THE GIANT’S CASTLE.
Clean gone were the Welshmen at last, and the Northmen with them; and
then came Gartnaidh and dragged poor Thorstein out of his lair, where he
had lain a night and a day with little ease: and took his daughter with
them: and over the mosses they travelled, no long way, to the stronghold
where the fell-folk were used to retire in times of war and trouble. All
along the Benn their houses were scattered, but on the side away from
Thirlmere there is a deep valley. No wilder might be in any part, and
scarcely in any land inhabited, than this that opens at Shoulthwaite.
On either side high cliffs, brant and broken, rise above the sheets of
ruin, which fall from them among scanty leafage of battered forest-trees.
In one place the crags frown over the gill as they frown nowhere else in
our fells, overhanging their bases, as if they would topple down with a
breath. The gill is steep and rocky; the chasm that cleaves its sides,
one long waterfall from top to bottom, coming down from the high moors
and desolate bogs to the low-lying valley and inhabited plain between the
Benn and Blencathra.
There in the midst of this trough runs out a tongue of land, steep on
either side: and the tip of it rises abrupt into a tall rocky island,
precipitous all round, and approachable only by a narrow neck that joins
it to the mountain.
Across this neck great trenches had been dug in ancient times, deep and
wide, and curving round the castle rock, like the new moon lying about
the old. So huge they are that they remain there to this day. And if the
first is climbed there is the second; and if the second is climbed there
is the third, twice as high; and no way to circumvent it or avoid it if
one would get up to the stronghold in the midst. And then there is the
hollow in the rock where a few houses might be built, as the forecourt
of the castle or its outer bailey, defended on two sides by the sheer
precipice, and on the third by the trenches: but on the fourth side rises
still higher the uttermost rock, a sheer tower unapproachable save by
a narrow path like a ledge in the side of it, so that one only at once
can enter; and one man above with a good spear could easily defend it,
thrusting each new comer over in turn, and down into the gulf below, like
sheep one by one thrust into the pool at a sheep-washing. Then on the
very top is a plain place, a rocky platform, whence the eye searches all
that valley and views the great vale and the roads below, and Blencathra
and Skiddaw rising beyond them, and the mountain tops of Helvellyn above
the nearer crags, and Ullscarf over the moor. By a steep path one could
come upon the road leading from Thirlmere out to the plain and round to
the old Roman fort at the foot of Derwentwater: and from spying-places
could be watched everything that passed, and all that was doing below. So
that this was the safest place for refuge, and the most dangerous to the
neighbourhood that could be found: a stronghold seemingly impregnable
before the days of gunshot, and still among the wonders of Lakeland.
[Illustration: THE CASTLE ROCK OF SHOULTHWAITE]
Here it was, our story says, that Gartnaidh kept ward on the passes with
his men, and held Thorstein in a prison from which there was little
escape. But so long as Raineach was there, life was not bitter nor
unbearable: for she was all the world to him now.
And yet there was little to give them pleasure in the horrible black
rocks and roaring gill, and the loneliness and deathliness of all around.
Gartnaidh came and went with his men, never leaving the place without a
guard upon the gateway, so that none might go out or come in. And indeed,
what with wild beasts and the terrible country round about, to say
nothing of a time of war when every kind of evil-doer is abroad, there
was little to tempt them forth, so long as they had a roof over their
heads, if it were no better than a pighull; and a wall between them and
the world, even though it were a prison-wall.
The summer sultriness thickened day upon day, until Blencathra was but
a film of grey, hung like a cobweb in the sky: and the beck began to
dwindle, and its roar died into a murmur beneath the bulwarks of the
hold. Then followed the stillness and the heaviness that makes one weary
in the hour before a storm bursts. But if the sky was threatening and if
the air was full of dread, in their hearts was a still greater unease
while they waited evening after evening for the news that must by now
be on its way to them,—the fulfilment of Aluinn’s sight-seeing and the
sooth-saying of her mother.
One night the men came back and called for drink; and Raineach brought
them what mead there was, and a jar of strong waters. Gartnaidh drank
and bid Thorstein out of his sight. The lad crept into one of the ruined
chambers,—low bields they were, like dog-kennels against the wall, in
the lap, so to say, of that Castle-crag: and he lay there long, waiting
for the thunder to begin. But all he heard was the sound of loud voices,
and furious talking, and Raineach’s shrill tongue scolding, begging,
threatening; and at last a smothered scream, as if some evil had
happened. His heart went quite cold, and he crept out to die with her.
She was there beside him, sobbing and shuddering: but she put her hand
upon his mouth, and drew him into the chamber.
“He has beaten me,” she whispered: “and he will kill thee. He says the
wolf-cub is a burden, now the wolves are slaughtered. And he will kill
me too, if I stand in his way. He is wild. Oh, Thorstein, listen! he is
coming!”
There were shuffling footsteps without: the giant, drunken with strong
drink, was groping towards them in the darkness. His hand pressed the
broken thatch of the shed where they lay, and the underside of it cracked
away and dropped on them. But he could not find the door. After a while
he growled and muttered, and sank into slumber.
“Thorstein,” said she, “let us away while he sleeps. Oh save me, lad, and
save thyself out of this den!”
Then Thorstein, terrified as he was, tried to soothe her: and in a while
the quietness gave them courage to look forth.