The Good Knight (A Gareth and Gwen Medieval Mystery)

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,” Cadell said. “It is unwise to be hasty in these matters and I would prefer to clear up the details of my brother’s murder first.” He 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,” Hywel said. “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.” He 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