by Fiona Faris
Chapter Thirty-Five
As darkness fell, Joan, accompanied by two reivers in case they met opposition on their way down to the foot of the castle rock, trod carefully down through the woods. A full moon hung like a lantern in the sky, casting a silver sheen over everything it looked down upon, which would make Joan’s ascent easier but also make her more visible on the rock face. She hoped that the soldiers standing sentinel on Neidpath’s parapets would be concentrating their attention on the rivers in the forest by the courtyard’s walls rather than on the precipice at the rear of the keep.
Arriving at the foot of the rock, she took off her boots and made sure her dirk was secure in the belt around the waist of her breeches. She would much rather have been climbing in a kirtle, which she was more used to and would have allowed her freer movement as she stretched for hand and footholds. However, she also had to think of the likelihood of her being caught up in a skirmish once she had entered the courtyard and approached the gate. Hopefully, all of the sheriff’s men would be on the parapet, keeping an eye out for activity from the reiver band, but she could not rule out the possibility of having to sneak up on and dispatch a man left watching the gates; and while a kirtle might be ideal for climbing, it would be an encumbrance in a fight.
Handing her boots to her two companions, she began to climb. The rock was rugged and offered a plenitude of clefts and crannies, but it was also wet from the rains and slippery with moss and slime. She gripped the stone tightly with her long fingers and toes, climbing slowly but steadily, lit by the chill spectral light of the moon.
She made good progress. Although tall and long-limbed, Joan was light and nimble. She pulled herself up the rock effortlessly and was soon three-quarters of the way to the base of the keep. She found a deep ledge, almost as broad as a hall bench, and she rested her bottom on it to ease the aches in her fingers and toes.
Below her, the Tweed wound its way around the meadow like a silver ribbon in the moonlight. On the far bank, the parkland rose in a gentle slope towards the high fells, the tops of the trees dusted with a soft luminescence. She looked up; the heavens were scattered with myriad twinkling stars, and only thin wisps of cloud drifted across the brilliant face of the moon.
Then her blood ran cold. From the corner of her eye, she spied the outline of a tall square cage dangling from a gallows-like structure over the sheer drop into the river valley. A thin, wan arm hung from between the cage’s wooden bars.
“Mother!” She sobbed in alarm.
She could not see the figure to which the arm belonged, but she knew – she felt in her blood – that it was her mother’s. She hauled herself to a standing position on the ledge and began searching the rock above for fresh handholds. Finding them, she quickly resumed her climb with even greater urgency.
Back in the forest, the reivers prepared to rush the gate. They had discarded their short lances and drawn their broadswords and strapped their small round shields or ‘targes’ to their forearms. With baited breath, they crouched a ragged line in the undergrowth at the forest edge and tensed their muscles, waiting for the first sign of the gate cracking open.
The two escorts, who had accompanied Joan to the foot of the castle rock, returned and took their places in the waiting cohort.
“How goes it?” Auld Wat whispered to them.
“She was very near there by the time we left,” one of them returned the whisper. “Nae sign o’ anybody on that side o’ the castle.”
“Aye.” Wat grunted, returning his look to the gates that lay across open ground only a hundred yards from them. “Let’s hope there’s naeb’dy on the gates either. I doubt even the sheriff’s men are daft enough to deploy a pair o’ men to watch a sneckit gate.”
Beside him, Patrick’s eyes were wide with apprehension.
“I’ll be glad when this waiting is over, and we see her at the gates.”
“Wheesht, man,” Wat reassured him. “The lass will be fine. She has smeddum. Minds me o’ my Mary when she was a quine. Once she gets the bit between her teeth, there is nae stopping her.” He chuckled. “Ye werena feart the day you wedded her.”
Joan rolled over the parapet and crouched like a cat in the shadow of the tower at her back. She drew her dirk from her belt as her keen eyes scanned the battlement ahead of her. It was clear; she could see the sheriff’s men concentrated on the wall overlooking the entrance to the castle and peering hard towards the forest where the reivers lay.
On her bare feet, Joan left the shadows and padded along the battlement towards the stone staircase, forty feet away, that led down into the courtyard. She held her breath all the way, praying that none of the defenders turned to look in her direction. None of them did. She quickly reached the top of the staircase and scurried down into the shadows again.
She stopped to catch her breath and survey her surroundings. The courtyard was deserted and deathly quiet. She thanked God that no one appeared to be manning the gate; every pair of eyes had been called upon to scour the woods from the battlements on that side of the courtyard. She glanced up at the tower. No lights burned in the undercroft or in the hall; only the solar emitted a bright yellowish light from its windows. That must be where the hostages were being held, she confirmed; Patrick had been right.
She dropped her eyes to the door to the keep. Her heart swelled with joy when she saw that it was ajar. Once she had opened the castle’s gate, she decided, she must return to the keep door to make sure that it remained unbarred; otherwise, the hostages would be lost.
She also thought of her mother in the case overhanging the drop into the valley, and if anything, her resolve hardened. The sheriff would pay for that, she determined; he would pay for it sorely.
She set off along the base of the courtyard wall towards the gatehouse, skirting the empty sheds and workshops. She noticed the sheen of the moonlight on her pale hands and realized that this would make her more visible to the defenders, so she crouched down and smeared a handful of mud over her face and shorn hair, rubbing the residue into her hands and forearms.
Rising again, she darted like a rat towards her goal.
She reached the gate, and after returning her dirk to her belt, she placed both her hands under the massive beam that barred the heavy doors. Only yards above her head, the sheriff’s men had their eyes peeled for the least movement and their ears cocked for the smallest sound. She tried to lift the beam from its retaining hasp, but it was too heavy. She hunkered down and placed her slender shoulder beneath the thick square timber and pushed with all the strength in her back and legs.
With a loud clunk, the beam lifted, and the doors fell slightly ajar.
The sound of the beam being sprung echoed in the empty, silent night like a loud, sharp drumbeat. It was heard both by the reivers hidden on the edge of the forest and the sheriff’s men on the gatehouse parapet.
“Now,” Auld Wat cried, and the reivers sprang from the undergrown and began sprinting the short distance across the open ground towards the breached gate.
The defenders hurried down the stone stairs that flanked the gatehouse. They saw Joan racing across the courtyard towards the door to the keep, but they ignored her as they focused on the greater danger, which was the open gate. The first soldiers to reach the doors began to push them closed. But before they could secure the bar again, the reivers threw themselves against the gate in a single mass and the soldiers were thrown back, and the doors sprang wide open.
“The Scotts are out!” the reivers yelled as they poured through the gate and set to hacking and slashing at the defenders before they could organize.
Screams of pain and triumph began to fill the air, as the reivers’ blades found their targets and the enemy soldiers went down under the fury of the merciless onslaught. Metal clanged against metal, blades flashed in the moonlight, and the cloying tang of blood began to rise from the mud that churned beneath the combatants’ feet.
Patrick looked across the courtyard and saw Joan standing at bay in
front of the keep door. Two of the sheriff’s men confronted her with drawn swords. Joan snarled at them, brandishing her dirk.
“Joan!” Patrick cried, and plunged through the mêlée to reach her.
One of the sheriff’s men took a step forward and swung his sword at Joan’s neck. Joan fell to one knee, and the sword-stroke whistled harmlessly over her head. As the soldier stumbled forward under the momentum of his swing, Joan lunged and buried her dirk in his thigh. As the second soldier raised his sword to strike, Patrick’s blade pierced his back and emerged from the front of his chest.
“I would have had him,” Joan complained at being robbed of the kill.
“Aye, and my grand-dam is the Queen of Aragon.” Patrick scoffed.
A group of four defenders broke away from the fight and rushed towards Joan and Patrick to try to retake the door.
Joan stooped and picked up one of the dead men’s swords.
“We have to hold the door,” she cried. “If the sheriff’s men get past, they’ll bar it from the inside, and all will be lost.”
“I’m not stupid,” Patrick returned. “I do know when to fight.”
“Then fight!” Joan screamed as she began to cut with her sword and parry with her dirk.
Within minutes, the defenders had been overwhelmed, and each and every one of them was put to the sword, including the few who had tried to surrender. The reivers took no prisoners.
The men poured into the turret and up the spiral staircase.
“The solar,” Joan cried. “Go straight to the solar. That is where Margaret is being held.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Moult realized that his time had come. He looked on from the roof of the tower in horror as his men were overcome and the reivers disappeared into the turret staircase from the courtyard. It would only be minutes until they were breaking down the door to the tower battlements. He was under no illusions; he would lose his life here, on this day, under the moonlight, in this godforsaken land, far from his home and family in France. But he would exact a heavy price for his life.
When the courtyard gate was breached, he had brought Margaret and Lizzie up the last staircase in the tower and out onto the roof, closing and barring the door behind them. Margaret was now leaning over the parapet, calling down plaintively to her mother, while Lizzie cowered in the corner, her eyes wide with terror. Moult himself stood by the winding drum from which a stout rope ran through a pair of pullies mounted along the length of a wooden jib. This rope was attached to the chain from which Lady Maria’s cage hung over the dark void. The rope was stretched taut with the weight of the cage, and Moult held the razor-sharp edge of his sword over it.
Margaret left off speaking to her mother and spun round to face the sheriff.
“Please,” she pleaded. “I beg you, do not do this.”
Moult sent her a thin sneering smile.
“Your people have brought me low.” He hissed. “They will slaughter me like a pig. But they will pay dearly for the pleasure.”
“I will speak to them,” Margaret continued. “I will tell them you treated me well. They will spare you, I will insist on it. They will let you go if you promise to quit the country. At the very worst, they will hold you hostage, ransom you as a knight.”
Moult stared at her in disbelief.
“Do you really think…” His words tailed off into hollow laughter. “You really are such a sweet and innocent child,” he said, shaking his head in amusement. “And you were such an excellent plaything,” he mused aloud fondly, looking into the middle distance between them. “Though I never got to fuck you. I would have, eventually. I always fuck my playthings in the end, before I kill them. But I like to take my time and savor the fear, the humiliation, the tears, the sweet torture, and pain – to make them completely mine before I ravage them and snuff them out like candles.” He fell silent before refocusing his eyes on Margaret, as if only suddenly remembering she was there before him. “But you, my dear, will die a maiden still,” he observed regretfully.
“Do not do this,” Margaret implored.
Moult ignored her and continued.
“Let me tell you what is going to happen. The moment that door is breached, I will slice the rope on which your mother’s life quite literally depends.” He smiled at the pun he had made. “You will see her plunge to her death on the rocks below. Then—” He indicated to Lizzie, who was still cowering in the corner. “I will slit your little pet’s throat. And then I will cut your gut to let your innards tumble out. It will all be over before any of your ruffians can lay a finger on me.”
“They will kill you.” Margaret spat.
“I am dead anyway.” Moult shrugged.
They both looked towards the turret door as footsteps were heard scuffing and clattering up the stairs.
“It may take them a moment to break the door down,” Moult observed, smiling and making a little courtly bow of compliment. “Make the most of that moment, for it will be your last.”
But it did not take a moment. The door crashed from its hinges and clattered to the flagstones. The massive figure of William Scott filled the doorway.
Caught completely by surprise, Moult hesitated before bringing his sword down on the rope. This gave Margaret time to leap at him and knock him off-balance. The sword came down, but weaker than Moult had intended. The rope frayed but did not break. Below the level of the parapet, the cage gave a lurch but did not fall.
William sprang towards the winding drum and seized the rope just as it snapped. He wrapped his other hand around the post on which the jib was mounted. He roared as the full weight of the cage, with Lady Maria inside, jerked and wrenched the ligaments in his wrists, elbows, and shoulders. His face turned red, contorted with agony. The tendons and veins stood out on his neck and temples as he strained to prevent the cage from falling.
Several reivers rushed to help him, while Margaret wrapped her long legs around Moult’s thighs and her arms around his sword arm. Lizzie leaped to her feet and joined in the fray, grasping a tight hold on the breast of his surcoat and trying to drag him to the ground.
Joan leaped through the broken door and dashed across the rooftop towards her sister, sword in one hand, her dirk in the other.
Before Joan could reach them, however, the unbalanced Moult stumbled and spun. Losing their grip on him, Margaret and Lizzie were thrown to the ground. Suddenly released, Moult lurched back, and his legs came in contact with the parapet. With a look of surprise on his face, he tumbled backward and plunged into the darkness.
William and the reivers hauled the cage laboriously to the roof and pulled it over the parapet. Auld Wat smashed the lock with a single blow from his sword, and Lady Maria was dragged out.
“Poor auld soul,” Wat observed. “She’s more dead than alive. We need to get her out of those wet rags and some vittles in her as soon as we can.”
“We’ll see to her,” came a voice from the doorway, “me and the lassies.”
Everyone looked around. It was Mary.
“Christ, woman!” Auld Wat cried. “What the hell are ye doing up here? You should be resting in the woods, where we left ye. You’ve nae business to be climbing a’ thae stairs.”
Mary came and knelt beside Lady Maria.
“Och, wheesht, man,” she said, running a hand over Lady Maria’s brow and down along her cheek. “Twa-three stairs aren’t going to beat me.” She looked up at Wat with a twinkle in her eye. “A fine mess you’ve left in the courtyard, by the way. It’s going to take some cleaning up.”
“Leave it,” Margaret said, lifting the tangled gray tresses from her mother’s face. “Leave it for the crows.”
“But you’ll no’ be able to bide here with a’ that carrion in the yaird?” Mary said, puzzled.
“I won’t be biding here,” she murmured. “It is no longer my home, no longer Neidpath. It has been utterly spoiled for me.”
“They will be sending another sheriff in any case,” Patrick pointed ou
t. “We’re still outlaws. More especially after this.”
“True,” Wat agreed. “You’re still welcome to Dryhope. Though it will need new doors.”
“Burn it,” Margaret said suddenly.
“What?” Patrick asked. “I do not understand. Burn what?”
“This place,” Margaret said in a dead voice.
“Burn Neidpath?” Patrick laughed nervously. “But this is… Neidpath. It is what you have always wanted, to be the Lady of Neidpath.”
“It means nothing to me,” she went on in the same dead tone. “I have lost everything. I have lost my father, my betrothed, and now my mother…”
Margaret bent over Mary and put her cheek close to her mother’s mouth. She felt no breath.
“She has gone,” she said, looking up in surprise.