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Pit Prisons and the Bottle Dungeon

I always assumed that the dungeon at St Andrews Castle, carved out of rock and worn smooth by its many occupants, was unique.

Named the bottle dungeon for reasons which are soon obvious to any visitor, it is indeed unique – in shape. But the principle of keeping prisoners in a pit prison was fairly universal.

The Pit Prison at Hailes Castle, which poor George Wishart was held in before he was taken to St Andrews, tried and then burned at the stake.

There were of course others forms of punishment, often about humiliation more than pain

masks of shame the castilians — Masks of Shame displayed in Mdina, Malta

Cardinal Beaton, who was instrumental in the death of George Wishart was himself held prisoner at Blackness Castle

but, as a rich and powerful man, Cardinal Beaton’s incarceration was quite different from that of general prisoners

Cardinal Beaton's prison accommodation at Blackness was spread over three floors — Cardinal Beaton’s prison accommodation at Blackness was spread over three floors

Of course Beaton had to pay for his comfortable living, but then any prisoner had to rely on family or friends to provide food, heat, bedding, bribes and a ransom…so if you were poor you were in desperate straits.

The Cardinal did end up in the bottle dungeon a few years later, where the Lairds who murdered him are said to have kept his mutilated body…

‘Leslie wants the Cardinal’s body brought out of the dungeon and laid to rest somewhere more fitting. Will hangs his head over the bottle neck and quickly hauls it out again. The smell is bad: dank, airless and putrid. Surely the Cardinal can’t still be rotting after more than a year pickled in salt.

The men below shout up; they need help. Will sighs, grasps a rope and slides down to join them. No doubt they will soon be imprisoned here themselves, and he would prefer it if the Cardinal was first removed.

They balance awkwardly on the curve of the hollowed-out floor of the dungeon. The coffin slips and crashes to the ground. The ill-fitting lid slides open.

Will looks down upon the tightly packed body and the Cardinal’s face stares up at him. He steps back with a sharp intake of breath, and he’s not the only one. He rubs his eyes hard, God’s blood, he would swear on his life he saw Beaton’s unquiet spirit escape.

They ram the lid back on and get the coffin tied up, and hauled to the surface without any further mishap. He climbs back up the rope and the group, staggering under the weight as they slip and slither in the muck, take it in turns to carry it across the rain-soaked, cannon- blasted courtyard. Will notices that Norman Leslie takes no further part in proceedings.’

The Castilians , currently on the Amazon BEST SELLER List, is on offer until 16 September.

The sequel, The Conversos, will be released on 30 November.

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The Sea Yett and the Perilous Climb

When I was plotting The Castilians I had to work out how I was going to sneak its heroine, Bethia, inside St Andrews Castle. The obvious way – through the gate in the curtain wall, and across the drawbridge — wasn’t going to work.

Main entrance to St Andrews Castle – although it was re-positioned here during the re-building work after the Siege.

Although around 2500 people lived in St Andrews in the 1500s (there were 60 bakers alone), the chances of Bethia, as the daughter of the well-kent Merchant Seton, being observed by someone who knew her were high.

A solution was for her to gain entry by a gate on the seaward side and, in the ruins of the castle, such a gate still exists.…

The Sea Yett – there is some debate as to when it was knocked through, however I’m going with those chroniclers who think it was already there in the time of the Siege. It would’ve been essential for the off-loading of Cardinal Beaton’s rich supplies, especially as it was much easier and cheaper to transport goods by sea.

Problem solved.

But how is she going to get in here? The castle sits perched on a cliff. Last summer I realised I needed to get a good look at the castle from the sea, but this is COVID times and there were no boats going out. Instead I went at low tide and scrambled over the rocks in a most precarious, and undignified, manner.

Wow, the castle is impressive from the seaward side. Shame about the graffiti halfway up, which rather destroys the atmosphere.

It’s also high – how am I going to get Bethia safely in and out of there, especially if the sea is rough?

They reach their destination sooner than she expects, bumping up against smooth rocks which form a jetty below the cliff. Geordie leaps out and offers his hand to steady her. She tips her head back; the crumbling sandstone is soothing to the eye, but the castle wall rising over it is grey and forbidding. She can see a small gate high above, but she can’t see any way to reach it.

Geordie shouts and after a few moments a face peers through the bars of the yett. Geordie sniffs, ‘They must be thinking God is keeping watch for them, since they’re no bothering.’

‘Bethia Seton, what are you doing here?’

She sees James of Nydie’s blonde head and frowning face looking down.

‘Is there a way up, I need to speak with Will.’

‘There is a ladder but it’s not an easy climb.’

‘I’ll manage,’ she calls, voice quivering.

A rope ladder is unraveled and hangs, swinging in the breeze. Geordie grabs the end and she goes to step on.

‘Wait,’ cries James and the end of a rope comes slithering down. ‘Tie it around you.’

Up she goes, the ladder swaying and banging off the cliff. She keeps her eyes fixed on the uneven rock close to her face, so close in places that her nose and knees bump off it, and her knuckles scrape over it. Her skirts catch around her legs, restricting movement. Her breathing is loud in her ears, fluttering and panicked. She’s grateful to James for the rope, doesn’t think she could have done it otherwise.

‘Ye’d better no be long,’ Geordie shouts, as she’s crawling through the gate. ‘If the tide gets too far out the boat will be stuck till it rises again.’

One day recently I visited Tantallon Castle, near North Berwick. Castles served different purposes and St Andrews Castle is really a wee fortified bishop’s palace. Tantallon is a BIG castle on a GRAND scale.

And there I found the perfect explanation of how goods would be lifted from the deck of a ship a long, long way below and hoisted into the castle.

Drawing of the winch for bringing goods up from a ship and/or jetty at Tantallon Castle

Perhaps Bethia could have been hauled up this way— but I suspect she’d prefer to stay with the ladder, rather than being swung around in the air in a most unsafe, wind-tossed ascent.

Ps Do note the walkways around Tantallon – all without barriers. Terrifying!!

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Caitchpule

A reader writes to ask what is a caitchpule — and I realise I have made an assumption. In The Castilians I mention King James V’s fondness for the game of caitch, which he regularly played at Falkland Palace. Growing up nearby I was always aware of the famous tennis court at the Palace, and so I wrote as though readers would understand what I was talking about when I mentioned the words ‘caitchpule’ and ‘Falkland Palace’ in the same sentence.

Ooops!

What I didn’t know, before I wrote the novel, was that real tennis was called caitch and the tennis court a caitchpule. The game is the precursor to lawn tennis played at Wimbledon since the the 1800s.

Real tennis is more like squash in that it uses the walls surrounding the enclosed court and the sloping roof above the viewing gallery, to bounce the ball off. Lawn tennis, although played differently, copied the same scoring system as real tennis.

James’s uncle, King Henry VIII of England, was also a keen tennis player in his youth. There was a caitchpule in St Andrews, so it’s entirely possible my characters in The Castilians may have played the game – at least those with the wealth and leisure to do so.

Real tennis is still played at Falkland Palace by local residents, who would most certainly not have been permitted anywhere near the caitchpule in the 1500s.