And then, behind me, someone knocked something over. I don’t know who or what it was. Something wooden clattered onto something else. Not a loud noise, but it was enough to give us away. Now they knew we were here.
I heard a lot of whispering and then a strange, scraping noise against the wall. For a moment, I couldn’t think what on earth it could be and then something floated down from the roof.
A stir ran around the barn as, simultaneously, we all realised what they were doing. They were climbing the walls. They would come at us through the roof.
I looked up. There were the four central pillars, supporting the timber beams. They’d laid brushwood over those to support the thatch. Everything was loose. It wouldn’t hold them for long. They would pull away the thatch and drop through. And we were trapped.
The same thought occurred to all of us. Women threw themselves at the barricade, heaving sacks aside. We had to get out. We were no safer outside, but at least there would be room to move. To run, maybe, or find somewhere to hide until this was over. Because Arthur would win, I was sure of it. The only question was whether we would be alive to see it.
Old people began to yank children out from under the straw. Babies were securely tied to their mothers who herded themselves into a tight group, clutching their pathetic weapons. They were terrified. Many of them were crying. Tears ran down their grubby cheeks. Their eyes were distended with fear as they stared wildly about them. But they stood their ground.
Because there’s something in the female genes. Something carried down from the dawn of time, maybe, from when we were bottom of the food chain and everything was a threat. Something that, despite overwhelming odds, makes us turn, stand at bay, teeth bared, weapons raised, and defend our children.
More straw and dust floated down. I looked up. A face appeared, long hair hanging down around it. He stared for a moment and then shouted something over his shoulder. He was pushed aside and another face appeared in his place. There was the sound of laughter.
Another hole appeared. Large lumps of thatch fell around us.
I looked behind me. Three women and an old man were struggling to heave the sacks aside. A group of women and children clustered behind them. Around me, some half dozen women, single, like me, I guessed, stood looking up.
The only thing that bought us a little time was that they’d made their holes in the highest part of the roof. Too high to jump and risk a broken leg because, looking at the faces around me, no mercy would be shown to any man unfortunate enough to be unable to defend himself.
Two men tried to lower another. He hung for a moment, legs kicking, still too high to drop. I had a sudden idea, ran to the pile of stones, and began to throw them. Others had the same idea. I’m a good shot. Suddenly, this wasn’t somewhere he wanted to be. He shouted to be pulled up. His mates, laughing their heads off, let him go. He fell heavily. An old man pushed us roughly aside and stood over him with a rock. There was a nasty sound.
And now, we had a sword.
The old man, one-eyed and heavily scarred, picked it up, hefted it expertly, sighted down the blade and grunted in satisfaction.
Over our heads, they’d stopped laughing and were furiously excavating. Even more lumps of brushwood and thatch fell around us. Surely now, they could safely make the jump. The roof sloped – where the roof met the walls was not that high above our heads. But they didn’t. They cleared the roof, tossing everything down into the barn with us. I could see the sky, hear the sounds of battle around us. But they didn’t jump.
It was the old man with the sword who understood first. Turning his head, he shouted. The women at the door redoubled their efforts to pull the heavy sacks away. And then I got it as well.
They were going to burn us.
They would drop lighted torches down on top of us and this barn, full of hay, straw, wood, and thatch would explode into an inferno. And they’d wait outside the doors to cut down anyone trying to escape. We had to get out now. Or we would burn.
I could hear men shouting all around us. There were a lot of them. They began to scramble down off the roof. Obviously they wouldn’t want to be caught up there when the torches were dropped.
More shouting. And now, the clash of swords. There was fighting. Were we being rescued? We couldn’t see a thing. We had no idea from which direction the most peril would come. Were we now safer inside or out? I made a mental note never ever to be caught like this again, and then the little voice inside me, that one gives me such a hard time in the small hours when I can’t sleep, said, ‘You should be so lucky.’
A movement caught my eye. I looked up. I saw a flicker. The next moment, a lighted torch dropped through the roof, trailing a stream of black, oily smoke, and landed squarely on the biggest pile of bone-dry brushwood.