Authors: Margaret Irwin
They rode over the open moor, the dawn breaking in streaks of pale light behind the hills that lay like sleeping giants all round them. The wind was from the west, driving and tossing the clouds before it in dark flying banners now flushed with red. The sun climbed over the edge of the still dark hills, and the foam of Witterhope Burn was turned to blood – then silver. Water ran everywhere, brawling in the burn, whispering hidden in the squelching bogs where the treacherous moss gleamed brilliant as emerald; the sun
struck the autumn bracken and turned it to a flare of gold on the hillside, and the heather a fiery purple; the wind rippled and tore the bent like a running sea.
For all the brightness of the morning there was the smell of rain on the wind together with the sharp earthy freshness of wet moss and bog water and the brave smell of horses and leather. By the faith of his body, but it was good to be on this work again, with the wind in his face as he rode west, and the creak of the saddle beneath him, and the Night Hawk’s throbbing muscles springing forward under the press of his knees! Round him rode his lambs as on their old forays together: Wee Willie Wallocky now grown to a stalwart stocky young man, who’d been in at many a death since he’d squeaked with excitement to see John Cockburn drop from his saddle that All Hallows’ dawn seven years ago; Long Fargy longer than ever, but filled out from the lean lanky youth he was then to a fine broad-shouldered fellow; older men who’d ridden in many a Martinmas raid of a less legal nature than this, and new lads eager to try their spurs for the first time.
They rode up to Gibby Elliot of the Shaws, whose peel stood on the banks of the Witterhope Burn, and would have ridden past, for old Gibby never rode a raid, which gave him small credit with these ministers of the law! There was no ‘riding’ at the Shaws, they jeered; old Gibby had lain in so long at peace with his neighbours that his horses had grown too fat to stir out of their stall.
But Gibby was out at his gates waiting for them with a big jug of ale and two or three horn mugs to offer stirrup-cups to the leaders.
‘This is paying blackmail to the Lord Lieutenant,’ he said with a wink as he handed them up, ‘so mind you never take the fray to me.’
‘Not I!’ laughed his overlord; ‘it’s ill work taking the breeks off a Highlander. I know peace is your over-word, my douce quiet man. But there are others a wee thought of your own kin who sing a different tune; with them it’s aye, “Who brings the fray to me?”’
‘Maybe. I’ll not answer for ’em. I’d rather pay blackmail to be left unraided than rescue-money for my neighbours’ succour when
raided. But it’s a lie to say I ever
took
blackmail from any, man and then refused him succour. No, my lord, I can say to all, as I said to Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead,
Go seek your succour where ye paid blackmail,
For, man, ye ne’er paid money to me.’
He tipped up the jug and filled the mugs again with gnarled old hands knotted with rheumatism, a complaint he had suffered from early youth, which may have accounted for his strangely peaceable behaviour. His small screwed-up eyes twinkled wisely under his grizzled brows.
‘I hear you took a big haul of Armstrongs from the Tarras Moss yesterday. You’ll need stout locks for Jock o’ the Side. It’s no’ so long since Mangerton’s lads carried him away from an English prison, fetters and all. And now he’ll rue the day that made the Galliard Lord Lieutenant.’
‘Reivers shouldn’t be ruers. He’s never lacked good beef nor ale as long as his neighbours’ lasted. He’ll still feed free of expense in prison!’
‘Have you warned the water, my lord?’
‘Everywhere south of Lousy Lauder – from Borthwick Water to Priesthaughswire and the Currors o’ the Lee, and as we came down the Hermitage Slack two days syne I left word on Willie of Gorrinberry. He’ll obey a royal summons, so will the Coultart Cleugh and Gaudilands and Commonside and Allanhaugh. But what of your own kin, Gibby? Will they ride with me to Jedburgh, or must I take them in shackles?’
‘Well now, I doubt Little Jock Elliot o’ the Park will come whinnying up to eat out of your hand.’ He rested a confidential hand on the Night Hawk’s bridle. ‘All the years I’ve lived I’ve never known a worse summer for trouble, except in the invasions – and there’s been more than one sign that those might start again at any moment. You’ve got all the fords of Liddel set?’
‘Not a salmon leaps in the moonlight but it’s known and named and a message sent to its mother. Every ford is watched, the Dunkin
and Door-Loup, the Willie-ford, Water-slack and Black-rock and Muckle Trout-tub o’ Liddel.’
He said the names for the sheer pleasure of hearing them ring out again like the clang of bells. Three years he’d missed out of his life on these moors – he was making up for them now!
Old Elliot of the Shaws looked up into those hot reddish-brown eyes, of the very colour of the trout waters he’d been naming, and saw the blazing gaiety that was racing through his veins, making him more alive than any mere mortal had the right to be.
Was it true, then, that he was the Devil’s man? True or no, to one creaking old man it gave new life to see the reckless arrogance of that head and hear that dangerous laughter.
Gibby’s stiff-jointed fingers stroked the Night Hawk’s neck while, forgetful of the New Religion’s ban on saints and charms, he murmured the invocation to safety for those who would ride the autumn bogs:
‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
Hold the horse that you ride on,
Hold him fast and hold him sure
Till you win o’er the misty moor.’
He dipped a mug into the ale-jug for himself and held it up, pledging his visitor. ‘Here’s to more friends like yourself, and less need of ’em!’
‘And may the mouse never leave your meal-poke with the tear in its eye!’ responded the Lord Lieutenant, clinking his mug against his host’s and tossing it off.
He wheeled the Night Hawk round, waved his thanks for Gibby’s hospitality and hallooed his men on to the hunt. They answered him with a shout and cantered after him, following the Witterhope Burn to where it joined the Liddel Water, with the Tower of Redheugh across the burn to their right. The land here between the two streams was known as the Park, the terrain of the redoubtable Little Jock Elliot.
But when they came to his peel tower ‘away was himself’. The
doors were locked, and they smashed them in with a hewn tree that was lying handy, but ‘not a thing about the place but an old rusty sword without a sheath that wouldn’t fell a mouse,’ Willie Wallocky reported as he came out, a grin splitting his freckled face from ear to ear.
‘Better an empty house than an ill tenant,’ muttered Soft Wat, who’d no wish to meet Jock o’ the Park face to face. But he’d no luck, for the Lord’s voice was ringing out, ‘So he’s taken the hill – and the better hunting for us! After him, lads, and hell for leather!’
They galloped on down Liddel Water. The towers of Mangerton and Whithaugh rose stark and grey on the hillside against a torn strip of blue among the racing clouds. Those towers too were empty, for their Armstrong owners had been taken yesterday to the Hermitage prisons, and Little Jock Elliot should join them ‘afore the gloaming’s grey’. So the hunters swore, and suddenly their leader turned in his saddle and shouted a view-halloo.
Bothwell had sighted their quarry among the heather. Now, clamped on his saddle, with the Night Hawk stretching out at a hand-gallop under him, and the Elliots flying before him and his men sweeping up behind him and the ground thudding like thunder under their horses’ hoofs, and the dark moor and the wind and the wide sky all round him, there was nothing in the world he could not do!
But the Elliots had had a good start and their horses were fresh: they scattered, and some were soon clean lost to view. One short stocky figure on a dappled gelding was galloping hard towards the Kershope Burn.
‘After him, Hawk!’ He dug his spurs into the Night Hawk’s flanks and the horse’s quivering muscles responded nobly, sharing his joy in the pursuit, plunging forward over the wet heavy ground, forgetful of the travelling he had already made that day, straining every nerve and sinew in answer to the grip of his master’s knees, the caress of his hand.
Jock o’ the Park looked back and saw one horseman close on his heels. Only one. The rest were now outdistanced. But that was the Lord Lieutenant himself, whom Jock feared as he would the devil.
He flogged on his mount, but his pursuer came thundering down the slope, gaining ground steadily, and they were neck to neck as they came down to Kershope o’ the Lily Lea.
Here the ground was a shaking morass and both riders had to check their pace.
‘Yield to the Queen’s justice!’ shouted Bothwell.
‘If I do, will you give me my life?’ came Little Jock’s shout in answer.
‘I’d
be content. But you’ll have to abide by the law.’
That last word was too much for Jock. He sprang from his gelding, which was already floundering among the livid green and burnt-red mosses. On foot there was still a chance he might escape the Lord Lieutenant on this marshy ground. Bothwell brought up his pistol and fired, and Jock stumbled as a bullet hit his thigh. The Night Hawk plunged after him, squelching fountains of water up from the drenched ground. In another minute the horse’s weight would bog both himself and rider.
Bothwell dropped his smoking pistol and leaped from the saddle – on to a loose log hidden in the marsh, which turned under his foot and brought him down headlong. As he scrambled for a footing, Little Jock sprang back on to a firm tussock of bent, swung his two-handed sword back over his shoulder and hacked at the man below him. Three blows he struck, wounding him in the head, in the body, in the left hand as it shot up to defend the right, that was dragging out his whinger from his belt. But Bothwell struck upwards twice, at Elliot’s chest. Two wounds he gave him; at the first, Jock dropped his sword; but as he dealt the second, Bothwell fell forward on his face and lay still, the blood pouring from his three wounds. Jock dragged himself through the reeds and long grasses some little distance before he fainted dead away.
Gibby Elliot of the Shaws stood at his gate yet again that day, when the clouds had covered the evening sky, and rain and battering hail swept past on the wind, striking down in long silver spears. But Gibby stood there at his gates and paid no heed to his bare
head nor his aching bones, and saw a company of men coming riding very slowly up the Witterhope Burn, and among them some on foot, carrying a hurdle between them, and on it the body of the Lord Lieutenant.
Chapter Seventeen
Word travels fast in wild country. ‘The Queen has lost a man she could trust, of whom she has but few,’ so the report was written; and by word of mouth went faster: ‘Lord Bothwell lies dead in Liddesdale.’ Queen Mary heard it low down by Borthwick Water as she travelled by way of Melrose to Jedburgh:
My lord lies dead in Liddesdale,
And his hunting it is done.
His horse had bogged in his headlong pursuit, and Jock o’ the Park had killed him and left him lying in his blood upon the moor and moss.
There was nothing she could do. She could not speak. She rode on towards Melrose.
The triple head of the Eildon Hill rose in sudden purple from the green plain, and the sky was blue as midsummer. Once he had told her she would make all Scotland a fief of Elfland, like the Eildon Hill where True Thomas had followed the Queen of Faery.
The grey ruins of Melrose Abbey towered above her. Once he had stood with legs apart and hands on his belt, laughing down at her with hot bright eyes, when she had accused him of threatening the monks of Melrose for neglecting to pay their fees – ‘Do you know a better way to get money out of monks Madam?’
She rode between Lord James and Lethington (Darnley had refused to come), and everywhere, people ran out to cheer and
wave to her and throw gay autumn flowers, marigolds and big yellow daisies and late roses, and she smiled and bowed and spoke her pleasure, and smiled, and smiled.
And then she came to Jedburgh, where she was to have held her Court of Justice with him. She came to a stone house with a corner tower, set in an orchard where the trees were heavy with fruit, the yellow and polished green of the apples in the evening sun glistening like lamps hung among the dark leaves. She heard the splashing ripple of the river Jed flowing under its old humpbacked bridge down below the orchard. She went up the winding stone stair with its rail on the left side – for the house had been built for the Kerrs, who were all left-handed. She went into a small room with a wide window looking out towards the blue hills. There were tapestries on the walls showing Jacob coming to claim his reward of Laban’s daughter after his seven years’ service for her.
Seven years he had served her mother and herself since he had snatched the bag of gold from the English agents that October night, and now here was his reward this bright October day – that he lay dead in Liddesdale, and his hunting it was done.
She sat in a chair by the window, it may have been only for five minutes but it seemed as many hours, before Mary Fleming, now just married to Maitland of Lethington, burst into the quiet room and filled it with a whirlwind of rushing silks, flushed cheeks, and warm plump arms flung comfortingly round her.
‘Madame ma mie,
my little darling, it is all a tangle, I cannot find out yet for certain, but I believe there is hope – anyway he is not yet dead. Oh, Madam, I know you will be glad as I am, for whoever else we may marry, we’ll never get a man like that!’
And the happily devoted bride of the most brilliant intellectual in Scotland had tears of joy running down her face. The two friends clung together, laughing, kissing, crying, that numbed passivity of Mary’s all broken up by dear Fleming’s golden warmth of hope.
It was an odd twist of news she had heard. The report of Bothwell’s death had sped like the wind across the moor and
reached Hermitage long before his men’s slow return on foot with the hurdle bearing his unconscious body. The Armstrong prisoners, taken a day before, had snatched their chance of the general consternation to attack their warders, seize the keys of the fortress and make themselves masters of their jailers. So that when Bothwell’s men came back, it was to find that redoubtable Armstrong, Jock o’ the Side, in command, and refusing them admittance to their own castle. At any moment the Elliots might take advantage of the situation to make a counter-attack. And all this time the blood was soaking through the roughly improvised bandages of their all but lifeless leader on the hurdle.