She had heard the word. Fin liked to tell ghostly tales sometimes. She knew a banshee was something fearful. But she didn’t know that it was a dread female spirit, that when a banshee wails around a building, those inside are filled with the fear of death. All she knew was that she was being asked the impossible.
She shook her head frantically. But McLennan didn’t see or care. He lowered her to the ground. She stood there, helpless and terrified. He raised his whip.
‘Do as I bid ye, afore I give ye something to wail about!’ he muttered fiercely.
She clung to his leg, sobbing.
‘I canna! I canna!’
She was begging him to have pity on her, not to demand this terrible thing of her. His answer was to bring the whip down. It cut her back right through her jerkin. She tried to cry out.
He reached down and blocked her mouth with his big hand. It gripped her whole face, lifting her off the ground.
‘Not yet, ye simpleton! Wait till ye get up there, under the walls! Then feel your pain and cry for it, and for the pain I’ll give ye if ye disobey my orders!’
Peony ran.
She ran away from her master and his small army of followers. Up the hill towards the castle, black against the stars. She kept her eyes on the small points of light in the embrasures at the top. They seemed to twinkle, to call her. She knew that was what she had to head for.
She had been ordered to cry and wail. She thought she could do it. She had always done as McLennan ordered, so surely she could do this. Her back hurt. Her heart hurt. She had enough sadness in her heart because of his harshness to cry and wail all night, and for many nights to come. Despite what she knew of her master, despite her new understanding, she had not expected this of him.
She limped to the top of the hill. The castle loomed above her. There was no moat – the walls rose out of the hilltop. She was panting, and stopped for a moment to catch her breath. Then, slowly and carefully, she began to walk beside the wall. She kept one small hand on the stones to guide her in the darkness.
The stones were very cold. She felt the coldness fill her hand, and creep up her arm. It seemed to reach her heart. Her heart stopped hurting. It felt frozen.
She thought, ‘Now I must cry and wail. Now I must feel my hurt. Now I must let my hurt come out in a loud sound.’ She opened her mouth and pushed out her breath, meaning to cry and wail.
But no sound came out. Not even a moan, let alone a cry that would frighten those inside the walls.
She struggled to cry out. She forced herself. But nothing came. All her life she had taught herself not to cry, not to groan, not to let out her pain, but to hold it inside her. Now that she needed to bring it out, she couldn’t.
She walked on and on, touching the stones. She kept trying to obey her master’s order. The muscles of her stomach clenched. Her mouth was wide open. It was as if she screamed silently. She thought of all the bad, sad, terrible things in her life: her mother binding her feet tighter and tighter, ignoring her sobs and pleas. The sudden devastating change when McLennan took her. The stench of blood and battle, the wounds, the squalor, the horrors she had seen as a young child. She thought of McLennan’s harshness to her, his refusal to treat her as anything but a chattel. She thought of her back, where she could feel blood trickling down. But she felt none of it. None of it seemed real to her.
Instead, a very strange thing happened. It was the good things that came back to her. Her sisters who had loved and pitied her, their big, painless feet acting as her feet as they carried her on their backs. The kindness of Li-wu, and his wise words. The beautiful sights she had seen on the long journey along the Silk Road, the golden dawns over the desert, the snowy mountains turning pink at sunset, and then the green fields of the west. The moment when she brought McLennan tea on the ship, and he fell asleep, and she touched his red beard and felt the balm of forgiveness for him flowing gently over her, proving Li-wu was right, giving her something to live by. The old woman in the cottage, and Janet, Fin’s mother – their warm arms, their affection, their motherly kindness. Her imaginary garden, created with such love – and so long neglected, because she hadn’t needed to visit it since she’d found Fin.
And Fin. And Fin!
Li-wu had taught her too well. He had said, ‘The sorrows of this life are a dream. Let only what is good touch your inner self.’ He’d told her to seek nothing for herself. She had sought nothing, but she had found many little treasures of warmth and kindness. Little pleasures. Scraps of unexpected happiness, like the scraps of food that had somehow nourished her, inadequate though they were.
Peony wasn’t able to cry because she couldn’t feel any pain. She just walked on and on around the high, fortified walls until the battle started. By that time she was round the far side. She heard the shouts and cries; she heard the loud ‘thock’ of the monstrous sling-shot; she saw the reflection of the fireballs. She even thought she heard the faint whistle of arrows.
She sat down under the wall, with her back against the bulge at the base of it, and stared up at the stars.
She should have been terribly afraid, alone and desolate. But all she felt was peace.
Chapter Ten
McLennan had waited in the darkness to hear the ‘banshee’ begin to wail. When nothing happened, he flew into a blind fury. The hot blood he had aroused by confronting his memories boiled in his veins. He forgot good sense and strategy. He lost control of himself.
He stood up in his stirrups and shouted to his men, ‘Attack! Attack!’ Then he rode up the hill like a madman, yelling his battle cry.
His men followed, yelling like him. They were running toward certain defeat, and probably death, and every man of them knew it. But loyalty to their master carried them forward.
Those manning the siege-engine dragged and pushed it up the hill. When they thought they had come within range, they stopped, but the siege-engine started to roll backwards. Those behind strained to hold it; those in front leaned into the ropes. But some had to let go, to find rocks in the darkness to put under its wheels, and there was an agonised cry from one of the pushers as one wheel rolled over him. The arrows from the castle were flying, burying themselves with multiple small thuds in the turf about ten yards ahead of them. They were only just out of bow-range.
Donald was one of the pullers. He saw a man running towards him through the gloom with a big stone, to act as a chock, in his hand. Abruptly he stopped, dropped the stone which slid down towards Donald, and fell forward, an arrow in his back. All Donald felt was hot relief that it wasn’t him.
The rock stopped level with him. Still pulling on the rope, he twisted his body and gave it a mighty kick towards the back of the engine. Someone seized it and set it under the back of one wheel. The engine, rocking and unstable, slewed around – it seemed to those in charge of it that it had a will of its own, to retreat from the castle. It took long minutes filled with curses to get it straightened and to block the other wheel so it couldn’t roll backwards.
Now that Donald could let go the rope, he was responsible for lighting the fireballs with a tinderbox. While others twisted the thick ropes round the axletree by frantically turning levers on either side, Donald scraped feverishly with the flint. The dry grass in the box caught a spark, and Donald, panting with excitement, brought a twig ready dipped in pitch to the little flame, and transferred it to the fireball nestling in the ‘cup’ on the end of the catapult arm. The missile blazed up at once. When the fire had crept all around it, the signal was given to fire the catapult. As the tightly-wrapped ropes spun the axle, the arm snapped up, crashing to a stop against the padded crossbar. The missile, released, flew in a high, blazing arc towards the black shape of the brooding mansion with its bright crest of fires. The loud swish of the fireball through the air drowned out momentarily the sound of the killer arrows humming like hornets toward them in invisible waves.
But the siege-engine was on such a slope that the fireball landed short. It took long minutes to
prepare the next, and while they did so, grim realisation seized them – they would have to move the engine forward, into arrow-range. Panting and shouting encouragement to each other, they heaved the engine up ten yards, losing two more men to arrows. Again Donald lit a ball while the rope was prepared, and this time the missile did fly far enough. They saw it land on the roof, behind the fires.
Donald and his crew raised a cheer before setting-to to prepare to fling another. They were all relishing the notion of their fireball causing chaos, setting fire to the enemy’s stronghold. They didn’t know that it had gone through the roof and landed in a flag-floored hall below, where the women rushed upon it. Water flung from a dozen pails put out the fire, leaving no more damage than a hole in the roof.
McLennan meanwhile waited till one salvo of arrows had landed, then made a dash for the wall. Jumping off his horse he shouted for a ladder. ‘It’s safe here, men! Get under the walls where the arrows canna touch ye!’ Men with ladders came running. A flight of arrows struck the party and several fell wounded, but seeing the safe ground immediately below the battlements, others took up the task while the defenders were stringing their bows with new arrows. Ladders were put in place, and McLennan and several others started to climb.
At the same time the men with the heavy battering ram had brought it up to the heavily barred gate. As more and more men were hit by arrows, others took their places. The strongest men seized the battering ram and ran with it till it crashed into the gate with a shuddering jar that ran up their arms and across their chests, shaking their whole bodies. Then they backed off and ran at the gate again.
When they were right under the battlements, a sudden scream went up. Streams of boiling water from above were falling on them. Like scalded cats they fled, dropping the tree trunk.
McLennan did not get halfway up the wall before a rock dropped on him from above, striking his shoulder and knocking him off-balance. The ladder swayed and fell backwards. McLennan clung to it, his legs dangling. He fell feet first into a group of his men, who caught him safely and lowered him to the ground. Apart from his shoulder, which was badly bruised, he was not hurt.
But the shock of falling brought him to his senses. He knew he had made a terrible mistake in carrying out the attack. The battle was lost before it began. He needed his men. It was stupid to get too many of them killed.
He heard his horse whinny in the darkness. He staggered to it and mounted. In the first lull in the noise, he shouted, ‘Back! Back! Fall back out of range!’ Then he led the retreat down the hill, shouting the same words as he rode through his men.
They ran, dragging and carrying their wounded. The siege-engine and the battering ram were left behind, along with a third of their number, dead or dying on the hill.
Fin’s brother Donald lay sprawled beside the siege-engine, his tinderbox still in his hand. The small flame in it had ignited some dry tufts of grass on the ground beside him. The glow showed his young face with a look of surprise on it, and glistened up the shaft of the arrow through his heart.
Inside the walls, McInnes’s commander reported, ‘They’re on the run, m’laird! Shall we give chase?’
‘We’ll give chase all right,’ said the old man. ‘But no’ this night. I know the whereabouts of the man. Aye, I know that well enough! We’ll give chase in our own good time.’ And he went to his bed with a tankard of whiskey.
It wasn’t till they were regrouping back in the wood that McLennan remembered Peony.
He stopped cold as if he had walked into a wall. Where was she? What had happened? Why hadn’t she obeyed his order? He was used to Peony doing everything he told her. It didn’t occur to him that he had finally given her an order she could not obey.
He had almost willed her death. If they’d seen her coming and shot her, what of it? Or captured her? Why should he fear that? She could tell them nothing that mattered. Leave her. Forget her. She has no importance. Leave her.
These thoughts had not fully formed in his brain before he had wheeled his horse about and was raining kicks and blows on it to drive it through the forest. So small – they’d no’ ha’ seen her coming – hiding somewhere, aye, that’s it. In the heat of battle she could not have come back to him. He must get to her before daylight came. That was all he knew.
His men, open-mouthed, watched him vanish through the trees. Then one muttered, awe-stricken, ‘He’s awa’ back after the wee lassie!’
‘First he risks her life, then his ain to save her,’ said another.
‘Aye. Maybe he’ll be shot on the way’ said another.
They looked at each other, some fearfully, others with a grim smile. No one said ‘Let’s hope so!’ – though they all dreaded his rage at coming back home beaten, and with no prisoner for his dungeon.
McLennan rode at full tilt back through the wood and round the bottom of the hill till he faced the back of the enemy stronghold. Then he tied his horse to a low branch and climbed the hill on foot. He was fearful that dawn would come and light the scene before he could find the girl and get away. He moved as quickly as he could for the injury to his shoulder.
He felt his anger growing inside him at having done what he had no intention of doing – no reason to do.
‘She didna do as I bid her!’, he thought. ‘If she had, we might have beaten them!’ By the time he reached the foot of the castle walls, he was sure it was chiefly Peony’s fault that he had failed.
The back of the building faced east. The first streaks of dawn were making the horizon pale. By this faint light, he saw her, and his heart bounded in his chest. She was lying at the foot of the wall. Was she alive? Was she alive? He ran to her, saying in his head, ‘They didna capture her! She’s given naught away! That’s what matters!’ But what mattered was whether she was quick or dead.
He ran to her and crouched beside her. He touched her throat. Yes, her blood was beating there, he felt it in his fingers. The instant relief – like a white light in his own blood – that flooded him, he stifled in swift action.
He picked her up and put her across his shoulder, but the pain stabbed him. He cursed, and swung her on to his back, bending forward, holding her legs under his arms. He felt her hands fumbling at his neck. A strange gladness seized him. He began to run down the hill.
The light was getting stronger.
Halfway down, an arrow whistled past him. He jumped aside. He felt the girl on his back – her body was between him and the arrows, it would be hit first. A shield. Was this not good? Yet instinctively he twisted himself, exposing his left side to the arrows.
The next one struck him in the flesh of his arm.
He felt it as a powerful blow, as if he’d been hit hard by a stone, but looking down he actually saw the point come out – saw it come bursting through in a little spray of blood. He stared at it, incredulous. Then the pain started.
He cursed and ran on, doubled over, with blood running down his sleeve and more arrows falling round him. His brain was full of fury.
Anger always helped McLennan to be strong. Reaching the wood, he found his horse and threw Peony over the front of the saddle. Then he pressed his arm tightly against a tree to steady it, broke off the arrowhead where it came through his arm, and pulled the shaft out at the back, clenching his teeth against the agony. The shame of defeat – the futility of the battle and the slaughter, the loss of his men – and now, this. His left arm useless. Awful pain. It was all the girl’s fault, all of it! She was a witch – she had brought this on him out of spite, to punish him! Why had he felt gladness to find her alive, why, when he’d wanted her dead, had he turned his body to protect her? Better she were dead, much better, than to let her twist his actions into their own opposites! Curse her, it might be thought that she mattered!
He climbed on his horse by standing on a fallen tree, and rode off at full gallop through the wood, shouting, ‘Ye’ll pay for this, ye wicked wee devil! I’ll make ye pay!’
Chapter Eleven
He caugh
t up with his men. They noticed the girl, flung over the saddle. They saw her move and knew she was alive. Many of them had kind hearts, and were glad, but they looked at his face, frozen with hatred, and feared for her now, and for themselves, his unsuccessful raiders.
The raiding-party marched home in grim silence, McLennan riding at their head. They were silently mourning their dead friends and neighbours. They marched for two days, stopping only briefly to sleep and tend the wounded. McLennan allowed no time for hunting or eating. His mind was seething with poison. In the night he tied Peony to a tree and would not even give her water.
At midnight one of the older men dared to creep to her on his belly to bring her a drink. They exchanged two whispered words.
‘Do-nald?’
‘Dead.’
She turned her face into the earth.
At sunset the following day, from the gatehouse casement Fin watched them coming, the sad procession. His eyes flew instantly to Peony, lying across the Master’s saddle. ‘She’s dead!’ he thought, and his heart seemed to shrivel up. He forgot to look for his brother, but ran down crying to Rob, ‘She’s dead!’
Rob said, ‘She’s no’ dead, lad. He’d no’ have bothered bringing her home if she was dead.’ To himself, he muttered, ‘Maybe better for her if she were.’
Fin was in the courtyard when they rode in. He dared not touch Peony until McLennan had dismounted, thrown him the reins, and stumbled away, clutching his arm. Then Fin lifted her tenderly down.
‘Are ye aw’richt, Wee Eyes – Little Flower?’ he whispered.
Exhausted and battered by the events of the past days, she still managed to nod and smile at him. His spirits took off like a bird.
‘Och, but ye’re a braw lassie!’ he cried, and held her for a moment in his arms.
‘See to the horse!’ ordered Rob loudly, adding in an undertone, ‘And gi’ the lass something to eat and drink.’ He, too, was mightily relieved to see Peony safely back. As the two children went into the stable close to each other, it was Rob who took the horse while scanning the motley, blood-stained, depleted crowd of men, noting with a sinking heart that the lad’s brother was missing.
The Dungeon Page 10
