The Disorderly Knights (56 page)

By dusk, and the approaches to Liddesdale, he still had not come. Afterwards, Jerott could never say when he realized that something was wrong. Only the air suddenly was cold, and full of whispers. The Kerrs who had been trotting in cheerful ferocity at his side drew off and could be found riding in knots, talking quietly. It was all the odder because a scout of Gabriel’s, sent ahead secretly, came back to report after dark that the Scotts had clearly been to the settlement, recovered their cattle and gone, taking or killing every able-bodied Turnbull there first. He had not found the Kerr beasts at all.

This on the face of it nearly disposed of their obligations, on this trip at least. The Turnbulls had met their doom prematurely, but at least it could not be done twice. The Scotts were out of the way. It only remained to find the animals reived from the Kerrs.

Having reasoned so far, they all looked to Guthrie, who said, ‘There’s only one question that matters. Will the Scotts have taken the Kerr beasts?’

‘No,’ said Gabriel. And ‘No,’ said Jerott equally positively. ‘You
can rely on that. If it had been Bucclcuch, perhaps. But Will Scott knows very well the feud had got to end.’

‘Then,’ said Guthrie, enunciating, as ever, to the class, ‘If that’s what the Kerrs are afraid of, and it must be, it’ll do them a lot of good to prove otherwise. I think they think we’re concealing something. I suggest we deal with it by setting them free.’

‘Leaving them? I should be against that under any circumstances,’ said Gabriel. ‘But who agrees with you?’

They were having a break for bannocks and water, and perhaps a mouthful of wine, before the last stretch. After two days of it, although with adequate rests, they were a little stiff and looking forward now to an end. Here in the dark, with the dim shapes of their own men moving ahead and the concourse of Kerrs moving, muttering, munching beyond, they replied in undertones to Gabriel’s question. No one thought they should abandon the Kerrs. But there was some agreement that they should split up.

Some time ago, Walter Kerr had approached Gabriel with the rasped suggestion that they would search a good deal quicker in small companies. Now that they knew for certain that the Kerr herds were not actually in the settlement, it was only common sense to search around.

Thus, when both Walter and John Kerr, pale with irritation at having to ask, required once more a gentleman’s freedom to scatter and scour as they went, Gabriel gave his assent.

On the information his company then had, no one could have done other. But when Adam Blacklock, gaunt in the darkness, came racing up to them half an hour later, they realized, listening appalled, that the Kerrs knew the fate of their cattle—must have been told in secrecy, while they rode at their sides. And that all the Kerrs now out of their sight, including Cessford and Ferniehurst, their sons, Mark Kerr of Littledean and the rest, had gone straight to the scene of the slaughter.

It was then that Gabriel at last took command. He put under guard all those of the Kerrs within reach, and using the last of their torches, led the race to the scene of the butchery. Except for their black monoliths, wavering in the torchlight, the fields were empty of life.

Without stopping, Gabriel and the men from St Mary’s rode through. Over two hills they came to the Turnbull family’s cabins. They were ablaze, the window spaces lit with clean orange, the stench neutered in the bright flare of fire. In the light, bright as day, you could see the trail of the Scott cattle, leading west towards Liddel Keep.

The Kerrs could hardly have missed it. Silently, in their turn, Lymond’s army, led by Graham Malett, followed as fast as they dared.

*

Philippa Somerville was annoyed. To her friends the Nixons, who owned Liddel Keep, and with whom Kate had deposited her for one night, she had given an accurate description of Sir William Scott of Kincurd, his height, his skill, his status, and his general suitability as an escort for Philippa Somerville from Liddesdale to Midculter Castle.

And the said William Scott had not turned up.

She fumed all the morning of that fine first day of May, and by afternoon was driven to revealing her general dissatisfaction with Scotland, the boring nature of Joleta, her extreme dislike of one of the Crawfords and the variable and unreliable nature of the said William Scott. She agreed that the Dowager Lady Culter was adorable, and Mariotta nice, and that she liked the baby.

By late afternoon she mentioned that his lordship of Culter was a very nice man, of quiet rather than vulgar colouring. He was also very wealthy. It was, indeed, to save him worry over his mother worrying over Joleta that she, Philippa, had agreed to come. Which being the case, it seemed only appropriate that the said Richard, Baron Culter should come and fetch her himself.

There was, however, no need to send for Lord Culter. Just after midnight Sir Will Scott arrived, and hammering on the Keep door, awakened the household. With him, milling round in the darkness, were three hundred yelling Scotts, armed to the teeth, and what seemed like the whole of a Candlemas Fair, bleating and bawling outside the walls.

Mistress Nixon’s steward opened the door and after a while Johnny Nixon went down, in his nightrobe and in no very good temper. Philippa, her braids dangling over the banisters, could see that Sir William Scott, far from being nonchalantly superb, was covered with muddy chain mail and cattle slavers, and in a state of stupid, boisterous hilarity which she put down to drink, but thought later was just ignorance.

Shamed and furious, she heard Master Nixon giving cold permission for the crew outside to sleep in the yard, while Will Scott and two or three of his cousins tramped in along with a burly, slick-haired man with a cheerful face, referred to as ‘Bell’. She heard them hammer up the tower stairs to the little rooms where Mistress Nixon kept her folding beds, and a little later a servant passed on his way up with hot water and meat and a jug of wine. Shortly after that, there was silence, even from the weary animals outside, although beyond the walls the starlight glimmered, now and then, on the helmet of the sentry Scott had posted there. Philippa went back to bed.

After almost no time at all, or so it seemed, another battering began at the front door; this time even more urgent and prolonged.
With imprecations embroidering the air, both outside the castle and within, the Keep heaved awake. Leaning over the stair rails again, Philippa saw Johnnie Nixon, his face scarlet, himself march to the door, while a red shock-head and a rattling sword debouching from the newel stairs to the tower proclaimed Will Scott’s vigilant presence.

It was another cousin of his, a man he had left behind ‘at the Turnbulls” with five others and someone called Adam Blacklock. That meant as little to Philippa as it did to Johnnie Nixon, but the newcomer was heaving like a white whale in calf, and was the bearer, obviously, of sensational news. A moment later, they had it. Francis Crawford had arrived at the Turnbulls’. (Philippa drew back.) The herd of stolen animals for which the Kerr tribe were looking had been found butchered, for which the Scotts would be blamed. By now the Kerrs would have located the animals and would be following Will Scott’s trail to the Keep, there no doubt to fight the Scotts to the death.

Lymond had sent orders. Will Scott and his men were to retire inside the Keep and draw up the ladder, taking with them as much water as they had time to carry. All weapons were to be taken inside. Anything that might be used as a battering ram was to be taken inside. They were to carry inside also as much fuel and inflammable material as they could. The horses and the herds were to be abandoned to their fate. And at the earliest possible moment, Philippa Somerville and all those normally resident at Liddel Keep, under the guidance of Nixon the owner, were to be mounted on the fastest possible horses and sent back to Philippa’s home at Flaw Valleys, near Hexham, to await news to return.

The reason was, said Will Scott’s cousin, coming to the end of his recital and his breath at much the same time, that Graham Malett and the whole company of St Mary’s was hot on the heels of the Kerrs. Provided the Keep could hold out against assault, fire and battery for an hour, the most perfectly trained army in the island would relieve them.

Will Scott asked two questions. ‘Do the Kerrs know that Gabriel is behind them? And where’s Crawford of Lymond?’

‘The Kerrs ken,’ said his cousin, and choked. ‘That’s why they’ll try anything to break in here quick. Crawford and the rest of us stayed to see to the Turnbulls, but they’re coming straight on here after. They’ll have a race with the Kerr clan, I doubt.’ His face was green and running with sweat, but in the big, simple eyes there shone a terrible joy. ‘Man, if ye’d clapped eyes on thae beasts. There wasna ae part of a coo that was next tae its usual. Cessford’ll wet his breeks when he sees them.’

‘Aye, aye,’ said Will Scott drily. ‘It’ll be a grand fight.’ And, raising his stentorian voice, roused the household to war.

When Francis Crawford and the five Scotts arrived, riding belly to ground, there were archers at every window of the tall grey tower and cressets burning bright along the yard wall. Inside, the first person Lymond’s eyes fell on was Philippa.

In the words he had used such a short while before in Dumbarton, but in a voice very different, he snapped, ‘
What are you doing here?
’

Philippa’s chin jerked. She was dressed, but not cloaked, and her flat chest heaved like a colt’s. ‘I’m not going. Somervilles don’t run away.’

‘Stay, of course,’ said Lymond brutally, ‘if you like men to die for you. Where’s that fool Nixon?’

‘I can’t get her to go!’ Philippa’s host, white-faced, stood his ground. ‘Her horse is ready. The rest are all mounted outside.’

‘Go, then!’ said Philippa. ‘I’m not under anyone’s orders. I know how to fight. I can fire a gun even. I’m as good as Joleta.…’

Someone said, from two floors above, in a wild skirl, ‘They’re coming!’

‘You can keep away from Joleta,’ said Lymond quickly to this other, plain child. ‘You can leave Midculter in future alone. You can get back to Flaw Valleys when you’re told, and stay there; and if you won’t obey my orders you can take the consequences,
like this
.…’

He hit fast and precisely, and her jaw snapped shut under his fist. A moment later she was in Nixon’s arms and down the ladder. Another moment and, homeless, gearless, the owners of Liddel Keep had vanished south into the darkness, leaving their home and everything that they owned as a battlefield for the Kerrs and the Scotts.

To the thundering approach of many hooves, the family Scott pulled up the ladder and locked and barred the thick oaken door; and Lymond turned to find Randy Bell grinning at his shoulder. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘My God, you’ve a way with women, haven’t you? You must let me teach you a thing or two, if we ever get out of here.’

‘I know them both,’ said Lymond pleasantly, and exchanged a long, wordless greeting that was not a smile with Will Scott, who knew everything there was to know about Lymond’s way with women, and had done his best to apply some of it, to effect, with Grizel. Then they became very busy indeed.

No feud of many years’ standing can keep at full pitch all the time. The rivalry between the Scotts and the Kerrs flared and died and flared with events, and there were times when an affront to a peace-loving member would bring no retort, while an imagined slight could cause the more choleric to burst out and kill. Probably never before, as tonight, had the whole Kerr family been wrought to such a white-hot pitch of fury when, fellow-sufferers in a common theft, the Scotts had taken the chance, they believed, of slaughtering all their
livestock without cause. And had further had the confidence to proclaim it. With that shambles of beasts just behind them, the Kerrs were out for one thing: to reach the castle and kill.

The main door to Liddel castle was on the first floor and reached by a ladder now removed. On the ground floor there was a stone-vaulted room with a well where stores and stock could be kept, and where in time of need horses might also be hidden.

The Nixons kept their grain in this place. Into it Scott had pushed at least some of the fuel; the spare ladders; the new-cut tree in the woodshed that would have made a fine ram. There was no time for more. Bell had barely time to lock the big timber door over its stout iron grille and have himself pulled up with the rest into the keep, when the first Kerrs arrived at the gate.

They arrived in a grey, antique horde, mailed, malevolent, thirsty for blood as the red dogs of Hades, and poured screaming into the yard, hurling aside cattle and sheep as they came. They put the cressets out, plunging the courtyard in darkness, so that in those first moments Scott’s men at every dark window found only shadows for targets: shadowy figures, well-briefed, well-organized, racing from building to building collecting what they required.

Lymond had been right. Cessford and Ferniehurst knew there was no time to waste. If Liddel Keep was to be taken, it must be stormed ruthlessly, and at once.

Swiftly, the assault began to take shape. The Keep was surrounded. The noise rose like a hymning of devils and added to it came the clatter of wood, as all that would burn was stacked round the base-batter. So far, the ground door was holding, although the Kerrs were now assaulting repeatedly and even attempting to climb to the windows, forcing the Scotts to man every room and waste shafts. Then the fire-arrows began to come from the courtyard, first into the windows, and then in streaming arcs against the two doors.

Inside, they stamped out where they could, and for the rest resorted sparingly to Lymond’s precious water. Two men, leaning out to pick off incendiarists, had so far been shot dead, and there were some Kerrs in the yard who would never fight a blood-feud again. ‘We’ll do it,’ said Will Scott comfortably, shouting over the tumult. ‘If it’s no more than an hour, we’ll do it.’

‘Christ, I believe you’re sorry, you flaming maniac,’ said Lymond. ‘Don’t I keep telling you that this is bloody childishness, and don’t you keep agreeing?’ He had given his bow to Scott, and was standing watching as the young, auburn-haired giant picked his mark for each arrow, steadily and accurately, as he had been taught.