by Fiona Faris
All she had to do was compose herself and wait for Patrick and Joan to fall asleep. But, to her dismay, that soon became a distant prospect. Far from being sated in their desire, it seemed that their wild display had merely been foreplay, as Joan laid back in the bed and Patrick entered her, and with their long limbs entangled, they began to make love slowly and leisurely far into the night.
Chapter Nineteen
It was a chilly autumn evening. Margaret stood by the small window in the solar, gazing out across the thinning treetops towards St. Mary’s Loch. The skies were crystal clear, and myriad stars blinked against the blue-black firmament. The last light of the gloaming revealed drifts of leaves on the slopes leading from the castle walls down to the edge of the Ettrick Forest. The air was still, the steady, insistent hoot of an owl the only sound that disturbed the peacefulness.
Joan and Patrick were away on a raid, leaving Margaret and Lady Maria in charge of the infant Simon. As had become the custom, Mary Scott and two retainers – the same two men who had escorted Patrick and the Fraser women on their flight from Neidpath – had arrived to provide the two women with company and protection while Patrick was away. Mary and Maria were gossiping in the hall below, while Simon played among their feet in the dried rushes. Wat’s men were stationed in the windowless undercroft, among the barrels and sacks that supplied the household, guarding the low, narrow entrance to the keep. Tallow candles kept them company.
It was difficult to believe, Margaret reflected, that behind her, to the north, a desperate war was being waged, in which her beloved Gilbert was staking his life for his country’s freedom, while to the south, in Annandale, her sister was looting and harrying with a lawless reiver band. The peaceful scene before her seemed to suffuse the whole world, and she felt guilty at enjoying a peace that was denied to those whom she most deeply loved. She felt she should be sharing their trials and sufferings, rather than relaxing into the idyllic landscape, ensconced in a comfortable room with a warming fire crackling in the grate, with thick castle walls sheltering her from harm. She felt she should be doing something, and was surprised when she realized that, at that moment, she was envious of Joan.
She conjured up an image of her sister in her head. To her astonishment, she found that the image that came was not of Joan, the tomboy, in her yellow kirtle, hanging upside down from the bough of a tree, nor of a shorn-headed, leather-jerkined wildcat cracking skulls with her quarterstaff, but of a young mother nursing her baby at her breast while softly crooning a lullaby over its drooping eyelids.
And, yes: she envied Joan that too, Margaret acknowledged to herself – her motherhood. And that was another reason Joan fought so fiercely; not just to avenge their father, but also to protect her child and his inheritance. Would she herself, Margaret wondered, be able to fight tooth and nail, as Joan was, for her own child? She was sure that she would, to the best of her abilities and with all her strength. But Joan was far better equipped for the fight than she was.
Downstairs, in the hall, Mary and Lady Maria were discussing similar matters.
“I just don’t think it is fitting for a woman to ride with the men,” Lady Maria insisted.
Mary was sparring with Simon, shoving him about the floor beneath the table with her feet, while he wrestled with her skinny shanks and chuckled with glee.
“It’s surely not the usual run of things,” Mary conceded. “The men are generally the stronger, so it makes sense for them to do the fighting while we get on with running things. I used to go out on a raid, now and again, with Wat in my younger days, when there was nothing much else to do; but usually, I’d be too busy. Joan has the luxury of haein’ a mother and aulder sister here to run the hoose while she’s away.” She reached under the table and dragged a squealing, squirming bundle of flailing arms and legs out onto her lap to tickle. “Without you pair, she’d have her hands full with this wee tyke to be going to the reiving.”
Mary looked fondly on her grandson.
“That is true,” she said. “But, even so, it is unnatural. Even in your case, it was the exception that proved the rule. Your priority was to manage the household, leaving your man to ensure you could do that and protect you in doing so.”
Mary made a face.
“Aye, it was my place to rule the roost,” she replied. “But let me put it this way: if a muckle beast of a man were to come into the hall this very minute and make to slit the throat o’ wee Simon, here, and were I to put a blade in your hand, would you not fly at the chiel to protect your ain? If the man who ordered your husband to be so cruelly butchered at Smithfield market were standing here in front of you now, would you not be trying to claw his eyes out?”
Lady Maria said nothing, but she knew it was true. She would gladly lay down her life for her own and sate the visceral fury that burned in her stomach at her husband’s execution.
“Your Joan is just at liberty to do what you would do in the same circumstances,” Mary concluded. “She’s avenging her faither and fighting for her bairn. There’s nothing more natural than that.”
Lady Maria looked up into a darkened corner of the room with a tear glittering in her eye.
“When you see it that way,” she said in a thin, fragile voice, “then what am I doing to avenge my lord and win back wee Simon’s inheritance.”
Mary leaned across the table and clapped a hand on top of Lady Maria’s.
“You’re enabling Joan. You’re shouldering the care and responsibility of running the household, leaving her free to do what needs to be done and what she’s more equipped to do than yourself. You’re being a virtuous lady, Maria.”
Lady Maria burst into tears and clutched Mary’s thin, withered hand in both her own. All the tension, grief and worry that she had been holding inside herself over the past four years of travail, she had finally let go of, and the emotion poured out of her like a burn in spate.
Simon stopped his struggling and giggling on Mary’s lap and stared at her, awestruck.
He gasped. “What’s the matter with Grand-dam?”
Mary set him down on the floor and rose to comfort the other woman.
“There’s nothing the matter, Simon, son,” she assured him, as she knelt and took Lady Maria into her arms. “Your grand-dam just has a sair fight, and we maun be good to her all we can. Come here and gi’e her a cuddle.”
Simon toddled round and tucked himself under Lady Maria’s arms, reaching his short arms around her waist. He grimaced as she planted a soppy kiss on the top of his head, but he tholed it for his grand-dam’s sake.
Chapter Twenty
There was a commotion outside the keep. Margaret awoke with a start and was confused to find herself in Joan and Patrick’s bed. It took her a few seconds to remember that Joan and Patrick were out on a raid; Mary Scott was staying over and was sharing Lady Maria’s bed instead of Margaret. Simon lay asleep on his truckle bed by Margaret’s side. The two men whom Wat had left to safeguard them would be down in the storeroom on the ground floor.
A lurid red light flickered through the chamber window, shimmering on the walls and ceiling like sunlight through the water on a riverbed. Voices growled and murmured outside. Then there was a tremendous hammering on the door.
“Open up!” a loud voice commanded.
Margaret threw a cloak over her shoulders and left the chamber to find Mary and Lady Maria in the family room of the solar.
“Who is it?” Margaret hissed, her eyes wide in alarm.
Mary peered through the crazed panes of the small window then wrestled with the snib.
“Bastarding window!” she said with a grumble. “It’s never opened.”
She turned from the window, snatched up a cruisie lamp and moved to the hatch in the floor that led down to the hall.
“I cannae see wha it is.” She blustered. “I’ll go down and find out.”
“Take care, Mary,” Lady Maria cautioned.
Mary started down the wooden staircase, pausing just as her hea
d was about to disappear through the trapdoor.
“Ye’d better shut the trap ahint me, just in case.”
And, with that, she was gone.
Margaret had followed her to the hatch and watched her descend, the lamp casting her figure in giant dancing shadows against the hall walls. Lady Maria pulled a curtain across the window and lit a candle from the banked embers of the fire in the grate.
“Shut the trapdoor, Margaret,” she urged in a low voice. “Do as Mary says.”
Margaret did as she was bid and slid the thick wooden bar through the iron hasps on the frame to hold it fast.
“Is Simon alright?” Lady Maria asked.
“He’s still asleep,” Margaret replied.
They fell silent, straining their ears to make sense of the muffled sounds that rose from two floors below.
Suddenly, there was another loud command from outside.
“Open the door, or we’ll put the fire to it and burn ye out!”
Lady Maria gave a loud sob and clutched the neck of her chemise.
“Mother, it’s cold.” Margaret sought to distract her. “You should find something to throw around yourself. Away you go.”
She shooed her mother into their bedchamber.
Once she was alone, she eased the bar from the hasps and pulled the trapdoor open a crack to better hear what was going on below.
“… bolster the door with those beams and gi’e the wood a good soaking from the water barrel,” she heard Mary command. “The pair o’ ye stand here with those pikes. If they do burst the door down, they can only come through one at a time. Surely the pair o’ ye can fill the door again wi’ their corpses…”
“Open the door, ye auld carle!” came the voice again.
“Get tae fuck!” Mary bawled back, and Scott’s two men bellowed with laughter.
“Aye, come ahead then, Ker,” one of them taunted through the door, “so as I can shove this pole right up your arse!”
The men laughed again, and Mary added her cackle to their amusement, as the pounding on the thick wooden door resumed.
“Who is it?” Lady Maria asked anxiously as Mary plodded back up through the hatch and into the solar. She had pulled a gown over her head and thrown a shawl around her shoulders.
“Mercy!” Mary panted. “Gi’e me a minute to catch my breath. I maun be getting auld. I used to be able to trip up and down those stairs like a goat.”
Bridget the cook and Jean the maid climbed through the hatch behind her.
“I brought Bridget and the lassie up wi’ me, just to be on the safe side,” Mary explained.
Margaret took the cruisie from Mary’s trembling hand, and Mary dropped heavily into a chair.
“Who are they?” Lady Maria asked again.
“Kers.” Mary spat. “Up to mischief while Auld Wat’s away. Christ knows what mischief it is though.”
“Will they burn us out?” Lady Maria asked, casting a frightened glance towards the chamber in which her grandson slept.
“Will they hell!” Mary replied with a contemptuous snort. “Someone should tell the Kers that stone does not burn. They might burn the door down, if they can get a good enough blaze going against it. But, even if they do, Andra and Matthie will soon fill it up again with their lousy Ker carcasses.”
“But we can’t just sit here and wait,” Margaret said, puzzled.
Mary raised her eyebrows and spread her hands.
“Why not?” she said. “That’s what this place was built for. They cannae get in, and we cannae get out. But we’ve plenty of supplies, and they’ll eventually get fed up and go home. One thing’s sure: they won’t want to be here when my Wat and your Patrick get back; not unless they want their arses kicked.”
The hours passed, and the loud regular pounding of the keep door continued to echo throughout the tower long into the night. Periodically, Mary would go down and check on their defenses.
“The door’s holding,” she informed the women. “But they’ve rigged up a battering ram. I fear the door will splinter. Still,” she added to allay the women’s concern, “the men should be able to fend them off until Wat and Patrick return.”
Suddenly, they heard a howling and snarling of hounds and further commotion among the attackers outside.
Mary’s face went ashen.
“What is it?” Margaret asked.
“They’ve maddened the hounds,” Mary said, and for the first time, Margaret heard alarm in Mary’s voice. “I hadna thought o’ that.”
“What about the hounds?” Margaret pursued, her own voice growing tight with apprehension.
Mary rose and scurried to the hatch.
“It means that the door’s about to go and they’re going to send dogs, not men, against Andra and Matthie,” she cried. “Those dogs will ha’e been starved and whipped and tormented out of their minds. I maun get the men out o’ there and up into the hall afore the dogs rip their throats out.”
She raced down the stairs into the hall and called through the hatch into the undercroft.
“Andra, Matthie! Get yourself up here. They’re about to lowse the dogs. Your pikes will be of no use against them. Hurry, men, for Christ’s sake!”
But, even as she spoke, there was a loud crash and squeal of torn timber as the door gave way. Almost immediately, two giant hunting-hounds, their eyes mad with rage and terror, sprang through the narrow doorway and dashed beneath the reach of the long pikes. The leading dog leaped at Andra’s throat, while the second sang its fangs into Matthie’s groin.
Matthie screamed a long bloodcurdling scream, and he fell under the weight of the massive hound. His hands scrabbled ineffectually at its neck and shoulders as it shook its immense head back and forth, ripping his manhood from between his legs. Andra was thrown back against the stairs by the force of the lead dog’s impact but managed to ram a forearm between its powerful jaws to prevent them from closing on his gullet.
With an eldritch cry, Mary drew a dirk from her girdle and leaped from the trapdoor onto the giant beast’s back. She hooked an arm around its throat and wrenched its back from Andra’s face. A powerful jet of blood sprayed the stairs and wall as she plunged the dagger deep and hard into the animal’s neck.
They turned to where Matthie lay sprawling and kicking at the beast that was now sinking its fangs into his soft belly. Drawing his short sword with his undamaged hand, Andra ran the dog through.
As Mary tried to help Matthie to his feet, Andra turned to find Kers pouring through the door.
“Leave him!” he commanded Mary. “The poor soul’s done. Get back up the stair and get ready to shut the trap.”
He stepped between Mary and the stairs and began cutting and slashing at the Kers with his blade, his left arm hanging uselessly by his side, dripping blood and ribbons of torn flesh. Mary gently laid back down the now unconscious Matthie in the pool of his own blood, murmuring a fierce mother’s blessing, then she sprang to her feet and ran back up the stairs and through the trapdoor. Delivering a final few blows, Andra turned and sprinted up the stairs after her.
Mary slammed the trapdoor shut as soon and Andra had cleared it. She slotted the beam across it and into the hasps. Seconds later, the trapdoor began to jump under a tremendous pummeling.
She turned to her clansman.
“That looks a wee bit sore,” she remarked, nodding at his mauled forearm.
“Just a bit,” Andra admitted reluctantly, grimacing with pain.
“We maun get it cleaned and bound,” Mary said. “Away up to Bridget; she’ll see to you.”
Andra turned to continue up the stairs to the solar.
“And send Jean and Margaret down to help me shift this furniture,” she called after him.
Chapter Twenty-One
Auld Wat cursed. The English had grown wise to him. They had sent out an advanced party of horsemen to reconnoiter the road in advance of the supply train. An ambush would be discovered long before it could be sprung. So, here he was, freezing his
arse off in the wastes of Stranit, north of Dumfries, unable to move because the land was swarming with soldiers.
Patrick was happy, however. At least, if the soldiers were here, they would not be in the field against King Robert. Even if they could not harry the English supply lines, they were serving the great cause by diverting troops to chase geese rather than their king.
The reivers, though, were much less happy. As Patrick looked around their sullen, rain-drenched faces in the watery dawn light, he could see that their enthusiasm was waning. If they did not win some plunder soon, they would be abandoning the venture altogether and going back to raiding their neighbors. This was the third raid now in which they had been disappointed.
