Albany had told me that this eastern approach to the castle was up a gentler incline than the stark rock faces of the north, south and west, but even so, it was a steady climb. What fascinated me most, however, was the medley — one might almost have said the muddle — of different kinds of dwelling. It soon became obvious that, originally, the community had been largely rural, owners of smallholdings and farmsteads, and a few of these spreads still remained, hens and pigs and even the occasional goat, wandering across the road as a snare to unwary horsemen. But new, two-storey wooden houses were springing up everywhere, although it was soon apparent that not every occupant was as yet prepared to abandon pastoral ways. Here and there, cattle and other livestock peered from ground-storey windows, while the goodman and his dame lived on the upper floor, reached by an outside staircase. In the midst of these dwellings, a fine, large church was under construction, the hammering of the masons and carpenters almost deafening us as we passed. I later learned that it was dedicated to Saint Giles, that preceptor and confessor of Charlemagne, and was rising on the site of the old Norman church, destroyed by the army of the last King Richard when English forces had ransacked the city nearly a hundred years earlier.
The people watching our cavalcade pass by were silent and sullen, refusing to raise so much as a cheer, even for their own lords and masters who, for the most part, ignored them. I could see that the Duke of Gloucester was ill at ease, used as he was to the cheering, adulatory crowds of York and London. The English generally were tense, and Earl Rivers more than once fingered the jewelled haft of the dagger he wore at his belt as though he expected treachery from his hosts. But we reached the castle in safety with only one incident when an onlooker scooped up a handful of mud from the roadway and, with a muttered curse, flung it at the Bishop of Moray. Men-at-arms immediately moved to restrain the offender, one of them felling him to the ground with a single blow. They were big men, these Scots, even though many of them were pale and gaunt with hunger, the ravages of the past winter having taken their toll on a yet greater scale here than in the northern shires of England. (And that, believe me, was saying a very great deal.)
As we crossed a rugged forecourt, I was surprised to see fewer defences than I had anticipated; but Davey, who had manoeuvred his mount alongside my cob in order to constitute himself my guide, told me that all of them had been demolished by the Scots themselves at the beginning of the previous century, after an English occupation of the fortress in the reign of the first Edward.
‘But why?’ I asked.
The page chuckled. ‘So that when you Sassenachs overran us again, you were unable to defend the castle, and so it was easily retaken. Rebuilding was only started after King David II was released from his English captivity. He built that great tower yonder and this defensive wall.’
As a Wessex man, born and bred, and with forebears equally native to the west country, the wars between England and Scotland had barely touched my consciousness, except as something that happened a very long way away. Wales, Ireland and even France were all nearer than this distant northern land, and once again I was nearly physically sick with the longing for home that engulfed me.
In the forecourt, the cavalcade drew to a halt and everyone dismounted. Grooms came to lead the horses to the stables while we humans were led up a steep flight of stone stairs by the portcullis gate to the very summit of the rock, where all the main buildings of the castle seemed to be crowded inside a curtain wall. The chief of these was a great hall, built of timber, which, as I soon discovered was used for sleeping, eating and recreation by all household servants and retainers, including those of visiting dignitaries, and consequently was hot, smelly and noisy eighteen or nineteen hours a day.
The royal apartments lay on the south-eastern point of the rock; a series of chambers built, so Davey informed me, by Albany’s grandfather, the first King James, the one who had eventually been murdered by his nobles, and whose ghost was said to haunt the place, even though he had not been killed there. Arrangements had been made to house my lord of Gloucester in the royal bedchamber — no one knew where King James was being held: it was thought probably in Craigmillar Castle — his squire and other household officers using the ante-room. Earl Rivers and his nephew, the Marquis of Dorset, were lodged in the Constable’s tower, while the remainder of the English lords were left to shift for themselves and find what accommodation they could, either in the castle itself or in the town.
At this point, obviously growing bored with my company and his self-appointed task as my guide and mentor, Davey abruptly disappeared, presumably in search of Murdo or Donald or even old friends and acquaintances, some of whom he must have had in the castle. Where Albany was I had no idea, but guessed him to be closeted with his uncles and the Duke of Gloucester. Not for the first time, he seemed able to do without my protection when it suited him, although I doubted if anyone was really interested in his demise any more. I couldn’t help feeling that his importance as a political pawn to both sides was diminishing by the minute. The Scots nobles had their king securely under lock and key, but had no intention of deposing him in favour of his brother, while the English, provided their terms were met — Berwick ceded and Princess Cicely’s dowry refunded — were quite willing to negotiate with King James and his spokesmen. My part was played, and I experienced a surge of anger that I was still being treated as though my presence were essential to Albany’s well-being.
The anger receded, giving place to an even greater panic than I had known earlier. A gnawing fear that I would never get home again suddenly grew into an overwhelming conviction that this was not merely some nightmare that would eventually be vanquished by common sense, but the brutal reality. I broke into a sweat, even though the day was chilly, and discovered that I was trembling. I needed help, and urgently.
I found it close at hand.
Davey had pointed out to me a small, square stone building, probably one of the oldest on the site, as the chapel of Saint Margaret of Scotland, the second wife of King Malcolm III and a lady of whom I had learned much from Brother Hilarion during my days as a novice at Glastonbury. Although she might never have lived in the west country, and although her mother had been a Magyar princess, on her father’s side, Margaret was descended from all the Wessex kings from Cerdic, through Alfred to her great-grandfather, Ethelred Unraed, who had tried to keep England free of the Danes with payments of gold. For by that time, the descendants of the Cerdingas were rulers of all England, not just of Wessex, and Saint Margaret had been of their line, brought to Scotland with her brother, the Atheling, and sister for safety after the Norman Conquest.
I pushed open the chapel door and went in.
Inside it was very cold and dark, a smell of dampness lingering on the air. But there was a light burning on the altar and I stumbled towards it, falling on my knees and lifting my eyes to the effigy of the saint which stood in a niche behind the guttering candles. I lit a fresh one at a flame of one of the three already burning there, then clasped my hands and sent up a silent prayer to be returned safely to my home and family. I don’t know exactly what I said now, after all these years, but I remember that I prayed with an intensity so great that I almost cracked my finger bones. I recollect vaguely that I also asked for the intercession of that other son of Somerset, Saint Dunstan, sometime Abbot of Glastonbury and, later, Archbishop of Canterbury, and also of Saint Patrick, born and bred in the west before being sold into slavery in Ireland. With such a trio of saints on my side, how could I fail to return home to Adela and the children?