‘No doubt ye ken well why I’ve called ye and where we’re going,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve a score to settle. A wrong done me is a wrong done to every last man of you. Ready your weapons,’ he told them. ‘We leave at dawn tomorrow.’
They did as he ordered.
Donald spent the night in the stable with Fin. They talked about the raid to come. Fin was in a state of high excitement. Before Donald could grumble much, Fin’s enthusiasm began to infect him, so that he remembered his duty to his laird and put aside his reluctance.
‘I came in place of Father,’ he boasted, not quite truthfully – the recruiting officer, seeing the two of them together, had picked Donald. ‘He’s too old now and Mother needs him. Did ye know that in six months we’re to have another wee brother or sister?’ But Fin wasn’t much interested in that. All he could think about was the coming battle and how Donald might bring honour on the family with brave deeds. Whatever he might think of the laird personally, it was a privilege to fight for him in a good cause, and a man might win gold and favours if he stood out in courage or devotion.
‘I wish I could come! I’d show that black-hearted murderer!’ Fin kept saying.
McLennan chose his best horse, his sharpest sword and his heaviest club. At dawn, his men, willing and unwilling alike, ranged before him in the shadowed ward. In the dull dawn light, he inspected them and their weapons. They all had their bows and arrows, and some had swords and pikes, as well as dhus. Then, because these were freeborn Scots who would fight better when they understood their orders, he told them his plan. It was a good plan, but it depended for success on the element of surprise.
The castle gate was opened, and the drawbridge lowered. McLennan was just going to ride across the moat. But something was wrong. Something was missing.
‘Where’s the girl?’ he roared suddenly. ‘I want the girl!’
The men from outside the castle didn’t know what he was talking about. All except one. Donald knew. Peony was in the stables with his brother – Donald had just said goodbye to her and claimed a kiss for good luck. ‘Since I havna a sister, you must do the office!’ Its shy feather-touch was still tingling on his cheek.
But such were the ingrained habits of blind obedience to the laird, a slavish desire to please him, that he didn’t let himself stop to think. He ran in there, picked her up with not a word said, and carried her into the ward.
Fin, who had been tending a horse, let out a howl. But before he could move or utter again, a heavy hand fell on him and another stifled his mouth. He struggled, but Rob had three times his strength and pinned him to the stable wall, his eyes fierce and compelling.
Out in the yard, McLennan’s brow cleared. ‘Ah! Good. Put her up behind me.’
Donald obeyed, Fin’s cut-off shout of protest ringing in his ears. Then he turned shamefacedly and went back into the ranks. Every man present avoided his eyes, because they all had the same thought. Take a wee girl into danger? It was cruel. It was needless. But they dared not say anything. The laird’s will was law – their only law.
Peony, trembling all over with shock, struggled to pull out her skirt, which was hampering her legs. Once again, she locked her arms around her master’s waist and hid her eyes against his back, holding her breath and clenching her teeth.
Fin had wrenched free of Rob with an eel-like squirm, and run out after her. He was trembling, too. He stood in the stable doorway with Rob’s hand hard on his shoulder, holding him tightly, restraining him.
‘There’s naught to be done, lad, naught to be done,’ he muttered over and over in a husky undertone.
The raiding party crossed over the drawbridge, which was pulled up behind them, and down the ramp. The portcullis crashed down with a sound of absolute finality.
The moment Rob released him, Fin ran up the stone stairs on to the battlements and watched them marching away, with McLennan at their head. He could see Peony clinging on behind. He felt the useless anger inside him, like a huge lump stuck behind his breastbone. Tears blurred the scene.
‘I may never see her again,’ was his thought, and it brought desolation. ‘Puir lassie. Puir wee thing. She’ll be so afeared! How can a man be so hard, and still call himself a man? If I’d a bow I’d shoot him dead from his horse this instant. I’d get over the moat somehow, I’d run and fetch her back. I’d make her safe.’
But none of that was going to happen, and he knew it even as the power of the wish was possessing his whole being. It made the wish as heavy as a stone in his brain, weighting him down, making it hard to move or breathe as he watched the raiding party grow smaller with distance – through the slumbering village, and out across the moor.
McLennan marched his men for two days, reaching his goal – an oak and beech wood two miles from the enemy castle – on the afternoon of the second. There were to be no fires. The men were soon huddled up in their plaids and sheepskins, looking forlorn and hungry. They had reached the wood too late to hunt, but McLennan, mindful of keeping their loyalty, heartened them as well as he could.
‘The wood’s full of deer, squirrels, pheasants… ye’11 no’ go hungry after tonight. Sleep, and your bellies will sleep and no’ trouble ye.’
There was a subdued murmur among the younger men, but they obeyed. Donald rolled himself up in his plaid between thick roots that snaked around the base of an ancient beech. He sighed and shivered, wishing himself at home in his warm bed. He had a guilty conscience, too. Fin’s face when he had picked up the lass… No. It did no good to keep yourself awake with such troublesome thoughts. He’d only been obeying orders. If he hadn’t fetched her, someone else would have done, and got the credit for it, too. He hoped Fin wouldn’t tell their mother, though. Oldest son or not, Donald still feared his mother’s anger, and she would be angry at this.
McLennan himself, after seeing his force encamped under the trees, lowered Peony to the ground without a word, and rode through to the far side of the forest. From there, sheltered by the outermost fringe of trees, he could see his enemy’s castle on a rise, silhouetted against the last of the light.
‘It’s no’ as big as mine!’ thought Bruce McLennan. ‘It’s crude, next to mine, not more than a fortified mansion. One tower – no moat and no drawbridge.’
Still, its castellated walls and gatehouse looked formidable, and on that single tower he could see a watchman patrolling back and forth… Storming it would not be easy. But McLennan had his plan. After surveying his intended prize for an hour, marking every strategic point until darkness hid the scene, he rode back to the camp.
On his return, the first thing he did was to scan the sleeping company for Peony. It was hard to see her in the deep darkness under the trees that did not even admit starlight. But she came to him. She had food for him and had spread a blanket in a fairly comfortable place. ‘No tea,’ she said, smiling up at him. ‘No fire.’
‘Be quiet. Dunna wake the men. Bring water from the stream for my horse and for me.’
She struggled back from the stream with a leather pail full of water. Then she curled up as near him as she dared. She watched him covertly as he lay on his side, eating and drinking. She didn’t sleep until he did.
The raiding party, hidden by the wood, spent two days assembling the siege-engine and practising with it. McLennan had thought of an improvement over the Mi-Ki version. He had had his blacksmith construct a special, shovel-shaped iron piece to top the throwing-arm. He now instructed some men to encase several of the heavy stone balls in bent branches. Between stone and wood they stuffed sheep’s wool smeared with pitch. The pitch would be set alight, and the flaming balls flung over the enemy’s walls by the giant catapult.
They cut down a tough young oak and shaped its trunk into a battering ram to break down the gates. They also made ladders out of branches to scale the walls.
McLennan had picked a small group to hunt. The hunters duly shot some birds, squirrels and rabbits, but saw no deer. It wasn’t enough, and McLennan knew they wouldn’
t fight well with empty bellies. So on the second morning, before dawn, he took a gamble, which seemed reasonable at the time. He sent a small raiding-party to steal sheep from one of the farms around the castle. He warned them to be stealthy, and to steal at most two or three animals so that they wouldn’t be missed.
At noon that day, looking at the progress that had been made, McLennan was satisfied. When he saw the three stolen sheep being brought in and skinned, he turned his mind to the problem of cooking them.
‘How can meat be cooked without making smoke?’ he asked one of his older men.
‘By digging pits, m’laird.’
McLennan ordered other work suspended while three pits were dug, and dead wood collected. The fire was kindled in the pits, and smoke was wafted in all directions by men fanning it with leafy branches so that it kept close to the ground till most of it was dispersed. Next, large stones and green branches were laid on the glowing wood to stifle the flames and hold the fire in the embers. The carcasses were wrapped each in a rush mat soaked with water, and some of the earth was then piled loosely on top. What emerged was steam, and after some hours, an aroma of cooking mutton that brought saliva to every mouth.
That night they unearthed the meat and rent it to pieces between them with lusty shouts. But even while they laughed and guzzled, gnawing on the bones and feeling an unusual warmth toward their master, the farmer they’d robbed was on his way to the enemy castle to report his loss to his laird.
Archibald Mclnnes, although a man of savage instincts and a drunkard, was no fool. He had been waiting for something like this from McLennan for many years. The news about the missing sheep – though a man with less on his conscience might have thought it meant nothing – made his veins run ice.
He sent out spies.
They tracked the thieves, and came back with the news that there was a big party of men in the woods, with weapons including a siege-engine. Mclnnes broke out in a sweat, put away his whiskey and got ready to defend himself.
He sent runners and riders out into his lands according to custom, and ordered all his men who could fight, and their families, inside his walls. He urged the utmost speed and stealth, with threats that galvanised them all. The men frenziedly prepared their arrows and the women drew up tubfuls of water out of the well. They built their own fires ready to be lit on the edges of the roof, and carried up pots of water.
While these preparations were in progress, Mclnnes remembered he was a Christian and sent for a priest to shrive him of his sins. But there was one cardinal sin he was afraid to confess, a sin ten years old. A sin for which he assumed that no forgiveness was possible.
McLennan sat among his men, ate moderately and reviewed his plan. Peony, at his side, was given titbits almost from his own mouth, he was so certain of success. Soon he would have his just revenge. Soon his enemy would be dragged back in chains at his horse’s tail and locked in his dungeon at his mercy.
The day after the feast was the last before the planned attack. McLennan moved among his men from dawn till dusk, making sure everything was ready for the march which was to begin two hours before midnight. They would have to march around the wood. They couldn’t drag the great catapult through it.
When all was ready, and the men asleep, McLennan, too, decided that, after all, a prayer would be a wise precaution. His words to God were as terse as to his fellow men. He knelt on the ground some distance from his troops and gave his order to the deity.
‘God give me the victory I deserve over my cursed enemy.’
He rose to his feet. This seemed a little abrupt, even to him, though at least no word of reproach had crossed his lips. After hesitating, he knelt down again.
‘And forgive me my sins.’
But he was confident that no wrong he had ever done compared with the one done him, that he was about to avenge.
For the remaining hours until it was time, McLennan sat on in the dark under a tree and withdrew into himself. Regarding the coming raid, everything that needed to be thought about had been; all that needed doing was done. What he must do now was to rouse in himself the utmost courage, ferocity and determination. It was time to look again at the thing he had pushed down into the bottom of his memory and tried to bury because of the pain it gave. Now pain could be a goad.
Quite deliberately – and this took immense courage – he recalled the last moments in the life of his family. The memories he always fought, he now summoned. He saw the face of a bonny young woman, a face too much loved and mourned to be remembered clearly, screaming long, fierce screams as she was thrown across a man’s back, her hand reaching out to him, fingers spread… He could hear the cries of children, cries cut short one by one. He shifted his arms and legs in a spasm, his limbs remembering how they had been unable to move then against their bonds. He clenched his fists till his nails pierced his palms, and screwed up every muscle of his face in an effort to endure the memory. It seemed suddenly that it had been an act of cowardice and betrayal, all these years, to struggle to blot out those scenes, those sounds, just because they tortured him.
He visualised his wife being carried away. He saw again her face, and it was a mask – hardly the face he’d known and loved, whose eyes had been bequeathed to all his children, but a thing distorted with terror and outrage. He saw it so clearly – forcing himself – that his breathing became erratic and his hair stirred almost audibly on his head.
He turned the fearful eyes of memory on to his children. He must think of them, too, recall them in every detail. Their sweet faces, their innocence, and the remembrance of their death-cries would surely put hellfire into his blood. So he called them up, one by one: two daughters and his little son, his heir that should have been…
But something happened in his mind.
Their faces would not come to him. Instead of their remembered faces, each of them had the same face, and when he saw whose it was, he froze with incredulity. It was the face of – of the girl, of his nameless Mi-Ki slave.
The shock was terrible.
He groaned, ground his teeth, pummelled his head with his fists to change the images, to bring his children’s faces back. But it was no use. There she was, curse her – each one of their bodies bore her head – how dared it be so, but it was! Like some malevolent, ghostly thing that had taken them over, she occupied an unmerited, intruding place in his mind and memory, the place belonging to his children. As if she – that scrap of foreign waste that he had scooped up and bought for his use, like a pot or a blanket or a pair of boots – was daring to claim kinship with him. As if she were his own blood! As if she had replaced his children!
He rolled over on his side on the forest floor, clawing up handfuls of leaf mould. He crammed it over his eyes, rubbed it into his hair, into his beard. She had befouled his mind, stolen his memories, sucked at the source of his courage! That old woman in the cottage was right. The girl was a witch! He would have to rid himself of her.
But when at last it was time to get up, to steady and clean himself, to rouse his men, he had not thought how it could be done, and his mind, instead of being calm and clear, was as turbid as troubled waters.
At the darkest time of night, he ordered his men to wheel the siege-engine around the outer edge of the wood. It took six of them to drag it with ropes, three more to push from behind. Its wooden wheels and their rough-hewn axles squeaked and groaned each time it went over uneven ground. The men were uneasy and so was McLennan, riding alongside with Peony behind him. (Why had he taken her with him? Because he always took her. Because he didn’t know how to leave her. Because he had not decided what to do with her.) He hadn’t expected it to be so noisy. They would have to move it quickly up the hill and attack without delay, before the defenders were roused. Luckily the wind was in their faces, blowing the sounds away.
It was well after midnight when they reached the foot of the hill on which Mclnnes’s mansion stood. McLennan ordered complete silence, but he couldn’t silence his horse. When a sh
rill whinny suddenly pierced the night, all the men felt a chill of fear. But they were still far enough away so that perhaps it hadn’t been heard. McLennan ordered the pullers and pushers to be changed to fresh men and the siege-engine hauled up the hill as fast as possible, with the missiles being dragged behind on hurdles. He rode ahead of them at the trot. And abruptly reined to a stop.
He’d seen something that appalled him. All the men behind him stopped too. Those who were dragging the siege-engine braced themselves against its gravitational backward pull, and looked up for the first time, instead of at the ground. And they saw what he saw.
Between the crenellations around the building, sudden points of bright light sprang forth. Fires…! Those fires told McLennan at once that his enemy had been forewarned, that his purpose had been discovered.
He looked at the walls. He couldn’t see the windows in the blackness, but he guessed that behind every one, a man with a bow and arrows was waiting in the dark. He knew what would happen when his men stormed the building that held his enemy.
McLennan’s heart hammered and his limbs trembled, not with fear but with the most intense disappointment and frustration. The raid was doomed. There would be no conquest and no prisoners to take back and put in the dungeon. Once again his hated enemy would triumph. Unless…
McLennan’s right hand reached slowly behind him. Peony was there, a soft, compliant figure… Suddenly he grasped her. He dragged her from behind him to the front. He held her on the pommel of his saddle and brought his mouth close to her ear.
‘Listen to me,’ he whispered. ‘I know now why I brought ye. Ye’re going to go up that hill. Ye’11 walk around the building. Ye will cry and wail like a lost soul, just as loud as a body can wail! They’ll think ye’re a banshee. That’ll put the fear of the devil into them.’
Peony partly understood. She understood what she had to do, and her heart froze. Alone in the dark of night, she had to walk up a hill and round that great black shape with its crown of fire, outlined against the stars. She had to cry and wail like a banshee.
The Dungeon Page 9