The Fallen One (33 page)

    
“We will have to split
the force,” he said with quiet urgency. “As much as I do not relish doing so,
Kirklinton will need aid.
 
Mat, you will
take four hundred men to Kirklinton and make short work of the Scots
there.
 
Then you will move on to Carlisle
to reinforce me.
 
 
I will send a messenger this night to
Harbottle Castle and empty her of her might force. That should bring another
one thousand men to Carlisle and with those numbers, we should make short work
of the Scots.”

    
Mathias was still rattled
by the scout’s report and struggling not to show it.
 
He was his usual cool and collected self, but
inside, he was a mess.
  

    
“Send Pembury to
Kirklinton,” he suggested. “Cathlina is at Carlisle and I….”

    
Tate cut him off. “I
need Pembury with me,” he said. “You are better suited to the kind of siege
Kirklinton will need.
 
You will crush
them, Mat. I am depending on your emotion in this case to send a clear message
to the Scots. Moreover, it will put you in good with Saer if you save his
castle.
 
He would forgive you
everything.”

    
“But….”

    
Tate put a big hand on
his shoulder and shook him gently. “No more talk,” he said, though it was not
unkind. “You have your orders.
 
Go now
and prepare for our ride; it will be hard and fast through darkness, so be vigilant.
 
If all goes well, you should see Kirklinton
come the morning.”

    
Mathias wasn’t pleased
but he didn’t argue.
 
“Sebastian goes
with me,” he said.

    
Tate nodded firmly.
“Absolutely,” he said, slapping him on the back before heading off into the
darkness. “Have the perimeters of the camp broken down and I will see you at
the head of the column in an hour.”

    
Mathias watched Tate
fade off into the darkness.
 
He wasn’t
exactly sure what he was feeling at the moment other than terror and
disappointment; he wanted to ride with Tate to Carlisle because that was where
he left his wife, but on the other hand, he had his orders.
 
He would be seeing Cathlina a little later
than he had hoped.
 

With a heavy sigh, this time one for
courage, he stalked off into the darkness, shouting orders to the men around
him as he went. Soon, the entire came was scrambling to assemble and by the
light of the three-quarter moon, the Earl of Carlisle’s army moved south. By
morning, he did indeed see the walls of Kirklinton but it was not as he had
expected or hoped.

Kirklinton was in flames.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

They came in the late afternoon.

Three days after the warning from the
Carlisle soldiers, men began emerging from the trees about a half mile from
Kirklinton Castle in a solid line of legs and weapons.
 
Oddly enough, it wasn’t the glint of weapons
that gave them away; it was the tartan that blended in to the foliage because
it gave a strange rippling effect when they moved.
 
Kirklinton’s sharp sentries were the first to
see it and the shout went up.
 
The Scots
were on the approach.

Cathlina had been with Roxane and
Abechail’s small bower, keeping her company by telling her stories and playing
card games with Cathlina’s lovely painted cards that Mathias had bought her on
their travels through Scotland.
 
Every
time Cathlina held up a card to her sister or lay it upon the table in a fan
pattern with others, she was reminded of Mathias and of how much she missed
him.
 

The afternoon had been waning and they were
thinking on the approach of the evening meal when the sentry’s cry went up.
Startled, Cathlina and Roxane had jumped up and run to the lancet window that
faced the gatehouse only to see the Kirklinton soldiers scrambling upon the
walls.
 
They really couldn’t see beyond
the walls from Abechail’s chamber so they raced into their larger bower which
had more a view of the north and west.
 
That was when they saw the line of men moving across the clearing
towards the castle, like a tide of ants at a distance, heading in their
direction.
 

“Look!” Roxane gasped, pointing. “Men! Do
you see them?”

Cathlina did, indeed. Her heart sank but
strangely, she didn’t panic.
 
Her big
brown eyes stared at all of the men approaching the castle.
 
The closer they loomed, the more detail she
could make out as she and Roxane clung to each other anxiously.

“They are carrying clubs and axes,” she
said with apprehension in her tone. “They do not look like Mathias or other
knights we have seen. Remember how the knights as the tournament were dressed?”

Roxane nodded fearfully. “They were dressed
in mail and armor, and….” She suddenly stopped and pointed out of the window.
“Look at the knights on horseback. See them back behind the men on foot?”

Cathlina did and her fear began to grow
just a little. “I do.”

“They are here to attack us!”

“It is possible.”

Together, they continued to watch the Scots
come forth from the foliage, moving across the warm summer grass and trampling
on the wildflowers the women had taken such delight in.
 
Then, they simply stopped.
 
Confused, Cathlina and Roxane watched
anxiously for them to make a move that would throw them all into the midst of a
battle, but they remained still.
 
Then,
it appeared as if someone gave a command because the men began moving; some of
them settled in where they were while others moved back into the trees and soon
they could hear the distant sounds of chopping.
  
In short order, trees began falling.
 

“What do you suppose they are doing?”
Roxane asked apprehensively.

Cathlina had no idea. She had never seen a
battle before.
 
“I do not know,” she
said. “But Father will. He will come and tell us what is happening.”

As the women clutched each other in
mounting fear, Rosalund entered the chamber.
 
Her usually cold and austere face was flushed with exertion and fright.

“Come, girls,” she said, clapping her hands
and nearly startling Cathlina and Roxane out of their skins. “Your father has
asked that we remove ourselves to the vault and lock ourselves in.
 
We must collect all the supplies we can before
we do this.
 
Hurry; there is no time to
waste.”

Cathlina and Roxane rushed after her. “Lock
ourselves in the vault?” Roxane repeated. “Why would we do that?”

Rosalund hustled into Abechail’s room where
the girl lay, weak and ill, upon her bed.
 
She ignored Roxane’s question as she stroked her youngest child’s pale
face.

“We shall return for you,” she said calmly.
“Your Father wants us to be safe and will lock us up in the vault until this is
over.”

Unable to see out her window at what was
occurring, Abechail was understandably frightened. She clung to her mother’s
hand.

“What is happening?” she asked, verging on
tears. “Have the Scots come?”

Rosalund nodded patiently. “They have, my
lamb,” she said. “Your father says that they are building ladders so that they
may mount our walls.
 
If they are able to
get in to bailey, then it will only be a matter of time before they breach the
keep. Your father feels that if we lock ourselves in the vault, they cannot get
to us.”

Abechail’s eyes were tearing up but she
nodded. Rosalund stroked her daughter’s hair one last time before returning her
attention to Cathlina and Roxane.

“Roxane,” she said. “You will collect as
much water as you can from the well and take it to the vault. Use buckets and
pitchers and anything else you can find.
 
Have a house servant assist you.
 
Go, now; there is no time to waste.”

When Roxane fled, she turned her attention
to Cathlina. “And you, my dear, will collect blankets and bedding and take it
down to the vault.
 
I will also have you
bring chamber pots. I am having the servants stash as much food as we can
collect. Hurry on with your task, now.”

Cathlina had been moderately calm until
Rosalund had revealed the plan to hide in the vault.
 
If her father was already making such
preparations, then the impending battle must be a terrible one indeed.
 
That knowledge made it most difficult to
remain calm.

“If Father wanted us to stay to the vault,
then shouldn’t we have stored supplies earlier?” she asked. “It seems foolish
to do this at the last hour. We have known for days that the Scots could come.”

Some of Rosalund’s patience left her. “We
knew nothing for certain,” she snapped. “Your father prepared as he saw best.
You will not question his decisions.”

Cathlina shook her head, exasperated and
afraid. “I am not questioning his decisions,” she said. “I am simply asking why
we did not do this sooner. Now we must rush about while the enemy is building
ladders against us.”

“Psh,” Rosalund shushed her. “Go now and do
as you are told.”

 
With
shaking legs, Cathlina rushed off.
 
She
could hardly believe this was happening, that the Scots were preparing to knock
down her front door. She had moved beyond thoughts of her father’s lack of
preparation and on to Mathias. Hadn’t he sent her back to England to prevent
this?
 
Confused, terrified, and praying
that Mathias would somehow know of her danger and come to her aid, she raced in
and out of bed chambers, collecting what she could carry before taking it to
the vault.

The dungeons of Kirklinton were built under
the great hall.
 
The hall itself was built
using one of the curtain walls for its northern perimeter wall and on the
western portion of the hall were alcoves for the servants and a small doorway
that led down a flight of stairs into the great vault.

Originally used as storage, Saer had
converted it into the prison because the gatehouse had a tiny bottle prison
that was barely big enough for three men.
 
The vault had two great iron grates, one at the top of the stairs and
one at the bottom.
 
The vault itself had
a dirt floor and big barrel ceiling, the stones carefully placed to support the
weight of the hall above. It was big, and cold, and branched off on a ninety
degree angle from the staircase so anyone coming down the steps could not see
into the room.
 
They could only see a
very small portion of the entire vault.
 
That would hopefully work to their favor.

Cathlina worked steadily gathering bed
linens and fashioning four relatively comfortable pallets down in the vault.
She placed them as far away from the door as she could get them in order to
keep them as far away from danger as possible.
 
Furthermore, she had the cook hunt down large sheets of oilcloth
sometimes used to protect the rabbit hutches in the kitchen yard from the
elements.
 
She lay those down on the ground
underneath the pallets to keep the cold away.

As she emerged from the vault and headed
out into the bailey towards the keep, she could see that there was a good deal
of activity upon the walls.
 
Men were
shouting and she could see a rush of soldiers heading for the wall turrets.
 
It was nearing the nooning hour by this time
and as she neared the keep, her father and mother suddenly emerged. Her father
was carrying Abechail in his arms and her mother was running along beside.

“Cathlina, come!” her father said briskly
as he ran past her. “There is no more time. Into the vault!”

Cathlina’s terror surged as she followed
after them, nearly tripping on her skirts in her haste. “Where is Roxane?” she
cried.

“At the well,” her father said. “I will
fetch her. You must come with me
now.
”

Cathlina ran after them without another
word. Truth was, she was too frightened to speak; this was her first siege, her
first battle, and she fought back the tears of terror.
 
Dear God, if only Mathias knew of her plight;
he would let nothing stop him from protecting his wife.
 
A wife who happened to be carrying the child
he did not yet know about.
 
As Cathlina
ran through the great hall and down the stairs into the vault after her
parents, she wiped the tears off her cheeks. She prayed she would have the opportunity
to tell Mathias of his son.
 
It was all
she prayed for.

Saer handed Abechail over to Rosalund, who
bedded her daughter down gently on one of the pallets Cathlina had made.
 
Swiftly, he turned to Cathlina, who was
panting with fright and exertion behind him.

“Come with me,” he said, taking her arm.

He pulled her over to the stairs and
pressed something cold and hard into the palm of her hand; it was an old iron
key.
 
When Cathlina saw what it was, she
looked at him curiously.

“The key to both gates,” he told her
softly. “You must keep it safe because as long as you have it, the Scots cannot
get in. Do you understand?”

Cathlina nodded seriously. “Of course,
Father.”

His gaze lingered on her a moment before
cupping her face in his hands and kissing her forehead swiftly. “Take great
care of yourself and my grandson,” he muttered. “Know that you are very special
to me, Cathlina. I love you very much.”

Cathlina’s eyes welled with fat tears. “I
love you, too,” she sniffed. “All will be well; you will see.
 
You will meet your grandson in the spring.”

Saer seemed to grow misty-eyed but instead
of making a fool of himself with more sentiment, he simply raced up the
stairs.
 
Cathlina followed, slamming the
big iron gate behind him and locking it.
 
Then, she moved down a few steps and wait for him to return with
Roxane.
 

They weren’t long in coming; Roxane and
Saer returned shortly, Saer carrying a heavy bucket of water and Roxane nearly
hysterical.
 
Cathlina quickly unlocked
the grate and issued her sister in, followed by several servants they happened
to pick up in kitchen yard where they had gathered in an uncertain mass.
 
Each of them had some kind of supply or
possession with them, and the stable grooms were carrying more buckets of
water.
  

When they had all entered the stairwell,
Cathlina slammed the grate and locked it tightly again.
 
Then, she followed the collection of people
down into the vault and threw that gate as well, assisted by one of the grooms.
 
Engaging the lock, she made her way back to
her mother and sisters while the servants huddled over against the wall.
 

No one knew what to expect, or when to
expect it.
 
Buried deep in the ground as
they were, they were insulated from the sights and sounds above.
 
But if they had been able to see, they would
have envisioned the Scots positioning three big ladders up against the gray
stoned walls of Kirklinton in their attempt to breach the castle.
 
Up above, the battle was in full swing.

The Kirklinton soldiers battled back,
shoving the ladders away from the walls and sending dozens of zealous Scots
crashing down with them. Those who weren’t too badly wounded by the fall got
back up again and up the ladders would go once more, only this time they were
joined by two more ladders.
 
And two more
after that. Eventually, there were over a dozen ladders built from white oak or
birch lined up against the walls and the Scots were making a strong push to
mount Kirklinton’s defenses.