Champions of Time (The After Cilmeri Series, #13)

by Sarah Woodbury

  He was glad to see that the time had been put to good use as well, in that they had passed around a jug of beer and finished off the loaf of bread on the table. Nobody looked more worse for wear than their captain.

  David gave the key to Bernard, gesturing at the same time to the wounded guards. “Stick these two in the cell.” Then, as the men were dragged down the stairs none too gently, David looked at the rest. “You know this castle. We are currently outnumbered, but with twenty of you, if we plan correctly, we can take it from the inside.”

  “And then what?” A man with a gray beard raised a hand. “There’s an army between us and freedom.”

  William smirked. “Two armies, and the second belongs to us.”

  David nodded. “The Stewarts have marched from Scotland with two thousand men, and I have five thousand more on the hill to the south. If we take the castle, we can leave the soldiers in the field to them.” He didn’t actually know those numbers, but he wanted to hearten them. Callum was here, he would swear to it, and if the whole army hadn’t made it yet, they were coming.

  Some of the tension in the men’s faces eased at David’s confidence. There were even a few grins.

  “Our armor and weapons should be on the floor above us,” a lanky man said, pointing with one finger towards the ceiling.

  That was a bit of luck David hadn’t expected. But then, he’d armed himself from a storage room in a similar location in the tower on the other side of the castle. “Go, all of you.”

  While they went up one more floor, David moved to crouch beside the captain, who turned his head to meet his gaze. “Can I trust all of them?”

  “To a man,” Gilbert said. “We are English, not Scot.”

  “What about the rest of the garrison, the men who turned traitor?”

  Gilbert’s lips twisted. “Most had families to support or decided when they saw what happened to those who resisted that their loyalties were flexible. Most, if not all, will gladly fight for you.”

  “Can we take the castle?”

  “How many men are you willing to kill to do it?”

  David didn’t hesitate. “Everyone who gets in my way.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  4 April 1294

  Christopher

  Once through the castle gate, Christopher and Matha pulled up. The street before them was deserted. Where last night at this hour, shops had been packed with people, now they were closed up tight. The only men in sight moved purposefully in and out of the barrier that demarcated the town or passed through it heading straight to the entrance to the castle.

  “This way.” Matha tugged on his arm, and they loped down the side street to the mayor’s house.

  But when they arrived at their lodgings, they found the house closed up as tightly as the rest of the street. Christopher had to pound on the door to be admitted by Gunnar. He was fully clothed, so hadn’t gone to bed, and he held a knife in his hand, which he hastily put on the table when he realized who was at the door.

  Christopher got straight to the point. “We lied to you earlier about our identities. I am Christopher—”

  “—the Hero of Westminster,” Matha said.

  Christopher overrode him, “—the king’s cousin. Allies are freeing the imprisoned garrison as we speak. King David’s forces are even now prepared to attack the army in the field. Balliol has given you no thought because you are not his people, but the citizens of Skipton need to get inside the castle if they’re going to survive this battle.”

  For two seconds, Gunnar gaped at him, and then his mouth snapped shut. It was Inge who spoke first, however, coming out of the back room with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. “What do you want us to do?”

  “Awaken the town,” Christopher said, “but quietly! We don’t want to call attention to what we’re doing until it is too late to stop us. Everyone needs to come to the castle. At most, bring food to tide you over until the battle ends. Leave the rest of your possessions behind. The king’s army is not here to plunder. The main gate is open now, and we’ll make sure it stays open until everyone is inside. We also need every person prepared to fight, with whatever weapon they have to hand.”

  “We will do it.” Inge reached for her husband, who put his arm around her shoulders.

  “My nephew—Alvin—who sent you. He-he is on duty at the entrance to the town right now.” Gunnar was so anxious he was stuttering. “He will help.”

  “Thank you.” Christopher turned to go.

  But Inge put out a hand to stop him. “The king. He really is alive?”

  Christopher smiled. “He is not only alive, but he’s here. I spoke to him just now.”

  Inge’s eyes widened, and he sensed she remained disbelieving, interpreting Christopher’s reassurance as a boast, but she didn’t argue further. A few moments later, Christopher and Matha were hurrying down the street at a fast walk. It had to be past midnight by now. The deserted streets and the lack of movement in the field before them were testimony to how strictly Balliol’s orders to sleep were being obeyed.

  They stopped in front of Alvin, who looking at them questioningly. “My lords?”

  “I don’t know how to say this, so I’m just going to say it straight out. King David is here, along with his army. They are just out of sight beyond that hill.” Christopher didn’t point in case anyone was watching. “He has commanded us to take the castle. Your aunt and uncle said you were loyal to the king. Are you?”

  Alvin’s eyes were as wide as saucers. “The-the-the king is here?” He looked south as if David might materialize out of the darkness.

  Christopher was impatient with his question. “Yes, but he isn’t leading the army. He has personally infiltrated the castle and is taking it back. Your aunt and uncle are waking the townspeople to get them safely inside the castle, since once the king’s army attacks, nobody will be safe out here.”

  Alvin licked his lips.

  Matha nodded. “You rightly guess that if you don’t help us, you know too much, so if you decide to continue as a traitor, we will kill you.”

  Alvin put up both hands. “No, no! You don’t have to threaten me. I was on your side from the start.”

  He swung around to look at his partner, who was just returning from relieving himself in the ditch and had missed all but the tail end of their conversation.

  Matha stepped towards him with unmistakable menace, his hand on the hilt of his sword. “Decide your loyalties right now.”

  The man put up his hands. “I’m with you! I’m with you!” Then his attention was caught by movement in the street behind Christopher and Matha.

  Christopher glanced back and saw Inge, who seemed the more partisan between her and her husband, knocking repeatedly on the door of a house three down from the barricade.

  “What’s the plan?” Alvin said.

  “How many soldiers are on patrol in the town?” Christopher said by way of an answer.

  “Just us tonight.” Alvin gestured to the yards and yards of campfires in the fields south of the town. “A larger patrol seemed unnecessary.”

  “Except for the man on the drawbridge, of course,” his companion said.

  The drawbridge. Christopher looked towards the river. He could see the drawbridge workings poking up above the level of the houses’ roofs. It was still up, as it would be. Balliol meant to leave it up as a defense against Stewart’s men, but David had other plans, which meant they needed to control it.

  Alvin said in a low voice, “We rotate duty, so I could offer to relieve him. Too long at one post makes a man bored and complacent.”

  By now, Inge had encouraged many townspeople to move towards the castle. For forty or more people, they made very little noise. There wouldn’t be so many of them in total anyway, maybe three hundred people. It shouldn’t take long to get them safe.

  Christopher looked between the field and the castle. “Matha should stay here. Nobody has noticed us yet, but they will if two men aren’t manning this
post.”

  Matha’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded. “The moment arrows start flying, I’m coming after you.”

  “Feel free!” Christopher set off down the street that led to the bridge, which lay one street closer to the castle than Gunnar and Inge’s house. He’d noted the drawbridge earlier, of course, but it hadn’t played into his initial plans, in large part because he’d been so focused on not getting caught that he hadn’t had room to think about anything else. David might not realize its importance or even that it was there.

  They reached it to find two men rather than only the one standing sentry in front of it. Alvin walked straight up to them. “We will keep watch a while.”

  The two men didn’t argue, nor question the presence of a squire not in the garrison on lowly guard duty. On his way past, one of them said to Alvin, “Only one more night, and we’ll be rid of them.”

  “Do you mean that?” Alvin reached for the man’s arm to stop him walking away.

  The man paused, his eyes on his partner, who continued towards the castle. He was in for a surprise when he reached it. “You know I do.”

  “Then stay with us.” Alvin glanced at Christopher, who nodded.

  While Alvin related what they were doing at the drawbridge, Christopher turned in a circle to survey the ground they had to protect. The three of them couldn’t possibly survive a concerted assault. They had a guard station the size of a phone booth to stand under when it rained. Otherwise, the space was entirely open.

  Then Matha appeared in the road. He put up a hand but then disappeared down the street to their lodgings. Two minutes later, he returned with the bow and quiver they’d seen on the wall in the mayor’s house.

  Christopher eyed the weapon. “You don’t stand out at all with that.”

  Matha ignored the gibe, pointing instead across the river. “Look.”

  With his night vision ruined by the light from the torches in the town, it was hard at first to tell what had caught Matha’s attention, but then Christopher saw movement on the other side of the river. In the murky darkness, what appeared to be a colony of very large ants, so many it wasn’t possible to count them, had invaded the northern bank of the Eller Beck.

  “The Stewarts,” Matha said for Alvin’s benefit.

  Alvin swung around to look at Christopher. “You told the truth!”

  “Why did you follow me if you doubted?” Christopher said.

  “You are the Hero of Westminster and the king’s cousin. How could I not follow you?”

  Christopher glared at Matha, who shrugged, “I didn’t tell him. I have no idea how he knows.”

  “My uncle recognized you when you first arrived,” Alvin said. “He’s been to Westminster as a member of Parliament. He was afraid you’d betrayed the king.”

  A group of townspeople, possibly the last to get moving, appeared in the road, making their way up to the castle gate. But then one of them broke away from the main group and ran towards the drawbridge. “You can’t stay here! You must come with us into the castle!”

  Christopher waved him off. “We can’t. We have to defend the drawbridge until the Stewarts are ready for us to drop it.”

  The man hesitated, but then he turned back to his fellows, motioning as he did so for others to come with him. Five men and a woman, ranging in age from twenty to fifty, each armed with a staff or pitchfork, responded to his summons.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Christopher said when they reached him.

  “When the Scots came we hid in our homes,” the man said. “We are not soldiers, but still, it was cowardly. We didn’t even send a man to warn the king of what had happened to his castle.”

  The woman next to him nodded. “If the Hero of Westminster, a man who owes us nothing, is willing to defend our town, then the least we can do is stand with him.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  4 April 1294

  Thomas

  Thomas strode through the main entrance to the keep as if he owned the place. He’d noted over the course of the day how Christopher and Matha also were able to affect an air of confidence that he was fairly sure they didn’t feel any more than he did. He was doing what had to be done, however, so he maintained an air of superiority and arrogance that was expected of a young nobleman such as he.

  Very few people were awake. The call to march in the morning meant that everyone who wasn’t anyone was abed. Several of the great lords, however, continued to drink and talk, and it was with real trepidation that Thomas crossed the keep’s small enclosed courtyard and mounted the stairs to the great hall. At the far end sat a half-dozen lords, and Balliol and Hakkon were involved in a discussion that had turned heated.

  “You told me David would be dead!” Hakkon slammed his fist onto the table. “You promised it!”

  Thomas hesitated on the threshold, scanning the hall for servants. Tonight, there were no female servants at Skipton at all, barring two middle-aged women in the kitchen. All sensible fathers and husbands had fled the castle with their daughters and wives the moment the army arrived. A single manservant remained, wiping down the tables nearby, and Thomas sidled closer. “You must gather any other of your fellow workers who are still in the keep and leave it. Immediately.”

  The man gave him a startled look, but then he pulled on his forelock. “There’s only me, Nob, and Charlie left, my lord. It’s an early day tomorrow.”

  “Good. Go to the main gate. All will be explained once you reach it.”

  The man bobbed with his whole body, but unfortunately, their conversation had been noted at the high table.

  “You there! Thomas, is it? What do you want?” It was the castellan of Skipton, the one who’d let Balliol take the castle, a man named Hugo Renard.

  Thomas dismissed the servant with a wave of his hand, hoping he had said all he needed to, and strode up the hall towards the high table. “I was merely asking for some wine, my lord.” He paused to look around the room. “I was also looking for Sir Henri.”

  Renard left his position at the table and came towards Thomas. “He excused himself a moment ago.” He looked Thomas up and down. “I swear again that you look familiar to me.”

  “Leave the boy alone, Renard.” The King of Scots himself leaned to one side to see past the bulk of his castellan and gestured towards Thomas. “Get me some wine while you’re at it.” He was in his middle forties, with a full brown beard and brown eyes. Without a crown on his head, he looked no more royal than the other men at his table, and Thomas wouldn’t have marked him either as the King of Scots or the author of such an intricate plot against England.

  “Yes, my lord. Immediately.” Thomas was off like a shot to the kitchen door, located near the main entrance to the hall. The kitchen had its own access to the inner courtyard, so he could leave the keep without Balliol knowing it.

  Before he could reach the doorway, however, Henri appeared through the hall’s main entrance. Thomas dragged him out the door again and down the stairs before anyone at the high table could notice anything amiss. “Where have you been?”

  “Taking some air.” Henri frowned. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting you out of here. King David has come.” Thomas whispered the last words.

  “What did you say?” Unfortunately, Hugo Renard had followed him out of the hall and now gaped at them from the top step.

  Thomas motioned with a hand that Renard should come to him. “Hurry.”

  Obeying because he was curious, Renard trotted down the steps to stop in front of Thomas and Henri. “Did you say—”

  Thomas cut him off. “Why did you have to follow me?” As he spoke, he grabbed the collar of the Renard’s tunic and, in the same breath, drove his belt knife into Renard’s chest.

  Henri gasped his surprise but, despite his shock, grasped Renard’s upper arm to keep him from falling to the floor. “I hate to ask what you’re doing.”

  “I have followed you for months,” Thomas said. “I hope you can follow me in
this.”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  Together, Thomas and Henri dragged the body towards the wine cellar and dumped it behind a barrel, grateful yet again that Balliol had ordered most everyone to quarters.

  They returned to the central courtyard, and neither broke stride as they passed through it and out the inner gatehouse.

  Henri continued to keep pace across the outer ward. “Tell me what is happening.”

  “We are retaking the castle.” King David stepped out from the shadows of the curtain wall. “The phrase Join us or die does have a habit of focusing the mind.”

  Henri sucked in a breath before bowing before David. “Sire.”

  The king stepped closer and embraced him. “I am really glad to see you.”

  “Not, perhaps, as happy as I am to see you.” Henri lifted his chin to point to the gate. Upwards of ten men were moving in and around it. Beyond, townspeople hastened through the barbican. “Balliol and Hakkon remain in the keep.”

  “And Roger Mortimer?” David said.

  Henri frowned. “I haven’t seen him in at least an hour.”

  David grimaced and related the state of their insurrection.

  “We’ll get him, my lord,” Thomas said bracingly.

  “We will if I have to hunt him to the ends of the earth,” the king said.

  In addition to the main gate, King David had already conquered the keep’s gatehouse and its tower entrances on the wall-walks, and now shouts came from the barracks, implying that it soon would be in his hands too.

  Thomas glanced up to see a guard on the top of one of the keep’s towers peering down at them through a crenel. “He’s really beginning to wonder what’s happening,” he said in an undertone, “but he’s afraid to leave his post.”