Insurrection (7 page)

It was several minutes before Alexander reached them. His shadow fell across Robert. ‘We would have been quicker taking the track home,’ he said, clearly trying to stifle his breaths.

‘We haven’t been this way in years. Besides’ – Robert’s grin widened – ‘I wanted to see if I could still do it.’

‘You’ll always beat us. You’re the oldest,’ murmured Thomas, sitting up. His hair, wet with sweat, had flopped into his eyes. It was curly and blond like their little sister Christian’s. The rest of the children were dark like their mother, except for their fair half-sister, Margaret, married now and gone.

‘Alexander’s older than you and Niall,’ replied Robert, ‘and you both beat him.’

‘I didn’t try,’ responded Alexander tautly. ‘Now that you’ve won, let’s go back.’

Robert sat up with a sigh. He was restless after weeks without training or schooling. The castle had been frantic with preparations for the attack, the adults tense and preoccupied. Each day, more knights arrived from towns and manors across Carrick, all vassals of their father. Robert knew most of them, for all, at one time, had paid homage to the earl, kneeling before him to take the sacred vow, their hands in his as they swore their undying loyalty in return for a grant of land. Just as their father held his lands by right of the king and was expected to serve in war, pay rents and perform duties such as the guarding of castles, the men of Carrick, by their act of homage, were required to fight for the earl. They brought with them their own squires and foot soldiers, each man armed, ready for the assault on Galloway.

The chaotic coming and going had put their father in a foul temper and earlier, Robert and his brothers had slipped out of the gates, alone. The freedom away from the oppressive atmosphere and the earl’s harsh tones was a relief and the golden late afternoon was one of the most glorious since Robert had returned from Ireland. He wasn’t inclined to waste it. ‘Let’s stay a while longer.’

‘Someone will miss us. We’ve been gone almost an hour.’

‘Who will notice? Everyone is busy.’

‘Are you saying you won’t come?’

Robert stared at his brother, standing above him, hands tight at his sides. Alexander had always been serious, even as a boy of Niall’s age, but lately he had become as sombre as a monk. He wondered at the change, so noticeable since his return from Antrim. He’d thought it might have something to do with their father; perhaps the earl had been hard on his brother in his absence? But their father still seemed to be most pleased with Alexander and Thomas, respectively the most obedient and quiet of the five brothers. An answer struck him. With him and Edward in fosterage in Ireland, Alexander had effectively become the oldest son in the household. Now he was back, perhaps his brother felt robbed of that place? Robert couldn’t feel sorry for him. Alexander had no idea how fortunate he was not to be the one on whom all the future hopes of their family were pinned. Especially, Robert mused darkly, when their father seemed determined to make it impossible for him to prove himself worthy of that great responsibility. ‘Go if you want,’ he said, lying back and closing his eyes. ‘I’m staying.’

‘You should both come,’ said Alexander, addressing Thomas and Niall. ‘Unless you want to feel Father’s belt.’

Robert opened one eye a crack as Thomas pushed himself to his feet. He felt a knot of anger tighten in him as the two boys walked away down the hillside together. There was a time when Thomas, like Niall, would have done anything he said. He put his head back on the grass, listening to the thrum of bees in the heather and wishing Edward was here. But his brother, who was a year younger than him, had six months of his own fosterage left. Edward was a dervish with a practice sword, could climb trees higher than anyone, knew how to lie effectively and would dare any challenge. Things were dull without him.

Niall scrabbled over. ‘What shall we do?’

After a pause, Robert jumped up, determined not to let Alexander ruin his afternoon. ‘I’ll teach you how to fight.’ Sprinting to a clump of wind-blown trees, he snatched at a thin branch and pulled hard until it snapped. Breaking it in two, Robert stripped the leaves and handed the longer stick to his eager-eyed brother. ‘We’ll practise over here.’ He motioned to a flat expanse of grass. In the distance, the tall hills of Carrick marched east. The lower slopes were clad with trees, but the crowns were bare. Robert used to think of them as bald old men, standing in a guarding ring around Turnberry. ‘Like this,’ he said, planting his legs apart and grasping the stick two-handed.

Niall, his face serious, imitated his brother. The knees of his hose were grass-stained.

Robert swung the stick slowly through the air, curving down towards the boy’s neck. ‘Now you block my blade.’

Niall swiped at Robert’s stick.

‘Too quick. You have to start slow. Like this.’ Robert brandished the stick again, keeping it central to his body, then swept it round in a slow motion, first one side, then the other, now up and over his head. ‘Then faster,’ he said, the stick picking up speed in his hands, whistling as it carved the air. ‘Pretend you’re fighting someone,’ he shouted over his shoulder.

‘Who?’ Niall called, running after him.

‘An enemy. A Comyn man!’

Niall whipped his stick at the grass. ‘Look, Robert! I got two!’

‘Two?’ Robert pointed his stick down the hillside. ‘There’s a whole army down there!’ He let out a yell and charged down the steep slope, the stick high above his head. ‘Death to all Comyns!’

Niall came behind him, his shouts exploding into laughter as Robert tripped and went sprawling. Robert grunted as his brother landed on top of him with a cry of victory. Together, the two of them rolled down the hillside, their makeshift weapons abandoned in the grass behind them. They came to a winded stop near the bottom, oblivious to the figure standing there watching them.

‘What are you doing?’

At the unfamiliar voice, Robert’s eyes opened. He realised he was staring at a girl, upside down. Pushing his brother off him, he faced her. The girl was whip-thin, with long black hair that twisted lankly around her bony shoulders like rat’s tails. She wore a threadbare dress that had perhaps once been white, but was now grey with dirt and in her grubby hand she clutched a small sack. A heady smell of earth and flowers clung to her, but Robert was drawn mostly to her eyes, for they seemed the largest thing about her, overwhelming in her lean face. ‘What business is it of yours?’ he answered in Gaelic, her intense stare making him uncomfortable.

The girl cocked her head to one side. ‘Who are you?’

‘He’s the heir of the Earl of Carrick, lord of these lands.’

Robert shot Niall a look to silence him, but the girl didn’t seem to notice. Her probing gaze moved from his sweat-soaked tunic to his dirty face. Her lips twitched as her eyes came to rest on his hair. Raising his hand unconsciously, Robert found a sprig of heather lodged in his fringe. It crumbled in his fingers as the girl shrugged her shoulders.

‘You do not look like an earl,’ she said, turning and walking away across the grass.

Robert, watching her go, realised she wasn’t wearing any shoes, not even the wooden clogs that the peasants who worked the fields wore. He knew the faces of everyone in Turnberry and many thereabouts: the retainers and vassals of his father, farmers and fishermen, and their wives and children, even merchants and officials from Ayr and other nearby towns. So why didn’t he know this brazen girl, out walking in the wild on her own?

‘How dare she talk like that,’ muttered Niall.

Robert wasn’t listening. ‘Come on,’ he murmured, moving through the grass towards the trees that clad the lower slopes of the hill.

‘We’re going the wrong way,’ said Niall, glancing down the valley towards the sea, visible as a flat sheet of blue in the distance. He ran to keep up with his brother’s long-legged stride. ‘Robert!’

‘Quiet,’ said Robert sharply, as they entered the tree line. The girl was strolling unhurriedly along a stony track that followed the curves of a shallow river. Faint on the warm wind, above the burbling water he could hear her singing. At a crossing of stones, she lifted the skirts of her grey dress and skipped across, then threaded her way up the bracken-covered hill on the other side. Robert studied the ground, thinking of a hunt his grandfather had taken him on in the woods of Annandale. The old man had drilled him on the importance of adequate cover to conceal the hunter from his quarry. There was a copse of rowan trees, a small hillock and several boulders between him and the water’s edge.

‘We should go home, Robert,’ whispered Niall, at his side. ‘Alexander’s right. Someone will miss us.’

Robert paused, his eyes on the girl. His mind conjured Alexander’s prim expression and he felt a stab of irritation, imagining himself and Niall trailing obediently in through the castle gates. ‘Do as I do,’ he instructed, setting off at a run towards the trees, as the girl continued her ascent.

It was a game, but as serious as any hunt, the two boys darting from tree to hillock, from rock to bush, as they pursued the girl across the river, over the spine of the hill and down into the next valley, more densely wooded than the first. Now and then the girl would pause and look round, and the boys would throw themselves into the tangled undergrowth. She seemed to be leading them a winding course, over streams and under the curved arches of fallen trees. After a while, she climbed another steep bank.

As she disappeared over the ridge, Robert set after her. He looked back when Niall didn’t follow. ‘Come on!’

‘I know where we are,’ whispered Niall. His face, half shadowed by the swaying branches, was troubled.

Robert nodded impatiently. ‘We’re not far from Turnberry, I know. We’ll see where she’s going, then we’ll go home.’

‘Robert, wait!’

Not heeding his brother, Robert clambered up the bank. At the top, he caught a glimpse of grey in the woods below and slithered down, grasping at snaking roots for purchase. As he reached the bottom, he caught the tang of wood-smoke. He wondered if it was coming from the village, but Turnberry was two miles to the west. Ahead, the trees thinned out. Robert halted. The girl was heading into a green valley, overshadowed by a hulk of a hill that reared up, dotted with rocks and brown gorse. The crown was flushed pink in the sunset, but in the valley all was in shadow. Crouched at the foot of the hill was a small house of mud and timber. Smoke twisted from an opening in the roof. Beside the house, in a pen of bound stakes, two ponderous pigs rooted in the dirt. Robert looked round as his brother moved up behind him. ‘It’s her house,’ he murmured, glancing back at the squat dwelling.

‘That’s what I was saying,’ whispered Niall, looking at once vindicated and fearful.

The girl was almost at the door, passing under the shadow of a large oak. Through the thicket of leaves, Robert glimpsed several webbed shapes hanging from the branches. He had been in this valley a few times before and had seen that tree, but even Edward had never dared get close enough to find out what those strange webs were.

‘Let’s go,’ pleaded Niall, taking hold of his arm.

Robert hesitated, his eyes on the house. The old woman who lived there was well known, for she was a witch. She had two dogs that Edward called Wolves of Hell. Alexander had once been chased and bitten by one. Robert had watched from the door to his parents’ bedchamber as the physician had stitched the gash. He expected to witness his father’s furious retribution – men sent to the old woman’s house to kill the savage beast, but his father had merely gripped Alexander’s shoulders until the boy winced.
Never go near her house again
, the earl had murmured fiercely.
Never
.

Robert was halfway to letting Niall pull him away when the girl stopped at the door. Turning, she raised her hand in their direction and waved. Robert’s eyes widened. As she pushed open the door and disappeared inside, he heard the bark of a dog, then silence. Shrugging from Niall’s grip, he made his way purposefully down the hillside. He was the heir of an earl, second only to a king in the ranks of the nobility. He would one day inherit land in Ireland and England, the rich domains of Annandale and the ancient county of Carrick, and the men who now came at his father’s summons would one day kneel before him. He would go wherever he damn well pleased.

There was a loud splintering sound as he stepped on a rotten branch. Robert looked back, hoping Niall hadn’t seen him start. He grinned boldly, then whipped round hearing a mad barking. From around the side of the house streaked two huge shadows. Robert caught yellow teeth and matted black hair, and then he was sprinting for the trees, Niall ahead of him, crying out in terror.

5

A grey dawn was breaking over the hills of Galloway. Mist gathered in the fields and cattle made strange shapes within the white. It would be a hot day, but without sun, the sky in the east promising only humid blankness. Gulls made slow circles over the brown waters of the River Urr as they searched the mud-banks. The water was low, sinking with the tide on the Solway Firth.

On the west bank, rising from a wide mound of earth, was a castle, protected by the river on one side and on the landward by a deep fosse. The bottom of the trench was layered with sticky, red clay and the only way across was by drawbridge, raised for the night. A double line of timber piers rose from the depths like a row of pallbearers at a funeral waiting to take their burden. At the foot of the piers, shrouded in gloom, invisible to the castle guards that walked the battlements far above, were seven men. The clay caked their hands and the arms and chests of their padded gambesons. It smudged their faces, shadowed by woollen hoods, and daubed their hose and boots. For over an hour they had been there, up to their knees in the sludge, their feet turning to stone with the cold. None spoke. Only the listless cries of the gulls and the muted conversation of the guards drifted down to them. Occasionally they caught one another’s eyes; pools of shifting brightness, but they would look away soon enough, each cocooned in his own silent world, waiting for the morning bell, wondering if it would come before the mist concealing them lifted, or the sky lightened to a whiter shade of ash.