The Black Douglas Trilogy

by J. R. Tomlin

  Moaning notes of a horn came from inside the castle. Voices shouted garbled commands carried by the wind.

  An arrow thudded in front of James; he lifted his shield. Another thudded and bounced off it. “Wat, how many do they have on the walls?” He stepped forward a pace, squinting in the dim light. Cursing, he used a hand to shield his eyes from the blowing sleet. One of his men screamed. Another arrow whistled past James's head as he flinched. On the parapet, through nearly every crenel threatened a longbow, dozens of them. Another flight of arrows clattered around them. He silently thanked St. Bride for the stiff wind spoiling their aim. “Blow retiral!” James shouted. The horn winded twice. “Retire! Leave the ladders.”

  The wooden ladders clattered as they were thrown down. James spun and leapt over one, shoving one of his men ahead of him with a hand to the middle of his back. His men slipped and slithered on the icy ground. Hew, arrow buried in his shoulder, was being half carried by Fergus. Another lay face down on the white-sheeted ground. James knelt. Arrows rattled around him. He rolled the man over. An arrow buried deep in the chest, the man coughed up a spume of blood and lay still. Wat grabbed James's arm and jerked him to his feet. They tore down the slope to catch up to the others, James sliding down the braeside every second and third step. Behind them another horn blew within the castle.

  James stopped and looked back. Out of bow range, he glared at the dark walls wrapped in the blowing white of the storm. “That answers any doubt. We can't take it with an assault.”

  Sir Edward's men were trotting past and the man swung from his horse, his face knotted into a scowl. “As we feared.”

  “Did you lose any men?”

  “A couple. Not enough to be a problem.”

  “After dark I'll see the bodies are retrieved,” James said.

  Edward arched an eyebrow. “What good when they're dead?”

  “I don't leave my men to English mercy,” James spit out before he could rein in his anger and frustration. “Dead or alive.”

  Edward paused, his mouth tight. "You hate the English no more than I, Douglas. It was my brothers they foully murdered. Tortured to death." His jaw worked. "Three brothers dead, tortured and beheaded. A sister caged no better than an animal."

  James's anger flowed out like a tide. “I know.” He looked closely at Edward de Bruce, so like his brother in looks, broad shouldered, blond hair, face weathered from years in the field. He was hot headed, and James prayed he was never king, but Edward de Bruce was a fury in battle. “I meant no disrespect, my lord. They've done enough evil to go around. To all of us.”

  Edward gave him a hard look, grabbed up his reins, and stamped after his men toward camp. James scrubbed his face with his hands, trying to rub away his frustration. Somehow they would take this castle. The problem was that he had no idea how.

  He crunched through the thin crust of snow and ice toward the long building, thumping his hands together, fingers numb.

  “Sir James,” Philp called. Behind him stood a man of middle years, chest big as a keg of ale with streaks of gray in his bronze hair and a heavy bag slung over his thick shoulder. Philp thrust his head toward the man. “This is Syme that I told you about.”

  “Then bring him in and we'll warm ourselves whilst we talk.” James stomped to work some feeling back in his feet. He hit the door with the flat of his hand and strode inside. Richert squatted in a far corner as he adjusted a blanket. “Richert, how does Hew fair?”

  “Arrowhead went all the way through his shoulder, my lord. Pulling it out wasn't too bad. If he doesn't get wound fever, he'll mend.”

  James nodded and went to hold his hands out to the fire that blazed up from the stone pit in the floor that served as a hearth. The door slammed as the two men followed him in. James looked over his shoulder trying to ignore the prickle as the blood flowed back into his hands and feet. Curse a siege in such weather.

  “Syme, is it?”

  “Aye, my lord. A smith and...” Syme cleared his throat and dropped the bag on the floor with a loud metallic clatter. The man scratched the back of his neck, and he shifted from one foot to the other. “The thing is, my lord, these ladders we use. It just seems to me there doesn't be any way to sneak them to a castle wall.”

  James gave a bark of a laugh. “I'll not argue with you there.”

  “So I was thinking on it and made a different sort, but Sir Edward... Well, he's a right proud knight, King's brother and all. Said he wasn't one for sneaking.” Syme nudged the bag with his foot. “Philp here said you might want to take a look. I think it would work. If a man didn't mind sneaking.” He knelt to pick up the bag and dumped a mess of ropes and boards and metal onto the floor. “Look, my lord.” He pulled out a heavy, squared iron hook in each hand and stood, stretching out the mess.

  Frowning, James shook on the rope where it went through wooden rungs a couple of feet apart, and came to the third one down that had an iron fender across the back. He turned it. “This would...?” He blinked and grinned. “This would hold it off the wall whilst you climbed.”

  Syme held out one of the hooks. “See I made a hole in each of the hooks. You could stick the point of a pike in, and a tall man could lift it high enough to hook over the wall. If he sneaked up, quiet like.”

  James took the hook, heart thumping in his chest. “By the Holy Rude,” he said softly. “Syme, how long would it take you to make more of these?”

  The man beamed. “I'll make as many as pleases you. Hardly any work to make if I have the rope and a mite of iron.”

  James's men had gathered in a circle around them, muttering and peering over each other’s shoulders.

  “I'll see you have as much as you need. And a handsome reward to go with it.” James was chuckling as he straightened out the rope ladder. “That no one ever thought of this before... By all the saints, what we can do with such a thing.”

  Wat squatted and straightened out the bottom portion. “We'll need a good amount of rope—forty feet for each ladder. Or fifty more like. And iron for the hooks. Wood for the rungs.” He scratched his head. “Not sure where we'll find that much. It'll take doing.”

  Syme put in, “I saw a good pile of rope in the stables. And there's iron at the smithy they left there. Not like it takes very much.”

  “Wat, have someone search the town. Find every scrap of rope and iron in the place. Let's hope this miserable weather holds. We'll need it to cover a night attack. Tear down the rest of that cowshed for the wood.”

  “You going to tell Sir Edward what you're planning?” Wat asked.

  James grimaced. “He's in command. I can't attack without his say so, but I don't know that he has to know what we're planning exactly.” He nodded to himself. “I'll tell him that we'll make another feint at the walls by night and ask him to have his men ready in case we can open the gates.”

  Syme frowned at him. “He fought hard at the Dee. He's no craven, you know.”

  “Only a madman would question his valor.” James grinned. “But I'm not the King's brother nor nearly too proud to sneak an attack.”

  The man examined his creation, nodding thoughtfully.

  “So get to work on what we need for these ladders--all of you. Syme, do you think you can have twenty ladders made in two days’ time? Before the English in Buittle find their courage and decide to come to their aid.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The second night, James leaned on the wall outwith the malting door looking at the scattering of stars in a clear winter sky and cursing. Clear weather held for three more days until clouds blew in late in the afternoon, so dark that it turned night an hour before the sun set. When James made his way to the house where Sir Edward crouched over a cup of wine with another knight, the King's brother grunted and shrugged when James told him that he was going to make a night attack on the castle. “If we make it over the walls and open the gates, we could use a company of your men.”

  “If.” Edward snorted. “But I'll send a company to the
barricade.” He waved to his unarmored companion “See to it.”

  “I'll wait till the English are snug inside, hiding from this snow. My men will be at the castle walls in three hours’ time.” James let the door bang closed behind him.

  Flakes of snow, as big as oak leaves, tumbled in the wind as he squelched his way to the malting. “Four men to a ladder,” he ordered as he stomped inside, unbuckling his sword belt. He tossed it onto the table. “It will be dirks and dirty work in the dark. No noise. Not a sound from the lot of you.”

  Richert spoke up. “The pikes are the hard part. We must have them for the ladders.”

  “No help for that. You men carrying those, try to put them down silently. Don't let them rattle against the walls.” Twenty men with pikes to put the ladders in place, forty all together for the attack. Richert had the right of it that those made sneaking harder. James pulled his mail hauberk over his head. “No armor. No swords. Our weapons tonight are dirks and our ladders.” He stuck his dirk, as long as his forearm, into his belt. Clattering and clanking and muttering of men shedding their armor filled the room. Plunging his hand into a bucket of ash next to the hearth, James pulled up a handful and smeared it over his face.

  Syme folded a ladder into one of the rough bags and nudged the pile of bags beside the door with a foot. “My lord, a favor.”

  James twitched a smile. “I owe you at least one. What's that?”

  “I'd like to be first up.”

  “No reason not. I'll be behind you.” He looked his men over. There was always the worry he'd forgotten something. Something that would mean his men would die. He picked up his heavy cloak and pulled it around his shoulders. “We'll be exposed out there for a long while getting to the walls. Put on every stitch that you have. If your cloak is dark, then wear it.”

  Fergus shouldered one of the bags and took a pike from the other side of the door. “Too bad we can't climb with these.”

  James slapped the man's shoulder. “You're good enough with your dirk for tonight's work.” One last look. Either they won, or they died--just another night of war. “Let's go.”

  James led an odd group of warriors through thick, blowing snow up the rutted road to Rutherglen Castle. They were unarmed except for their dirks stuck in their belts, in wool tunics and trews and flapping cloaks, faces and hands smeared with wood ash to make sure they didn't stand out in the murk. They moved silently through the dark. One man grunted when he stumbled into a hole. Bracken crunched as James shoved his way past, but the noise blew away on the whistle of the wind. James sucked in a breath as he slid down the edge of the dry spike-lined moat. Someone grunted softly. “Spread out,” James whispered. They knew their part now, to scramble up the far side of the moat. James squeezed Syme's shoulder and then prodded him ahead. Wat was panting on the other side as he tried to climb and handle the sixteen-foot pike he carried.

  Spread out the few feet between the edge of the moat and the stone wall, James gave a low whistle, his signal to hoist the ladders. Their task, to raise the hooks on the pike tips and catch them on the edge of the parapet, they'd had no chance to practice. He'd chosen the strongest of his men for the job. Syme grunted as he hoisted the pike overhead. Wat panted as he lifted. There was a faint clank of metal on stone. The man sucked cursed under his breath and lifted the pike higher. “Got it,” he breathed out and jerked on one of the rungs. James leaned back against the wall, closed his eyes and let his hammering heart slow. James pulled his dirk, clasped it between his teeth and signaled for Syme to go.

  The ladder rocked as they climbed, clanking faintly against the stone. James grabbed the merlon and hoisted himself through the crenel, breathing a sigh of relief. If any guards had seen the hooks, they'd cut the rope through and send his men crashing down. But the snow and the cold had kept all the defenders inside.

  James waved Wat to the other side without speaking. The man already had his orders. They split the party in two. The square six-story keep was surrounded by the high, thick curtain wall with the embattled parapet walk. The subsidiary buildings in the bailey yard, stables and warehouses, were coated with snow. Wat led half the men at a trot to the far gatehouse tower where half the sentries would be sheltered. James hurriedly led half the men down the stairs to approach from the near side tower. There must have been at least a hundred defenders in the castle, judging by what they'd seen three days before, but only a few would be on night duty.

  A dog barked once and yelped. Then there was silence.

  James pressed his ear to the tower door. A snore snorted on the other side. A voice raised softly in a night song--a cursing complaint. He threw open the door with a crash and dove for the nearest guard, head down on a table. With a hard hand, he grabbed over the guard’s mouth and jerked back the head. A hard slice across the throat followed and blood pooled on the table. James spun. The small stark chamber was filled with unarmored men, and four more bodies sprawled on the blood soaked floor.

  There was clanging as something metal was thrown off the wall. “What is that thing? Where are the other guards?”

  James stepped into the doorway. They'd missed a guard, and he'd found one of their ladders. Trying not to sound Scottish James shouted, “Some fool thing the smith was trying out. I'll be right up. God damn, it was freezing up there.”

  “What kind of fool thing?” The man didn't sound overly worried.

  He bound up the twisting stairs to the parapet. The guard strode toward him. “What the devil's going...”

  James plunged his dirk deep into the man's throat. Blood gushed, warm and sticky, over his arms as he caught the body and lowered it. No help for it. By the time he ran back down the stairway, Wat and his twenty men were streaming out of the tower. Wat nodded his success.

  Across the wide cobbled courtyard, the keep was dark, the door closed. James motioned Fergus to him. “Take three men and check the stables and outbuildings. If you must, silence anyone that you find.” Opening the gates would be sure to rouse the castle. He couldn't afford to bring help. “Wat, once the fighting starts inside raise the gate and sound the alarm,” he said and ran.

  He threw open the door. A dying fire flickered on the hearth throwing flickering light over men wrapped in blankets on the floor. A man rolled to his knees, fumbling for a weapon that James kicked away. He slammed the flat of his sword on the man's head. “Fight and you're dead men,” he yelled. His men rushed through the room, grabbing up weapons as they went. A dark figure threw a blanket back as he rose, swinging a sword, but he went down with a groan. James scooped up a sword from the floor.

  Outside the gate squealed metal upon stone as the grate was raised. A trumpet blew. “A Douglas!” Wat shouted. The lord's chamber would be higher. “With me,” James called to half a dozen of his men and took the stairs two and three at a time. The door to a room flew open and a man stumbled out, bare-arsed with a blade in his hand. Within the room, a woman whimpered. The man backed against the wall, raising his sword. James batted it aside and held his blade at the man's neck. “Best you yield,” he said softly.

  Half a dozen more men dashed down from an upper story. A woman above was screaming. One of the men ran full tilt into James's sword. The others threw their blades clattering on the stone floor. “Check the upper floors. I especially want the hell-spawn archers if you find any.” He motioned the prisoners ahead of him and followed them down to the great hall.

  Only three men had been killed there. The others sat, hands bound behind them, staring in terror at the Scots who had come seemingly out of nowhere. In a moment, Sir Edward threw the door open with a bang. He shook his head as he looked around the hall. Finally, he said, “Hell mend you, Douglas. You are good at sneaking.”

  James smiled. “It's a skill I have, Sir Edward.”

  The man snorted and strode past the prisoners to the lord's chair at the head of the hall. “Someone throw wood on the fire. It's hellish cold out there.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Spring, 1309


  James paced, glowering over the waste of the Moor of Rannoch before smacking his fist into his palm. His men glanced his way but kept their distance. It had been a two-day wait, and he could delay no longer than daybreak on the morrow to leave for St. Andrews. Even with his tail of only two score men, he'd been hard pressed to find decent ground to camp. Behind him, they sat on rocks and logs around two campfires, the scent of roasting quail and rabbits cutting through the smell of the dank pools, burns and peat bogs that dotted the landscape where trees twisted into monstrous forms from the winds. Yet it was broken by massive ribs of dark rock. The high, blue mountains beyond, Mount Rannock and the vast maze of the Mamlorn, made him feel small and alone in this vast, wilderness remorseless desolation, even with his men at his back.

  From the top of the stony ridge, his lookout shouted, “Incoming!”

  Three horsemen cleared the crest, riding at a walk toward them. James squinted, walking toward the incomers. Three were black friars on simply palfreys. With them rode handsomely equipped knights, two men-at-arms and two women.

  James took a step toward them, drawing his sword. Behind him was the sound of dozens of swords being drawn.

  The friar in the lead kicked his horse to a faster pace.

  “Bishop Lamberton!” James shouted and ran toward them. Lamberton, in his simple friar's robes, climbed haltingly from his horse, sinking to his ankles into standing water. James brushed through knee-high reeds, splashing, and would have dropped to his knees to kiss the Bishop of St. Andrew's ring if the thin, bony man hadn't grabbed his arms in a fierce grip.

  “Jamie—lad...” William Lamberton's voice broke. “To lay eyes on you again...” The bishop's mouth worked but he couldn't seem to find words.