Caging the Lyon Page 5

  He tethered the horse in a copse and washed the worst of the horse muck off his clothes in a stream. He now had a problem. He had told his men to head back to their base with their purchases but he was the wrong side of the river. To reach Sherwood Forest he had to cross back again and the nearest place to do that was Gunthorpe where there was a ford. Although the sentries at the bridge gate hadn’t paid much attention to him, one of two had looked at him and they would remember the smell. It wouldn’t be long before a party of mounted serjeants were sent in pursuit.

  He mounted again and cautiously retraced his steps until he reached the junction with the road to Newark. He reached the track which led to Gunthorpe without incident but, when he approached the ford he found three men wearing the badge of the Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire guarding it. They spotted him at the same time and ran to their horses. Luckily he was mounted on a jennet whereas they wore chain mail and rode rounceys so he left them behind after a couple of miles. Once back on the Newark road he followed it over the River Trent then headed west towards the forest some ten miles away. By now it was getting late in the day and as it had started to rain he decided to spend the night at a small wayside tavern. However, he pulled off the road just before he reached it.

  He changed his smelly braies for a red pair he found in the pack hanging from the horse’s saddle. The fact that they were far too large round the waist didn’t show too badly once he had tied the waist cords. The spare tunic he found was also too large so he discarded that together with his own soiled one. He would have to make do with wearing his under tunic and a black woollen cloak he had found in the pack.

  An hour later he was sitting in the taproom with his second quart of ale, having eaten a tasty meat pie and some bread when two of the sheriff’s men came in shaking rain off their cloaks. Robert watched in alarm as they talked to the innkeeper. He caught the phrase ‘smelling of horse shit’. It was obvious that he had not completely eradicated the stench when the innkeeper pointed Robert out to them. The two soldiers drew their swords before heading towards him.

  Chapter Two – A Legend is Born 1160 - 62 A. D.

  Robert de Brus and the marishal, Hervey de Keith, had been left to pursue Fergus of Galloway whilst Walter FitzAlan, Guy FitzRichard and Gospatric of Lothian headed for Berwick. When they reached Roxburgh Castle near Kelso the constable greeted them with the sad tidings that Máel Coluim had died in his sleep. Walter immediately ordered a lavish funeral in Kelso Abbey so that word of his death spread far and wide. The army then advanced on Berwick.

  Lady Emma had been confined to her bedchamber with her maid, the pages and the two children since Duff had seized the castle but was otherwise unharmed. They were even allowed outside for half an hour each day under armed escort. The servant who brought their food had told her that the members of the garrison who had remained loyal to Guy had been thrown in the dungeons and were in a poor state. Emma was a sensitive woman and this news affected her much more deeply than her own circumstances. She also worried constantly about her son, Nicholas, and Patrick, the page who was missing with him. All she knew was that they hadn’t been found by Duff’s men.

  In the north the earl of Strathearn was also fermenting rebellion and the news that he had seized the town of Perth reached FitzAlan as he arrived outside Berwick with his army. Walter immediately called a council of war.

  ‘We must re-capture Berwick and Dunbar before we move on Perth.’ Both Guy and Gospatric were desperate to recover their respective castles and release their families before embarking on a major campaign in the Highlands.

  ‘I agree.’ Eachann Mac Hearn had joined the army with his borderers at Kelso. ‘It makes no sense to go fighting fires in the north whilst the south is still aflame.’

  ‘But the castle is holding out at Perth. We must relieve them before it falls.’ Walter paused. ‘I have some other news as well. The king and Prince William have left France to return home.’

  ‘But that’s excellent. One of the reasons that folk were dissatisfied with him was his deference to Henry of England and his foreign adventures.’ Gospatric interrupted.

  FitzAlan ignored him and ploughed on. ‘What is not so good is the fact that he is headed for Dundee having heard of the problems in Lothian, and that town is in the hands of Strathearn and the rebel earls.’

  ‘Can we not get a message to him?’ Guy asked.

  ‘I sent a ship to intercept him. I just hope it can find his fleet, but the North Sea is a big area.’ Walter shrugged. ‘All we can do, it seems, is to re-take Berwick and Dunbar and then move north.’

  The servant that normally brought them the sparse fare each day woke Emma at four in the morning when it was still dark.

  ‘Wake up my lady. Duff has fled.’

  ‘How dare you! Get your hands off me.’ Emma was still half asleep and somewhat indignant at being dragged from her sleep by a servant.

  ‘I beg pardon, my lady, but Duff and his men are gone. I thought that you would want to know.’

  ‘What? Duff gone? No, I’m sorry. You were quite right to wake me.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Agnes, get me dressed. Then we must rescue those poor wretches from the dungeons.’

  The castle was devoid of life as Emma emerged from the keep and made her way across to the gatehouse where the gates stood wide open. The servant and the pages managed to get them shut and barred, just in case Duff changed his mind. She sent two pages up to the top of the keep to take down the gold dragon banner of the late Máel Coluim and raise that of de Cuille again. She herself went down the stairs to the dungeons and was immediately assailed by the stench of the unwashed and of human excrement. The poor wretches had been left chained together in the dark with overflowing buckets as their only latrine. They looked half-starved and cowered away from the light given off by the torch that a servant carried.

  There was nothing Emma could do immediately to release the captives so she sent a page into the town to find a blacksmith to come and remove their fetters. In the meantime she ordered the servants to clear away the stinking buckets and to bring food and water.

  By the time that Guy arrived with the royal army the next day the loyal serjeants and men-at-arms were recovering and the fittest of them were on guard duty. The army camped outside while the commanders met in the great hall to discuss the next stage of the campaign.

  ‘I propose we send a messenger to Dunbar to ascertain whether the rebels have fled from there as well.’ One of the lords suggested.

  ‘And if they haven’t?’ Gospatric asked. ‘I would rather we march there as soon as possible and not waste time waiting around here.’

  ‘But we don’t know the situation in Perth and Dundee.’ Eachann Mac Hearn reminded them. ‘I’ll not go outside Lothian with my borderers so I’ll make for Dunbar with the earl here and we can call for reinforcements from Edinburgh if we need to. Meanwhile the rest can head straight for Perthshire.’

  The high steward was about to endorse this plan when a messenger arrived. He handed over a letter then stood to one side as Walter read it. He looked round the room.

  ‘The king is safe for the moment.’ At the collective sigh of relief he held his hand up. ‘He managed to reach Perth and is now ensconced in the castle but the town and the surrounding area are in the hands of Strathearn and the rebel earls. Malcolm has two hundred knights and four hundred other soldiers, including the garrison, but he is faced by a force of over two thousand.’

  ‘How many do we have here, without the earl and Eachann’s borderers? Guy asked.

  ‘Perhaps eleven hundred, but we can call out the trained bands from Edinburgh. That will enable us to outnumber the rebels. I’ll send a messenger tonight and we can meet them at Stirling.’

  A week later the rebels found themselves caught between the approaching army of the high steward and the king’s forces in the castle.

  ‘Well what happened?’ Emma wanted to know when Guy eventually returned to Berwick, bringing Nicholas and Patri
ck back with him from Craigmor.

  ‘Well, not a lot really. The rebels were outnumbered so they sued for a truce and Strathearn and the other rebel earls swore fealty to Malcolm. He took a son from each of them as hostage and we all went home.’

  ‘What about Fergus of Galloway, my lord?’ His squire, Duncan, asked.

  Guy smiled. ‘Your father and de Brus caught him and he will now spend his remaining days as a monk at the abbey of the Holy Rood in Edinburgh. His son, Uhtred, has been made lord of Galloway in his place.’

  ‘What about Duff?’ Although Duff and his men hadn’t treated Emma and her children badly, she was still outraged by his disloyalty and the conditions in which he had kept his captives.

  ‘The supporters of Máel Coluim have been rounded up and are in jail in Edinburgh awaiting trial. They will all be hanged without a doubt. I can only assume that Duff is amongst them.’

  But Guy was wrong. Malcolm didn’t hang them. They were exiled from Scotland and sent in chains to Toulouse where they were forced to join the English army besieging the town. At a stroke Malcolm had got rid of them and pleased Henry Plantagenet at the same time.

  ~#~

  Robert only had a dagger so he knew he couldn’t fight two experienced serjeants armed with swords. Standing up he picked up the stool he had been sitting on and threw it at one of the men, closely followed by the heavy pottery quart tankard at the other. Both men ducked and Robert sprinted for the door, kicking a bench into their path, over which one man tripped. Robert was out of the door and racing for the stables before he realised that his horse would be unsaddled. He cursed, then realised the serjeants’ mounts would be there.

  Luckily the ostler had only unsaddled one; a stable boy was holding the reins of the other so Robert climbed into the saddle, wrenched the reins out of the hands of the surprised boy and, bending low to avoid the lintel, rode out of the stables into the yard. Seeing the two serjeants barring his way he kicked his heels into the sides of the horse and rode them down. One of them managed to cut the flank of the horse as he escaped but Robert didn’t notice. However, after half a mile the horse stumbled then came to a halt, its sides quivering with the shock of the wound.

  Robert dismounted and examined the cut. It hadn’t severed anything vital but the horse was losing a lot of blood. He led it into the woods at the side of the road and cut its throat with his dagger rather than let it face a lingering death. Three minutes later the two serjeants galloped past, one riding the jennet Robert had stolen from the Nottingham merchant. They would know his horse was wounded so Robert didn’t think it would be long before they realised that he had eluded them and retraced their steps. He set off back to the tavern at a run.

  He had seen two other horses in the stable, both nags but it would be better than walking. He crept up to the stables wondering where the ostler and the stable boy were. Then he heard the unmistakable sounds of rutting coming from one of the empty stalls. He hadn’t really paid much attention to them earlier; the ostler was perhaps eighteen or nineteen and the boy maybe twelve or thirteen. He had noticed that the boy had an unusually attractive face though. His gorge rose as he thought of the man sodomising him but when he looked into the stall he got a shock. The stable boy was undoubtedly female. Recovering from his surprise he rapped on the wall to get their attention. The couple leaped apart in confusion and alarm.

  ‘Now why would a girl, and a pretty one at that, need to disguise herself as a boy?’ He asked them.

  ‘Please don’t tell anyone, sir,’ the ostler stood nervously, pulling up his braies. ‘We’re in love but her father betrothed her to a bad-tempered sod of a man he owed money to so we ran away.’ He paused uncertainly. ‘What are you going to do?’ The girl came and stood by his side, her eyes mutely pleading.

  He laughed. ‘Nothing, if you get me the better of those two nags saddled up in less than a minute.’

  ‘But those horses belong…..’ the ostler started to say, then changed his mind. ‘Yes, sir. Straight away.’

  ‘Why are you disguised as a stable boy though?’ Robert spoke to the girl for the first time.

  ‘We needed money so we had to find work and they would be looking for a runaway man and girl.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s not the life we dreamed of and we spend every day fearing being discovered, but what else can we do?’

  ‘You can come and join me in the forest. We need someone to look after the horses and you can live there openly as man and wife.’ The two looked and each other for a second, then the girl went to saddle the other horse. Five minutes later Robert and the ostler rode out of the stables and headed for Sherwood, the girl riding behind her lover.

  A week later he left the forest again, this time to ride to the manor house where Lady Marianne lived with her husband. He had felt very attracted to her when he had seen her again in Nottingham and couldn’t get her out of his mind; he still felt bad about not turning up at the church as he’d arranged. The last time he had seen his cousin before that had been eight years ago; he remembered her as a thin stick of a thing; mind you her face had always been pretty and she had abundant chestnut hair that tumbled down her back.

  He had heard that she had been betrothed a year later to an old knight who had already buried two wives but, as he owned the adjacent manor to her father’s at Laxton and had no children as yet, the alliance was intended to extend the family estate. He knew that they had been married as soon as she reached thirteen but he hadn’t heard much news of her since then.

  So on a fine autumn morning with a hint of chill on the wind he set off for Ossington, some four miles from the edge of the forest. He had dressed in a maroon overtunic made from the finest wool with a sword at his side and he took John Little with him. They looked like any other knight and squire travelling the road. Over the past year his band had grown until it now numbered over twenty. They lived by poaching deer and exacting a toll from every rich traveller who journeyed along the road through the forest, which was how he had acquired the overtunic. They retained some of the coin they took to buy essentials but Robert insisted that most of the silver and copper coins were distributed to local people who had fallen on hard times.

  Robert wasn’t quite certain what he intended to do when he reached Ossington but he was sure he would think of something. When the track crested a low ridge above the village he stopped and looked down on a collection of wattle and daub houses lining the single street that ran through Ossington. Most had a small vegetable patch outside and some had a chicken run. A few had a pig sty but most of the villagers’ animals were grazing on the common land to one side of the village. The land on the other three sides was taken up with strips of cultivation used to a variety of crops such as oats or wheat, root vegetables and cabbages. This late in the season the crops had been harvested and the land had been ploughed ready for sowing.

  Robert was surprised that no-one was about but then he realised that it was Sunday. All days were the same in the forest and, although most of band were religious, without a priest it wasn’t possible to say mass. The villagers would be in the little stone church at the far end of the street. The only other stone building was the fortified manor house which stood slightly apart from the other houses at the near end of the village. The main building had two storeys with wooden steps leading up to the first floor. The only apertures were arrow slits let into the wall at second storey level, although there was a small window with shutters in the solar. The ground floor was presumably for storage, with the hall and the solar above it. There were a few timber buildings within the palisade that surrounded the manor house: smithy, stables, kitchen, brew house, kennels and the like, whilst a dovecote stood outside the perimeter to provide an additional source of meat for the lord of the manor and his family in the winter.

  Robert noted that some of the posts in the palisade were rotten and the thatched roof of the stables and other buildings was green with age. There were other signs of neglect too. At that moment people started to emerge from
the church. From this distance it was difficult to make out individuals but the couple in front must be Marianne and her husband. The man was helped onto his horse by two attendants and rode back down the street whilst Marianne was left to walk with the villagers.

  The two attendants had to run to keep up with the horseman so that they were at the stables to help him dismount. Robert could now see that he moved with difficulty and had a bowed back. Far from thanking the two men who had helped him he cuffed one round the ear before heaving himself slowly up the stairs into the hall. A stable boy came and collected the horse and led it away.

  A few minutes later Marianne walked in through the gate in the palisade and, accompanied by a maid, made her way into the manor house. Robert could see by her demeanour that she was dispirited and dejected. He sat there in the shadows of the trees at the side of the track wondering what to do now. He couldn’t bear the thought that Marianne was so obviously depressed and unhappy and he decided that he must rescue her.

  He and John ate some cold venison and bread for dinner then lay down to sleep until dusk. It had started to cloud over earlier in the day and in the middle of the afternoon it started to rain. Robert and John woke with a start as cold drops of water splattered them. The leaves of the trees above them had withered and turned brown, making ideal funnels for the rain to drip down onto them. Robert wrapped his thick black cloak around him and, leaving John to tend the horses, he made his way cautiously down the slope towards the manor house. He had seen no sign of any men-at-arms and no-one guarded the gate in the palisade. He slipped through it and crossed the deserted courtyard to the end of the manor house where the solar would be. He crouched under the one window in the building, which was closed with shutters, and whistled several times.