She had a point. Keith crossed his arms thoughtfully. “Ye have another idea, then?”
Rhoswyn thought on the situation seriously. Her only plan had been to send for allies, but clearly that wasn’t the answer. She had to come up with something else, something to hit the English where it would do the most damage.
Something to damage that fragile male ego. An idea took hold.
“The English have considerable pride, Pa,” she said after a moment. “I dunna suppose they could turn down a challenge, could they?”
He looked at her strangely. “What kind of challenge?”
She gazed at her father intently. “Would they accept a challenge that had yer best warrior against their best warrior?” she asked. “The winner would name the terms, and when I won, I would tell them they had tae leave Monteviot.”
Keith’s brow furrowed. “Yer terms?”
She nodded eagerly, thinking she was on to something brilliant. “Aye,” she said. “We could go tae Monteviot and challenge them, but I wouldna reveal meself until the battle. Once the English warrior sees I am a woman, he has tae fight me. It would shame him if he dinna.”
Keith scratched his chin thoughtfully. In truth, it wasn’t a bad scheme. Perhaps, he could coerce and insult the English enough that they would take on a single-combat challenge, winner take all. It would most certainly be a matter of pride. The only negative point to that entire plan was the fact that Rhoswyn was determined to be the warrior facing the English. Although his daughter was good – very good – he wasn’t sure he wanted to pit her against an English knight.
Still, she had an excellent point – not revealing her identity until it was too late. The English knight would have no choice but to go through with it simply to save his pride, woman or no. Or… he could surrender because fighting a woman would be beneath him.
One way, Keith might lose a daughter. The other way… he’d gain back his outpost and keep his child intact.
It was a difficult choice to make.
“And what happens if ye lose?” he asked quietly. “What then? They could name their terms, too.”
Rhoswyn wasn’t one to entertain defeat in any case, but she had to be realistic. “What is the worst they could do?” she asked. “Demand we go home? Demand we leave Monteviot Tower to them and never return?”
Keith was much older and much more experienced. He knew that a counter-demand could be much more serious than she was making it out to be.
“They could demand ye,” he said. “Or, they could demand we turn over Sibbald.”
Rhoswyn thrust her chin up. “Then we would be without honor because they couldna have me or Sibbald. We would run for home and hope they would not catch us.”
She was serious; Keith could see it. In his opinion, she wasn’t being reasonable. Still, in her suggestion, he could see that she was more than willing to sacrifice herself and that was the mark of a noble warrior. He appreciated that.
After a moment, he sighed and put his arm around Rhoswyn’s shoulders, giving her a squeeze. For just a moment, she was his little girl again and she hugged her father, tightly. But it was only for a moment; she quickly released him, embarrassed to show any emotion.
“Ye understand that I must do what I feel best,” Keith said to her, fingering a tendril of her hair. “In spite of what ye think of me, de Wolfe’s incursion will be answered. I willna cower from him. The man is on me land and I must let him know that I know.”
Rhoswyn nodded. “I know.”
“But I’m not sure I’m a-wantin’ ye tae fight their best warrior for the prize of Monteviot Tower.”
“There is no one better than me. Ye know that.”
Keith snorted softly. “There are a few, lass.”
“But they willna have the advantage I have – of being a woman.”
“That is true.”
“Then we will go on the morrow?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Now?”
She nodded firmly. “Why should we wait? The sooner we go, the sooner they leave.”
Hesitantly, he nodded, and the plan was set. As much as Keith didn’t want to entertain the possibility, the more he thought on it, the more sense it was starting to make. Having his daughter challenge the English, winner take all, and then revealing her sex when they accepted the challenge. Those foolish English knights with their sense of chivalry might very well lay down their weapons rather than fight a woman. In fact, he was willing to bet that would be the case.
He was about to stake Rhoswyn’s life on it.
As Keith glanced at his tall, proud daughter, he began to think of the terms they would relay once she triumphed over the arrogant English. Not a few minutes earlier, he was thinking on offering her to de Wolfe to create an alliance. He still thought it was a good idea. And if the winner was the one to set the terms of victory, Keith had a different idea of terms set forth than his daughter did. His terms wouldn’t be that the English should clear out and leave Monteviot Tower.
His terms would be that the loser marry his daughter. He’d have his alliance, his daughter would have a husband, and all would be well in the world – even if her husband was English.
Rhoswyn’s plan to challenge the English was looking better and better.
CHAPTER THREE
Monteviot Tower
The great hall of Monteviot smelled like smoke and burned flesh, but they were all so exhausted and hungry that no one seemed to care. Three days after the burning of the tower, the restoration of the grounds was already underway.
The bodies of the dead Scots had been piled outside of the walls of Monteviot and, at William’s request, Troy had sent to Jedburgh Abbey for a canon to come and pray over the departed souls. They waited two days for the holy man to come but at the end of the second day, the stench of the dead was so bad that Troy ordered the funeral pyre lit.
Of course, it was appropriate that the canon should come just as the sky filled with black, greasy smoke from the burning bodies and the wiry man with his skull suitably shaved to denote his piety arrived on an old palfrey and promptly launched himself from the horse to berate the English who were disposing of the bodies.
Hector de Norville, Paris’ eldest son, had been the first to receive the holy tongue lashing because he happened to be standing closest to the priest when he arrived. But Hector was much like his father in that he didn’t take most things too seriously; he knew his duty, he knew what was best, and he simply brushed the priest off when the man tried to tell him that burning the dead without a priest’s blessing was condemning the souls to Purgatory.
As Hector walked away, Troy watched from his position across the pyre. The frustrated priest seemed to be scolding any English knight he came in contact with but the knights were all following Hector’s example and either ignoring the priest or walking away.
As the priest came close to a tantrum as the flames of the dead burned brightly, Troy made his way over to the man who was now trying to berate the soldiers who were piling up the bodies. With the knights gone, the soldiers were the next targets, but the soldiers looked at the priest as if they had no care for his ranting. They continued their duty of stripping the dead and then throwing them onto the pile. They had their orders and no one, not even a Scottish priest with a heavy accent, was going to stop them.
“You,” Troy said as he walked up behind the frantic priest. “Are you from Jedburgh?”
The man whirled around, his eyes widening at the sight of the very big, very dark knight. “I am,” he said, breathless. “Ye sent for me. Now I am here and I find ye burnin’ the bodies of the dead?”
Troy held up a hand to calm the man. “We had no choice,” he said. “Some of them were burned already because they had been caught in the fire that burned out the tower. For the rest of them… it was starting to smell very badly around here. We had to do something.”
The priest threw up his hands. “Then bury them!”
Troy eyed the man before kicking at the ground. �
��In this?” he said, pointing. “Look at it; there is more rock than soil here. We could never dig through this. Or did you have in mind that we should take them in a caravan to Jedburgh so that you and your fellow priests could properly bury them?”
That seemed to bring some pause to the priest. His gaze lingered on Troy before looking to the ground, seeing what the knight had meant. It was extremely rocky ground, meaning it would have been very difficult to dig out a mass grave. Soil such as this was nearly impossible to cut through. Unhappy, the priest sighed.
“Then why did ye send for me?” he asked. “Ye’ve already burned the men. Ye’ve already done what needed tae be done.”
“I sent for you to pray for these men,” Troy said. “It was not by my choice, I assure you. My father requested it. All of these men are thieves and murderers, so prayer will not do them any good. Their paths were set in life and they are set in death. But my father requested that a priest pray for them just the same. It is a merciful gesture, I suppose.”
The priest scratched his head, fingers digging into thin hair that stood up like straw in places. He seemed to be calming after his initial flare up.
“Then yer father is a pious man,” he said, eyeing the big knight. “Who are ye?”
“Troy de Wolfe. My father is William de Wolfe.”
That brought a reaction from the priest. “The Wolfe of the Border?”
“Aye.”
Now, the priest wasn’t quite so irate. In fact, he seemed to be more interested in his surroundings. “A de Wolfe battle in Scotland?” he asked. “What goes on here, then? What happened?”
Troy looked up at the burned-out tower, at his general surroundings as the sky darkened into night overhead. The stars were starting to come out.
“This place was a haven for reivers,” he said. “We have eliminated the threat. My father is taking over command of this outpost and it will become English property. In fact, this tower is located between my father’s seat of Castle Questing and his major outpost of Wolfe’s Lair. Have you heard of the Lair?”
“I have.”
“Now we shall have two outposts on the Scottish side of the border.”
The priest was looking around, growing more subdued by the minute as he realized what had taken place and what it meant for the area in general; the Scots weren’t policing this part of the border very well so now the English were. And, knowing de Wolfe, he would not relinquish the property without a major fight, which no one in this area could give him.
The English were here to stay.
“I’d heard of some raids out here,” the priest admitted. “These are Kerr lands. Did ye know that?”
Troy nodded. “I did. So does my father. But the raids were not on Kerr lands; they were on de Wolfe lands.”
The priest looked at him. “But these lands belong tae Red Keith Kerr,” he said. “Does he know ye’re here?”
Troy shrugged. “Does it matter? He did nothing to control the reivers on his land so we had to take care of the problem. If he has issue with us being in his lands, then let him come forth and discuss it.”
The priest sighed heavily. “I’m sure he will.”
Troy knew that. He’d been fighting the Scots a long time and he knew of Red Keith and his band of Lowlanders. Troy had never had much action with the man, for he tended to keep to himself, but those incidents that Troy had heard of where Red Keith had been involved gave the man a legendary temper and men who were quite zealous. If Troy believed what he’d been told, then Red Keith had some fearsome warriors.
But it occurred to Troy as he pondered the reputation of Red Keith Kerr that this priest would possibly know the lands and the clans better than he did. It was true that William was quite knowledgeable about those who bordered his lands, and Troy was also very knowledgeable by virtue of the time he’d spent on the Marches, but this priest might know things they wouldn’t, including intimate details of Red Keith Kerr. An interest in what the priest might know had him behaving a bit more friendly towards the man.
“You did not tell me your name,” he said.
The priest glanced at him. “Audric.”
Troy looked at the man a moment, trying to gauge how to proceed. “Thank you for answering the summons to come and pray over the bodies of your dead countrymen,” he said, “but I am sure you could use some rest before you do. Come inside and meet my father. Let us discuss how to keep peace now that we’ve purged the reivers from Kerr land. I am sure my father would appreciate any advice you might have.”
He began to lead the priest towards the bailey. Audric sensed a change in demeanor with Troy but he didn’t say anything. He, too, was trying to get a sense of these English, and of what had occurred here beyond the purging of reivers.
Audric wondered if that was all there was, considering de Wolfe had at least two properties in the area that were a day’s ride or less away. Wolfe’s Lair was well-known in these parts, even to the clergy of Jedburgh and Kelso to the northeast, and Kale Water was known to house fanatic English who were fearsome fighters. Now, he had Monteviot Tower. Perhaps if Audric could find out what de Wolfe’s intentions really were, he could tell his superiors and even Scots lairds in the area who would want to know. These men were English, after all, and any peace with them was tenuous at best.
Aye… perhaps he should find out all he could. Let his visit here mean something other than saying prayers for those who didn’t need them now, anyway.
Let him find out what was really going on, for what affected the border affected the rest of Scotland as well.
*
While the vast majority of the fortified tower smelled of smoke and burned bodies, the great hall had remained oddly untouched. It smelled of dogs and of smoke and of unwashed men, but it didn’t have the rank smell of burned flesh that the rest of the fortress seemed to have. Therefore, the meal that night could be eaten in relative comfort, and eat the English did.
It was the end of the third day after the conquest of Monteviot Tower and the English were relaxing somewhat. The cleanup was nearly over as far as the dead were concerned and some of the knights had begun what would be the restoration of the tower. Burned wood was hauled out and anything salvageable was set aside.
From Michael and his sons, who were to be deeply involved in the assessment and salvage of the tower, Troy had learned that the second and third levels were nearly undamaged. Those levels were the laird’s hall, which was a smaller hall, and then two bedchambers above it. A narrow spiral staircase built into the thickness of the wall had also been completely spared.
The majority of the damage had come from the roof collapsing into the fourth floor, and then burning men and anything else it could use for fuel. Most deaths had come from smoke inhalation rather than actually burning, although they did have their share of the burned bodies. Michael seemed to think that skilled craftsman could easily repair the roof and William vowed to send some of his craftsmen from Castle Questing to help with the repairs. In truth, the tower had been built mostly of stone, as Barden had said, and the structure itself had mostly survived.
As William had hoped, he still had a tower.
As evening fell and the night turned dark and crisp, the smell of roasting meat mingled with all the other smells of the tower, making for a rather pungent experience. A cow had been slaughtered and the men were greatly anticipating the meal. With the majority of the army in the enclosed bailey, with the repaired gates now sealed for the night, the knights and senior soldiers had found their way into the hall.
With the short, skinny priest at his side, Troy made his way into the rather crowded hall, full of men drinking and tearing their way through the beef that was being pulled straight off the roasting spit in the bailey. Somewhere off in a corner, a soldier had produced a mandolin, and songs of love and victory filtered through the smoky air.
There was a table near the open-pit hearth in the center of the hall and Troy could see his father and most of the other knights sitting th
ere. He led the priest towards the table, catching his father’s attention as he drew close.
“The priest from Jedburgh has arrived, Papa,” he said, indicating the short man in the dirty brown robes. “This is Father Audric.”
Audric found himself under intense scrutiny as most of the table within earshot turned to look at him. In particular, at least three of the younger English knights were looking at him with extreme suspicion and he met their gaze, rather warily, wondering if they were going to rush him then and there. Hatred for the Scots burned deep in these young English warriors. Fortunately, Troy grasped him by the arm before any trouble could start and pulled him away from the unfriendly faces and over to a seat the end of the bench while he went around the table to sit with his father.
Audric sat down and someone put a wooden cup in front of him. There was a pitcher of liquid within arm’s reach and he timidly picked it up, pouring what turned out to be the dregs of the wine into his cup. It was cloudy and full of sediment, but he drank it anyway, thirsty. From across the table, William was the first to speak.
“You are from Jedburgh?” he asked.
Audric nodded. “Aye, m’lord.”
“We sent for you two days ago. What took so long?”
Audric sensed a rebuke in that question. He looked around at the table of men; he’d never seen such a collection in his entire life. They were big; some of them were even huge. Scarred, battle-worn, bruised and even a few that had bloodied hands or a nick to the face. Even so, they were the victors and that victory radiated from them like a stench. Sassenach men who had come to fight the righteous fight, to rid the land of a threat but, in that action, Audric could still sense conquest. It was in their blood, the English against the Scots, something that was seared into their souls from one generation to the next.
The Original de Wolfe Pack Complete Set: Including Sons of de Wolfe Page 214