by Fiona Faris
“Enough is enough,” Auld Wat informed him. “We’ve been kicking our heels owre this for a day and a night. As soon as we get a chance, we’re breaking for home.”
Patrick’s brow furrowed. “We could dance on the heads of the English horsemen.”
Auld Wat considered him sympathetically.
“Aye, but where’s the profit in that?” he asked. “The Scotts…” He took in his men with a sweep of his arm. “… have no quarrel with the English. In fact—” He chuckled. “They’ve been guid to us by sending us a’ this plunder.”
Patrick opened his mouth to speak, but Wat raised a hand to silence him.
“I can’t hold the men here if there’s no booty to be had. They’re reivers, not soldiers beholden to any earl or king. I’m sorry, Patrick, friend, but that’s the way of it.”
Patrick sighed, recognizing that it was hopeless to try to convince them otherwise.
“I just hope the English are as charitable to you.”
Wat bristled, and his hand went unconsciously to the handle of his sword.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” he said calmly. “If the soldiers meddle with us, we’ll send them home with their heads in their hands. But it’s their siller we’re after, no’ a throne for King Robert.”
“You’re a craven mercenary.” Patrick growled, his disappointment written on his face.
Wat threw his head back and laughed.
“Aye, that’s me, right enough.” He smiled fondly at Patrick. “Let’s not fall out over this. I’m not that mercenary that I’d charge ye rent for Dryhope. I’ve given you sanctuary and protection at no profit to myself, and you can bide there as long as you need to. But I cannae gi’e ye an army as well.”
Patrick grasped Wat’s upper arm and squeezed it warmly, suddenly contrite.
“Aye, you’re right.” He sighed again. “You’re a valued fiere, and I’m grateful for all that you’ve done for us, Wat. We should retire to Dryhope and ride out another day.”
Auld Wat smiled and patted Patrick on the back.
“We might as well be warm and dry while we wait them out,” he commiserated. “If we lie low for a bit, they’ll grow complaisant and lazy, and we can hit them again. I’m sure Edward would rather his boys were out hunting Robert than chasing our shadows down here in Annandale.”
Joan, however, was less satisfied. When Wat gave the order to withdraw to the fastness of the Ettrick Forest, she spat and cursed in frustration. As the party wended its way through the remote hills and glens and trudged across the high wet moorlands of Eskdalemuir, she dragged behind them in sullen silence, resentful of their high spirits and spurning their society.
“Don’t sulk,” Patrick urged her. “You’ll get to kill many Englishmen yet. It is what King Robert would call a ‘tactical withdrawal’ rather than a retreat. We spare them now only so that we can smite them later. Auld Wat is just being canny.”
But Joan did not reply. She just kept her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead, with a steely determination that Patrick both feared and admired. He had the feeling that she would take her frustrations out on him – when she got him back into bed at Dryhope.
His cock stirred in anticipation of this. He loved the fierce intensity of her lovemaking, the same intensity with which she went about her killing. She was ruthless and efficient in both, quick and single-minded, merciless. Often, he’d had to plead with her to stop as she continued long after he had come multiple times, the fire of her own orgasm rolling on and on through her body, her eyes wild with delirium, her fingernails raking the flesh of his chest and shoulders. Their lovemaking was something he both thirsted for and dreaded. It was a sweet unbearable trial.
They made slow progress. Companies of English horsemen and foot soldiers were scouring the country for them, and they often had to take long detours to elude them or lie-up in secluded cleuchs and hollows while they passed by. And all the time a heavy, persistent rain fell on them, keeping them drenched and chilled. The reivers did not seem to mind, as if the cat-and-mouse chase was all part of the game, but Patrick and Joan grew increasingly miserable and impatient to be home. The reivers’ intimate knowledge of the land also meant that they were never in any serious danger of being discovered, and they delighted in this superiority they enjoyed over the ‘ootlins’ or strangers. At times, they seemed to Joan like bairns playing hide-and-seek, and she suspected that they were prolonging their childish game unnecessarily.
Bridget tore some linens into strips for bandages. Andra sat by the table in the solar, his elbow sitting in a bowl of bloodied water. Downstairs, in the hall, the women dragged the heavy furniture over the closed hatch.
“There, that should hold them,” Mary remarked, drawing her bloodstained hand across her sweating brow. “We’ve lost our supplies, though, and a good man. Let’s hope Wat and Patrick return soon from their raid, or else it will be yon time before we can break our fasts.”
They climbed back up to the solar and sealed the trapdoor there with furniture too, then settled down to await their rescue.
Downstairs, the steady pounding continued as the Kers turned their attention to the trapdoor that separated the undercroft from the hall. The pounding echoed in Margaret’s head and grew into a thumping headache. Beyond the window, a weak morning light seeped into a leaden sky, and the crows flew up from their roosts in the forest to inspect the battlements and complain about the noise. Their querulous cawing played on Margaret’s already taut nerves.
Simon’s fretful wail was the last straw. Margaret banged her palm down on the table in irritation.
Lady Maria rose and moved quietly towards the chamber door.
“I’ll see to the laddie,” she whispered. “The poor wee mite will be frightened.”
Margaret buried her face in her hands.
Mary came and stood behind her, rubbing her shoulder in encouragement.
“Dinna fret, hen,” she soothed. “We’re safe up here. The men will soon be home.”
Margaret looked up into Mary’s face and covered the reassuring hand on her shoulder with her own.
“But what if they’re delayed, or caught? We’ve no food up here.”
“They’ll no’ be caught.” Mary chuckled. “My Wat’s been slithering like an adder through the Marchlands for thirty-odd years; he kens every nook and cranny and hidey-hole there is. He’s never been caught yet, and he’ll no’ be starting now.” She smiled fondly. “His father was famed as a warlock, you know, and folk will swear he’s inherited some of his father’s magic. Half the clans between here and Alnwick believe he is in league with the fairies, who have given him the keys to the hills and let him travel under the ground, so he can get around the country without being seen.”
Lady Maria returned with Simon in his nightshirt.
“Did you hear that, Simon?” She jiggled him in her arms. “Auld Wat is a magician just like Lailoken in your Grand-sire’s book.”
Mary raised her talons and screwed up her toothless face.
“And I’m an auld carline, who flies on her besom when the moon is full.” She snarled.
Simon squirmed around in Lady Maria’s arms and hid his giggling face in her shoulder.
“Oh, wheesht, woman!” Lady Maria chided her. “You’ll frighten the bairn.”
Mary let out a loud cackle.
“Och, Simon kens weel I dinna eat laddies, don’t you, son?” she said, tugging gently at his foot. “Laddies are far too stringy and tough. No, wee soft lassies are more to my taste.”
Simon turned back around with a broad beaming grin and pointed a chubby finger at Mary.
“Aye, the lad’s got my measure,” Mary said with a smile, putting the tip of her own gnarled finger to the boy’s. “I cannae frighten him.”
Bridget, who was sitting on a stool by the hearth with her palms spread over her broad aproned knees, suddenly gave a start.
“Dae ye smell that?”
“What?” Margaret turned to her.
“
I can smell burning.”
The room fell silent, as if they had all gone mad and were listening for the smell.
“I don’t smell anything,” Lady Maria observed.
“Are ye sure it wasna a whiff o’ reek frae the fire?” Andra suggested. “The wind coming doon the lum?”
“The fire’s near oot,” Bridget pointed out.
Jean gave a shriek and threw her hands to her cheeks.
“Mercy! Look!”
She was staring wild-eyed at the hatch on which most of the furniture had been piled. A thin mist of gray smoke was seeping through the jambs of the trapdoor.
“The bastards!” Mary spat, racing over to the hatch and starting to dismantle the furniture pile. “They’re burning us out!”
Jean let out a long keening wail. Simon started to sob, and Lady Maria clutched his head to her shoulder, her face transfixed in horror.
Andra strode across the room and began to help Mary move the furniture with his good arm. Margaret threw her weight against the sideboard and pushed it, screeching, across the wooden floor.
Once the furniture had been cleared, Mary grabbed the rope and hauled the trapdoor open, with Andra standing at her shoulder, sword drawn, ready to strike at any Ker who dared to poke his head through. A large cloud of smoke billowed from the hatch and filled the solar, along with the coughs and retches of its occupants. Margaret lifted an iron from the grate and smashed the jammed window to help it escape.
Mary peered through the trapdoor into the hall below. As the smoke cleared slightly, she could see that it was empty. At the foot of the staircase, tongues of flame flickered along the edges of the trapdoor that let into the undercroft on the ground floor. Mary let the trapdoor fall open onto the floor and started down the stairs, with Andra following her.
She stomped around the hall, like a fisherman testing the ice on the surface of a frozen loch. She could tell from the lack of heat on her bare feet that the whole of the undercroft was not alight, but only the underside of the trapdoor.
“Persistent buggers!” Mary remarked to Andra in little more than a whisper. “Well, at least they mean to take us alive. Else they would just hae torched the stores and watched the place go up like a candle.”
The smoke was thick and suffocating in the hall. Mary tore a strip from the hem of her kirtle and tied it around her mouth. Andra’s eyes were streaming.
“Should I smash the windows, Mistress Scott?”
Mary considered it for a moment.
“Better not, Andra,” she replied eventually. “It might turn the tower into a giant flue and draw the fire.” She gave the flames a grim look. “By Christ, the Kers shall pay dearly for this.”
“Maybe we should move everybody up onto the roof and bar the trap into the solar again. That would mean the Kers would still have another two doors to burn through afore they reached us.”
Mary slapped him on the back.
“That’s what we’ll do, Andra,” she agreed. “At least up there, we’ll be in the fresh air and hae a drap o’ water to drink while we wait for Wat.”
They both jumped as, with a loud rending explosion, the trapdoor burst, showering them with burning splinters. The heavy furniture fell into the hole and was dragged clear by halberds and field rakes.
“Run, Mistress!” Andra cried, wielding his sword in his good hand. “I’ll hold them as long as I can. You get the ladies up onto the roof.”
Mary hesitated as Andra strode to the edge of the flaming hatch, then screamed in horror and fury as a long iron-tipped pike was thrust up through his guts and out through his back.
As the head and shoulders of the first of the Kers rose through the dying flames and into the hall, Mary turned and scampered back towards the stairs to the solar. She was halfway up the staircase when a strong hand gripped her ankle and yanked her backward.
“Where are you going, Mary Scott?” said the voice of the man into whose arms she fell. “Is this any way to welcome visitors? Is this the famous hospitality of the Scotts of Harden?”
Mary drew her dirk, but a strong arm clamped itself tightly across her throat while another hand closed a vise-like grip around the scrawny wrist of the hand holding the dagger.
“First you bar the door to me, then you kill one of my dogs…”
“I’ll have your eyes for this, John Ker.” Mary spat.
“Oh, I don’t think so, Mary,” Ker replied with an amused laugh. “There’s a price on your head, and I mean to get it ere the hangman’s noose draws it from your skinny neck.”
There were screams and crashes from the solar as Ker’s men poured up the stairs and through the still open hatch.
“Then take me, John Ker, but leave the ladies and the bairn unmolested.”
Ker brought his mouth close to Mary’s ear.
“Oh, I hae no wish to molest the Fraser bitches.” He hissed. “But I ken a man who does. And he’s paying me a pretty penny to bring them to him.” He looked around the smoke-filled hall and the smoking ruin of the trapdoor. “And, thanks to you, ye dried-up auld whore, I’ve had to work hard for my money. Still, it will be worth it yet, just to see you dance a jig at the end o’ a rope.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mary, Margaret, and Lady Maria were led from the keep. They were bound hand and foot, and sacks were tied over their heads and shoulders. Then they were slung like bags of grain over three packhorses and led away into the forest in the direction of Peebles. After some debate among the Kers, the infant Simon was discarded and left with the two servant women.
After a long day’s journey, the Kers with their prisoners splashed through the ford and entered the burgh by the Bridgegate. They clattered up the Port Brae and presented themselves to the sheriff’s officers at the gate to Peebles Castle. They were admitted to the bailey, where they stood the women in the courtyard and stripped the rough sacks from their heads.
The women blinked in the late afternoon light.
A few minutes later, Sir Walter Moult, Master of Durham and Sheriff of Tweeddale, came across the bailey courtyard to receive them.
“Ah, you have returned my chattels, as promised,” he said to John Ker with a broad smile of satisfaction, running his eyes over the three captives. “But who is this old crone?”
He flapped a hand at Mary, the long cuff of his bliaut falling almost to the cobbles.
“Yon’s Mary Scott, sire,” Ker answered, “the ‘floo’er o’ Yarrow’ in her day, though she’s a withered beldam now.”
Moult shook his head in puzzlement.
“But who is she? And why have you brought her here? She was no part of our transaction.”
“She belongs to Auld Wat Scott o’ Harden,” Ker explained, pleased with himself. “Ye ken… the reiver wha’s been gi’ein’ ye sic a hard time in Yarrow and Annandale.”
Moult nodded slowly in appreciation.
“An outlaw,” he said. “Well, she’ll hang for that next market day.” He turned to his officers. “Take her to the Market Cross and throw her in the jail.”
Two officers in mail seized Mary by her scrawny shoulders and dragged her off along the High Street towards the Eastgate.
Moult looked at the remaining two women, then made a show of looking for a third.
“And where is the scullery slut?”
Ker and his men looked at one another, at a loss as to whom Moult was referring.
“The other sister,” he said impatiently, “Joan, Johanna, or whatever her name is.”
“Oh,” Ker said as realization slowly dawned. “She rides with Auld Wat and his men.”
“Does she now?” Moult sniggered. “The filthy whore.”
The Kers laughed obsequiously at his innuendo.
“Well, she shall hang for an outlaw too… eventually,” Moult observed, already planning the torments Joan would have to suffer before the mercy of the rope.
Moult reached inside his surcoat and pulled three small pouches from his belt.
“Here,” he sa
id as he threw them into the mud at Ker’s feet. “I am well pleased with your work. There will be another payment when you bring me the trollop.”
“A pleasure doing business with you, sire,” Ker replied, bowing and stooping to collect his bounty all in the same movement, then he and his men withdrew.
“Bring them,” Mount said imperiously to his men as he turned on his heel and marched back up the courtyard towards the castle’s keep.
The sheriff officers cut the ties that were binding their ankles and pushed Margaret and Lady Maria after him.
