The door opened with a bang, rattling the frame and breaking the lock, which gave way. The bell jingled, breaking the silence of the night. The shop was swathed in darkness. A single candle flickered, trying to chase away the darkness while making shadows dance up the walls.
An imposing man wearing a black cape with a rolled-down hood slipped inside. He barely had time to catch his breath before he shivered, as he felt a blade press against his jugular and one of his arms pushed into his back at a painful angle.
“What—”
The pressure on his arm increased and the man let out a gasp.
“It’s me, Glenn, the goldsmith!”
His headgear was pushed back, unveiling a face lined with pain. His eyes were bulging in terror.
He was forced closer to the candle and, straining his neck, he could just make out the face of a young woman with emerald eyes.
“Ailéas? My god, what’s the matter with you?”
The young woman let go of his arm and withdrew the scissors’ blade from his neck. She readjusted her long ginger mane and continued to glare questioningly at the goldsmith; the scar which ran across her forehead made her seem even scarier.
“Precautionary measure,” she replied. “You did just break down the door.”
She gestured at the door which had just swung shut with a concerning creak. Glenn dumbly observed the metal lock hanging off with his mouth open.
“I… I thought it was stuck.”
Ailéas rolled her eyes in exasperation.
An amused voice from behind the timbers spoke up.
“You’re a brute, Glenn. It’s no wonder you work on jewels instead of armor!”
A man slid out of the shadow produced by the shop counter. He was middle-aged, sported a gray beard and wore a dark embroidered doublet which accentuated his square shoulders.
“Alastair!” gasped the goldsmith in shock. “My god! Why this welcome? I almost wet myself!”
The bearded man let out a laugh and nodded.
“Your apprentice is better at cutting up a man with scissors than a garment! A real wild cat.”
“Watch yourself, Glenn, cats scratch,” snarled the girl.
She sprung forwards to light the other candles. The goldsmith moved aside with a fearful look. From the halo of the candlelight, he took in the chaos of the shop. Fabrics were piled here and there. Sections of the large and luxurious furnace had been strewn in a ball on the floor. A broken wooden table lay not far from that destruction.
“Did they try to rob you, too?”
Alastair Aitken nodded in affirmation. He was the most respected tailor in the south of Scotland, and certainly the richest. His dresses were known right up to the Highlands*, and some of his overcoats were worth their weight in gold in the markets of Glasgow and Edinburgh. That someone tried to rob him wasn’t exactly surprising, especially right now.
“Luckily Ailéas was here.”
“The bastard ran away like a little coward,” she said with a smirk.
“I see,” replied the goldsmith, wiping his brow.
“What brings you here?”
“What brings me here? Good lord, Alastair! Three days! The town has been under siege for three days. And you ask what brings me here? What the hell are you still doing here?”
The master tailor leaned against one of the bolts of vermillion fabric.
“The Guild…” he started.
“Beck got killed in his damned bunker,” Glenn cut him off. “Oh, you didn’t know, huh? Well, he did! He was a bloody idiot and bad at business, but he didn’t deserve that.”
The goldsmith paced around the shop. He wrung his hands, with his many rings all clinking together.
“I almost got eviscerated myself on my way here! People have gone mad! But at the same time, I get it. Have you heard the screams from beyond the walls?”
Ailéas felt a shiver run down her spine.
Four days earlier, the English army had been spotted coming from the south. The young woman had climbed up to the watchtower above the ramparts and had seen the organized battalions advancing through the hills. The weapons and armor of the soldiers glistened in the spring sunshine, and the wind fluttered their banners.
The terrified screams of those who had managed to find refuge behind the city walls had come just before those who didn’t make it to safety. Ailéas half-wondered what they were doing to people to make them scream like that, not really wanting to know the answer.
Since then, tents had sprouted up everywhere, like red and gold petals on the jade moors. It had been three days since Berwick-upon-Tweed, the economic heart of the southern Scottish Lowlands*, was under siege and a maritime blockade.
Ailéas understood why the city, her city, had found itself in this catastrophic situation. Alastair had made it a point of pride to explain it to her. It was all about a military campaign, organized by Edward I, King of England, in retaliation for treason by the King of Scotland, John Balliol. The latter, in agreement with Parliament, had rejected a call to arms from the English crown to go up against the French. Even worse, he had then forged a military alliance with the King of France.
She was pulled out of her thoughts as a young man appeared in the doorframe of the shop. Just like her, he had emerald eyes, a wild and tangled mane of red hair, and a thin nose and mouth.
“Ah, Fillan! At least you won’t welcome me by trying to slaughter me?” Glenn quipped.
“A public danger is more than enough for that!” retorted the new man with a mischievous look at his twin sister, who made an obscene gesture in return. “What are you doing here?” he continued, shaking hands with the goldsmith.
“Did you hit all your heads? I’ve come to do what the Merchants Guild should have done long ago and make us leave Berwick!”
He almost shouted it, frowning deeply at Alastair.
“Calm down, Glenn.”
“Calm down?” he shouted for real this time. “Damn it! Alastair, I just learned that that son of a bitch Douglas is going to hand over the keys to the city to Clifford!”
“Right, we—”
“Do you know what awaits us? Douglas will abdicate with no conditions. They’ll gut us like pigs!”
“Will you let me speak?!” interrupted the tailor. “We leave tonight. I was about to send the kids to tell you.”
The ‘kids’ gave each other an annoyed look. At sixteen years old, they detested being treated like children.
“Ah, ok. OK. But we must leave right away. Immediately! You haven’t rushed them enough; you’ve handled all this badly!”
Fillan frowned.
“And no thanks to you, things have been arranged,” he started icily. “You should show more respect, Glenn!”
“And you,” interrupted his master, “should learn to shut your mouth and mind your own business. Go put this in my luggage.”
He was holding an old piece of fabric in his arms. Ailéas knew it was just an excuse to make her brother leave the room. She watched him exit with his head bowed.
“This is how we’ll proceed,” started Alastair to Glenn.
While he outlined how they would leave the city, using the quays, the young woman was lost in thought about the shop.
She’d miss this place. A lot.
Her eyes turned towards each wooden beam, each dusty corner, and every bit of furniture that held so many memories. She and her brother had lived here for eight years. They had grown up here and rebuilt themselves between the overflowing wardrobes. They came from the north of Scotland, and Alastair had taken them in after their parents were massacred. The master tailor had taken care of them with all his signature kindness and offered them a new life of luxury in Berwick. Ailéas was grateful to him, as he had helped to give them a future by making them his apprentices.
Yes, the smell of the dyes, the rays of sunshine on the edges of the quays, her escapades on the city walls – she would miss all of it.
She had no idea what the future held for her now and it was terrifying. She hoped their journey might bring them to the sweeping, savage, and mountainous countries of her childhood, her memories of which were slowly fading. At the same time, she hated that the hope was a possibility. Thanks to the Guild, and money, they survived while thousands of others had met their ends during this atrocity.
Her throat and her stomach were dry.
Glenn left with a wave, and she went to find Fillan in the back of the shop with Alastair, before buckling up their packs. A heavy silence hung in the air. It was so heavy that Ailéas felt her sense of guilt growing.
“It’s not fair,” she said with a frown.
“What’s that?” asked Alastair.
“That we get to leave the city while so many others can’t.”
The tailor looked at her with his kind eyes, full of sympathy.
“Don’t be so stupid,” retorted her brother, annoyed. “What do you want? To stay here and be massacred? Take more with us who would get us caught? Think about it!”
He was right, and she knew it. There was no other choice.
“Do you know what soldiers do to women during a siege?” he continued.
“Calm yourself, Fillan,” soothed Alastair, who was used to their bickering. “Being cruel is no help to you. Ailéas, listen to me. When war comes, the only thing that matters is survival. And you cannot lose your will to survive.”
The teenager bit her lip. Her master’s words eased the knot in her stomach. A little. But not enough.
“Now you’ve finished, go warn Nollan.”
“The cobbler?” asked Fillan.
Mounting cries resounded from just a few streets away. They all exchanged worried looks.
“Be careful,” he carried on. “Douglas has called back the garrison. The streets aren’t safe.”
“We know what’s coming,” retorted Ailéas, arming herself with a walking stick.
Fillan shrugged his shoulders and snarled.
“You’re like a dog! No, that’s unfair to dogs. You’re even worse!”
Her brother gave her a mean look as they kept going. They turned at a fork in the road, where it was darker because of the timber buildings.
“You’re so annoying with your stupid thoughts,” he said. “Plus, you woke me up last night again.”
“Sooo sorry for having a nightmare, oh great sir.”
“Hmm.”
“Don’t you ever relive it?”
“Relive what?”
She held back a sigh. He knew perfectly well what she was talking about. It wasn’t the first time she’d had this sort of dream.
“The night our parents died.”
“Damn, Ailéas! We’re sixteen. It was years ago! Get over it!”
This time she wanted to break his nose.
As they came out of the shadows of the street, Fillan saw the rage-filled eyes of his sister.
“No one said we had to talk,” he said.
He went silent once more and pressed on.
They were the mirror image of one another, but their characters were complete opposites.
Ailéas was poised and reflective, and preferred solitude to futile friendships. Fillan was impetuous and arrogant, loved to mingle, and knew everyone in town.
They kept going as though they were shadows. After two steps, they ducked into a porch to avoid the groups of local thugs who were trying to find a poor soul on whom to take out their nerves. From time to time, a scream rang out. The rest of the city was petrified in anticipation and terror, frozen by indecision.
It was suffocating.
They came into view of the workshop and spread out. The moon had finally managed to pierce through the clouds and they could make out the shopfront. On the cobblestones, near the dark threshold, a scarlet pool gleamed.
They each took a direction, listening intently.
Nothing.
They crept along to the entry. The trail of blood was flowing from outside to inside. Ailéas gripped her stick, which did nothing for the erratic beating of her heart.
They entered the shop in one step, but found nothing.
“Is that… Master Nollan?”
Fillan thought he was going to be sick, the bile burning his throat, and his sister reached out for his hand.
There was blood everywhere, to the point that even the walls were streaked with red. The awful smell of iron enveloped the whole room. The cobbler, a man the same age as Alastair, was laid out on the counter. Several of his tools surrounded his body. Along with several of his organs.
“They jumped him in front of his door,” observed the young man. “Then they pushed him inside…”
“They’ve stolen everything,” said Ailéas taking in the devastation on the counter.
“Such animals! What difference will money make when the English have their heads on spikes?”
The eerie silence fell once more, but it was broken almost immediately by dozens of shouts exploding from the west of the city. Roused by the same instincts, brother and sister looked at each other. Their fear was visceral and instinctive, and shone in their eyes.
As they exited the shop, a man slipped onto the blood-covered floor in mid-run. He cast a furtive look in the direction of two growing shadows and gave a start upon discovering the twins.
“The English are in the city!” he screamed from the ground.
Residents fearfully looked out of their windows and some even dared open their doors.
“Douglas has surrendered! The soldiers are killing everyone!”
The man shouted the words with a haunted look. It was only as Ailéas tried to help him up that she noticed the spear in his back.
“Get out of here! Go!” he shouted as he tried to flee.
The teenagers took off without a word.
* The Highlands are the mountainous region in the north and west of Scotland. The natural border of the Highlands runs from Arran to Stonehaven.
* The Scottish Lowlands stretch from the south of Scotland to the east of the natural border of the Highlands between Stonehaven and Helensburgh.