Games of Otterburn 1388 (23 page)

“Did he know our disposition in the field?” asked
Douglas
pulling on the reins of his destrier.

“He knew,” said George.

“You
hearin
’ me Douglas?!” again shouted Hotspur.

“I said the lad’s not mine!” back shouted
Douglas
.

“His name is Simon of Dunbar,” said Hotspur continuing the taunt.

“He
tell
ye that?” asked
Douglas
stalling for an opening to save Simon.

“He told us plenty!” said Hotspur. “We know you’re just the van.”

“I will pay a ransom of fifty pounds
stirlin
’ for the lad,” offered
Douglas
.

“Worth that to ye, is he?” goaded Henry more.

“Sixty?” said
Douglas
.

“I would advise you to take the money, Milord,” said Ogle strongly.

Simon was battered as could be easily seen from the ground.

“Lost his way as we were
goin
’ south,”
lied
Douglas
. “He knows
nothin
’, Lord Percy.”

Henry’s cunning smile returned in all its glory. He felt
his
event was working well.

“The great Hotspur
goin
’ to kill a lad?” back taunted
Douglas
.

“Set the boy on the wall,” ordered Hotspur to his men.

Simon was picked up by two burly wall guards. His body ached from the torture. His head wobbled so he could not keep it properly upright though he wanted to dearly. He was set on the wall, his feet dangling over the moat below.

“Still got the rope around his neck, James,” said George.

“They aim to hang him,” replied
Douglas
, “and I don’t know how to stop them”

With that no more than out of
Douglas
’ mouth, Hotspur pushed hard on Simon’s back and the lad went flinging into the air. He jerked hard when he reached the end of the pay out and slapped hard against the stone wall.

There was a moment of complete silence. Nobody believed Sir Henry Percy would dare hang the lad under such circumstances. But he certainly did.

All of the assembled Scots set up a roar of protest that Robert Ogle then knew he was woefully right on his second prediction. A glance at Redman portended another.

“There’s our event!?” shouted Hotspur and without waiting for another word stormed off the wall walk with Ralph quick at his heels.

Mungan and Adara came from the near wood when they heard the rough hooting.

Adara looked at poor Simon on the wall and began to weep uncontrollable.

She hugged Mungan and he enveloped her in his large arms.

“What now?” asked Sir George still staring at dead
Simon.

“It is still their turn to call the event as far as I’m concerned,” said
Douglas
with his mouth turned down.

August 16 - Afternoon

Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Sir James Douglas drew his dagger and cut a slice of rump meat from the roasted steer hanging from a low branch of one of the trees close behind a peasant’s hovel near the silage field.

He bit into the succulent fire-cooked meat as he turned to George Dunbar who was ready with his own dagger to take a slice. “Still no word from within the castle,” griped George.

“Come sudden on us
wantin
’ a full fight, they might,” said
Douglas
.

“And if they do?” asked George.

Douglas
smiled. “Yer son will be earl in yer stead by tomorrow.”

“Shit,” remarked George, “Hain’t ye got better to say than that?”

“As many as I know they have within those walls, they could run us over within minutes,” said
Douglas
taking another bite of his meat.

“Have a hell of a time
gettin
’ that many out of that gate ere we could scatter,” opined George.

Douglas
laughed. “Scatter or stand and fight, no matter, we’d still be dead… maybe they’d take me, ye and yer brother… and the rest of our knights for ransom…”

“And kill most of the rest, I reckon,” said George finishing
Douglas
’ thought.

James nodded and smiled. “Ye want to go on
thinkin
’ yerself to pure tatters?”

George back smiled with a kind of sardonic snarl and took a first bite.

“The question is… why hain’t they really come out in full force against us?” wondered
Douglas
looking at the walls and the many bobbing heads along the top of the battlements.
“Just why hain’t they?”

Adara had at last calmed enough to talk to Mungan regarding her despair.

“The man yon,” she said pointing to the wall and hiding her eyes with her other hand, “is… my brother.”

Mungan looked at the stiffened spy hanging half way down the wall over the seemingly awaiting moat where Hotspur had pushed him over with the tied-off rope tight around his neck.

“Brother?” he wondered.

“Don’t know how he got in such a fix,” she burst into another storm of tears.

Mungan had no notion as to what to do. He thought of himself as a Scottish warrior in the employ of Earl John Dunbar and not much more. He knew little about women, never having a female friend and staying close to the garrison quarters and entertaining
himself
with visits to the falcon mews to offer his services in feeding or other such menial tasks required by cooped hawks. He was
,
he had to admit to himself, fast finding out a lot about their sort and at that moment he didn’t know if the goods outweighed the sorrows or not.

In
Durham
, his empathy for the odd screaming woman had swept over him due to her plight of circumstance and he saved her. He was in his own state of quandary.

Within the
castle’s
solar, that Henry Percy had commandeered for the duration of his transitory stay in
Newcastle
, he was saying, “We cannot go against our king!”

“Our king is far off, brother mine,” said Ralph. “I could have sliced
Douglas
up where he stood when he refused to fight me alone.”

“Just cannot figure,” repeated Henry swilling down the remainder of his wine in the goblet. “Why are they here? Do they want us to make a run at them while their main army awaits in their hiding place ready to pounce like the mean little devils they are?!”

“You’ve said that
a’plenty
,” said Ralph who was discussed with the whole situation.

Henry flashed anger and slammed his fist on the arm of the chair with his one hand and flung his empty goblet at the cold stone hearth with his other.

Ralph was not impressed. “I could have just run that
Douglas
through his silly face!” he reiterated seemingly fixated on Sir James’ refusal to fight him.

“Don’t know but I don’t like playing their game before knowing what their game is,” growled Henry becoming angrier at his own ignorance of the fact that there were Scots close at hand and he seemed powerless to kill them forthright.

“The bishop will be here tomorrow,” said Ralph. He’ll have plenty of men to kill them with and, as I figure it, Douglas will be
layin
’ about like he is just now and the bishop’s plenty will ride up on them
takin
’ their ease and he’ll then kill them all… and you and I will not be to blame ‘cause we’re lock-holed here!” he finished with enthusiasm.

“And he’ll be under the same orders as we are…
wait
for Richard and Arundel to show here… goddamn it! Your vision sounds like it was got from a gypsy. Besides we’ve got plenty more than enough men to chase them down and kill them all… and be back in time for supper.”

Ralph was sullen. First Douglas and then Henry insulted him. He stewed for a while more. He was willing to take abuse from his brother for he was family but that
Douglas
simply chaffed him in a most awful manner, so he thought.

 
“I have an idea, my brother,” said Ralph having another gleam of excitement in his eye.

“Ye reckon we could get my poor dead brother off the wall, Mungan?” asked Adara still tearful.

“How ye figure that?” asked Mungan narrowing his eyes.

“Make a ladder and put it against the wall up to him then clomb up and cut him down,” she explained.

“Fall in the
stinkin
’ moat, he will,” offered Mungan.

“Ye’ll not let that happen to my dear dead brother, will ye?” she implored.

“Dead, hain’t he?”
Mungan answered with a question.

“Aye,
he
‘tis,” she admitted, “but he hain’t had a proper
buryin
’ neither.”

“He yer real brother?” growled Mungan getting more suspicious with her every word.

“
O’course
he is,” said Adara coyly.

Mungan stood and walked a few paces away.

Adara stood and went to Mungan’s back, put her arms around him and said, “Me husband, he is.”

Mungan unlocked her fingers at his belly and turned and looking her straight in her eyes said, “Yer married?”

“Was ‘til this morn,” she said. “Not for real married like the uppers get married but married all the same, for a season or two.”

“None of my truck then,” said Mungan quietly.