The Fourth Horseman by Sarah Woodbury Read Free Book Online Page A

suggests that either is tied to
Alard, except that he went into the water at Newcastle, and someone
came out of the brook here.” He pursed his lips. “It is well not to
assume. Thank you.”
    “ We all have assumptions,
and sometimes those assumptions prove true, but with two murders
now, I think it might be best if we take it one step at a time and
focus on what we know,” Gareth said. “The more we learn, the more
we can explain, until the murderer reveals himself without us
having had to assume anything.”
    Amaury gazed towards the river, though
Gareth didn’t think he was really seeing it. He was silent through
a dozen heartbeats and then said, “May I have a moment of your
time, Sir Gareth?”
    “ Of course.” Gareth turned
to Evan and Gruffydd and spoke in Welsh. “Would you excuse Sir
Amaury and me? Perhaps if we are alone, he will tell me something
of the truth. So far, I don’t know that we’ve heard much of it from
anyone.”
    Evan and Gruffydd nodded, and Amaury and
Gareth returned to the bank so they could be alone by the river.
Amaury jerked his head towards a tree that hung over a small
waterfall. When Gareth followed him to where he indicated, the rush
of the water grew even louder than on the trail. Amaury was right
in thinking that the sound would drown out their voices to all but
them.
    Amaury leaned his shoulder against the trunk
of the tree, and Gareth stepped close, such that they stood only
two hand-spans apart. Gareth didn’t find it comfortable being so
close to the Norman, but if it was the only way to get him to talk,
he was willing to endure it. This had the makings of a secret worth
hearing.
    Amaury thought for another count of ten, his
eyes on Gareth’s face, and then said, “What I have to tell you must
not go beyond you and your lords.”
    Gareth nodded, grateful that Amaury
understood that Gareth was honor-bound to report everything he
learned to Prince Hywel.
    “ And if someone asks how
you came by this knowledge, it didn’t come from me.”
    Again, Gareth agreed. He clasped his hands
behind his back, patient and attentive. Finally, Amaury found it
within himself to speak, though he didn’t look at Gareth and stood
as he had when he’d delivered the bad news about Alard to Gareth
earlier in the great hall: “Once there were four men. The empress
called them her ‘four horsemen’, and to her they represented
everything you think of when you hear that phrase.”
    If Amaury’s expression had been less
anxious, Gareth would have whistled through his teeth. He knew his
Bible, of course. At the ending of the world, the four horsemen of
the apocalypse would be visited on mankind: conquest, war, famine,
and death. That Empress Maud would refer to her men in such a
fashion made Gareth’s stomach clench. At the same time, maybe he
shouldn’t have been surprised. Unlike King Stephen, who had such a
fine sense of honor it was costing him the war, Maud was known less
for her piety than for her vindictiveness.
    “ In what way did they work
for her?” Gareth said, more to say something than because he feared
Amaury wouldn’t tell him.
    Amaury took in a deep breath through his
nose. “Remember the rebellion in the southwest of England in the
early days of Stephen’s reign? It forced Stephen’s focus away from
fighting Maud to fighting his own barons, when he wasn’t at odds
with the Scots or the Welsh.”
    “ I remember,” Gareth said.
“I was fighting Normans in Ceredigion around that time.”
    Amaury gave him a wry smile. “Who do you
suppose were instrumental in helping Earl Robert foster that
rebellion? Who infiltrated castles, made promises Maud might never
keep, and put steel in those half-Saxon spines?”
    “ The horsemen, clearly, or
you wouldn’t be telling me this,” Gareth said.
    “ I don’t know where she
found them, exactly, or in what fashion she gathered them together,
but they were her spies, and by that I mean they were trained to a
degree few men