They padded softly out of the room and began to move stealthily through the castle, climbing staircases and heading for the top of the tower, and the observatory.
As the boys passed through the series of great salons they devoured, wild eyed, the richness of the decoration. Every inch of the enormous rooms seemed to be covered with architectural detail and as they crept carefully onwards they were overwhelmed by the sight of a wealth they had never imagined existed – the rich tapestries and exquisite carpets, beautiful furniture and proud, glorious paintings.
But while the Castle of Beath was clearly a treasure house, assembled from the plunder of centuries, there were signs of decay and negligence in every room. Wall hangings were awry, rugs carelessly rolled back and fallen objects left where they lay. Much of the furniture was haphazardly covered by dustsheets.
And, everywhere the boys looked, there were books. On tables, on chairs and on the floor, like the troubled surface of the sea outside, an ocean of books spilled across the rooms. Many were bent open where they’d been dropped. Others showed a mess of paper stuffed into pages to mark passages, once important enough to be noted but now, later, the reasons for them long forgotten. It was plain that introverted and scholarly though these Urquhain lords may have been, whoever had been reading here recently was oblivious to his surroundings.
Silently the brothers moved from room to room.
But as they left one of the glorious salons Alistair’s thoughts had strayed already to the new life he would lead when their night’s work was realised. His mind wandered and as he lost concentration his foot dug deep into the side of a casually coiled glory from the great Shah’s workshops at Isfahan. He stumbled at first as he caught the curved side of the carpet and then brought his trailing leg down hard. This only made things worse. His momentum was now increased and as he pitched forward in the darkness he raised an involuntary hand to stop his fall but, to his horror, he struck a heavy mahogany door with his palm. It shuddered with the impact and then swung back, hammering the wall behind it in an explosion of noise.
They froze. Then Alistair scrambled to his feet and looked up to see the mask of fury on his brother’s face. James glared at him and swept his arm down in an angry gesture of command for him to stay where he was and to wait.
It was too late.
A floor away, in a study set in the corner of a tower, the great stronghold’s lord lifted his head with a start from the long table at which he’d fallen asleep. He had dropped where he worked, his face flat amongst the chaos of the table’s vast confusion – its surface covered by mathematical tables and drawings, a large orrery, books and celestial globes. On top of piles of scribbled workings, lonely plates of food lay untouched and uncollected like so many forgotten islands.
The Earl of Dunbeath was immediately wide-awake. His face was sharp and determined, full of the ruthless certainty of his ancient line and flooded with the particular wrath that had come down to him from his ancestors. He rose silently to his feet and the moonlight fell across his profile. He was in his thirties, dark and strong featured and it was clear that the centuries of carefully chosen marriages had made this, the last of the Urquhain, a man of striking appearance. He was of above middle height, heavy shouldered and with a powerful, wide frame. The firm cut of his mouth was now tight as he listened intently in the dark. Around him was a heavy coat he’d thrown over his shoulders before he’d fallen asleep, made for his grandfather and now much frayed. He wore no wig and his once cropped brown hair had been uncut for months and curled like Medusa’s snakes away from his still, tense face.
But even the most cursory of glances showed that whatever the Earl of Dunbeath had been working at was taking its toll. It was evident that he’d taken no care of himself for some time.
Moving deftly to one side, he reached over to the top drawer of a cabinet and took out a heavy pistol. He then crept stealthily through the open door and stood in the corridor, waiting as quietly as a predatory animal for any further noise.
The brothers had not moved. James held his hand out, palm first, ordering Alistair to be still. For five minutes or more they stood, straining every nerve as they listened for any sign that they’d been heard.
But Dunbeath was rigidly still too, sensing their presence in spite of the deep silence to which the castle had returned. It was true that there were always cracks and groans coming from the ancient building as it settled with the centuries but the earl knew instinctively there was something about the sound he’d heard that made him certain that, for the first time in its long history, someone had managed to break in.
A floor below him, James eventually nodded. The acute silence had convinced him that either Alistair’s fall hadn’t been heard or that the castle was empty. The brothers let out long-held breaths and together they moved on, pointing out to each other with quick, nervous gestures the precious pieces they would collect later as they came back down the stairs. On they climbed, higher and higher, one cautious step after another, until they emerged at last into the observatory. There they held their lanterns high and looked around in the pale glow, their eyes flashing in greed as they took in what there was to steal.
Like Dunbeath’s study and the rest of the castle, the observatory seemed to have been the object of a malicious attack and a colossal mess of handwritten notes, scientific instruments and books spilled from every surface and flowed carelessly across the stone floor.
James had just moved over to where an oval table was covered with ziggurats of astronomical books and parchment-covered ledgers of star movements when his eye was caught by a sudden glint that reflected back from his lantern’s thin beam. He moved some papers and let out a silent gasp, then reached down and picked up an exquisitely made telescope that had been half buried under a pile of celestial maps. It was a thing of the utmost beauty and James began to pant with short, shallow breaths as he felt its weight in his hand, hypnotised by its exquisite exterior. Little that he would have cared, the masterpiece had been crafted a hundred years previously for the fabulous collector, Ferdinando de Medici, but as James looked at the thick gold of the instrument’s barrel, etched with hunting scenes and densely set with precious jewels, he knew only that the gorgeous thing was beyond value. Furtively, he glanced round to see if Alistair had seen him pick it up but his brother was half bent over something else, and James slipped the telescope quietly into the poacher’s pocket of his coat.
What the eye didn’t see, he thought to himself and, anyway, why should he have to share every last thing with Ally? Hadn’t he practically had to drag him to the castle in the first place?
Moonlight flooded the room and the two boys pulled at books and moved charts in their search for treasures. Greed had so invaded their minds by now that it had overcome their caution and neither heard a slight scuffing sound as Lord Dunbeath crept to the top of the tower’s stone stairs and slid quietly through the open door.
The earl now stood in icy silence, pointing his pistol at the brothers’ backs. Eventually, something must have caught Alistair’s eye because he looked up and gasped in appalled shock as he saw Dunbeath’s wide frame. And then the pistol in his hand. As he heard his brother’s cry, James glanced up and followed Alistair’s horrified gaze. In an instant the three men were standing, rigid, staring at each other, the two of them frozen in shock and the other hard coiled with the lust for revenge.
At last Dunbeath broke the silence.
‘How did you get in here?’ he asked in a terrifyingly quiet tone. ‘Armies have tried to storm this castle for centuries and failed. How did you do it?’
The McLeish brothers remained where they were, too stunned to answer. They simply stared back in a horrified silence at the black threat of the pistol.
Then Alistair began to plead in a thin, reedy whine.
‘Oh, we’re sorry, your lordship. God knows it, we’re so sorry. We’re just two stupid, hungry boys. Don’t bother with us, my lord. We won’t ever do anything like this again.’
His voice broke with fear. ‘Oh, please God, let us go!’
Dunbeath said nothing. He seemed to be so completely absorbed in his thoughts that he showed no sign of having heard the boy. Instead he appeared to be weighing up what to do next with all the calm concentration of a cat staring at a sparrow. He stayed like this for some time, swaying slightly as he turned the situation over in his mind before a hint of amusement seemed to come over his face. He had clearly come to a decision.
With a wave of his arm he ordered the pair through a door to the gap between the outside wall of the observatory and the ancient fortifications of the turret. Then, in an oddly disconnected voice, he barked an order at James.
‘Stand up there!’
He pointed with his free hand at the battlements.
‘On that stone.’
James looked at the raised teeth of the parapet with alarm. Four hundred years before, the castle’s builders had followed the defence strategy of their day and projected the turret out from the side of the tower. The battlements hung over the sea far below and James looked at them, appalled. The top of each of the stones was hardly wider than a man’s feet and slippery with frozen sea mist.
‘I can’t,’ he stammered, his chest tight with fear, ‘I’ll fall.’
There was a second’s pause before Dunbeath took a step towards him and put his pistol to the boy’s head. He ground it into James’s temple as he hissed at him in a low, urgent whisper.
‘Do it. Or die here now. You’ve broken into my home. Who would ever say I was wrong to shoot you?’
James realised he had no choice if he was to survive. He moved mechanically over to the wall and put his foot on the lower of the stones. Then, with heart-sinking desperation, he levered himself up onto the surface of the higher level, first on his knees and then, with manic concentration, onto his feet. As he did so he had to lean outwards and he saw with sick terror the horrible sight of the drop to the sea below. He slowly straightened upright, every part of him concentrating on stopping his legs from shaking. Blood pounded in his temples, his senses scattered, his head spun.
‘Turn to face me,’ Dunbeath ordered.
Even in his shattered state James knew that the slightest wrong move would send him over the edge. He shuffled to one side, his knees bent and his feet making tiny movements to bring himself round. Terror was quickly overtaking him and as his mind solidified, so his limbs softened. Eventually, he succeeded in turning round.
‘Now you,’ snapped out Dunbeath, swinging the pistol to point at Alistair.
The younger man could take no more. He’d seen James’s terrible climb and there was nothing left in him that could make him follow his brother’s lead. He began to whimper, now deaf to Dunbeath’s voice.
‘Wait here,’ said Dunbeath sharply, and stepped backwards into the observatory with his pistol still raised. Without ever taking his eyes from them he felt for the back of a chair and then dragged it outside behind him.
‘Here. Climb up on that. Get on this stone here.’
Like James, Alistair could see no way out. Shaking violently, he stood on the chair and, by holding its back rail, he edged a foot forward onto the battlement’s surface. Then he closed his eyes and lifted his other leg. He was now facing out to sea and he gibbered to himself as he slowly inched round to face Dunbeath. The earl seemed to inspect his work and then barked out his next command.
‘Now, each of you, take the other man’s hand. Go on. Both of you do it. Get hold of his hand!’
James and Alistair lifted their arms towards each other and linked hands. As they did so, Dunbeath pulled the chair back and threw it to one side. A hundred feet below them the surf roared ever louder with the pull of the incoming tide but, in their terror, the brothers heard nothing – they knew only that the slightest movement from either of them and they would fall.
‘I’m going to give you some choices’ said Dunbeath dispassionately. He had suddenly become a man of science, explaining an experiment.
‘Listen carefully. You know I have only one ball in my pistol. If you both jump at me I could only shoot one of you. I might even miss. No doubt if I did you’d overpower me and throw me over that wall you’re standing on. But if you don’t want to try that then you can simply ask to get down and I’ll take you to the sheriff in the morning. I see from your empty sack that you’ve taken nothing so you’ll probably only get a light sentence, just for breaking into my property. Possibly a short spell in jail.
‘But, concentrate now…’ Dunbeath’s voice rose in emphasis, ‘…if one of you steps down and pulls the other one off the stone, and he falls, then you have my word, that man can go free.’
He took a step back from them and his lips tightened into a satisfied smile.
James and Alistair began to plead, first with Dunbeath and then with each other.
‘Ask to get down Jamie…give ourselves up,’ stammered Alistair, his body shaking in the wicked cold of the wind.
‘No, you fool,’ said James urgently, ‘jump at him! Come on, let’s jump at him. We can do it together.’
Dunbeath seemed completely oblivious to their argument and continued to stand quite still, pointing his gun in silence. Long seconds passed as he waited patiently. For all the world, he seemed no more than a gentleman scientist, fascinated to see the result of a chemical reaction.
As the cold black of the pistol’s muzzle pointed at first one and then the other of the brothers, their heads pulled back in horror. Too terrified to be aware of what he was doing, Alistair lost control of himself and leaked noisily onto the stone of the wall.
Possibly prompted by this, Dunbeath’s manner changed in an instant. His features hardened and his temper flared.
‘Choose!’ he now shouted at them angrily, ‘what will you have? Choose!’
The earl had passed from cool control to manic fury in just a few seconds and he now began to step rapidly from foot to foot as if scarcely able to contain himself.
‘Come on! What’s it to be, gentlemen? Life or death?’ He was screaming now, the rage that had flashed up in him almost as mind shattering to the brothers as the prospect of the sea below.
James looked across at Alistair. He was about to urge him forward again when he noticed for the first time his brother’s sodden clothing and the moonlight glinting on the puddle he’d made in front of him. It was then, at this sight, that something gave in his deranged terror. In a second his fear went out of him and, instead, an extraordinary calmness came over him.
James was quite cold now as he looked again at Alistair’s desperate, twisted face. He saw his brother’s stretched skin and starting eyes, wasting his time pleading for his life with this half-crazed man. As he looked at him, James felt as if he had left his body and was floating gently above where they stood, looking coolly down on the whole insane conflict. It all seemed so suddenly clear to him – how he had always led the way with Alistair, forever caring for him and fighting his battles. He felt as if he’d been carrying him all his life. Now he’d pissed himself. What a pathetic weakling he was. Well, he’d give him one last chance to be a man. He would pull his arm to make him attack Dunbeath. And if he fell? Then he should have fought harder. Shown more spirit! How typical it would be of him if he fell over the edge.
If Ally jumped forward when he pulled him, James thought, then they might have a chance with Dunbeath. But if the boy went over the edge? So, he’d go free himself. It was absolutely obvious to him now. Either outcome suited him, the best thing he could do was pull.
James looked away and then jerked his arm, wrenching Alistair towards him. As he did so he leapt forward from the battlement.
But Lord Dunbeath was ready for this and stepped quickly backwards, the pistol still outstretched. Like James, his eyes were on Alistair. Both of them now watched, fascinated as, in a moment of sudden quiet, the boy’s face crumpled in incomprehension and his fragile balance was lost forever on the slick stone of the battlement. There was a slight scrape as his legs
went from under him and then he fell heavily, bringing down an arm on the block that James had just stepped off. The two men heard the hideous slap as Alistair’s hand struck and then slid off the wet surface. There was no cry at first and the boy only gave a small grunt of surprise. But then, as he fell, twisting, down towards the sea far below, he let out a long and despairing scream.
There was a deep, black silence. Too stunned to react for a few seconds, James simply remained unmoved, frozen in mute shock. Then he flung himself at the battlements and stared down into the dark roar of the sea.
‘Alistair! he screamed. ‘Ally!’
He shouted again and again, his voice becoming weaker with each cry. At last, with an agonised sob, he fell to the tower’s floor, his head in his hands, whimpering in his utter self-loathing.
Dunbeath waited, quite still, seeming to observe James’s anguish with the greatest interest. Then he moved towards him and pulled him upright. The mad anger of a few minutes before had by now completely dissolved and he led the broken boy, almost gently, down the stone stairs and towards the main gate.
‘I wanted him to attack you,’ James sobbed when they’d reached the entrance hall. He continued, distraught and jabbering, all fight long gone. ‘Why didn’t he know that? I was pulling him to jump at you. Why didn’t he? That’s what I meant. Why didn’t he jump?’
‘He didn’t jump because you pulled him off the stone,’ said Dunbeath. ‘You don’t know what to think, but I’m telling you, you pulled him to his death. You chose to live. You killed him so that you could go free. That’s what happened.’
As Dunbeath opened the castle’s great entrance door, an odd compulsion seemed to come over him to share his conclusion.
‘You had no part in the decision back there,’ he muttered. ‘I wouldn’t blame yourself. It was just man’s wickedness that pulled him to his death, not you. You did it because of the evil nature that’s in all of us, in every man alive. You’re no different to anyone else, it’s only self-interest that makes us who we are. We think we’re civilised, but every one of us would do what you did. We’d all kill to survive. Even a worm will twist to escape, a fish will fight the hook. You, all of us, we’re no better than they are.’
The Prisoner's Dilemma Page 2
