Yet he was also the most powerful in Scotland, simply because he held the strings of the purse Ralph now handed him.
He helped fasten on the belt, then adjusted his master’s arms in the sleeves of the long, loose gardecorps; Cressingham consoled himself with the fact that at least his gardecorps was refined. No riotous colours here, no gold dagging along the hem, or long slits up the sides, or three-foot tippets. Plain black, with russet vair round the sleeves and neck, as befitted someone of probity and dignity.
‘I will break fast now,’ Cressingham said and Ralph de Odingesseles nodded, took a step back and bowed.
‘The Seneschal is here. Brother Jacobus also.’
Cressingham frowned and swallowed a curse – couldn’t they at least let him wake up and eat a little? He waved his page away to fetch food and told him to let the Seneschal in, then went to brood at the shuttered window, peering through the cracks rather than open it to the breeze – even in August it was cold. Outside, the river flowed, gleaming as quicksilver and he took comfort from the Teviot on one side and the Tweed on the other, so that the castle seemed to sail on a sea, a boat-shaped confection in stone.
Roxburgh was a massive, thick-walled fortress with four towers and a church within the walls. Cressingham’s room was on a corner of the main Keep overlooking the Inner Bailey and, because of that, had a proper window of leaded glass rather than the shuttered arrow slits that faced the outside. The other sides of his room bordered on a corridor, so there were no windows at all, which made it dim and dark. Not for the first time, Cressingham thought of the light-flooded solar tower and its magnificent floor tiles, where De Warenne had installed himself.
A polite cough turned him and the Seneschal, Frixco de Fiennes, stood, waiting patiently in his sober browns and greens.
‘Christ be praised,’ Frixco de Fiennes said and Cressingham grunted.
‘For ever and ever,’ he responded automatically. ‘What problems have surfaced this early in the day?’
Frixco had been up for several hours and all the lesser folk of the castle hours before that. Half the day was gone as far as Frixco was concerned and he had already dealt with most of the castle’s problems – the cook needing the day’s salt and spices, the Bottler warning that immediate ale stocks were low and small beer lower still.
The other problems he had no answer for were worse -supplies for the 10,000 men currently filtering through Berwick and heading this way, the timber to the workmen scaffolding the Teviot wall in order for minor repairs to be done, men to make spears and quarrels and bows. Where grain for bread was to come from, or fodder for animals, or bedding for horse and hound.
‘The world turns, Treasurer,’ he replied. He should properly have addressed Cressingham as Lord but that was a step too far for the fine-bred Frixco de Fiennes, who was brother to the Warden here. Frixco, however, was not brave, or clever. He should have gone to the Church but liked women too much even to suffer the slight restriction priesthood would place on his whoring – the thought of the splendid Mattie down at the Murdoch’s Tavern in the town tightened his groin so much he almost bent over, convinced it could be seen.
Seneschal here was perfect, for it let him use his skills in tallying and reading and writing in English, French and Latin while leaving him free to plough whatever furrows he could find.
He laid out the problems as Ralph de Odingesseles returned with bread and dishes of mutton, pork and fish. The squire poured watered wine and Frixco stood while Cressingham chewed and swallowed, toying absently with the bread as he walked to the shuttered window and, finally, opened it to the day. Behind him, sly as a mouse, Ralph filched slices of meat and fish, popping it in his mouth at once and ignoring the frowning Frixco.
There was Stirling, one of the main fortresses still held by England. Frixco meticulously listed the castle stores there – 400 barrels of beer, four of honey, 300 of fat, 200 sides of beef, pork and tongue, a single barrel of butter, 10 each of pickled meat and herring, seven of cod, 24 strings of sausages, two barrels of salt and 4,000 cheeses.
‘Enough for six to eight months,’ Frixco de Fiennes ended, ‘given that the garrison is not large. I have assumed that the townsfolk will seek sanctuary within.’
‘If we do not succour the town?’ Cressingham asked and the Seneschal looked astonished at the very idea of not taking in Stirling’s desperate. That was the purpose of the castle, one of the three such purposes fortresses were designed for. One was as a base for the destruction of enemies, the second was the succour of guests and pilgrims and people in their charge and the third was to stamp the authority of the king on the area.