Early next day Lord George Douglas and his party were seen approaching. His commander in the castle breathed a sigh of relief and danced a jig.
‘Thank God! Thank the Guid Lord!’ he shouted. ‘If the English had known what happened,’ he clapped Matthias on the shoulder, ‘the hunter would have become the hunted and I couldn’t face being besieged in Barnwick until Easter. It was all a gamble before the refugees from here could raise a warning. My Lord of Douglas is a bonny lad!’
The portcullis was raised and the drawbridge lowered. Douglas and his party entered. They had now brought with them a string of carts. Some were empty, others full of armaments, crossbows, arbalests, lances, buckets full of arrows, swords, halberds, even a pile of chain-mail jerkins and leather sallets. One cart was full of gunpowder: barrels and tuns stacked on top of each other and covered with a canvas cloth.
Lord George Douglas came to a stop. He threw Matthias his reins. Matthias let them drop. The Scotsman made a face and dismounted.
‘I am your prisoner, not your servant,’ Matthias declared.
‘That’s obvious,’ Douglas replied.
‘Then why am I here? Why wasn’t I released with the rest?’
Douglas narrowed his eyes and, grasping Matthias by the shoulders, walked him away from the others.
‘I have a task for you, Fitzosbert,’ he murmured. ‘Deveraux told me what had happened here: the young girl who was mysteriously killed and, above all, the hauntings in the north tower. Are you fey? Do you have the second sight?’
‘I am a clerk, I am cold, I am hungry and I want to leave!’
Douglas’ hand fell to his dagger hilt. ‘I asked you a question, Englishman. I did give your father-in-law honourable burial.’
‘I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what I have,’ Matthias replied. ‘But the north tower is haunted.’ He pointed to a cart full of gunpowder. ‘You are going to use some of that here, aren’t you?’
‘Of course! We are leaving this afternoon. We dare not stay here any longer. I would like to destroy Barnwick completely, leave not one stone upon another. However, that would take too long and I haven’t got the powder, so I am choosing what I should destroy. The gatehouse will go. Some of the outer and inner walls and, as a favour to you, Englishman, I’ll store powder in the base of the north tower.’
Orders were rapped out, the plunder was hoisted into the carts, the Scots sweeping the castle again to make sure they had missed nothing. Five of Douglas’ soldiers were engineers, one a master of ordnance. The gunpowder was placed at certain strategic points: the gatehouse, the north tower, two postern gates as well as the hall and solar. Matthias didn’t care. In a way he was glad that rooms where he had experienced such happiness would never again be used by anyone else.
Late in the afternoon Douglas’ party left. Scouts were sent out before them because the Scots now feared the English might have learnt what was happening and organised another force. As they left, the engineers fired the long fuses.
When they were some distance away, the troops stopped beneath bare-branched trees. Matthias stared back at Barnwick. He glimpsed the north tower, the empty gatehouse and his eyes filled with tears. He kept whispering, ‘Rosamund! Rosamund!’
Suddenly there was a fierce explosion. Parts of the castle seemed to lift, then collapse in thick clouds of dust. The horses whinnied and pranced about, tossing their heads at the thunder which rolled towards them. The Scots cheered as tongues of flame flared up from the castle. Matthias crossed himself. He heard a cawing from the trees and stared up. Two figures, all in black, sat in the branches glaring down at him: the Preacher and Rahere, pallid-faced, red-eyed. Matthias blinked and stared again. They were only ravens. They cawed fiercely at the tumult and, spreading their great dark wings, soared off up into the sky.
22
Five days later Douglas and his party reached Edinburgh. They had travelled across the wild heathland, past small villages and hamlets. The children and dogs came running out to watch them whilst their parents stood in the doorways and glanced dourly at these fighting men. Eventually they struck east towards the coast, before moving inland to where Edinburgh crouched on its great crag. It looked a princely town but, once within its gates, Matthias found it not very different from London, which he had visited on a number of occasions. The great high street stretched in a herringbone with dark alleys and lanes running off it. Some of the houses had three or four storeys with glazed or painted windows. Others were poor cottages made of wattle and daub, and covered in thatch. They passed the kirk, the Tolbooth and courthouse, across the main market place where the dismembered limbs of traitors were displayed. The crowds swirled about. Rich merchants and their wives in velvets and damask rubbed shoulders with the poor, garbed in coarse linen, wooden clogs on their feet. It was a busy, tumultuous place with different markets in various parts of the city: the fishers, the clothiers, the blood-covered stalls of the fleshers and butchers. Douglas and his party had to force their way through, using whips and the flats of their swords. As in London, the commoners were not so easily cowed, and Douglas and his men, even though they’d loudly proclaimed a successful foray into England, were cursed and spat at.
At last they broke free of the city and entered the palatial grounds of the Abbey of Holyrood. They crossed gardens and fields where lay brothers worked busily on the land, past fisheries and orchards, laundries, outhouses, barns and granges, then into the great cobbled yard which divided the abbey from the small palace which adjoined it. Here, retainers, wearing the black and scarlet of the royal household, came out to meet them, grooms and ostlers, supervised by men-at-arms in quilted jackets.
Douglas snapped his fingers and ordered Matthias to follow him into a flat-stoned passageway. The galleries and entrances to every room were guarded by knight bannerets all wearing the livery of the red lion rampant of Scotland. Holyrood was a close, secretive place. Despite the wooden wainscoting, the coloured cloths on the walls, the beautifully polished oak furniture, the broad sweeping stairs and clean, well-lit galleries, the palace was a military camp with armed men thronging about. Time and again Douglas was stopped and, before he entered the royal chambers, he reluctantly had to surrender his sword and dirk to a royal archer, who also searched him for any hidden weapons. Douglas scarcely greeted anyone, whilst those he and Matthias passed stared askance or looked away. They were ushered into a small waiting chamber opulently furnished with cushioned seats round the wall. More guards thronged here. Douglas told Matthias to wait: an archer opened a door and led the Scottish lord into the royal presence.
Matthias must have kicked his heels for an hour. No one approached; now and again the archers would stare but mainly they chose to ignore him. Nevertheless, Matthias realised that they had him in custody: both the entrance to the royal chamber and the door which they had just come through were locked and guarded.
At last the door to the royal chamber was thrown open. Douglas came out and beckoned Matthias forward. The chamber they entered was hot and stuffy, the windows shuttered. A fire burnt fiercely under a mantled hearth. Pitch torches flickered on the walls whilst a table in the centre of the room was covered with lighted candles. The man standing in the far corner talking softly to a handsome peregrine, perched hooded on the great wooden stand, came out of the shadows. Douglas poked Matthias in the ribs.
‘He might not be your king,’ he whispered, ‘but he is Christ’s anointed.’
Matthias went on one knee. The hand he kissed was covered in precious stones; it was also cold and clammy.