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Updated: June 23, 2025
A while the two waited in the outskirts of the wood near the cleared place about the castle. Then said De Skirlaw, "I go forward boldly to the bridge and summon the warder in the king's name." "I go with thee," agreed De Kellaw. So briskly the two rode forth from the shelter of the wood and up to the entrance, where De Skirlaw loudly wound his horn. But there was no response. He wound it again.
"Ay, and brave his wrath by so doing," returned De Kellaw; "for, since he cannot lay hands on those that have disappointed him, he will lay hands on us that bring him word of the matter. To be near to the king, if thou be not a liar or a cajoler, is to stand in a dangerous place." "Yea," answered De Skirlaw, "thou art right; but we needs must return. So let us set out."
As De Skirlaw and De Kellaw entered, the king, scanning their faces, read that they bore him no welcome news, and his rage broke out afresh. "What land is this that I be king of?" he exclaimed. "A land of rebels and disobedience. A land of dull skies and duller fortunes. What saw ye that ye come before me with glum faces and serious looks? Speak, if ye can. Is the castle gone?"
De Skirlaw and De Kellaw galloped off; and the king, shortly after coming to Clipstone, entered his private apartments and excluded the party from them. "There is treachery somewhere," he said to himself, aloud, "and the guilty shall not escape me. Why, what is this Josceline but a boy of fourteen? And what is his mother but a woman? And do they both bid successful defiance to me, the king?
Still in silence he rode to the edge of the moat and looked down. And there he saw the armor and the bones as De Skirlaw had said. An attendant now spoke to him, and he nodded his head in assent. At once three of the artisans were hurried across the postern bridge and through the gate with instructions to hasten to the front entrance and let down the bridge and open the great gate for the king.
They heard no news in the town; nor did they see anything until they came to the castle itself. Birds of prey were screaming above the moat near the postern, and there was a stillness about the place that would have argued desertion if the flag had not still floated from one of the towers. "I like not this stillness," said De Skirlaw. "It hath a menacing air," observed De Kellaw.
Meanwhile word was brought to Hotspur that the Scots would spend the night at Otterburn; and he, without waiting for Walter de Skirlaw, Bishop of Durham, who was expected that evening with a strong force, at once set off with 600 spearmen, and a force on foot which is variously given as anything from 800 to 8,000.
"Nay, Your Majesty," said De Skirlaw. "The castle we found, but " "Ye mean that the prisoner spake true," burst out the king, "and that the young lord is escaped?" "Yea," answered De Skirlaw. "No human being inhabiteth the castle. And in the moat at the rear kites and eagles have fed." "What mean ye? What hath chanced there?" "Your Majesty, no man knoweth," was the answer.
Walter Skinner had been gone over night, and the second day of his flight was well begun when the king, impatient over the slowness of De Skirlaw and De Kellaw, sent from Clipstone to Newark to have the spy brought before him. In haste the bailiff went to the room where he had placed him, and no prisoner was there.
And still there came no answer. "Seest thou no man upon the walls?" asked De Skirlaw, scanning the heights with eyes somewhat near-sighted. "I see no one," responded the hawk-eyed De Kellaw. "Let us skirt the castle," proposed De Skirlaw, after a short pause. "I am ready," responded De Kellaw. Then together the two began their tour of examination.
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