The Last Siege Read online

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Ghosts, maybe.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘Well, think about it . . .’ Marcus’s voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper. Without quite meaning to, Emily and Simon leant forwards to catch his words. ‘This guardroom is bound to be haunted. Think of all the battles fought just beyond this wall. All the sieges. There must have been dozens. The archers in here would have been the best in the guard. They’d have killed hundreds of men . . . firing until the moat was choked with bodies. But some of the archers would have died here too, shot in the heart with arrows through this very window or cut down when the enemy burst in at the door. It must have happened. I can feel it.’

  Emily looked about her. The room was filled with shadow.

  ‘After all that,’ Marcus went on, ‘there’s bound to be at least one lonely spirit who comes back, to moan over the place where he met his end and perhaps seek revenge on the living.’

  ‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ Emily said, shoving her hands firmly into her pockets.

  ‘I do,’ Marcus said.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Seen one.’

  Emily snorted. ‘You are such a liar.’

  ‘Don’t believe me if you don’t want to. Anyway – ’ Marcus pushed himself off the ledge and dropped to the flagstones – ‘that’s not the only reason to get excited round here. I want to show you something, up at the keep.’

  Emily swung her foot at him. ‘Don’t try to change the subject! You can’t think of something fast enough, can you? I knew you hadn’t seen one.’

  Marcus shrugged. ‘I’ll tell you some day if I feel like it. But listen, before the storm blew up I was coming back to show you what I noticed at the keep. I can’t believe you haven’t seen it yourselves.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come with me and I’ll show you.’

  Simon groaned. ‘Just tell us about it,’ he snapped. ‘It’s a blizzard out there.’

  ‘The snow’s dying off. Come on, it’ll only take a minute.’

  Emily went to the doorway and looked out. Sure enough, only a few tattered flakes of snow were drifting haphazardly around in the air. The wind had slackened.

  ‘It’s breaking,’ she said, looking at her watch. ‘Look, I’ve really got to get home. Can you show me quickly, on the way back?’

  ‘’Course. Come on – ’ Marcus nudged Simon, who was evidently still reluctant – ‘it’ll be worth it. It’ll make you forget your stupid brothers.’

  ‘And Pauline,’ Emily said.

  ‘All right.’ Simon heaved himself to his feet. ‘I owe you both one for earlier. But it had better be good.’

  Marcus led them outside and up the steps. The light was better now and there was a clear view all around. For a moment Marcus halted.

  ‘Get on with it then,’ Simon said.

  ‘Yeah, in a minute.’ Marcus was standing spellbound, gazing straight ahead.

  The great square keep rose up whole and strong to the height of a four-storey building. It sat in the middle of its flat white enclosure, surrounded by the raised mound of the moat’s inner edge and here and there by low broken stretches of the curtain wall. It was built of grey stones, with a squared tower at each corner. Except at the base, where they sloped steeply outwards, the walls were sheer and blank. In their lower halves there were no openings except arrow slits, but higher up, near where the wall began to fracture into ruin, several small arched windows could be glimpsed, separated by ornate columns.

  ‘Wouldn’t you just love to get in there?’ Marcus said.

  ‘Sure,’ Emily said. ‘Except that it’s locked.’

  ‘Like we keep saying,’ Simon added.

  ‘Follow me.’ Marcus set off across the snow, making for the left-hand corner of the keep. ‘What’s it like inside?’ he asked.

  ‘Um, it’s OK,’ Emily said. ‘Good for kids. Stairs and passages and stuff.’

  ‘Is there a dungeon?’

  ‘Um . . . I don’t remember. Haven’t been in it for years.’

  ‘What about that tower? Can you get up it? It looks complete.’

  ‘I think so. Come back in the spring – you’ll be able to climb it then.’

  ‘Three pounds fifty,’ Simon reminded him. ‘Get your mum and dad to take you.’

  ‘I can do better than that.’

  They passed the corner of the left-hand tower. Just beyond was a rounded stone arch with a narrow rim and stone columns in the wall on either side. In the arch was a great wooden double door, studded with black nails. A large keyhole was set in the left-hand door at chest height. Marcus looked through the hole, but could see nothing.

  ‘There’s stairs there,’ Emily said. ‘It’s roofed, that’s why it’s dark.’

  Marcus pushed at the door, but the massive rough wood did not budge. He stood back and looked up. ‘Norman,’ he said. ‘You can tell by the round arch. Must be quite early.’

  ‘Is this it?’ Simon asked.

  ‘No. Come on.’ Marcus moved off along the side of the keep. ‘Once you got in there you could hold out for months. You’d barricade the door, maybe put a portcullis behind it so they couldn’t smash it down. Then you’d sit back. No one would have a hope in hell of getting past these walls.’ He craned his neck to look up at the mass of stone stretching into the white sky.

  ‘The army wouldn’t have to break them down,’ Emily said. ‘They’d just starve you out.’

  Marcus shook his head. ‘You’d have tons of food with you before you started. There’ll be great storehouses in there, deep in the foundations, where you could put your oats or whatever. Nice and dark and cool, so they wouldn’t go off. And you’d have a constant supply of fresh water.’

  ‘What, from a stream?’ Simon asked.

  ‘No – a well. There’ll be one in the cellars, cut through the rock to a water source. It’ll never dry up. Now, past this corner . . .’

  They rounded the second tower and a new side of the keep stretched before them. Three quarters of the way along, Marcus stopped and pointed. Emily and Simon looked up at the wall. The stonework here had evidently once been subject to some intense bombardment. Its top was ragged, much lower than most other parts of the keep. In one place there was a great vertical gash that ran halfway down the wall. It passed in a zigzag fashion through several ruined windows and ended in a roundish hole only five metres or so above the ground.

  ‘See that hole? That’s not so high up,’ Marcus said in a thoughtful voice.

  ‘What’s the big deal?’ Simon said.

  ‘Look inside it,’ Marcus went on. ‘See the two metal bars running across the hole? I reckon there’s a walkway or something behind it at that level. Is there, Em? You’ve been in – you must remember.’

  Emily frowned. ‘Yeah, maybe . . .’ she said doubtfully. ‘You can walk round the inside of the keep on some sort of ledge. Why? Does it matter?’

  Marcus’s eyes were bright with excitement. He grinned. ‘Depends whether you want to get inside or not! Check out the base of the wall.’

  They checked it out. For nearly all their height, the massive walls of the keep were vertical. But about three metres from the ground, the walls suddenly jutted out diagonally, spearing down at an angle into the snow. This meant the base of the walls formed a very steep – and icy – ramp.

  ‘They did that to strengthen the structure,’ Marcus said, ‘in case the enemy tried to tunnel under to make the walls collapse. But the thing is that if you were careful you could shin up that sloping bit. Then you’d be halfway to the hole. Simon might even be able to reach it from there if he stretched. Anyway, if you then climbed the wall, which wouldn’t be too hard, you’d be laughing – you could just squeeze through the hole into the passage!’ He paused triumphantly.

  ‘There’s a few big ifs in there,’ Simon said.

  ‘We couldn’t get up,’ Emily said flatly. ‘It’s too high. Nice idea anyway.’

  ‘You see what I mean, though?�
� Marcus said to Simon. ‘Half of it’s on the slope.’ Without warning, he suddenly ran as fast as he could at the sloping masonry at the foot of the wall, leaping up it in two, three steps. On the third step his trainers slipped and he crashed forwards against the snowy stone, then very gently slid back down the slope to the bottom.

  ‘Well done,’ said Emily.

  Marcus ignored her. ‘It’s slippery, obviously,’ he said, getting to his feet, ‘but we could scrape the ice off easily enough. Then we could scramble to the top of the base and be near the hole.’

  ‘Not that near,’ Simon said. ‘We couldn’t stretch to it, and even if we could, most of us couldn’t pull ourselves up.’ His emphasis suggested that ‘most’ meant two-thirds.

  ‘Couldn’t we climb the wall, though?’

  Emily looked at her watch. She didn’t have time for Marcus’s mad enthusiasms. But she was uneasy to see that Simon, far from brushing off the harebrained scheme, was entering into the spirit of the idea. Something in the practical nature of the challenge seemed to appeal to him. He had approached the foot of the masonry spur and was looking up at the stonework beyond.

  ‘It’s quite rough,’ he said. ‘Those stones there are smooth, but these other ones have been worn back quite a way. I reckon I might get a foothold. Could I climb up? Maybe. Don’t know how far.’

  ‘The worn stones go right up to the hole,’ Marcus pointed out. ‘You could do it, Simon. And if you got in, you could help us up too.’

  Emily thought it was time to intervene. ‘Yeah, go for it,’ she said. ‘If you want to break your neck.’

  ‘It’s not that difficult,’ Marcus said. ‘Come on, Simon, we’ve got to try!’

  ‘I’m going,’ Emily said. ‘I don’t want any falling idiots landing on me.’

  Simon said nothing. He just stood there, considering the wall. Emily loitered. Marcus hopped about in a fit of impatience. At last, after a full minute of silence, Simon finally spoke.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I reckon Em’s right. I might be able to do it, but you’d both fall off and break something.’

  ‘But – ’ Marcus began.

  ‘It’s a stupid idea,’ Simon said. ‘Who wants to get in the castle anyway? What would we do there? Come on, let’s go.’

  Marcus muttered something under his breath and turned away from the wall. In gloomy silence, they set off back the way they had come. Emily was first. She rounded the corner of the tower and walked into a man standing there. She screamed. The man shot out an arm and grabbed her by the hood of her cagoule. Emily tried to pull away, but the man jerked her towards him so forcefully that the fabric of her hood ripped. Behind her, Simon and Marcus were transfixed.

  ‘You’re not going anywhere!’ the man said, shaking Emily hard by the hood. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Eh? Eh?’ With each exclamation he gave her another shake, making her whimper with terror. Emily was so frightened she could barely focus: all she could see was a white-haired, scarlet-faced apparition, scowling at her in fury.

  ‘Let her go,’ Simon said in a shaky voice. ‘You don’t need to do that.’

  The man’s gaze fell on Simon. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘Trespassing again? You ought to be locked up with the rest of your family.’

  Simon went white. He said nothing. His hand still clawed in Emily’s hood, the man gestured for them to start walking in the direction of the gatehouse.

  ‘Come on, get going!’ he shouted. ‘Every bloody winter it’s the same. You vandals think you can waltz in here, damaging the stones, churning up the grass, leaving litter everywhere like it’s a bloody council tip . . . No you don’t, my son, come here!’ This was to Marcus, who was wandering off stealthily at a slight angle to the caretaker’s intended route. A quick step to the side, a clip to the head, and Marcus was back on line, rubbing his scalp in shock.

  ‘Didn’t expect that, did you?’ the caretaker said shortly, dropping back so that all three were well in front of him. ‘That’s what naughty boys get if they go trespassing. And if they still don’t heed, we’ll see what the police have to say about it. Understand?’ He gave Emily’s hood a corresponding yank.

  ‘We weren’t doing any harm,’ Simon said. Of all of them, he seemed the one least stunned by their capture. Marcus and Emily were both unable to speak. ‘Don’t get the police over, please,’ he went on in a plaintive tone. ‘We won’t do it again.’

  ‘I should think you won’t, my lad. Because I’ll be looking out for you. I’m here every day, see? And rain or snow, I’ll collar you if you set so much as one foot in these grounds. What was it – through the hedge?’ He tugged at Emily again. ‘Well? Speak up! You came in through the hedge somewhere, did you? Eh?’

  Emily nodded dumbly.

  ‘Every year it’s the same. How old do you think that hedge is? No, you haven’t given it a moment’s thought, have you? Two hundred years old, that hedge is, and you’re happy to slash holes in it just so you can get in to play with the snow! You’re bloody thoughtless kids, and if I had my way they’d lock you up to teach you a few hard lessons. Right, through here – ’ they had reached the gatehouse – ‘now head for the entrance gate. Yes, you don’t know where that is, do you, miss? Not used to paying your way, eh? Keep going . . .’

  A constant stream of commentary like this accompanied them as they walked in dismal fashion down to the gate, a revolving metal grille set in the hedge next to a tiny wooden cabin. The caretaker stood by while they passed hurriedly through the grille, hearing it click back into position behind each one.

  ‘Right,’ he said, staring at them through the narrow bars. ‘You’ve been let off lightly this time. Now clear off. I’ve told you what I’ll do if I see you here again . . .’

  But the three were already walking away from him as fast as they could, down the road alongside the frosted hedge. The road was thick with compressed ice and after a couple of steps, Emily slipped, lost her footing and fell, landing hard on one elbow. There was a loud laugh from the caretaker at the gate. Silently, Simon and Marcus helped her to her feet. They walked on.

  At last Simon risked a look behind them.

  ‘He’s gone,’ he said, stopping in the road. ‘That bastard.’

  ‘That tosser,’ Marcus said.

  ‘What a git the man is.’

  ‘Treating us like bloody hooligans, like kids.’

  ‘If I was bigger I’d give him something.’

  ‘Like stupid – like vandalizing kids.’

  ‘He’d know about it and all.’

  ‘That tosser.’

  Simon looked at Marcus. ‘You haven’t got any more of that whisky, have you?’ he asked.

  ‘Finished it.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Emily said nothing. The shock of the encounter was still sinking in. She sniffed.

  ‘Hey, don’t worry about him, Em,’ Simon said. ‘He’s all mouth.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She said it in a small voice.

  ‘Are you worried he’ll tell your dad?’

  She frowned. ‘No!’ It came out more violently than she’d meant it to. ‘It’s not that. It was just . . . he was just so horrible.’

  ‘Forget about him. He’s nothing.’

  ‘Yeah, but he wins, doesn’t he? We all stood there and took it.’ Her fear changed and hardened into anger. ‘We all lined up meekly and trotted out in front of him like good little children. And that’s it. He wins. Like your brother. He beat us up and won too.’

  ‘Carl didn’t win! Marcus here made him look a complete pillock in front of those girls.’

  ‘At the cost of my nose,’ Marcus said.

  ‘It didn’t feel like a victory,’ Emily said. ‘Anyway, we’re turfed out and there’s not much we can do about it, is there?’ She scuffed her boot against the snowy bank on the verge of the road.

  ‘Carl didn’t win,’ Simon muttered.

  ‘Well, I think we should do something,’ Marcus said.

  ‘Like what?’ Simon looked up. ‘I’d only get
duffed up again. I’ve booked myself one kicking for tonight already.’

  ‘I’m not talking about Carl. The castle. That tossing caretaker. So what if he won this time? You’re being too defeatist, Em. It’s no shame to be beaten back by the enemy. In every siege it was the same. The defenders would charge out in a surprise attack, send the besieging forces packing, kill a few – then, when they couldn’t break up the surrounding circle, they had to nip back inside the castle and hole up as before. Then the besiegers would settle in again. It was a game of patience.’

  ‘What, a card game?’ Emily grinned weakly, despite herself.

  Marcus gave a cry of annoyance. ‘You know! A waiting game is what I mean. It’s the same with us.’

  ‘So we go in again and sooner or later he’ll find us and boot us out again! What’s the point?’

  ‘He won’t find us,’ Marcus said, ‘if we’re inside the castle.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘But we’ve already said – ’ Emily began.

  ‘I know what we said. But that was before. And Simon knows we could do it.’

  Emily looked at Simon. He said nothing.

  ‘Think about it. We’d be inside, watching him plodding about, looking for us in the snow. He’d never bother with the castle. Think how sweet that would be.’

  Emily thought. It did seem sweet.

  ‘I reckon I could get in,’ Simon said. ‘And if I had a rope, maybe you could too. I could get one and all. My dad’s got some in the shed.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ Marcus clapped his hands together. ‘That’s settled then! We’ll restore our honour. Tomorrow?’

  After a long moment, Simon nodded. ‘OK,’ he said slowly. ‘If Em’s on for it.’

  They looked at her. Emily remembered the livid face, the repeated tugs on her hood. Her neck was sore.

  ‘I’m on for it,’ she said.

  Marcus grinned. ‘So what time?’

  ‘It’ll have to be after lunch,’ said Emily. ‘Two. I’ve got aunts visiting till then. What about you, Simon?’

  ‘Two’s OK. If I’m still alive.’ He scratched his chin ruefully.