Reiver

by David Pilling

He laughed. “None,” he answered, kissing her, “except to stay alive, and stay warm at night. You can help with both.”

  Richie was secretive, even to his mate, and preferred to deal in half-truths. It was safer that way. In spite of his words, he did think a great deal of the future. Unless he somehow obtained a pardon or fled into exile, he knew his days were numbered. To an outlaw, fame was a dangerous burden. A millstone round his neck, shortly to be replaced by a noose. The Wardens all knew his name, and his legend, and would compete to see who could snare him first. In time of peace they might have hunted him down already.

  He often pictured his rotting corpse, hung up inside the iron cage of a gibbet beside the King's highway. Law-abiding folk would glance at his remains and shudder as they passed by. He shivered at the thought of the ravens picking greedily at his dead flesh.

  For now, he was saved by the promise of war. The news of Moray's assassination had spread up and down the March like the first tremor of an earthquake. With his strong hand removed, Mary Stewart's supporters in Scotland would fly to arms. Already there were dire rumours of invasion. Papist armies massing north of the Border; Spanish fleets lurking off the coasts.

  Richie discounted most of the rumours. He had heard it all before. Yet his scouts frequently reported bale-fires burning along the border. Raiding parties swept into England almost every night, penetrating far inland before turning back again, laden with spoil. They left a trail of chaos and death and burning cottages. More widows and orphaned children, young boys who would grow up with a fierce desire for revenge on the men who slew their fathers. Feud, raid and counter-raid, war and pillage and the endless cycle of bloodshed. So it went.

  It was Adam who finally brought the news Richie expected. “The Crookback musters troops at Naworth,” said the youth, breathless from his ride. “I saw them with my own eyes. Riders of Redesdale, moving west in force. The valley has emptied of fighting men.”

  Richie mulled this over. Crookback Dacre had but recently returned to his estates, after a long and probably enforced stay at the Queen's pleasure in London. Once back in the north, he promptly deserted the rebel earls. Refused to even give them shelter at his castle.

  Dacre was known as a subtle man. Far too subtle to be caught up in Simple Tom's blundering. Richie had wondered when he might raise his banner again. Now, with the March on fire, the Crookback seized his chance. He could count on the support of the Borderers. Men who had only just laid down their arms now snatched them up again, risking all once again for the sake of Mary Stewart and the Catholic faith.

  It promised to be a sterner fight this time. “Dacre must be in league with the Scots,” said Richie. “Westmoreland has been seen riding at the head of the recent forays. Between them, Dacre and the Earl can raise an army.”

  “Edinburgh won't lift a finger to stop them,” Davy said gloomily. Richie nodded in agreement. Since Moray caught a bullet, the Scottish government in Edinburgh had seemed paralysed. Nothing was done to prevent the raids into England. Richie could only imagine the fury in London and the stream of outraged demands heading north, carried by the Queen's couriers.

  Ruth touched Richie's arm. “When war comes,” she asked, “what will we do? Stand aside, or get involved?”

  She had read his mind. Any war was cruel, especially so on the Border, but this one offered an opportunity.

  “I have yet to decide,” he replied evasively. This was true. First he wanted to see how many men the Crookback raised, and how the Queen's government responded. Since the rebellion of the earls collapsed last November, Surrey had disbanded his army at York. Another would have to be quickly scraped together to meet the new threat.

  “Should we join Dacre?” Davy asked bluntly. “Plenty of our friends joined the last revolt, and will join this one. Dodds, Milburns, Charltons. We could do worse than throw in our lot with them.”

  “Our friends, as you call them,” spat Richie, “did nothing to save Crowhame. Nor did they help us to avenge our slaughtered kin. I won't lead the Bairns to Crookback's banner for their sake.”

  Only Ruth, Davy and Adam were inside the bastle's upper chamber with him. He felt it safe enough to speak his mind before them, if not the rest of his followers. The latter had yet to earn his trust.

  “Let us say there is a battle,” he went on, “Dacre and his allies on the one side, Sussex and the Wardens on the other. Dacre gains the victory. He sweeps south, driving the Queen's men before him. Seizes Carlisle, then on to York. Unlike the earls, he won't hesitate. York will come under attack. But there are still many loyal to the Queen in the north. Another royal army will come up. Another battle fought. And another, and another...”

  He spread his hands. “Civil war. Dacre may not win outright, but he can turn the north into a charnel house for many years to come. The Border will suffer the most.”

  “You remember Crowhame. What the Armstrongs did to our village. Imagine that, repeated up and down the March. Every house reduced to a smoking shell. Homeless men forced into outlawry. Widows and their bairns wandering up and down the roads, begging for their bread. Seeking shelter that no longer exists."

  Davy was unimpressed. “The Border will endure,” he said, “it always does. How many times have armies, Scots and English, marched back and forth across our territory? All of them long gone, but we're still here.”

  “Must we always endure?” cried Richie. “Will it be this way forever? Clinging to life by our finger-nails while one host after another marches over our heads. Preying on each other like mindless beasts of the wild. Nothing but fire and pillage and murder, everywhere you look, forever.”

  “Aye, let us weep for the poor babes and innocents,” replied Davy with a knowing grin. “Come, Richie, enough of this hot air. You must have something better in mind.”

  Richie calmed down. His little speech, though heartfelt, plainly had little effect. Even Ruth looked confused. These were Borderers he was talking to. Bloodshed was their way of life. He needed to give them something practical, not a lecture.

  “Dacre must be beaten,” he said, “if the Border is to know any kind of peace. Leave that aside. If we join him, we are rebels and traitors to the Crown as well as outlaws. Our necks will be forfeit, many times over.”

  “They already are,” put in Davy. Richie ignored him.

  “If we fight against Dacre, join the Queen's forces, then we are traitors to our friends and kin of Redesdale. Or we could stand aloof. Do nothing. Let the war rage. Profit from it, if we can. We could live well for a few months, perhaps. As scavengers do when plenty of blood is spilled.”

  “Eventually we would be called to account. Whoever wins, they will seek to restore order in the March. That will mean scouring the borderlands for criminals like us. Hanging us up.”

  He raised a finger. “I swore not to end on a gibbet. We must choose the right course, if not for the sake of the Border, then for ourselves. Fight Dacre, strike a blow for the Queen, and we may earn a pardon. It's our best hope of escaping the trap of outlawry. Our only hope.”

  “Fight against the red bull,” said Davy after a long silence, “it goes against the grain, somehow. Our grandfathers fought alongside Dacres at Flodden.”

  “It seems wrong,” said Ruth.

  “I know,” replied Richie, “but the bull has turned traitor. We must bring it down, or perish.”

  19.

  “Damn it,” snarled Hunsdon, “the men of this garrison are fitter for the alehouse than soldiering. I never saw such a rabble of sluggards, drunkards and whoremongers.”

  “Perhaps,” said Forster, “but they can fight. They'll have to. There are no reserves this time. Sussex won't come up from York to save us. His army is disbanded. We have to deal with the Crookback ourselves.”

  Hunsdon puffed out his ruddy cheeks. He looked over the map of the Border spread out on the table between them. Lead counters were used to represent the position of enemy and allied troops. There were a great deal more of the former.


  The Wardens sat together in an upper room of the gatehouse at Berwick Castle. Both men were fully kitted out for war. Hunsdon hot and red-faced in his steel harness, Forster stiff and trying to ignore the pains in his joints. For days they had been lodged at the castle, frantically scraping troops together to fight Dacre's rebels.

  “Curse Lord Scrope,” snapped Hunsdon. “He should have gone to Naworth and arrested Dacre weeks ago. Only a halfwit would believe the traitor's excuses for not going to Carlisle. A sore leg, forsooth!”

  He patted the hilt of his sword. “The little turd will have reason enough to complain of soreness when I've finished with him.”

  Forster was impatient. The wound in his thigh still troubled him, and his colleague did little but growl and snap like a starved mastiff on a short leash.

  The old Warden was loath to admit it, but the speed of Dacre's revolt had taken them all by surprise. Scrope was bottled up at Carlisle, from where he sent out desperate pleas for help. The rebel force at Naworth had rapidly swollen to over three thousand riders, while fifteen hundred Scots under Westmoreland were reported to be tearing south to join them.

  He glanced fearfully at the map. An order had arrived from York, instructing Hunsdon and Forster to march with all speed on Naworth and scatter the rebel host. As orders went, it was insane. The castle at Naworth was too well-fortified, and Dacre's force outnumbered anything the Wardens could muster over two to one. Dacre was said to have artillery as well, proper ordnance, enough to blow down the ancient walls of Carlisle in a single day.

  “To hell with my lord Sussex,” Forster declared. “We dare not attack Naworth.”

  “Agreed,” said Hunsdon “Bugger Naworth. The place is too hot and well-furnished. Might as well slit our own throats.”

  Forster tugged at his earlobe, as he did when agitated. “The best course is to ride out with my March troopers and the bulk of the garrison here. Leave a skeleton force behind to guard the town. Make for Carlisle to join with Scrope. Then we might have enough men to face Dacre in the field.”

  Hunsdon swallowed. “It's a risk. Naworth lies between us and Carlisle. Dacre could easily get between us and Scrope.”

  An uneasy silence fell. To Forster it seemed the chamber grew smaller, and the shadows threatened to close over his head. In fifty years of hard service on the Border, this was the greatest danger he had ever faced. Now, when he was old and felt his strength ebbing by the day, God chose to place before him a supreme test.

  The easy victory over the earls had made the Wardens complacent. He realised that now, and knew he should have been more watchful. His grip on events was slipping. Forster hated the relentless advance of time, the slow, inevitable destruction of his body and mind.

  I won't resign my office, he thought savagely. Never! If I weather this storm, I'll hand over more responsibility to my bastard. Assuming the boy doesn't drink himself to death first.

  “It is a risk we must run,” he said. “The only alternative is to sit here and let the rebels take Carlisle. The Queen would demand our heads for such negligence.”

  He gave a wintry smile. “We need not fear her vengeance, though. Dacre will have our heads on pikes long before then.”

  Hunsdon chuckled at the bleak jest. “Our heads, or his. A straightforward bargain. Come, then. Let's ride out and spit in the Devil's eye.”

  Within an hour they were in the saddle, heading south from Berwick at the head of fifteen hundred men, a mixture of horse and foot. These were the best infantry from the garrison and Forster's own Middle March troopers; all the Wardens could muster at short notice.

  Their target was Hexham, where they planned to gather more troops before swinging west for the final, most dangerous stretch to Carlisle. Naworth lay between Hexham and Carlisle. Forster could only hope Dacre chose to stay at the castle until his Scottish reinforcements arrived.

  The march to Hexham was strange and unsettling, full of dire portents. Bale-fires glimmered all along the frontier: an endless string of glowing beacons, each just a mile or so apart.

  Like a row of candles, thought Forster. Mere rushlights. Soon they would be snuffed out, and the Border descend into shadow.

  Dacre's revolt had shaken loose the wild spirits. Every hill the Wardens passed echoed to loud cries, riders and men on foot, shouting as though they were mad. Horns and drums and trumpets, baying hounds, the racing of hooves. Forster knew not if these men had come out to join Dacre, or simply to create mischief. Perhaps they were not living men at all, but the shades of dead reivers, the fabled wild hunt, drawn from cold graves by the scent of war.

  He shivered at the thought. In his time Forster had hanged more reivers than he could remember, not to mention those he conspired to have murdered, or slew with his own hand. If the dead walked again, they would have plenty of scores to settle.

  The little army reached Hexham safely enough. There they found most of the garrison had deserted, save for a few diehards and Forster's son, Nicholas, who was swine drunk.

  “Father,” he burbled, visibly swaying, “I tried – I tried to gather the men but, but, but they ran away. I shouted at them, I begged and plea...pleaded, but the cowardly rogues wouldn't listen...”

  Embarrassed, Forster pushed him away. “Oh, back to your pot, you useless soak!”

  While Nicholas staggered away, Forster gloomily looked over the handful of men who had refused to desert their post. Brave, hard-bitten veterans, just the sort to have at one's back in a desperate fight against heavy odds. If only there were more of them.

  “No use in tarrying here,” barked Hunsdon. “On to Carlisle, as fast as we may.”

  It was an hour or so before dawn, and the darkness provided ideal cover for the final dash to Carlisle. After a pause to rest and water their horses, the Wardens rode west with all speed. The cusp of dawn found them crossing the Gelt river just below Brampton, a pretty market town not far beyond Naworth. Forster was cautiously hopeful as he urged his tired horse through the cold, fetlock-deep waters. All around them the woods lay shrouded in silence and morning mist. The world slept.

  They had ridden past Naworth, dangerously close, without sight or sound of the rebels. The Crookback slumbered, along with his men. Once over the Gelt, and out of the forest, a straight road lay ahead to Carlisle.

  Above the river the ground ran steeply onto a broad heath. Forster knew the land hereabouts, and spurred confidently up the slope. Once at the top, he meant to rest and take a breath of fresh morning air while the army toiled after him. It looked to be a perfect day for hunting. Forster wished he was out in the woods with horse and hounds, instead of straining his aged body on another fool's errand.

  His finely-honed sense of danger warned him to slow down. Forster shortened his reins and approached the top with more caution. His heart thudded against his ribs.

  The morning peace was shattered by the hard, unmistakable pulse of a drum. It came from the heath. Forster's guts churned as he reached the summit and peered across the long stretch of open ground before him.

  Some thin coils of mist rolled lazily over the heath. These failed to obscure the glint of burnished steel; the bright pennons and streamers; the rows upon rows of bristling spears and lances; the gigantic central standard displaying the red bull of the Dacres.

  At the northern edge of the heath, filling the wide gap between the trees, Crookback Dacre's army was gathered. Forster and Hunsdon's attempt to slip past Naworth without being seen had failed. Instead of waiting for the Scots, as they hoped, Dacre had rushed out with his full force to meet the Wardens in open battle.

  Hunsdon rode up next to his colleague. “Shit,” he grunted. Forster could only agree.

  He pointed at the slender figure mounted on a black horse under the red bull standard. “It seems the little man wants a fight,” sighed Forster.

  “Good,” was Hunsdon's fierce response, “let's give him one.”

  20: THE RED BULL

  Richie’s Bairns crept along the banks of the Hel
l Beck. The outlaws were strung out in single file, every man leading his horse on foot. To their right, the fast-flowing waters of the Beck rushed past, crashed over slippery black rocks and filled the air with a constant roar.

  This was a place of thick woodland, deep red sandstone cliffs and river gullies. Richie had seldom come here before. One of his men, Stephen, hailed from the nearby market town of Brampton and knew the region well. With Richie at his heels, Stephen led the way towards the meadows above the river.

  They climbed steadily, picking their way through the trees. The dull roar of the Beck faded. In its place Richie heard the distant tramp of marching feet; the tap-tap of drums; the neigh of horses.

  He and his men froze at the sound of a bugle. They crouched in the undergrowth while the thin, high note echoed and re-echoed through the woods. After a few seconds the note died away. Richie breathed again and signalled at the Bairns to keep moving,

  Richie was nervous. Frightened. Somewhere above, on the heath, two armies were about to meet in pitched battle. The peace of the woods seemed unnatural somehow. A deception.

  He had led the Bairns out of the Moss the previous day. Following the rumours, they rode as close as they dared to Naworth, where Dacre’s army was encamped. The woods near the castle offered good cover, from where they kept a close eye on the movements of the rebel host. In the small hours, when the rebels suddenly broke camp and moved off south, the Bairns followed at a safe distance.

  They had shadowed the army for four miles to this spot. Richie could scarcely believe Dacre wished to force a battle.

  “If it was me, I would have sat tight at Naworth and waited for the Scots,” he remarked to Ruth.

  She shrugged. “The Crookback must be a far braver man than we thought. Or a fool. He risks all on one throw of the dice.”

  Now, with the rebels drawn up on the northern end of the heath above, Richie smelled action.

  The world holds its breath, he thought, and awaits the storm.

  He glanced over his shoulder at Ruth. She was white-faced, clearly scared, but determined not to be left behind. Where he went, she went. Even to the slopes of Hell. She looked almost boyish in her trews, padded jack and steel morion. A pistol and ballock dagger were thrust into her belt, short sword held firmly in her right hand.