Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy)

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  Shouts went down from the walls to the yard within. Chains rattled and the edges of the portcullis groaned against its stone grooves as it was raised up. Most of the garrison streamed out through the gate to come claim its feast. They charged across the open land, whooping with excitement, the few horsemen reaching us first. But before the first spear was hurled from English hands, Scottish arrows flew from the trees and pierced their breasts. The men on foot did not know yet what was happening when the first horseman slammed onto the ground, crying in mortal agony. They kept coming and did not falter until we threw off our hides, raised our weapons and rushed at the horsed soldiers. By then my own horsemen had already set off from the woods to cut off the footsoldiers. Every step on my right leg was a bolt of pain, but it was pain quickly forgotten in the rush of battle.

  While we rained our blows and poured out our strength – cutting, thrusting, jabbing, slashing – Sim parted from the fray and scaled the ladders put up over the walls. A dozen followed him. There were not enough men left inside the walls to sufficiently defend the castle. By the time I made it through the gates of Roxburgh and led my men into the bailey, a pale sun was overcoming the fog and a dry, even colder wind blew down from the hills.

  What remained of the garrison had withdrawn to the central keep. I tried to keep up with my men and they maneuvered across the bailey, but every step I took shot me with pain from ankle to hip. An arrow smacked on the cobbles beside me. I snatched it up and ducked behind a cart loaded with broken barrels. A scrape and scuffling beside me drew my attention. Sim wheeled before me, his huge hairy forearm flailing through the pale dawn light. An English archer, barely weaned from his mother’s breast and now in his horror of horrors reduced to fighting on foot, wielded a clumsy sword. The Englishman’s sword jerked swiftly toward Sim’s head. Sim ducked to avoid the blow. His axe blade glinted high as he whipped it back and upward, then arced it down. It cleaved the archer’s face from hairline to nose.

  I closed my eyes as blood sprayed over me. Instinctively, I wiped away the wetness from my lips and cheeks. The English archer lay on the slick cobbles, his eyes wide and lifeless. Sim wiped his axe blade on the Englishman’s jacket and went to find more prey. Carefully, I took the bow that was slung over the archer’s back before its string could soak up any blood. He had three arrows stuck in his belt. Two had been broken in his fall. So I took the one left and gathered more, scurrying in between bursts of fighting, before I returned to the cover of the cart and its jumbled barrels. In my own belt, I had but one arrow – the last one fletched with swan’s feathers. The rest I must have lost in the first wave of fighting.

  An occasional arrow still pelted us from the keep and it was there I set my sights. A figure appeared in one of the crenel gaps. He was an older man, his forehead fringed with silver. His red and blue surcoat marked him as someone of importance. The visor of his helmet was flipped open, so that he could better see the state of fighting below. Daring fool, he was, to stand there so long and vulnerable. I fitted an arrow to my newly found bow, marked him for his boldness and let fly. The white swan feathers sailed upward and struck him in the face. He toppled backward, out of sight, and someone else upon the battlements there dashed from behind the merlon to his aid. I waited for more men to appear, but by now they were wise to me. I chanced a few more gray-feathered arrows wherever I noted movement, but whether more found a mark I did not know. Likely by now they were barricading the doors, bent on holding out for the long term.

  When I had spent my cache of arrows, I abandoned the bow, left my post at the barrel cart, slipped through a tower door and made my way up a flight of winding stairs, climbing over the bodies of two fallen Englishmen. The next that I came upon was not quite dead and I paused a moment, considering whether it was worth my time to finish him. The side of his head was smashed in. Brain matter was spattered onto the steps above him. His pupils were well back into his head. His face was contorted unnaturally and his body gripped with small spasms. I left him, figuring he was past pain and cognizance.

  My leg throbbed as if it were being struck every pulse with a lead hammer. I swallowed back the cries that I longed to release and went on. The first two doors I came to had already been thrust open, the contents looted and the confines cleared of habitation. Before I reached the third I could already hear the hammering of an axe on the door latch, then the abrupt splintering of wood as the planks yielded.

  “Sim?” I called up, as I spied his broad back and two other Scots, McKie and Murdoch, at his shoulder. He turned to look at me, his great, grizzly head speckled with dark brown mud and drying blood. I scrambled up the steps, each stride sending bolts of pain up my leg, squeezed past the others and reached his side. “Does anyone call out from inside?”

  He shook his head at me. I brought my shield up before me and tucked my sword between it and the wall. “Let me go first,” I said, nodding at him to take the door from its hinges.

  The whites of his eyes glowed in the half dark as he flung his axe again and again at the parting planks. No sounds emanated from within. He managed a gap, hooked his axe and yanked more of the wood away and when it was wide enough he shoved his arm through to fumble for the latch. He flipped it up, but the door was plainly barred and so he squeezed his arm through further and braced his shoulder against the door as he pulled up with all the might in his one arm. Grunting and sweating, his arm shook with the weight and tightness of the bar. Then it slid upward with a groan. He heaved it up over its hooks and away. As he began to pull his arm clear, his eyes shot wide and wild. He winced and pulled a blood streaked arm back through. Metal clattered sharply onto the floor on the other side. Sim’s wound was but a superficial cut, but the stinging of his flesh angered him.

  “Armed,” I warned, glancing at the two men with us. “Caution.”

  Sim rammed his shoulder into the door and threw it wide. Light poured in from tall windows to show a solar, packed with weaving looms and stools and baskets overflowing with thread and needles for embroidery work. Our enemies amounted to six women and an infant. Tapestries covered the walls and at once McKie and Murdoch went at them, slashing the threads and pulling them down to make certain that no armed men were hidden behind them. Two of the women were aged, one of those visibly feeble. The others were young and all ladies of high breeding. The fairest of them, hair of midnight and skin like January snow, clutched a writhing bundle to her breast.

  Sim gave his big, gaping grin as he stepped toward them. The women retreated toward the windows in a huddle, aghast at the intent in their intruder’s eyes. Only the black-haired lady stood her ground with stubborn denial. A cry, high and thin, escaped from the swaddling in her arms. Eyes shut, she pressed her face to the child she held and began to sing as she swayed side to side:

  “Hush, hush, do not fret ye.”

  Her voice leaked frailly from a trembling mouth. The babe cried louder and I thought of Archibald in my stepmother Eleanor’s arms when Neville exploded into our room after the massacre at Berwick. My God, what had ever happened to Hugh and Archibald? I had been too enthralled in my fighting all these years to seek them out. At one time they had been safe at Rothesay and Eleanor was cloistered somewhere with nuns. But that was all I ever knew.

  Sim dropped his axe into his drooping belt and wiped at his face, looming closer to the flock of women. He reached out his blood-streaked arm toward the infant.

  “The Black Douglas will not get ye,” she half-cried, half-sang.

  “No, stop!” I ordered. I sheathed my sword and rushed between Sim and the young woman, kicking a stool over on the way. A white bolt of pain ripped up the right half of my body. I stumbled and caught myself. Even as the stool toppled and fell loudly, still the lady kept her eyes shut and sang the song over and over and over. Sim yielded his ground with a low grumble.

  “Stop!” I shouted at her with all the wind in my lungs. My vehemence was aimed as much at her as it was at the shattering pain in my calf. I tried to stand without re
vealing my injury, but managed only a lopsided stance and sharp breaths.

  She flinched at my bellowing. I shifted my weight slowly onto the bad leg, went a stride closer, studied her. She was still in her nightclothes. Her fluttering fingers ran over a blanket draped about the bairn’s small back. She touched her forehead to its downy crown and the top of its swaddling fell away. The babe twisted in her grip to look at me. It fell quiet in curiosity. I guessed it was not more than a few months old... and a girl, judging by the delicate nose and small forehead.

  “... do not fret –”

  I spoke over her plaintive song. “We mean no harm, my lady.” I willed her to look at me, but she kept her eyes closed, droning on and on in that false lullaby.

  “The Black Douglas will not –”

  “Please, enough,” I demanded. “Douglas... he is not like that. He would never do you harm. Never.”

  I reached out to touch her on the shoulder and break her trance, but as I did so one of her hands whipped toward me with a flash of metal. I caught her by the wrist. The same knife she had cut Sim with hurtled from her grasp and spun across the floor.

  At last she looked at me. But the hatred in her dark, smoldering eyes struck me harder than the blow of any blade.

  “Your people have raped and murdered mine,” she accused, her red lips curved into a bitter snarl that turned her beauty into outright ugliness. “Have us all if you will. But I beg you – make it quickly done. What is one more mark on your conscience among thousands?”

  “I have violated no one, my lady,” I replied. Still clenching her wrist, I lowered her arm and pulled her in even closer to me so that she would not miss a word of what I had to say. “Not today, nor yesterday, nor in all my life. And any who have lost their lives to me made the choice to place themselves in danger. I am waging a war against the King of England. It requires that I fight... and win.”

  Proudly, she drew her chin up. “Then kill me. Now. But however, honor mercy and do not leave us to your pack of dogs. It doesn’t matter if it’s you or those who serve you who commit the deed. The stain is on you.”

  Aye, my men had taken women along the way. In the border towns we sacked it was an inevitable part of the aftermath. I discouraged it, punished them for brutality when I discovered it, hung them even, but alas, I could not be everywhere.

  I let go of her. “Tell me your name first, so that I may know the degree of the crime I am about to commit.”

  Just then the bairn thumbed her mother’s nose and cooed. The lady’s features softened with the boundless depth of her love for her child. The first tear spilled from the corner of her eye. “My name is of no matter.”

  “It matters if you are the governess of this castle and your husband is William de Fiennes.”

  At that a cloud passed over her brow. The governess of Roxburgh sank to her knees in defeat. The bairn cradled in her lap tugged at a loose strand of her hair, but she paid it no heed. The very moment Sim had ripped open the door, she had decided her fate was sealed and this was to be the day of her death.

  We Scots are not all savages, my lady. Perhaps this is the day you should instead learn a lesson of our humanity.

  “Sim.” I turned to him. He brooded yet over the prize that had been denied to him and thus this was no place for him. “Go. Find out if William de Fiennes has been captured, or,” I added lowly, “if he has fallen during the fight. I reckon most likely he is shut up in the keep. Murdoch, McKie... search for more weapons here, but harm none of these women or the bairn... or else it’s you I’ll kill. The lady is worth a fair ransom. A shame the governor abandoned his womenfolk and saved himself.”

  “It happened too quickly,” Lady De Fiennes protested. “He did not mean to part from us. My ladies were asleep in the adjoining chambers. My child was crying from colic. I came here to soothe her and by then we were under attack.”

  I retrieved the knife from beside a loom and twirled its jeweled hilt between my palms.

  “Forgive me for leaving your company so suddenly, Lady De Fiennes.” As I went toward the battered door, I motioned for Sim to accompany me, and gave McKie and Murdoch a warning glance to keep them in check. Without looking back, I said to the lady, “Things are not always what we imagine them to be.”

  Kelpies in the mist came to mind. And the Black Douglas... he was no child-killer or violator of women, either.

  William de Fiennes, as it turned out, was indeed confined within the castle keep as no accounts of him were found among the dead or captured. I had lost yet more men in taking the castle, among them the shepherd MacLurg, brother to McKie and Murdoch, and so I chose not to risk any more if I could avoid it. The defenders of the keep had a store of arrows, but their best archers had been posted on the outer walls and fallen in the outset. Whatever arrows were loosed from the keep did not fly true. They fell short or curved wildly – sure signs that the men behind them were not well practiced in the art. And whenever they shot their arrows, my men replied with more.

  For two days we held them there. Their numbers were unknown, but clearly they had suffered from the suddenness of our attack. My men laid out their dead beyond the outer wall for the local womenfolk to search over and bury. I had expected De Fiennes to surrender immediately, surrounded and disadvantaged as he was, and so it was not until the second day with no word from inside the keep that I ordered Sim to lead a company of men in battering at the keep’s door with a ramming rod. For nearly an hour, he and twenty other men heaved the monstrous pole at the timber door which was reinforced with iron straps. A dozen archers and I were positioned around the keep, arrows nocked to pierce the first Englishman who tried to pour boiling oil on Sim and his crew. But no one ever tried. When the door began to cave, a flag of truce appeared on the highest point of the keep, waved by the captain of the garrison. I motioned for my men to lower their bows and perched myself on the parapet of the tower nearest the keep. The day was bitterly cold, although bright, and a light, brisk wind nudged at my chest.

  Upon seeing me, the captain called out, “My master, the governor of this castle, requests his freedom in return for the castle keep and wishes to know your demands.”

  Standing with the toes of my boots over the edge of the wall on which I stood, high above the inner bailey, I cupped my hands around my mouth and responded, “Tell him, that I will permit the governor his freedom, but that I shall keep his wife and daughter until he pays me the sum of fifty marks. Less than two year’s wages for a knight. A small sacrifice, given the value of the goods.”

  “My master wants to know who it is that makes such a demand.”

  “I am known as the Black Douglas by the English around here. Surely you have heard of me?”

  “We have, m’lord.”

  “Ah, then you know that I get what I ask for?”

  “We do.”

  “Then who are you to bargain on his behalf?”

  “John of Wigton, captain of this garrison. A moment, m’lord, while I consult.”

  “Take an hour, John of Wigton. It will all come to the same no matter how you delay.”

  He left his post and reappeared only a few minutes later. I found the action merely ritualistic, as I doubted he had indeed consulted over much of anything. Why that was so intrigued me.

  “My master requests that if you would but hand over his wife and daughter so that they may accompany him back to England, he will pay you an annual indemnity of your choosing – within his means, of course.”

  “Tell your generous master that I will take the fifty marks from him and an immediate indemnity from the peoples of this county as well as other payments due through the course of the year. I will compromise by giving up the daughter, but keep the wife in my care until such payment is met.”

  John of Wigton’s gruff laughter echoed over the empty courtyard as he held his belly. “Leave the lady in your care? M’lord, I would not entrust you with the village laundress for a day and a night, let alone the Lady Rosalind for a matter of w
eeks or perhaps months until such monies could be raised.”

  “Tell your master that is my offer... or can he speak for himself at all?”

  Wigton threw his arms open. “Indeed he cannot. He was gravely wounded by an arrow morning before yester and is in terrible pain. But on the matter of his wife, m’lord, he asks that you take into consideration his condition and release her, for he fears he may not live to see her again should he depart here without her.”

  Wounded by an arrow. My arrow. I stepped down from the parapets and paced, my arms folded, one set of fingers drumming against my mailed arm. My archers stared at me as I swung back and forth. A minute later, I bounded back to my roost. Pain shot through my lower leg, reminding me of the deep bruise there.

  “Half an hour,” I said. “I shall meet him in the courtyard at the foot of the keep. He is promised safe passage from here to Berwick, but is to take nothing with him.”

  “And on the matter of the Lady Rosalind.”

  “I have given my terms, John of Wigton. Half an hour.”

  Before the captain could interrogate or plead further, I had left and was headed for the ladies’ solar. I knocked twice upon the poorly repaired door and gave the order to open. Murdoch complied.

  I had not seen Lady Rosalind since the day of the attack. I had, however, given firm orders that she and her women were to be afforded comforts. They had been brought appropriate clothing for a journey, fed well and passed the time reading to each other, so Murdoch had relayed to me. Rosalind herself was modestly and warmly dressed in her fur-lined winter cloak. She was a woman in her prime, yet young, and with the dark, mystical looks of a Spanish princess.