Border Fire
Amanda Scott
Dedicated to my cousin
Nancy J Fulsom,
who shares my genetic love for tales of the Scottish Border, in the hope that she will enjoy this one.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The correct pronunciation of Buccleuch is “Buck-loo,” with the accent on the second syllable.
“N
ow
Liddisdale has ridden a raid,
but I wat they had better stayed at home.”
The Borders
February 1596
T
ATTERED SKIRTS OF MIST
shadowed the high, gibbous moon as the raiders approached the dark hamlet of Haggbeck in the shadow of England’s Cheviot Hills. A thin, crisp layer of snow covered the ground, and there were thirty riders; but their ponies’ hooves were nimble and quick, and made little noise for so many.
At a sign from their leader, a group of ten led by Ally the Bastard circled toward the common lands to collect the cattle, sheep, and horses. The main party continued into the hamlet.
The band of reivers had traveled through the night following intricate byways known to few but their leader. He was a man, legend said, who could find his way to hell and back through smoke-filled Limbo and pitch-black Purgatory. The secret haunts of Liddesdale were his refuge, the Cheviot Hills and Tynedale forests his hunting grounds, the Debatable Lands and Bewcastle Waste his playing fields.
Other men respected him as a leader of excellent head, believing his skill for penetrating the darkest night or the thickest mist unmatched by any other of his time. He knew his ground to an inch, and he had an uncanny knack for evading the watchers that the English Queen had set to guard her border.
Those watchers presented a formidable barrier, for from Solway to Berwick, from October to mid-March, by day or by night, the entire frontier remained under watch. Local English nobility and gentry bore responsibility for arming and horsing their men, as well as for inspecting the watches they set over every hilltop, ford, and dale, to guard every conceivable passage over their marches.
In times past, English wardens had sentenced to death any man who failed to resist Scottish raiders, and English landowners were still under strict orders to enforce the rules. But over the years those rules had relaxed, and nowadays English watchers who failed to raise a hue and cry against thieves faced no more than being held liable for the goods stolen during their watch.
Twice already that night, the Scottish leader had waved his men to lurking places while watchers passed within yards of them. Unfortunately, one could not count upon the Queen’s guardians to be in the same places each time. Pairs or larger groups of them patrolled together, moving from dale to ford to hilltop and back, ready to catch any careless reiver who showed himself.
The Scottish side had its guards, too, of course, and beacons on hilltops and tower roofs set to give fiery warning of English raids. However, unless a powerful lord commanded otherwise, the Scots tended to be less organized than their English counterparts, relying on other means to warn of attack or to protect against one.
In any event, that night the raiders known the length and breadth of the Borders as Rabbie’s Bairns reached their target easily. They had chosen Haggbeck in simple retaliation for an earlier English raid on the Liddesdale holdings of Curst Eckie Crosier. Curst Eckie wanted his cattle back, and if the raiders could collect more, and a few horses or sheep to boot, so much the better.
The leader raised his hand again as the riders neared the hamlet center.
“No sign of anyone waking,” he murmured to the big man riding beside him with the vicious, long-handled, curved-bladed weapon known as a Jeddart or Jedburgh ax slung over one muscular shoulder.
“Nay, Rabbie,” the man replied. “They be lazy creatures, these English.”
“Keep your voice down, Hob. They say all Grahams sleep with an ear to the wind, and we are deep in Graham territory. The river Lyne and Brackengill Castle lie just over that hill to the south of us.”
“Aye, sure, I’ll keep mum,” Hob the Mouse said in a deep, rumbling mutter. “D’ye ken where be the house with iron gratings to its windows, Rab? Curst Eckie said he heard tell of such, and I promised him we’d find it and carry them home.”
“Does Curst Eckie covet iron bars for his cottage windows?” Laughter filled the leader’s voice.
“Aye, sure, and me, as well. Ye can laugh, Rabbie, but Curst Eckie and me, we’ll ha’ the last laugh. Once we’ve got iron fixed to our windows, won’t no thievin’ Englishmen climb in through them, ye’ll see.”
“Until some thievin’ Englishman steals them back again,” the leader retorted with a chuckle. “If you must have them, you’ll most likely find them on the biggest house, there in the village center.”
One of the riders raised a trumpet, and seeing his gesture, the leader nodded. The man put the horn to his lips, and its clarion call rang through the night. In moments the hamlet was awake. Screams mingled with the shouts of angry men.
The raiders charged the cottages, some dismounting to round up women and children while others dealt with their menfolk. Scuffles broke out right and left as half-dressed men rushed out with swords drawn to defend families and property. The clash of steel on steel soon joined with feminine shrieks and the cries of children startled awake. Over all, the trumpet’s martial notes rang out with eerie clarity.
Signing to the hornsman to stay near, the leader watched closely for a telltale glint of moonlight off an enemy pistol or sword, and listened for the familiar twang of bowstrings or any other unusual sound in the night above the din of the skirmishing. He held his sword at the ready in one hand and a pistol in the other.
The screams of the women and children did not disturb him, for he knew his men would not seriously harm or molest any female or bairn. Only one follower of his had ever done such a thing, and the leader had summarily hanged him from the first tree they had come upon after eluding pursuit, as a warning to the others that he would see his orders obeyed.
Huge Hob the Mouse had found his iron gratings, and while others held cottagers at bay with pistols and lances, he and another man liberated the grates by the simplest of methods. They ripped them off the windows with their bare hands.
As they did so, a young rider called Sym’s Davy came galloping through the hamlet, shouting, “Rabbie, there’s riders coming from the south!”
“How many?”
“Thirty, maybe forty!”
“Has Ally the Bastard gathered the beasts?”
“Aye, sure, about thirty kine and as many horses, but there be sheep, too, Rabbie, and the riders be coming gey fast.”
“Can they see Ally and his lads yet?”
“Nay, for they’re ahind the hill, yonder east.”
“Then ride like the devil, lad, and tell Ally to split his men, half to ride ahead with the cattle and horses, the others to drive the sheep. Tell them I said to abandon the sheep if they must but to get the horses and cattle to Liddesdale.”
“Aye, sure, they can scatter the sheep ahind ’em to slow them what follow,” Sym’s Davy said, grinning. “What of these lads here, then?”
“They’ll ride with me. We’ll draw the pursuers after us to cover your retreat. Off you go now.” Gesturing to his hornsman, he shouted, “Blow them away, Jed. We’re off at speed.”
The response came in a blast of notes from the trumpet, sounding retreat. The raiders who were engaged in fisticuffs, swordplay, and other such exercises broke off their activities at once. Those who had dismounted leapt to their saddles with whatever booty they had stolen from the cottagers, and in moments the little band was away, the hornsman riding behind his leader, blowing merrily as he rode. The trumpet’s notes taunted and teased the Englishmen to follow if they dared.
Hoofbeats thundered through the dale. Looking back, the leader smiled to see that his tactic had drawn the pursuers straight through the hamlet after them. The group following was large enough to make it unlikely that others had turned off to seek out more of his reivers in the rugged landscape. Knowing the hills and glens as he did, he could afford to let them keep his party in sight long enough to draw them well away west of the others. When they had ridden far enough to be sure that Ally the Bastard, Curst Eckie, and the others had got the animals safely on their way to Liddesdale, they could easily lose their pursuers.
Exhilarated by victory, he shouted, “We’ll have moonlight again, lads!”
Laughter and cheers greeted his slogan, echoing the trumpet’s notes. Deciding minutes later that they had ridden far enough west of the hamlet, he looked back again. They had entered a winding, narrow glen, and he knew the head of it was not far off. The pursuers had neither gained on them nor fallen behind.
The sides of the glen were moderately steep and covered with bracken, shrubbery, drifts of snow, and thickets of birch and beech trees. He knew that whoever led the pursuit would expect him to ride up the gradual slope to the glen’s head, rather than attempt a more difficult route. Waiting only until a bend briefly hid them from view, he wrenched his pony’s head to the right.
Liddel Water lay but two miles beyond the hill. What snow remained on the open patches of ground was thin and rutted, and so would not instantly reveal their tracks; and thickets would cover them long enough to reach the hilltop if their ponies were swift. Jed the Horn rode on up the glen, knowing from experience exactly what his master expected of him. With luck, their pursuers would continue to chase trumpet notes long enough for the rest of them to make it over the hill. As for the hornsman’s own safety, it was comparatively easy for one rider to find a lurking hole and elude pursuit.
The plan worked perfectly. As the riders reached the hilltop, they heard drumming hoofbeats below. Exchanging delighted grins in the pale moonlight, they let the ponies pick their own way down the other side.
Hob the Mouse moved up alongside the leader. “That be one in the eye for the English, I’m thinking.”
“Aye, it is,” the leader said with a chuckle. “’Tis a fine braw night, Hob. Good fresh air, a compliant moon, and a good stretch of the wit make life mighty fine for a man of adventure.”
“Profitable, too,” Hob said with a laugh. “Curst Eckie and me, we’ve got grating enough for both his cot and mine.”
“Whisst,” Rabbie commanded as they approached a shadowy, shrub-crowned hillock. “Can that be—Ambush!” he cried, realizing that the shadows at the hillock’s top were not shrubs but mounted men. He wheeled his pony toward a cleft worn into the hillside by a rivulet, but before he had ridden ten feet, he saw above him a screen of lances and more steel-bonneted men. Grimly, he drew rein.
“Dinna turn aside, Rabbie,” a man shouted behind him. “There canna be but ten o’ the villains!”
“Nay, lads,” he said loudly enough for his voice to carry to the silent ambushers. “In five years I ha’ lost only three men—four if ye count the hanging—and I’m no going to lose any tonight unless God Himself ordains it. They outnumber us, and they’ve cut us off on two sides. There are lances ahead.”
“Faith, they’ll clap us all in irons!”