Caging the Lyon Page 8

  ‘Then I had better see about finding you a tutor until you are old enough to join the scholars at Kelso Abbey.’

  It wasn’t until after he had said this that it occurred to Guy that perhaps it would have been wiser to speak to Emma about it first.

  ~#~

  Robert set off for Ossington late in the afternoon hoping that this time it would be a case of third time lucky. When he got there it was to find Marianne in a furious temper.

  ‘My wretched father hasn’t even had the decency to wait until my period of mourning is over.’ She told Robert as soon as he walked into the hall. ‘He has arranged for me to become betrothed to Osbert FitzRanulph.’ She almost spat out the name.

  ‘What? The sheriff?’ Robert was surprised, not because he was another elderly man, but because he was also the lord of Alfreton and Norton. As such he was both wealthy and influential. ‘Stephen is aiming high it seems.’

  ‘He can aim as high as he likes, I’m not marrying him,’ Marianne said with some asperity.

  ‘I was rather hoping that you would marry me’ Robert said with a twinkle in his eye.

  ‘Hmm. It doesn’t look as if I have much of a choice,’ Marianne said, somewhat grumpily.

  ‘Well, there’s no need to be quite so enthusiastic.’ Robert was more than a little piqued.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry Robert. Yes, I would love to marry you; of course I would. It’s just that I would have liked the opportunity to be courted and won instead of being forced into a corner.’

  ‘Well, I suppose we can wait until you’re ready to say yes but I suggest that you live in Sherwood until then to remove you from the clutches of the lecherous sheriff.’

  Marianne laughed, her mood lightening. ‘FitzRanulph is many things but I don’t think being a lecher is one of them.’ She called for her maid and turning back to Robert she said ‘I had better pack and organise a cart; unless you thought to bring one?’

  ‘Oh. I’m afraid not. Yes; good idea.’ The need for a cart hadn’t occurred to Robert, who had just brought a palfrey for Marianne to ride.

  By nightfall they were back at Robert’s base in Sherwood where he found an agitated band of men waiting for him.

  ‘Robert, the normal toll collection on the Sheffield road went wrong today,’ one of the men told him uneasily.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked as he dismounted and helped Marianne down.

  ‘Beorn was there. He was the only one to get away.’

  Beorn was a young man of eighteen who had joined the band a few weeks previously. He stepped forward timidly. ‘Well, there were five of us went out this morning and um, well.’

  ‘Don’t be afraid, Beorn, I’m not going to blame you. Just tell us what happened,’ Robert re-assured him.

  ‘Well, we had stopped a party of three, a merchant, his servant and another man who looked like a soldier. Ochta was in charge and he politely requested the usual fee for allowing travellers to pass whilst the others of us covered them with our bows. The merchant got angry and ordered his two men to attack us but they did nothing. Still he wouldn’t pay us so Ochta went to grab the purse hanging from his belt. Then the merchant tried to back his horse away but it reared up and he was thrown. I suppose we were surprised and while we were distracted the soldier pulled out his sword and charged us. We scattered but someone must have loosed an arrow at him because slumped sideways off his horse with an arrow in his chest.’

  Beorn paused for breath and nervously licked his lips. ‘It was then that I noticed that the merchant had a dagger because Ochta was down with it sticking out of his stomach. He was screeching something awful. One of the others put an arrow in the merchant and the servant galloped away down the road. It was then that a knight and an armed escort came round the corner. There must have been six or seven of them. Someone yelled for us to run for it so I did. The knight and his men chased us through the wood but I managed to get away by climbing a tree.’

  ‘What happened to the others?’ Robert asked gently.

  ‘I saw them leading the other three away with their hands tied and a halter round their necks. I went back later but the only person there was Ochta hanging by the neck from a tree. So I cut him down and hid him in the undergrowth. Some of the men went and got him and he’s over there waiting for burial. The trouble is we don’t have a priest.’ At this the youth started to sob. Marianne went and put her arm around his trembling shoulders and comforted him.

  ‘Right, we need to find out where they’ve been taken so send out men to find out if any of our usual contacts know. We’ll bury Ochta tomorrow and I’ll conduct the service.’ He glared at the men in front of him. ‘This happened because Ochta forgot what I told you. You must always put one man either end of the ambush to give warning if another group approaches; and you don’t all stand together, you position yourselves far apart so they can’t attack you easily. Finally, if they refuse to co-operate after being warned then you must kill them. You all know what happens now if you forget the rules. If you remember them from now on, then perhaps Ochta won’t have died in vain.’

  The next day they buried Ochta and Robert learned that his three men had been taken to Nottingham and thrown in the dungeons to await trial at the next session in two weeks’ time. Robert wracked his brains trying to think how best to rescue them, but it was Marianne who came up with the plan.

  Robert supplied one of his contacts with a small bag of silver pennies. He found out which of the jailors was easiest to bribe and where he normally drank off duty. It was then a simple matter to bribe him to open the postern gate into the castle and to put a sleeping draft into his fellow jailors beer. Through his contact Robert offered him another bag of silver when he opened the postern gate and twice as much when they left safely. He was also given another sleeping draft so he could take it later to divert suspicion away from himself.

  Robert waited until it was a miserable night: raining with high winds. It hadn’t been a particularly good summer but this night was more like late autumn. He took Beorn and two other men with him and took great care that they weren’t seen approaching the postern gate. As soon as he knocked four times, the pre-arranged signal, it was opened and the jailor led them to the doorway to the dungeons, keeping in the shadows. Once inside he let them through another locked door and down some steps. Robert could hear the sound of men playing dice around the corner at the bottom.

  ‘Walcher’s a long time taking a piss.’ one of them commented. Just at that moment Walcher appeared carrying three wooden flagons of ale.

  ‘I picked these up on my way back. I reckon we could all do with a drink.’ He put the other two down and took a long drink of his beer. Ten minutes later the other two jailors were slumped across the table and Walcher opened the door to the cell where Robert’s three men were imprisoned. They were manacled to the wall and had been brutally flogged. Walcher unchained them. Beorn and the other two men had to help them up the stairs and back into the bailey as they were in such a poor way. Robert thanked Walcher and gave him the rest of the silver and another portion of the sleeping draft. He watched whilst Walcher put it into his beer then drained the flagon.

  Once they were safely back on their horses heading for Sherwood, the three ex-prisoners each riding in front of another man for support, Beorn asked how long the sleeping draft would last.

  ‘Forever,’ Robert replied tartly. ‘They would have tortured all three jailors until Walcher confessed so I did them a kindness really.’

  Chapter Three - The Grim Reaper Cometh - 1165 – 1166 AD

  Malcolm IV, king of Scots, lay in his bed at Jedburgh Castle at the end of November 1165 groaning in agony. His bones had become misshapen so he could no longer walk and his face was barely recognisable. His jaw had swollen considerably on the right side and his forehead protruded two inches further forward than usual. He was dying at the age of twenty-four.

  Malcolm had been a good administrator but he was more of a scholar than a warrior. Coming to the throne at the ag
e of eleven, he had been sorely tested by rebellion after rebellion. The last one had occurred the previous year. Somerled had never been content with the truce he had signed and still had designs on the Cowal peninsula. In 1164 he led an army of men from Argyll, the Kintyre peninsula, the Isles and a few Irish adventurers from Dublin to invade Renfrewshire, the heartland of Walter FitzAlan’s estates.

  Walter had become tired of Somerled’s raids into Cowal and had begun to assemble an army to deal with the lord of the Isles for once and for all. However Somerled became aware of the Scottish forces gathering at Renfrew and decided to make a pre-emptive strike. Assembling an army of 15,000 men, he ferried them to the shores of the Firth of Clyde in a fleet of a hundred and sixty war galleys and a large number of other craft hoping to take Walter FitzAlan unawares.

  After landing they marched towards Renfrew but Somerled found his path blocked by a Scottish army consisting mainly of knights and armoured men-at-arms. The bishop of Glasgow led two thousand raised from the town and his own lands. Guy was present, having brought three hundred men from Berwick and his lands at Craigmor. In total the royal army numbered about seven thousand, but that was still only half of the number fielded by Somerled.

  The Isles men and their allies were brave but they wore little or no armour and the first wave of the attack crumbled against the javelins and arrows that struck down their reckless charge. The second wave fared little better, breaking against the Scots armoured foot soldiers. Then the mounted knights charged from the left and tore into the Isles men’s exposed flank. Guy speared one half naked warrior with his lance then cut down three more with his sword before the enemy broke.

  In order to restore his men’s morale Somerled himself led the next charge but he was wounded in the leg by a javelin. His men lost heart when they saw him fall and started to flee. Guy and the rest of the knights chased the routed enemy, cutting them down with ease. He saw Bishop Herbert wielding his mace to great effect. Somerled's eldest son, Gillecallum, and a few of his bodyguard tried to protect his wounded father but they were all slain. Nearly half of Somerled’s army were killed or captured before the survivors escaped back to their ships.

  With the death of Somerled Malcolm had defeated the last of the rebels and ruled over all of Scotland at last. It was therefore doubly tragic when he fell fatally ill the following year. He died on the ninth of December 1165 and his brother William was crowned at Scone on Christmas Eve. In contrast to his deeply religious, frail brother, William was powerfully built with a personality to match but his one failing was that he was headstrong. He had inherited the earldom of Northumberland in 1152 when his father had died and he had deeply resented it when Malcolm had meekly acquiesced to Henry Plantagenet’s demand that the earldom was returned to the English crown five years later. William’s overriding ambition was to get it back.

  ~#~

  Malcolm was not the only one to die that winter. Humphrey de Cuille, baron of the Cheviot and Redesdale was sixty eight and had been an invalid at Harbottle Castle for the last eight years, leaving the running of his estate to Hugh. His younger brother, John, had joined him at Harbottle and the two old men spent their days reminiscing and playing shatranj. Sometimes they would have visitors. Hugh came over fairly often on business and sometimes brought Alice with him. Her brother, William, baron of Alnwick since their father died in 1157, came over occasionally and Robert de Muschamp was a more frequent caller, bringing the nineteen year old Richard, his squire and Humphrey’s grandson, with him.

  On Christmas Eve, a few hours after William had been crowned king over the border in Scotland, Humphrey died peacefully in his sleep. His death had been expected for some time, but Hugh was saddened by his demise to an extent that he hadn’t expected. His mother had died some years before and, although he had missed her, Hugh hadn’t grieved for her in the way that he did for his father.

  Guy travelled over for the funeral of his cousin. He looked every inch the magnate he now was with caparisoned horse, rich clothes and a retinue of knights and serjeants to escort him. With the income from his appointment as governor of one of the most prosperous towns in Scotland and as sheriff, together with the income from the sale of horses from his stud at Craigmor, he was now much more affluent than Hugh. It was a miserable day in January when they buried Humphrey. Snow covered the ground and the biting wind chilled everyone to the bone. A sudden hail storm stung everyone in the face before they trouped back up the hill into the great hall of Harbottle Castle.

  ‘Will you move here now?’ Guy asked Hugh after they had spent a while reminiscing about Humphrey.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Otterburn is our home and Alice wants to stay there. Of course I’ll have to come over from time to time. Besides I think John will enjoy being master here for his remaining days.’

  ‘He’s looking fit and well I must say.’ Guy nodded in the direction of John de Cuille, Humphrey’s younger brother, who was deep in conversation with his grand-nephew, Richard. ‘It won’t be long now before your son is old enough to be knighted.’

  ‘That’s true. How is Nicholas getting on at Dunbar?’

  ‘Fine, as far as I know. I must think about placing him as a squire soon; he’s fourteen this year.’

  ‘I take it you’ll want him to stay in Scotland, rather than serving an English knight?’

  ‘Yes, he sees himself as Scots these days. He had even adopted Craigmor as his sobriquet’

  ‘Yes. I half wondered whether you would do the same.’

  Guy grunted. ‘I don’t see why. There are plenty of Scots nobles who have retained the Norman practice of using Fitz followed by their father’s name.’ Guy saw Hugh about to say something but forestalled him. ‘Yes, I know we were originally from Maine, not Normandy, but you know what I mean. However, I am thinking of changing my heraldic arms.’

  ‘Really?’ Hugh was surprised. The four branches of the family, including the one still in Maine and the one in Derbyshire, all used a variation of the white chevron on black. In Hugh’s case it was differenced by three gold crosses on the black field and in Guy’s by three red roses on the chevron. ‘Why do you want to change it?’

  ‘Because it is registered with Henry of England,’ Guy replied brusquely. ‘I know that I have prospered up here but that man deprived me of the original estate granted to our great-grandfather by William the Conqueror and I will never forgive him for that. I have decided to apply to King William for new arms.’

  ‘What has prompted this now?’

  ‘Well, to be honest it was William himself.’

  ‘He suggested it?’ Hugh was astonished if that were the case.

  ‘No, of course not. It was the fact that he hasn’t taken the red dragon borne by his brother and grandfather but has adopted a new device – a red lion rampant on a gold field. That’s what put the idea in my head.’

  ‘What will you use then?’

  ‘I haven’t decided yet. Emma wants me to use her father’s arms but it looks too much like a cow.’ The de Bully device was a white bull on a blue field.

  ‘How is Edward doing?’ Guy asked, changing the subject. ‘I was surprised to see that you placed him as squire to Bernard de Balliol at Barnard Castle. It’s a long way from home.’

  ‘So were you when you were squire to my grand-father, Tristan,’ Hugh reminded Guy.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Bernard approached me through William de Vesci and it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up.’ He shrugged. ‘He will have to make his way in the world in any case, being a younger son. I don’t want him to make the mistake that my uncle John did and hang around here as little more than a glorified household knight.’

  He paused. ‘How is young Simon, by the way? I see you sent him to be a scholar at Kelso last year.’

  ‘Yes.’ Guy grimaced. ‘We haven’t had a priest in the family before, but that’s what he wants to be.’

  As the hail had been replaced by a blizzard and the snow was starting to dri
ft, Guy declined Hugh’s offer of a room for the night and made his way over the ford at Wark and back along the north bank of the Tweed to Berwick.

  Three months later he had to retrace his steps to attend Hugh’s funeral.

  ~#~

  Hugh had been having trouble with reivers ever since Prince Henry, earl of Northumberland and father of both Malcolm and William, had died. The Prince had treated his earldom as part of Scotland and dealt severely with any cross border raiding but during Malcolm’s troubled reign the old problem of stealing cattle and sheep from across the border had re-emerged. Hugh recalled that decades ago, before Henry became the earl, his grandfather’s squire had been killed when Humphrey caught up with a party of reivers who were stealing a herd of cattle.

  In early April he was at mass in the chapel in Harbottle Castle when a messenger arrived from Alwinton, a mere three miles away, to say that a party of Scots had raided their village and also Shillmoor further up the Coquet valley. They had killed two men and driven off a large flock of sheep. Hugh reckoned that they would drive them down the Usway valley and across the border at the low point of the saddle running between the mountain known as Windy Gyle and the Cheviot itself.

  Pulling on a gambeson and helmet Hugh mounted a garron rather than a destrier because of the terrain. Taking ten serjeants from the garrison and his squire he set off along the Alwin Burn heading for Bloodybush Edge above the Usway Burn hoping to reach there before the reivers, who could only move slowly herding sheep. When he got there he saw the Scots and the stolen sheep half a mile to the north of him starting the climb up to the crest of the saddle. The ground here was grass and gorse with enough rocks scattered about to risk breaking the leg of any horse trying to move across it too fast. So Hugh led his men at a trot down from Bloodybush Edge and across Usway Burn then up the slope to overtake the Scots just before they reached the border.