The Renegade Merchant by Sarah Woodbury

seen Conall
since yesterday morning when he left the inn.”
    “Then I have no answer.” Gwen held up the
coin. “But at least we have a place to start asking questions.”
    “Where would that be?” Gareth said, though
he had a sinking feeling he knew what his wife was going to say
next.
    “The brothel,” Gwen said, as if it was
obvious.
    John jeered. “You? In a brothel?”
    Gareth put a heavy hand on John’s shoulder,
hoping to get him to tone down his outrage. After they’d found the
coin, John had expressed astonishment to Gareth that he would even
consider allowing Gwen to accompany them. Had they been in Wales,
Gareth would have taken her with him as a matter of course. But
then, had they been in Wales, they wouldn’t have been investigating
a brothel either.
    The lack of brothels wasn’t because men were
any more virtuous in Wales, but because families tended to be more
closely tied together among themselves and to their lord. It was a
rare woman who could fall through the cracks like these whores must
have done. Because of those connections, and the way everybody knew
so much about everybody else, Gareth was having a hard time
picturing any family—or any girl—so desperate that a father would
think selling her to a brothel was the only option. Or,
furthermore, would be allowed to.
    Even the camp followers who’d traveled with
the army last year didn’t sell themselves in the same way. Most had
men with whom they were associated, even if they hadn’t married
them. And since illegitimacy was no disgrace in Wales, a child
wouldn’t be rejected by his father just because he was a
bastard.
    John still looked amused and horrified at
the same time, but at Gwen’s sudden fierce look, Gareth said in a
gentle voice, “It is the one place in the entirety of Shrewsbury
you cannot go.”
    “Why not?” Gwen said.
    “You are a lady, the wife of a knight, even
if you are Welsh,” John said. “Surely you can see how uncomfortable
your presence would make everyone feel.”
    Gwen made an exasperated sound. “You can’t
be serious. I investigate murder!”
    “Not in any of Shrewsbury’s brothels,” John
said.
    Gwen was still looking daggers at the deputy
sheriff, but Gareth had questioned John about this before, and it
seemed there was no arguing with him. So instead, he tried to
deflect them both. “You’re saying that there’s more than one
brothel in Shrewsbury?”
    John rolled his eyes. “And she can’t enter
any of them.”
    Gareth shook his head. “That’s not what I
meant. Shrewsbury is a market town, with a charter from the king.
All commerce is controlled, which means the brothels are under the
authority of the town council. They have strict hours of operation,
and only single men are supposed to frequent them. So …
technically, I’m not supposed to enter one either.”
    “Are those rules enforced?” Gwen said.
    “They are supposed to be enforced by the
Council,” John said, his expression clearing as they moved on from
the more delicate subject of Gwen’s participation, “not by the
castle, which would become involved only if lawbreaking
occurred.”
    “Like, for example, murder,” Gwen said.
    John made a noncommittal noise in the back
of his throat. “The Council is mindful of the need to contain what
goes on in the brothels and to enforce certain restrictions. If it
passes ordinances that are too restrictive, however, the proprietor
might simply close the business and open it somewhere else, out of
the Council’s reach.”
    Gareth nodded. “It is my understanding that
in other places brothel owners have been known to move beyond the
limits of the town. Wales is only seven miles away, and laws there
are very different.”
     “Has money exchanged hands, then,
between the owner of this brothel and the Council or the sheriff?”
Gwen said.
    Gareth had been thinking that such an
exchange might be more normal than not, but at the shocked look on
John’s face, he realized that