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Pedr for two men to guard the body. I don’t know what more we
can learn from him, but I don’t want another body to go
missing.”
    “We’ve had far too much of that in the
past,” Gwen said.
    “True,” Hywel said. “But more to the point,
if any of us think of something in the short time we have left
before he’s put in the ground, I want him to be where I left
him.”
    “I’ll wait here until the guards arrive,”
Gwen said.
    “It’ll be only a moment.” Hywel disappeared
into the nave but returned a heartbeat later, poking his head
through the doorway to the vestibule. “On top of all that, I have
an alibi for last night.”
    Gwen found a smile lurking around her lips.
“Let’s hear it.”
    “Gryff has been dead some twelve hours, give
or take, correct?” Hywel said.
    “Something like that. With the water, it’s
hard to pinpoint as surely as we might like, but he died sometime
after midnight. We’ll have to learn about his movements yesterday
and last night before we know more.”
    Hywel waved a hand dismissively.
“Regardless, I was with Gruffydd all night.”
    Gwen’s brow furrowed. “The baby, you
mean?”
    “My son, yes. Mari was sleeping solidly for
the first time in a week, and I took Gruffydd away to sleep with me
in one of the cells that no monk was using. You can ask Prior Pedr.
He saw us together when the brothers filed past us for Matins.”
    That was the prayer vigil the monks kept in
the middle of the night. “I don’t need to ask,” Gwen said. “You
would hardly have taken Gruffydd to the millpond after midnight,
nor left him alone in a monk’s cell while you murdered a man a
half-mile away from the monastery.”
    Hywel saluted her. “Such was my thought. I
hope I have put your concerns to rest.”
     
    It was with relief that Gwen accepted
Hywel’s assertion he hadn’t killed Gryff. Maybe he was lying to her
again, but she didn’t think so. They knew each other for who they
were by now. Hywel was Lord of Ceredigion. If he wanted a man dead,
he could have arranged for it in a hundred better ways. With Hywel
cleared, they could begin the real work of finding out who did
murder Gryff.
    Since Rhun and Gareth had left to track down
Gryff’s master, Iolo, that left Gwen to explore some questions
closer to home, among them this issue of the notched knife. First,
however, she needed to find Tangwen and Elspeth and feed them both.
After going to her room to collect a clean dress for Tangwen, Gwen
made her way back to the gardens. As she had hoped, Tangwen had
spent a happy hour covering herself in dirt. Elspeth’s pinafore was
equally filthy, and Gwen sent the older girl away to change for the
evening meal while she saw to Tangwen.
    Elspeth seemed to have infinite patience for
watching Tangwen. Gwen always felt when she was minding Tangwen
that she should be doing something in addition to watching
her daughter, even if she couldn’t take her eye off the baby for a
heartbeat in case Tangwen stumbled into the fire, poked herself
with a stick, or swallowed something she shouldn’t. Since she’d
brought Elspeth into her household, Gwen had come to realize that
there was nothing like having a fourteen-year-old girl to watch a
baby for keeping both mother and baby happy.
    “Let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?” Gwen
helped Tangwen to her feet, brushed her off as best she could, and
then carried her towards the brook that ran past the gardens.
Tangwen’s dirty bare feet instantly marred Gwen’s apron, but since
Gwen had spent the last few hours with a dead body, she would
change into clean garments before dinner too. Gwen hadn’t done more
than touch Gryff in a few places, but that contact was enough to
make her feel unclean all over.
    The first warm day after Gwen and Tangwen
had arrived at the monastery, the monk in charge of the gardens had
showed her a little pool, separated from the rest of the brook by
rocks, where she and Tangwen could wade to cool off. Gwen had
brought