Caging the Lyon Page 7

  Ever since the boy’s escape from Duff Nicholas had seen Craigmor Castle as his real home and had decided to take it as his soubriquet. Guy was very fond of his son but even he could see that the boy was becoming a real handful. With Patrick, the page with whom he had escaped, as his willing accomplice the two boys kept getting into mischief. Their latest escapade had been to climb the outside of the keep; an exploit that could have resulted in either of them falling to their deaths on the cobbled courtyard below. He had sent them to his senior serjeant to be beaten but that had done little good in the past and had just made Nicholas resentful towards his father.

  ‘I blame Patrick,’ Emma told Guy.

  ‘I don’t. He had always struck me as a sober and serious lad when he first came here. It’s our son who is bad influence on him, not the other way round.’

  His other son, Simon, was a much more placid and amenable boy. He was now seven and so Guy had also started to think about his placement as a page. Emma would hate it but the truth was the boy was too close to his mother and, in Guy’s eyes, was becoming effeminate. He didn’t seem very interested in riding or learning to use the small practice sword that Nicholas had started with when he was six. He preferred to spend his days in the solar with the women and playing with his baby sister, Blanche, who was now two.

  He sighed. With the death of Fergus of Galloway at Holy Rood Abbey the previous month Malcolm seemed secure on his throne for the moment and life should have been peaceful. Guy was now thirty nine and, although not an old man by any means, he was beginning to crave less excitement in his life. Instead of that his two sons seemed determined to cause him concern in different ways.

  He decided he would take the two boys with him to visit Craigmor for a couple of weeks. It was some time since he had last been there and, now that Edmund was married, perhaps that would be the place for Simon to go as a page. Emma might accept that better than some strange household. He could then travel on to Dunbar to deliver Nicholas and visit Gospatric at the same time.

  It was a cold day for June when they set out, riding through the streets of Berwick before taking the road north. The town had prospered under the rule of King David, who had made it a royal burgh, and this had continued under Malcolm. It had become Scotland’s premier port and, with the establishment of the royal mint there in 1153, it had become one of the wealthiest towns in the country. Rain started to patter down as they left Berwick and followed the coast road before branching off to Craigmor. They arrived in the late afternoon, just as the showers ceased and the sun made a belated appearance. The connecting walls linking the central keep to the two smaller towers, each perched at the cliff’s edge, had been completed, together with the gatehouse beside the keep. Work had now started on replacing the palisade with a masonry wall fifteen feet high to protect the outer bailey.

  As Guy approached the castle the sentry on the outer gate, a new recruit just seventeen years old, gaped open mouthed at the approaching cavalcade. Guy’s horse was encased in a caparison which displayed the colours of Berwick –a quartered field of red and blue. A knight carrying his personal banner of a white chevron with three red roses on a black field rode beside him with a squire and two young boys riding ponies immediately behind him. Behind them came six serjeants. The sentry yelled down to the men inside the gatehouse that Lord Guy was approaching and they rushed outside, knocking over their gaming table as they left, and ran to open the gates and lower the drawbridge over the moat. This was a recent addition to the defences. A nearby burn, which tumbled over the cliffs to the rocks below, had been diverted so that it flowed along a ditch in front of the palisade and plunged over the cliffs at the other end instead.

  Once the drawbridge was lowered Guy still had to wait for them to raise the portcullis before he could ride across the outer bailey and in through the open gate of the inner fortifications. He noticed that most of the horses being reared and trained were now grazing in the large area between the two walls. Once inside the inner bailey he looked around. Most of the buildings here had been completed. The great hall was now built of stone but the rest – kitchens, brew house, bakehouse, stables, smithy and so on – were simple wattle and daub structures. As he dismounted a groom came up to take his horse and Edmund appeared from the keep with a pretty girl of about fifteen by his side. After greeting each other Edmund introduced his wife, the daughter of a knight who held one of the manors that made up the barony of Craigmor.

  When they were seated in front of the impressive, albeit unlit, fireplace in new great hall Guy asked why the horses had been brought in and the outer gate secured.

  ‘We’ve suffered a couple of raids on the horse herds recently. I was going to write to you about it,’ Edmund replied. ‘Not all the rebels that Duff and his friends led were hanged at Edinburgh. I am told that Duff himself escaped and is leading a band of twenty or thirty reivers in the Lammermuir Hills.’

  ‘Do you know where they are based?’

  Edmund shook his head. ‘Not exactly, though I suspect that it is somewhere near Hart Law as they seem to be raiding in a circle of fifteen miles or so from there.’

  ‘Very well; gather a force of fifty men, all mounted on garrons, from the barony. I’ll send to Berwick for another ten knights and serjeants and we’ll see if we can’t find and exterminate this nest of vipers.’

  Leaving Nicholas and Simon behind in the care of Edmund’s wife, to the annoyance of the former and secret delight of the latter, Guy set out three days later with a force of ninety men, including a dozen from the garrison at Craigmor. Sending Edmund ahead with thirty men to form a line along Bothwell Water to cut of escape to the west, Guy spread his sixty men out in a large semi-circle and started to sweep the area in front of Hart Law. After two hours there was a signal from towards the right of the line. Gathering his men in, Guy headed over to the top of the ridge from where the signal had come. He stopped below the crest and ran up to where a man was keeping watch on the valley below. Crouching down beside him he looked over the crest from beside a bush so he didn’t break the skyline.

  Guy counted about ten men in the bottom of the valley below him. Some were washing in a burn and others were tending a number of garrons in a paddock. A second paddock contained a few destriers and coursers and several palfreys, presumably the ones they had stolen during the raid on Craigmor. There were a number of hovels built of unmortared stone with turf roofs and a watchtower at one end of the valley where a lone sentry leaned on the parapet, watching his fellows instead of doing his job. The other end of the valley narrowed down to a defile and the ground looked to be very boggy, judging by the bright green colour than indicated the presence of sphagnum moss. Confident in the knowledge that Edmund would prevent any escape up and over the opposite side of the valley, Guy decided to leave thirty men here under command of Edmund’s father-in-law and sweep up the valley past the watchtower. He took all the remaining knights and serjeants and made up the numbers with the fiercest looking villagers.

  An hour later Guy was in position. It was now early afternoon and he suspected that most of the reivers would be asleep. Certainly the man in the watchtower appeared to be. He had seen the sentries change over a short while previously but the new one hadn’t appeared above the parapet and so Guy suspected that he had immediately settled down to sleep in the warm June sunshine. After a quick meeting to select the best man, he sent one of the villagers up the ladder onto the platform at the top of the wooden tower to silence the sentry. Fifteen minutes later he was back wiping his bloody dirk on a clump of grass to clean it.

  Guy and his men rode slowly and quietly down the valley towards the group of hovels. With the element of surprise he had hoped to burst into the huts and attach the reivers whilst they were unprepared but, as luck would have it, one of them came out to relieve himself. At first the man didn’t notice them as he was concentrating on what he was doing and had his back to them, but some sixth sense must have warned him. He turned round and gaped open mouthed at the
mass of horsemen not a hundred yards from where he was standing. He dropped the hem of his tunic and yelled a warning before running up the valley as fast as he could go. Sending one man after him, the rest waited for the reivers to come tumbling out of their houses.

  When they didn’t Guy was at a loss about what to do for a moment or two. Then he had an idea. His men went and picked up lumps of dried peat from a nearby pile, which the reivers obviously used as fuel, and set them alight. Meanwhile other men blocked up the smoke holes in the turf roofs. When the peat was burning nicely they broke down the doors of the hovels and threw several lumps of the burning peat into each one.

  The smoke eventually forced the reivers out and a short fight ensued. Guy’s men were fresh and organised, their opponents had streaming eyes from the smoke, were disorientated, demoralised and outnumbered. However, the fiercest fighting seemed to take place around Guy, possibly because his caparisoned horse identified him as the leader. Whilst he was trying to beat two of them off a third leaped up behind him and pulled him off his horse. Guy landed on top, driving the wind out of the other man. But he was now at the mercy of the other two. His sword was attached to his wrist by a leather thong so he managed to grasp the hilt in time to counter a downward blow at his body but the other man made to stab him in the eye with his dirk whilst Guy was otherwise engaged. At the last moment the dirk dropped from his assailant’s hand as Guy’s squire, Duncan de Keith, thrust a discarded sword through his back. Seeing this, the other man tried to run away but an expertly thrown knife by one of Guy’s men hit him in the middle of the back and he fell forward. Duncan strode up to him and hacked at his neck until his head rolled away.

  Guy got to his feet thinking that the young man would make a ruthless warrior in due course, perhaps too ruthless. He looked around him but the fight was all but over. The villager who had chased the man up the valley came riding back grinning and carrying his head as a trophy. A few reivers managed to escape up either side of the valleys to be dealt with by the cut-off groups positioned there, but most had died in their camp.

  When Guy made his way back to Craigmor that evening nearly all the reivers were dead for the loss of one villager killed and a few with flesh wounds. Even better, there was a prisoner: Duff had been wounded but was taken alive. When he reached the main road to Edinburgh Guy selected a suitable tree and hanged Duff from it. He watched him struggle and kick, his face turning puce, until he was sure he was dead and then the men split up, most going back to their villages or south to Berwick.

  A week later Guy took his leave of Edmund and his wife and headed north to Dunbar. He decided to taken Simon with him, just to get him out of the solar at Craigmor. Perhaps sending him there as a page wasn’t such a good idea after all. He would have to talk to the boy once they had delivered his brother to Gospatric.

  Dunbar Castle was almost as unusual a structure as Craigmor. It was built of red sandstone with the keep and inner bailey occupying a large rock standing offshore against which the sea pounded. This was connected to the outer bailey by a stone bridge over the sea with a drawbridge at the seaward end. It was one of the largest castles Guy had seen and emphasised the status of the earl of Lothian. Guy knew that, like Bamburgh in Northumberland, Dunbar had been a fortress for several hundred years. It was with surprise that he saw that there were two banners flying above the outer gatehouse - the white lion rampant on a red field within a white border of Gospatric he was expecting, but not the red dragon on a yellow field flying alongside it, indicating that the king was here.

  Leaving Duncan to find the page-master and hand over Nicholas to his charge, he left Simon with his brother and entered the great hall. Malcolm was sitting at the high table in conference with Gospatric, his son Waltheof, Prince William, Walter FitzAlan, the high steward, and Hervey de Keith, the marishal. The king was never in the most robust of health but Guy thought that Malcolm now looked decidedly unwell.

  ‘Ah FitzRichard, welcome. I hear that you have exterminated a pack of robbers and outlaws in the Lammermuirs. Well done!’ the king greeted him.

  ‘Thank you sire. I didn’t know you would be here. I merely came to deliver my son into the earl of Lothian’s care.’

  ‘Well I’m glad you are here as I wanted to see you in any case. Come and take a chair.’ When Guy had done so Malcolm continued ‘you know Waltheof I think.’ The king indicated Gospatric’s son.

  ‘Indeed sire, his son is a page at Berwick and it was Patrick who took my son to safety at Craigmor when that traitor Duff seized Berwick Castle.’ He nodded at Waltheof who smiled back.

  ‘Really? You should have told me you had such an enterprising son, Waltheof. It merely confirms that I have made the right decision.’ He turned back to Guy.

  I want to increase control over the south of Scotland. In the past there has only been one earldom – that of Lothian – and a number of independent lordships such as Galloway, Annandale, your barony of Craigmor, Haddington, Dysart, Stair and so on. In order to improve government of this area I intend to create three new earldoms. Waltheof will become earl of Dunbar and control the whole of north Lothian whilst Gospatric becomes earl of March as well as retaining the title earl of Lothian to control the lordships along the border in the south east. Uhtred will become earl of Galloway to control the south west.’

  ‘So, if I have understood you correctly, sire, I will no longer hold Craigmor directly from you but from either Gospatric or Waltheof?’

  Malcolm frowned. ‘Yes, from Gospatric. It’s not meant to reduce your status, Guy, merely to improve government.’

  ‘And where does Berwick fit into this? It’s a royal burgh after all.’

  ‘Ah yes. And as such it should have a governor in charge to manage it on my behalf. Somehow my father never got around to replacing the last governor when he died.’ He paused and looked at Walter to continue.

  ‘The town is of increasing commercial importance and it is no longer sensible for me to govern it directly on behalf of the king. We have therefore agreed that you should be appointed governor of the town as well as constable of the castle. Because this will place a lot of extra work on your shoulders the king has appointed Sir Alexander Seaton as deputy constable and captain to help you with the castle.’ Guy had met Seaton on several occasions and thought him a straightforward enough man and a good soldier, if a little unimaginative and set in his ways.

  ‘Sire, I am most grateful for the honour you show me,’ Guy replied though he wondered how the burgesses of Berwick would take the news. Walter might think that he governed the town on the king’s behalf but in practice the town council acted independently of royal control. He also wondered how his fellow lords and barons would take the change in their status. He didn’t feel very happy about it himself and others might react strongly to the new structure. Malcolm and Walter might think they had solved a problem but it didn’t exist in practice and the solution could very well create the very problem they were trying to avoid. But the king hadn’t finished.

  ‘As you know, my father completed the organisation of the country into sheriffdoms to maintain law and order. The last sheriff of Berwickshire was misguided enough to declare for Máel Coluim and join the rebellion. I want you to take his place.’

  The more Guy thought about his new role the more he foresaw problems. As governor of the town and sheriff of the shire he wouldn’t have time to do more than use the castle as a base. He would have to leave the running of it entirely to Alexander Seaton . His wife wouldn’t like that. At the moment Emma ran the domestic side but, if Seaton was married, his wife would expect to assist her husband and act as the castle’s chatelaine. He groaned. Why couldn’t the king leave well alone.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, sire. I’m overwhelmed.’ Both statements were true, but not in the way that the king interpreted them. Though Guy was not exactly pleased by these appointments they did indicate that he was held in high regard by Malcolm.

  ‘Good, that’s settled then. Now let us
turn to the problem of Somerled.’

  Guy knew that Somerled had conquered the isles off the west coast and the whole of Argyll during the previous decade. He had signed a truce with Malcolm after having to abandon his efforts to expand his domain a few years ago to deal with an attack by the king of Man. What Guy didn’t know and what he managed to gather from the discussion that followed was that Somerled was trying to expand his domain into Cowal. However the lordship of Cowal, together with the barony of Renfrewshire, were lands held by Walter FitzAlan so this brought the lord of the Isles into direct conflict with the high steward. Nothing was decided at Dunbar but Walter was given permission to build a new castle on Kilchurn Island in Loch Awe to guard the exit from the Pass of Brander. Although the castle would be on an island, which made it difficult to assault, there was a causeway just under the water linking it to the mainland, so it was an ideal base to guard against attack from northern Argyll.

  Guy’s head was so full of his new responsibilities that he entirely forgot that he had intended to speak to Simon about his future on the way back to Berwick. It wasn’t until they left Craigmor Castle after an overnight stop that he remembered.

  ‘Simon, now that Nicholas is at Dunbar I have to give some thought to where I might place you as a page in a year or two’s time,’ he began, but Simon jumped in before he could continue.

  ‘But father I don’t want to become a page or a squire or a knight,’ the boy told him.

  ‘What? Don’t be silly the de Cuilles have always been knights.’

  ‘Well I won’t call myself de Cuille then. If my brother can call himself Nicholas of Craigmor I’ll call myself Simon of Berwick.’

  ‘That’s not the point, Simon. If you don’t want to be a knight what do you want to be?’

  ‘A priest. Someday I want to be a bishop.’

  ‘Do you now.’ Guy was dumfounded. This wasn’t something he had considered but he had enough sense to realise that, if that’s what the boy wanted, then there was no point in forcing him to undertake military training.