“I might be old but my eyes and ears still work well enough. You thanked me for the bread. You had a smile for me when you first saw me enter here. You’re a gentle lass. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you came from the royal court. There’s grace in your soul. And fire too.”
“I wish there was fire,” she replied, picking up something purple. “What’s this?” she asked, turning it over in her hand.
“Carrot,” he replied. “Have you not seen one before?”
“Yes but…never mind. Can I ask you a question?”
“Aye.”
“Why is the castle in such poor shape?”
“What? In what way?”
She chewed on the carrot for a moment, surprised by how sweet it tasted. Once she got over the difference in color, she could almost imagine she was eating it as part of a warm meal at home. The thought was comforting.
“There were wooden props holding up your portcullis. One small fire and the whole thing could be pushed over by two men. The battlement walls are too thin, I can tell that from here. They could easily be undermined.
Same with the keep. If the rest has been so thinly done as this room, the whole thing might collapse. Feel that mortar. It’s too poor a quality for a wall such as this, nor has it been lain thick enough for such heights. In other places it is too thick. Your masons have been far too slapdash. And what building is that down there?”
He looked where she was pointing, a shocked look on his face. “The chapel, why?”
“The roof isn’t aligned right. God help you if you get a strong winter wind.
“How do you know all this?”
“I learned it.”
“Where?”
“Where I came from,” she replied after a moment, not sure how much to share. “Will you tell your laird?”
She thought about the castle coming under siege as he had warned. When she first arrived she hadn’t given much thought to the flaws, assuming they were because it was a recreation, not the real thing. Knowing this castle was built for defense made things different. She couldn’t live with herself if she went home knowing there were easily fixable problems and she’d chosen to ignore them to save her own skin.
Rory looked out of the gap in the wall, crumbling a little of the mortar in between his fingers. “What would you do to fix these problems if you were master mason here?”
“You might not like hearing this.”
“Go on.”
“Well, first I’d sack your master mason.”
Rory suppressed a smile. “Go on.”
“Then I’d deal with defense first as winter’s coming. I’d get the wooden props either buried or hidden behind strong stone walls. Long term you’d want to rebuild the keep and the walls of the battlements but for now you could thicken them at the bottom and at least get a single skin along the top after pulling the top couple of courses down. It would give the impression of level and concurrent strength to anyone outside. Might be enough to put them off if they don’t get too close. Then come the spring, I’d pull it all down in sections and rebuild thicker and this time do it right.”
“Would that not cost a fortune in stone?”
“Not really. You’d be able to reuse a lot of what you have as it’s already dressed. You’d just need more rubble for infill and if that’s hard to find you could deepen the earthworks and use what you dig out from there. You’re on top of stone here, aren’t you?”
“Aye. So we simply rebuild the entire keep and the walls. What about the chapel? Why do we need to fear the wind?”
“The roof is only half done but there’s no point finishing it as it is. Leave it off center like that and it’ll collapse in the first strong gale. The strength of a building like that comes from its symmetry. Same as the biggest cathedral.
It needs buttresses and the roof redoing entirely. Get that wood off and get someone who knows what they’re doing to do it right. Whoever you hired for the work is taking you for a ride.”
Again, a suppressed smile. “What about you?”
“What do you mean, what about me?”
