwallon, died the next year. All of a sudden, Hywel was far more important to his father than he’d been before. King Owain might dote on Rhun, he might not understand this second son, who was both wildly creative and physically bold—and exactly like his father—but he needed him, just as King Owain’s father had needed Owain himself when Cadwallon died. It wasn’t hard to see the parallels between King Owain’s growing up and Hywel’s, even if the idea of Rhun dying prematurely was horrifying.
    But in a royal family, these things must be acknowledged. Just as the possibility of treachery of one brother towards another needed to be accepted as well. Hywel would make an extraordinarily capable King of Gwynedd, perhaps more so than Rhun because he was so much more intelligent and devious. But he’d been born second. Gwen was too old now—and she and Hywel had grown too far apart—to ask him if he minded. Purportedly, King Anarawd had gotten along with his brothers too, and it might well be a smooth transition for Cadell to step into his brother’s shoes as King of Deheubarth. If that was the case, such an outcome was rarer than it should have been.
    The food came and went, served by a wide-eyed squire. He’d brought a fresh loaf of bread, some cheese, and mead, but it left Gwen unsatisfied. It wasn’t that she was hungry, but the room was empty of everything and everyone but her and her memories—and regrets. All she could do was stare out the window to the sea and wonder when, and if, a rescue would come.
    She understood that if nobody came for her, it wouldn’t be because Gareth didn’t want to come. If he knew of her absence, despite their five year separation, he would move heaven and earth to get to her. If he didn’t come for her, it was because he couldn’t—whether because the King still imprisoned him in his cell at Aber or because King Owain had hanged him, as Cadwaladr hoped. Gwen prayed that Hywel, in playing his great game, would think that was more