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wanted
to be remembered.
    Hywel’s other worries—namely the security of
Ceredigion and its people—were ongoing. But once he’d opened his
heart to his father two years ago and received advice and
assistance, much of his anxiety had been lifted from him. Mari’s
steady influence—and the birth of his son—had gone a long way
towards keeping him on an even keel in every other way too.
    Gareth bowed again to Rhun and turned back
to his wife. “Why don’t you talk me through what you know about
this death.”
    Gwen swept aside some stray locks that had
come loose from the bindings holding back her hair and gestured to
Prior Rhys. “I wasn’t the one to find the body. Prior Rhys came to
the guest house to find you and got me instead.”
    Gareth transferred his gaze to Prior Rhys,
glad to change the subject back to the task at hand. “So you found
the body?”
    “No,” Prior Rhys said.
    “A laborer did,” Rhun said. “We have already
questioned and dismissed him.”
    Gareth held back a sarcastic request for someone to tell him what was going on before the body in
question rotted behind them. Fortunately, it lay in the shade at
the water’s edge. It wouldn’t matter if it took a little more time
before they transported it inside.
    Gareth tipped his head in Prince Rhun’s
direction. “My lord, perhaps you could begin by saying how you
became involved. Why were you at the mill?” He didn’t add without your guards , deciding he’d already said enough on
that score.
    “I was returning to the castle after
finishing an errand for my brother—nothing important, just a
message to one of his overseers—when a boy raced down the road
towards me, waving his arms with a story about finding a body in
the millpond. I turned in, of course, and saw Prior Rhys’s horse
cropping grass by the mill entrance.”
    “Why were you here, Prior Rhys?” Gareth
said.
    “I was visiting the mill because the prior
of St. Padarn’s asked me to inspect it.”
    “Inspect it? Why is that?” Gareth said.
    “While I came to Aberystwyth on behalf of my
abbot to confer about a spiritual matter, when Prior Pedr learned
that I was the prior of St. Kentigern’s, he asked for my advice on
the running of St. Padarn’s.”
    The arcane point of doctrine in question was
one about which Gareth, fortunately, cared nothing. It didn’t
appear that Rhys thought it was important either, but he was under
orders and was obeying them. Gareth was happy to leave matters of
the Church to the Church. And he thought the prior of St. Padarn’s
was showing remarkably good sense in employing Prior Rhys in more
practical matters while he was here.
    “It is a rare man who can ask for
assistance, and an even rarer one who is as open to new
information,” Gareth said.
    Rhys bowed his head. “Both of which I have
found Prior Pedr to be.”
    Being open to new information was a quality
that Prior Rhys had proven himself to possess in large measure, to
Gareth’s benefit. A former soldier and spy, Prior Rhys had a
checkered past which he’d put behind him—mostly successfully—since
he’d given his life over to the Church.
    “I dismounted and walked to the water,”
Prince Rhun said, continuing his story, “and there was the body,
just as the boy had said.”
    “Where was it when you saw it, my lord?”
Gareth said.
    “Bobbing in the shallows on the eastern end
of the pond. It had been caught up in an eddy,” Rhun said. “While
Prior Rhys rode for the monastery to find you, the boy and I
rounded up men to retrieve the body from the water. We have so far
kept whatever we have learned to ourselves.”
    Then Prince Rhun related his interview with
the miller, and Gwen and Prior Rhys described what they’d found by
the edge of the pond. Gareth listened intently to all three before
finally crouching beside the body himself. He’d learned over the
years that more eyes were better than fewer, and he was glad they’d
done what they could to preserve the