Caging the Lyon Read online

  ~#~

  The door to the hall at Locksley opened behind the knight and he turned to see who it was. One of the serjeants booted a dog out of the door; presumably it had been annoying the sheriff’s men. This gave Robert enough time to string his bow and draw an arrow from his quiver. As the knight turned back and the door slammed shut Robert let fly, striking the man in his chest, punching through his chainmail and penetrating one of his lungs. He dropped to the ground making a gurgling sound which soon ceased when John drew his dagger across his throat. Robert and his men picked up the deer carcass, weapons, tent and bag of cash and made their way over to the stables. The two boys who looked after the horses and slept in the stables pleaded to come with Robert, saying that they would be punished severely if they were left behind. Robert was in a hurry so he agreed, though he had reservations about being lumbered with two eleven year olds. They had just finished saddling the visitors’ six horses and two of his father’s when a cry went up: the body of the knight had been found.

  Releasing his father’s other horses they got mounted quickly. John and one of the other men pulled the stable boys up in front of them, and, driving the other horses before them, they galloped out of the village. Once they were well into the woods they left the other horses to be recovered by Robert’s father later and rode south towards the immense royal hunting forest of Sherwood. That night they camped on the outskirts of the forest and feasted on venison. It hadn’t hung so it was very tough and none of the party was adept at cooking so it was burnt on the outside and raw in the middle but it still tasted good to the bondsmen, who had rarely tasted meat.

  A few days later Robert found a cliff well away from any of the forest roads. There were three caves that went some way into the cliff, one of which could only be accessed after a short climb. A stream flowed past the base of the cliff providing a constant supply of water. The caves themselves were reasonably dry so Robert quickly came to the conclusion that he was unlikely to find a better place for his new home. The horses were staked out to graze during the day in a nearby clearing and then shut up in one of the caves at night. The cave ten feet up the cliff face became their living quarters and the third cave was used as a store.

  Within two weeks the cave used as the stables had a rough wooden fence with a gate to keep the horses in. A stone wall with arrow slits had been built across the living quarters to keep out the weather and provide protection from attack. A wooden wall with a door, with a lock bought in Nottingham, secured the store.

  The forest provided a plentiful supply of meat - venison and boar in the main - but they needed flour, milk and vegetables as well. So Robert and John set off to see the miller at Edwinstowe, the nearest village. The mill sat on the River Maun, which provided the power to grind the corn; luckily it stood a little way out of the village and away from the prying eyes of the bailiff. In exchange for meat the miller traded sacks of flour and bought vegetables from the villagers to trade as well. All they needed now was a cow for milk and some chickens for eggs, but these were in short supply at Edwinstowe. What animals the villagers had they needed themselves. There was nothing for it but to venture into Nottingham where there was a weekly market.

  Robert decided that John shouldn’t come into Nottingham with him: such a large youth would stand out too much and Robert had no doubt that everyone was aware that both he and John had been declared outlaws. He took three of the former bondsmen with him and disguised himself as a freeman by wearing woollen hose below his braies with a plain woollen tunic and a hood. The other men dressed similarly as their normal garb – homespun tunics and bare legs – would have marked them out as bondsmen who would have no business being away from their lord’s manor. They had to leave their weapons behind too. Freemen wouldn’t normally carry a sword or any weapon, except perhaps a knife but Robert decided to risk taking his dagger. They rode as near to the town as they dared and left the horses with John in a small clearing in the woods.

  Nottingham on market day was bustling. The stalls were set up every Saturday in the square between Timber Row in the French Borough, which lay below the castle, and Long Row in the English Borough. The market was only a few hundred yards from the gate known as Chapel Bar on the Derby Road, which was the gate that Robert and his two men chose to enter by. The road was packed with people making for the market so they had no trouble in walking past the gate sentries who were busy collecting tolls from those bringing goods in to sell at the market. There were only a few milk cows for sale and most were past their best but Eldred, one of the former bondsmen, selected two that looked reasonably promising. He haggled the price down before parting with several silver pennies from the small purse that Robert had given him.

  Meanwhile Robert and another of his men, having failed to find any chickens for sale in the market itself, walked down a promising sounding lane called the Poultry, which led away from the market square towards the centre of the town. They soon found an open fronted shop where chicks a few days old were for sale and so they bought a box of two dozen for a few copper coins. Robert then visited the area known as the Drapery to buy two ells of cloth so that the rest of his men could make better clothes for themselves. As he finished paying for the cloth he heard a voice behind him.

  ‘Robert, is that you?’ He turned and saw that the speaker was a young woman of perhaps seventeen or eighteen. At first he didn’t recognise her, though she looked vaguely familiar.

  ‘It is you.’ The girl smiled at him. He could see that she was very pretty, despite the wimple that covered her hair and neck. ‘It’s me, Marianne.’

  He recollected her with a start. She was his cousin, the daughter of his father’s younger sister, whom he hadn’t seen since he went away to be the squire to Sir Guy FitzRichard seven years previously. She can only have been ten then so it was no wonder he hadn’t recognised her.

  ‘Marianne! God’s blood, it’s great to see you again. I heard that you had married,’ his voice trailed off. Out of the corner of his eye he saw two men-at-arms watching them. Obviously their eye had been caught by the pretty, well-dressed girl, even though she was wearing the wimple that only married women wore and was accompanied by a maid. ‘Look, best not to talk here. Can we meet in, say, fifteen minutes in St. Nicholas’ Church?’

  A look of puzzlement crossed the girl’s face; obviously she hadn’t heard that he was an outlaw now. As he turned to pick up his cloth and leave, she plucked at his sleeve and nodded. The two men headed back to the market, hoping that the men-at-arms would continue to watch Marianne, but something about Robert and his companion must have piqued their interest as they started to follow them instead. Robert whispered in his companion’s ear and, when they reached the market again, Robert handed the cloth to him and headed off down Wheeler Gate. His companion pressed on through the crowd carrying the box of chicks under one arm and the cloth under the other.

  The two soldiers hesitated for a moment, conferring urgently, then they both set off after Robert. Once he left the market area the number of people thinned out considerably. After a few hundred yards Robert saw an alley to his left and ducked into it. He pounded down it and came out in Hounds Gate. He could hear the two men-at-arms running after him but they were hampered by their helmets and swords. He ran down Hounds Gate towards the castle then ducked into another alley. He risked a look back up the street and saw his two pursuers looking up and down Hounds Gate trying to decide which way he had gone. Then they split up, one going each way along the street. Robert waited until the man came level with the alley then as he peered suspiciously into the dark passage, Robert reached out and pulled the surprised soldier towards him by the leather coif he wore under his helmet. Robert had drawn his dagger in readiness and plunged this through the thick gambeson the man-at-arms wore and up under his ribs into the man’s heart. Cleaning his dagger on the dead man’s clothing, he sheathed it and stepped over the body back into Hounds Gate, just as the second man-at-arms drew level with him. He drew his dagger again bu
t the man had pulled out his sword before he could use it. A dagger was no match for a sword. Robert knew that he was in real trouble, and to cap it all, two more soldiers were running down Hounds Gate towards them.

  ~#~

  Nicholas was out riding his pony with Patrick, a twelve year old page that his mother had recruited since their arrival at Berwick. The page was the son of a local baron called Waltheof and grandson of Gospatric, earl of Lothian. A somewhat sombre boy, Guy had thought him responsible enough to supervise his son’s riding practice. Patrick was mounted on a small rouncey, which was much faster than Nicholas’ pony, and Patrick was under strict instructions that they were not to ride out of sight of the castle. Guy and Emma’s eldest was a spirited boy and kept plaguing Patrick to let him ride a little further along the sloping meadow that adjoined the western wall of the outer bailey, but Patrick took his responsibilities seriously and headed Nicholas off as soon as he tried to ride too far from the castle.

  ‘Nicholas, you know your mother would tan my backside if I let you out of sight of the sentries on the castle wall’. He stopped talking as he became aware that the younger boy was staring past him at the castle. Half suspecting that this might be a ruse by Nicholas to distract him, Patrick nevertheless turned to see what the boy was looking at. At first he didn’t spot it, then he saw that the black and white banner of de Cuille had been replaced by a different banner on top of the gatehouse.

  ‘Why has my father’s banner been taken down?’

  ‘What’s worse it has been replaced by that of Máel Coluim,’ Patrick replied recognising the gold dragon on red banner immediately as it was the reverse of that used by King Malcolm. ‘There must be traitors in the garrison.’

  Patrick grabbed hold of Nicholas’ bridle and led his pony over a small ridge into dead ground.

  ‘They’ll be looking for us as soon as they realise we’re not in the castle,’ he explained.

  The younger boy nodded. ‘We must ride and warn my father.’ His lip trembled and his eyes were moist but he blinked back his tears. ‘My mother, Simon and the baby are in danger.’ Patrick admired the boy’s control of his emotions. Most seven-year olds in his position would have broken down and wept.

  ‘We don’t know where your father is – and I’m pretty sure that Galloway is a long way from here.’ Patrick thought for a moment. ‘I know, let’s head for Craigmor and let your father’s constable there know what’s happened. He’ll know what to do.’

  ‘Good idea; do you know where it is?’

  Patrick shrugged. ‘I know it’s on the sea cliffs somewhere north of here. All we have to do is follow the coast.’

  They worked their way round to the north of the town, keeping out of sight of the castle, until they struck the coast, then followed it north, keeping away from the main road. It was just as well that they did so: half an hour after they had set off they watched from behind a gorse bush three hundred yards away from the road as four armed men on garrons pounded past them heading up the road in the direction of Edinburgh. Soon the road headed inland and the two boys continued along narrow tracks following the coast. They stopped at the fishing village of Eyemouth and bought some bread and smoked fish with the few meagre coins that Patrick had with him. They ate the bread for lunch and saved the fish for supper. Luckily the weather stayed dry as they had to sleep in the open. Making do with a drink of water from a burn for breakfast they carried on until late in the afternoon when they saw the half-built castle ahead of them.

  The gate in the outer wall was closed but it was opened immediately when the two boys identified themselves. Five minutes later they were sitting in the solar of Sir Edmund of Winchester explaining why they were there.

  ‘It’s not the only fortress to fall to the adherents of Máel Coluim either,’ Edmund told the steward later. ‘I’ve just heard that even the earl of Lothian’s castle at Dunbar has been seized. It looks as if King Malcolm has a full blown rebellion on his hands. To make matters worse Henry of England has bullied him and his brother, William, into accompanying him across the channel to besiege Toulouse. This has left Scotland leaderless at the worst possible time.’

  ~#~

  Guy was in a meeting with Walter FitzAlan, the high steward of Scotland, and the other leaders of the Scots army, including the earl of Lothian, when Edmund’s messenger arrived. They were discussing how best to follow up their defeat of Fergus of Galloway in an engagement two days previously.

  ‘I say we must run Fergus to earth so he doesn’t have the chance to build up another army. We need to deal with him once and for all.’ Robert de Brus, the lord of Annandale, was Fergus’s rival for the leadership of the region and he didn’t intend to let this chance to eliminate his enemy slip through his fingers. ‘Then we can deal with this uprising in Lothian.’

  ‘That’s all very well but the rebellion in the south east could well infect the rest of Scotland. There are several earls in the north who don’t think Malcolm is strong enough to be king. They don’t like the fact that he is off gallivanting in France at the beck and call of Henry of England either.’ Gospatric of Lothian was one of the few earls who was staunchly loyal to Malcolm.

  ‘Why on earth they think that Máel Coluim would make a better king, God alone knows,’ Walter FitzAlan broke in. ‘He’s been a prisoner in a cell in Roxburgh Castle for the last sixteen years. The last I heard he was a broken old man.’

  ‘Perhaps it is time for him to meet his maker,’ suggested Hervey de Keith, the marishal, darkly. ‘Who is the constable at Roxburgh?’

  ‘Sir David Maxwell. But Máel Coluim is a cousin of the king so should we be doing anything without his sanction?’ Walter queried.

  ‘Look Walter, Malcolm left you and me as joint justicars to rule Scotland in his absence. I am not suggesting a trial or execution, merely giving nature a hand. We already have one rebellion here in Galloway to quell. Somerled is all too ready to lead his men in another incursion from Argyll, and this time he might well burn Glasgow to the ground, and the whole of Perthshire and the north is ready to rise in rebellion. We need to act now or there will be no kingdom for the king to return to.’

  ‘I agree with de Keith.’ Guy put in. ‘I don’t want to have to besiege the castle where my wife and children are held. I would rather the revolt collapsed of its own accord once the death of Máel Coluim becomes common knowledge. I suspect that the rebels will then flee to save their skins.’

  ‘That makes sense to me,’ Gospatric nodded. ‘I am in the same boat as Guy, although my son is with the king in France, my wife is at Dunbar. My vote is for the untimely death of Máel Coluim.’

  ‘Who and how?’ Walter looked at Hervey to answer the question. De Keith thought for a moment.

  ‘I have a serjeant who was passed over for knighthood when he became too old to be a squire. It still rankles and I think receiving the accolade might just be sufficient reward. Leave it to me.’

  Guy wasn’t particularly happy with such a ruthless solution but he could see that it made political sense. He just prayed that the rebels at Berwick didn’t take revenge on his family once the news of Máel Coluim’s death reached them.

  ~#~

  Guy’s cousin, Hugh de Cuille, looked at the smoking remains of the mill at Byrness at the northern end of Redesdale. The previous night a party of Scots raiders had crossed the border at Carter Bar and attacked the village, running off a dozen cattle, a flock of sheep and several horses. The destruction of the mill had just been a wanton act of spitefulness as it availed them nothing. The villagers had managed to kill one of the raiders and capture another: a boy of about thirteen who had fought his captors like a wildcat, biting several of them quite badly, before they had knocked him out and tied his hands and feet together.

  Hugh went to see the boy, who glared up at him malevolently out of piercing blue eyes set in a face so filthy that it was impossible to guess what he looked like. He was bare legged and wore no more than a ragged sleeveless saffron tunic and a leather
belt. Hugh told his men to wash him so they doused the boy with several buckets of water before scrubbing his face with a rag until Hugh could see that his pale complexion was covered in freckles. His face was framed by greasy, matted ginger hair. The boy was spluttering with indignation and rage so Hugh kicked him hard in the ribs, which made him wince.

  ‘Ask him where he is from,’ he told the bailiff, whose wife was Scots and who spoke the dialect used over the border. But the boy just continued to glare at Hugh and said nothing in reply.

  ‘How do we get this recalcitrant young savage to talk? Any ideas?’ Hugh looked at the bailiff who pondered the question for a moment, then grinned at Hugh.

  ‘I suggest we tie a cord round his bollocks and hoist him by them from that tree.’ The bailiff said in the Lowland dialect and pointing to a nearby oak. Hugh didn’t understand a word but the boy did.

  ‘Nay. Ye dinna want ta be doin’ tha.’ The boy’s animosity had disappeared in an instant, to be replaced by real anxiety. ‘I hail fra Saughtree.’ Hugh recognised the place name without translation and smiled. Saughtree was a notorious nest of the Elwold clan about ten miles from Carter Bar in the Wauchope Forest.

  ‘What’s your name, boy?’ But he refused to say more until the bailiff sent for some strong cord and, tying a noose at one end and throwing back the hem of his tunic, he went to slip it round the boy’s scrotum.

  ‘It’s Elliot.’ He said in a panic.

  ‘Is it now.’ Hugh mused. He knew that, by tradition, the name Elliot was given to the eldest son of the chief of the Elwolds. It fitted with the saffron tunic too as the colour was often reserved for a chief’s family in Celtic clans. ‘I think we’ll keep this little firebrand as a hostage instead of hanging him.’ He looked at the bailiff. ‘Do we know someone who could take a message to the chief to let him know that his eldest son is safe and well - for now that is?’ The man nodded. ‘Good. Put that cord around his neck instead. I’ll take him back to Otterburn for now. Let’s hope he can keep up or he’ll hang himself.’