You are here: Home > The Castle Experience > Pauline Wright
Walls by Pauline Wright
The walls were high, too high. White smoke drifted down on their faces hiding the screaming turbaned hordes on top. He felt the ladder sag beneath the weight of scrambling bodies. Keep going; he had to keep going. His comrades were crowding him from behind pushing him up, ready and eager to meet their enemy. The cordite was in his throat. It stung his eyes. He climbed blind, carried upward by his men. The smoke grew thicker. Another rung; he was nearly there. He looked up. A brown face looked down at him through the smoke. Staring wild black eyes; wide stretched mouth shrieking in fierce abandonment. Someone shouted at his back but the words disappeared in the mayhem. Everywhere men were screaming and pushing, the air thick with the noise of battle. Discipline was gone, given over to clambering…to breathing…to survival. Swish…the sabre cut through the smoke like magic, fanning his face as it passed his eye in a silver flash, embedding itself with a soft sickening thud in his shoulder. Aghh…..
‘Wake up, Duncan! Wake up! Yer hame. Yer safe.’
The voice drifted through the smoke. The pain in his shoulder dwindled away. He opened his eyes. It was cold in the room – man, it was aye cold in Stirling Castle.
They’d never felt cold like it in Lucknow. There it had been searing; the heat, the fighting, the assault on the walls of Begum Kothi’s Palace.
It would surely go down in history that day, the 11th day of March in the year of 1858, for the battle won, the heroism…the dead. Yet the thing he remembered best was a sound that he would never forget – the playing of the 93rd Foot’s piper, John McLeod. The skirl of his pipes had been heard over the battle field for hours. It fair roused the men.
Some had perished. Some, like him, had made it back to Scotland.
Outside, the castle’s hard, slippery cobbles under his shoes were comfortingly familiar. At the far wall he could see the other walking-wounded and the off-duties gathered. He wanted to join in their talk but his heart wasn’t in it. He turned and took the path leading to the battlements.
He stopped to look out across the Carse. He was alone. Gripping the cold hard wall he groaned. He lifted his foot and kicked fiercely at the stone wall. Three times he struck out as hard as he was able. It made no impact whatever on the age old edifice, changing nothing.
Pauline Wright
‘Wake up, Duncan! Wake up! Yer hame. Yer safe.’
The voice drifted through the smoke. The pain in his shoulder dwindled away. He opened his eyes. It was cold in the room – man, it was aye cold in Stirling Castle.
They’d never felt cold like it in Lucknow. There it had been searing; the heat, the fighting, the assault on the walls of Begum Kothi’s Palace.
It would surely go down in history that day, the 11th day of March in the year of 1858, for the battle won, the heroism…the dead. Yet the thing he remembered best was a sound that he would never forget – the playing of the 93rd Foot’s piper, John McLeod. The skirl of his pipes had been heard over the battle field for hours. It fair roused the men.
Some had perished. Some, like him, had made it back to Scotland.
Outside, the castle’s hard, slippery cobbles under his shoes were comfortingly familiar. At the far wall he could see the other walking-wounded and the off-duties gathered. He wanted to join in their talk but his heart wasn’t in it. He turned and took the path leading to the battlements.
He stopped to look out across the Carse. He was alone. Gripping the cold hard wall he groaned. He lifted his foot and kicked fiercely at the stone wall. Three times he struck out as hard as he was able. It made no impact whatever on the age old edifice, changing nothing.
Pauline Wright
