by Paul Doherty
Matthias opened his eyes and stared up through the branches. An owl hooted, low and mournful. A night bird fluttered in the branches above him. Where was Fitzgerald now? Where was the Rose Demon? He glanced back over his shoulder. Vane and the others stretched out before the camp fire. Might one of them house this terrible being now pursuing him? Matthias was beginning to understand it. The Demon could not control him but he could, when he wanted, intervene to protect him. But why not protect Mairead? Or did the Demon want no one in Matthias’ life to distract him? He sighed and went back to the campfire. Whatever, he ruefully concluded, three years in a lonely castle on the Scottish march would give him time to think and reflect.
The next morning they reached the Great North Road, a busy thoroughfare with pedlars, packmen, tinkers, wandering friars, scholars, beggars and peasants. The road also carried grim testimony to the royal victory at East Stoke. At every half-mile, for at least a hundred miles, scaffolds and gibbets had been set up: from each hung rotting cadavers. Corruption fouled the air; so great was the stink under the summer sun, Vane ordered the soldiers to leave the highway and use country lanes and trackways.
‘The Tudor intends there will be no more Yorkist revolts,’ he commented. ‘The news of his victory will soon be known to everyone.’
They continued their journey: progress was slow but Vane didn’t really care.
‘The longer we take,’ he joked, ‘the more time we can enjoy ourselves. Up to Barnwick by the end of July, it will be September before we dawdle back to Newark. Who knows?’ he added. ‘We may even avoid another battle!’
They made their way to York, skirting the city, going up towards the moors. The weather remained good, with only an occasional shower. Matthias used the time to calm his soul and soothe his mind. He decided his best course of action was to accept things as they were, not complain and wait for the Rose Demon to make its presence felt. The moors they now crossed were a vast sea of gorse and purple heather, grass turning brown under a searing sun; curlew and snipe whirling above them. Now and again they passed a farm but large, fierce-looking dogs kept them well away. Sometimes there would be a break in the land, a small village clustered around a narrow church. They bought supplies but the villagers were unwelcoming and, most evenings, they slept out under the stars. The weather changed slightly as they travelled north, the breeze colder, brisker, tugging at their hoods and cloaks. One sumpter pony damaged a leg and had to be destroyed, its baggage piled high in one of the carts. Vane became more vigilant.
‘We are into the war lands,’ he explained. ‘James III of Scotland, not to mention the Douglases, often launch cattle raids. They always choose the moors, especially in summer. A small army could march for days and remain undetected.’
In the end Vane’s precautions were not necessary. Late one afternoon Matthias reined in and exclaimed in surprise at the long range of disused and derelict buildings, a wall of small forts stretching to east and west as far as he could see.
‘What is that?’ he asked. ‘Where does it begin? Where does it end?’
‘The Romans built it,’ Vane explained. ‘They say it stretches from sea to sea. We’ll shelter there tonight, tomorrow we’ll be at Barnwick.’
They entered the ruins of one of the castles. Matthias found the sprawling, crumbling walls fascinating and marvelled at the genius which had built it. The horses were hobbled and put out to grass; sentries patrolled the crumbling walls, fires were lit. Matthias thought the men would be happy with some place to shelter but Vane explained how, like sailors, soldiers were suspicious: they feared the ghosts and demons which haunted here.
‘Just like Barnwick,’ he added enigmatically.
‘What do you mean?’ Matthias asked.
‘You’ll see!’
Vane picked up a water bottle and splashed some water on his head and face, wiping it off with his hands.
‘I served at Barnwick. I used to belong to the household of Richard III.’ He grinned slyly. ‘Oh yes, I’ve served them all. Just like a dance, you must know when to change your partner. Anyway, I was up there in 1482 — a little trouble with some of the black Douglases. I tell you this, the cattle up here must get dizzy: Scotland, England, Scotland, England — around here, thievery and poaching are a way of life and having your roof burnt about your head an occupational hazard. Anyway, it’s a sprawling affair, Barnwick. It has a large Norman keep, four towers, one on each corner: it’s the north tower you have to watch. They say a demon dwells there.’
‘Go on,’ Matthias urged. He smiled to hide his anxiety. ‘After all, if I’m to spend three years there. .’
‘Well, the castle was built, you know how it is, little bits added here and there. According to one story, in 1320 a Lord Andrew Harclay was betrothed to Maude Beauchamp. One day he discovered his betrothed and a young squire making love in a bedchamber high in the tower. Now Harclay was an evil man. He was feared as a warlock as well as a brigand. He showed no mercy to either. According to legend, he immured both Maude and her lover in the walls of the north tower. They say their ghosts, or some other presence, haunts there. It’s a frightening place: strange blue lights have been seen, terrible cries heard, candlelight but no candles. Footfalls but no one walks and a terrible moaning, as if some soul is in the last agonies.’
‘Did you see all this?’ Matthias asked.
‘At first I thought it was children’s tittle-tattle. One night, however, I was on the north tower — me and two other lads, archers from Barnsdale: good, true Yorkshiremen, thick in the arm and thick in the head. I tell you this, after that night, they didn’t accept life for what it was. We were on the tower wondering if the Scots were going to show us their bare arses. Then we heard it, a sound like a wolf howling on the stairs below. We unbolted the trapdoor but it wouldn’t move.’ Vane slurped from the wineskin. ‘We thought someone was playing a joke. There was a crack in the trapdoor. One of my lads looked through it. He saw a face staring up at him: yellow with age, crumbling teeth, eyes like molten coins, lips which bubbled blood. He was so terrified that if we hadn’t restrained him, he would have thrown himself over the parapet. The howling began again and the trapdoor began to lift. All three of us flung ourselves on it, praying to every saint we knew. A terrible smell seeped out, like that of corpses piled high on a battlefield. A voice whispered like a wind. We caught the words: “Let me through, let me through, let me kiss the stars once more!”
‘The trapdoor moved, as if an army were pushing beneath it. A hand came out, the nails scored, skin like cracked leather. I didn’t know if we were dreaming, but by then I knew it wasn’t some joke by one of the garrison.’ Vane wiped the sweat from his face as he recalled the nightmare. ‘We thought the rest of the garrison must surely have heard the clamour and our screams but the tower is high.’ Vane sighed. ‘I nearly died that night of fright but the second lad, Ralph, he was blessed with common sense. Whatever was in that tower broke off trying to get at us for a while. Ralph took his bow and, using flames from the beacon, loosed fire arrows into the air. The Constable at the time, Hubert Swayne, raised the alarm. Soldiers came up.’ Vane leant closer. ‘Do you know something, Matthias? They heard nothing; they detected nothing except for a terrible smell of corruption on the stairs. That was the last time guards were ever set on the north tower. Since then I have had my soul shriven twice a year. I take the Sacraments and, when I hear these clever jacks say there’s no God in Heaven, I can at least tell them that there’s a devil in Hell.’ He drank some wine. ‘A new constable’s at Barnwick, Humphrey Bearsden. He’s a good soldier, tight-lipped but kind-hearted.’
‘Anyone else I should know?’
‘Well, Father Hubert, the chaplain, I think he’s still there. He knows about the north tower. He’s a very holy man. Oh yes, and there’s Bearsden’s sergeant-at-arms, a Scotsman, at least by birth, Malcolm Vattier, a burly brute but one of the best swordsmen I have ever met. Anyway, do you know what I saw today?’
Vane, to lessen the ten
sion, talked about the different wild flowers he had glimpsed. Matthias listened. He had taken a liking to this rough, grizzled soldier’s fascination with the beauty of the cowslip and how it could be distinguished from the false oxlip. Or his insistence that bog pimpernel and bethany, if grown properly, could be used for wounds and scratches.
Matthias looked up at the starlit sky and watched a shooting star, a flash of light charging across the heavens. Vane was just about to describe the virtues of St John’s wort when there was a stir amongst the sentries: shouts and cries to someone to stop and proclaim himself. Vane sprang to his feet, wrapping his war belt on.
‘It’s all right,’ one of the soldiers called.
An old man, his hood pushed back, stepped into the firelight. Thin-faced, his skin lined and seamed, mere tufts of hair on his almost bald head but the owner of a luxuriant white beard and moustache. He had good stout boots and the robe he wore was serge cloth, bound round the waist by a rope through which a long Welsh stabbing dagger was pushed. In one hand he carried a thick staff, in the other a tattered, leather bag. He sat down without a by-your-leave and glared at Vane.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing here? Eh? Do you have some jam? Or some honey? A piece of honey would be really nice.’
‘Aye, we’ve got twenty pounds of it,’ Vane joked back. ‘Don’t you know who we are, old man? We carry the King’s commission. Who gave you the right to blunder into our camp and start asking for honey?’
‘I couldn’t give a donkey’s fart for you,’ the old man replied. ‘I serve the King of Heaven. My name’s Pender. I live here. You are in my house.’ He waved his hand airily. ‘All of this is mine.’
‘You are a hermit?’ Vane asked.
‘Yes, I am a hermit. I came here for peace and quiet, to pray to God. I might as well have stayed in bloody Durham. Tinkers, traders, pedlars, soldiers from Barnwick. Not to mention Scots, English, outlaws and wolf’s-heads. You’d think all the world and his sister were here. I went to Castleton to beg. I got bugger all. I’ve come back.’ He glared suspiciously at Vane. ‘I come back to find half the royal army camp here.’
Matthias got up and went to their stores. He took out a small, dried loaf and a jar of honey which they had bought in one of the villages. He brought these back and pushed them into Pender’s hand.
‘Be our guest,’ he offered.
Vane leant across and threw two pennies on the ground before Pender.
‘We’ll pay honest rent,’ he joked.
The change in Pender was wondrous. He gave a broad toothless grin, pocketed the pennies, ripped off the piece of linen that covered the jar of honey, stuck his fingers into the honey and began to lick it. Every so often he closed his eyes and rocked backwards and forwards.
‘Oh, beauteous taste! Truly the psalmist is right when he says sweeter than the honeycomb!’ Pender tore at the bread. ‘Blessed be the Lord God!’ he intoned. ‘And blessed be you in all your bodily functions!’ He opened one eye. ‘Are you, to crown my pleasure, to give me some wine?’
Vane filled one of their pewter cups and handed it across. The hermit crossed himself, sketched a blessing in the air and continued to fill his stomach. Afterwards he burped and smiled beatifically.
‘Lovely!’ he breathed. ‘Welcome guests all.’
‘How long have you lived here?’ Vane asked.
‘Oh, a good score of years and a few more.’ Pender patted the crumbling brickwork. ‘This is my palace, my church!’
‘You are not frightened?’ Matthias asked. ‘Of the loneliness?’
The hermit peered across. ‘Sometimes! Sometimes at night I hear sounds: cries and calls, dark shapes moving in the heather outside, and they are not Scots. During the day, especially late in the afternoon, I sit in a place like this with my back to the wall. I hear the clink of the armour, the legionaries and, on the breeze, their Latin tongue: orders and commands being shouted.’
The nape of Matthias’ neck turned cold.
‘I am not being fanciful,’ Pender continued, his eyes now watching Matthias intently. ‘Ghosts and spirits walk here, still hung between Heaven and earth.’
‘Who destroyed this?’ Vane asked.
‘Some say the weather,’ Pender joked. ‘But I’ve had dreams. When this wall stood firm and Rome’s legions walked the parapets, it would take more than the weather to cast these stones down. There are legends,’ he continued. ‘Further down the wall stands a ruined temple. On its wall a huge rose has been carved.’ His eyes never left Matthias, who swallowed hard and gazed back. ‘There are also strange rune marks scratched in the masonry. Some say they tell a story of the wall’s destruction but no one can really make them out or understand them. According to local lore, when the legions left, the soldiers here did not receive the order to depart so they went on guarding, as if there were an empire still left to guard. Now, in the ancient days, to the north were two great peoples who ruled the glens of Scotland. The Picti, or Painted People, and the Caledones. They were united into one army by a famous war chief whose emblem was a rose wound round a staff.’
Matthias stiffened: this ancient legend was connected to his own life, his own experience of that strange force, the sinister Dark Lord who had haunted him all his years.
‘If the legend is to be believed,’ Pender continued, ‘the great Rose Lord fell in love with a Roman lady, daughter of a commander on the wall. He asked for her in marriage. The Roman refused so the Rose Lord brought his great army south and, in one terrible night, annihilated the soldiers of Rome. Every man was killed and the fortifications levelled. For a while the Picts and the Caledones lived on the wall, honouring their great leader but he, on finding the love of his life had been killed in the attack, mysteriously disappeared. His great army broke up and drifted away.’ Pender stared into the fire. ‘That’s only legend. Nevertheless,’ he added in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘at night the ghosts of all who died here still house themselves in the shadows and corners.’ He hitched his cloak around him. ‘So, kind though you be, sirs, I hope you are gone by the morrow.’
The hermit wrapped himself up in his cloak and lay down near the fire, resting his head on the tattered, leather bag he carried.
Vane got up, saying he would check on the sentries. Matthias lay down on the ground and stared up at the stars. Who was this Rose Demon? He glanced across the fire. Pender lay there, eyes open, staring at him.
‘You should sleep,’ the hermit murmured. ‘You’ve nothing to fear. I can see around you those sent to guard you.’
Matthias pulled himself up.
‘Nothing but shadows,’ the hermit whispered. ‘That’s all I see.’ He grinned. ‘And you’ve got nothing to lose but your soul!’
18
Barnwick Castle was built on the brow of a hill which gently sloped away into a wild sea of tangled grass, flowers, purple heather and gorse which stretched up towards the Scottish border.
‘It looks solitary,’ Vane observed as they reined in, ‘but any Scottish army which wants to plunder the northern march will have to either take it or bypass it. Both would be difficult, especially the former.’
As they rode along the white, dusty track up through the great gateway into the castle, Vane pointed out its principal features: two encircling walls, a broad moat fed by underground springs. The outer wall had small towers along it, whilst the inner wall was built slightly higher. The top was crenellated so, even if an enemy did take the gateway, they would find themselves trapped between two lines of fire. The wooden drawbridge they crossed was good and solid. The soldiers on guard in the dark, sombre gatehouse were well turned out, vigilant but not fussy or overweening. The outer bailey had houses built against the walls; small cottages, workshops, a smithy, forge and stables. The inner bailey was approached by a smaller gateway protected by a heavy, wooden and steel portcullis. A foursquare keep dominated the inner bailey. This soared up against the blue sky. It was built of heavy grey ragstone and looked older than the rest of the castle. Va
ne explained that this had been built earlier than the rest.
The inner bailey was surprisingly quiet. Some geese and pigs wandered about, chickens pecked at the hard-packed earth, a few soldiers lounged in the shade. One of these came across to take their horses and explained that the rest of the garrison were in the chapel. Matthias remembered it was the Feast of St Peter and St Paul, a Holy Day of Obligation. He asked Vane about the castle.
‘The Constable’s quarters,’ the sergeant-at-arms explained, pointing across to a small two-storey house at the far end of the bailey. ‘Solar and parlour on top, hall below.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Remember, Sir Humphrey Bearsden is a stickler for duty. Everything has to be kept in order, be it one’s duty to the King or to God. Ah well,’ he added, ‘let’s make ourselves busy.’
Vane ordered his own soldiers and those lounging about to unload the carts and sumpter ponies: all provisions were to be taken across to the hall. The money he kept with him.
Matthias wandered off. Looking up at the great keep, he studied the north tower and recalled Vane’s story. In the golden ripeness of a summer morning it looked nothing out of the ordinary. Somewhere deep in the keep a bell began to toll, followed by the faint sound of voices and footsteps. The door to the keep, which was reached by steep steps, was flung open. Children, laughing and chattering, ran down into the yard to continue their games. Their mothers and women of the garrison streamed out, chattering noisily, after them their menfolk. The Constable and his party came next: they stood at the top of the steps, staring down at Vane and his men whilst one of the sentries went up and explained their arrival.