The Rose Demon

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