The Disorderly Knights

by Dorothy Dunnett

  Kate laughed. ‘Philippa picked it up from the big doctor—what’s his name? Bell? When he came by one day to see how she was doing. She swore he said you had gone to torment a child in order to get the woman to confess where the Kerr cattle were. And you know that’s Philippa’s.…’

  ‘Bête noire, I think, is the phrase,’ said Lymond. ‘She’s not far wrong, in a sense. I got the facts I wanted from the mother, all right, but I didn’t have to touch the child. Only told her that if she didn’t help me, I’d take the poor half-starved object to Edinburgh and have it brought up a douce, well-fed solid citizen. That put the fear of God into her all right.’ He shook his head. ‘Give up, Kate. Whatever you tell her, she’ll only believe now what she wants to believe.’

  He pushed back his chair gently, and she rose. As he took her arm to walk out to the yard with her, she looked up and said, ‘Why is the March meeting so important? It is important, isn’t it?’

  ‘For three reasons,’ said Lymond. ‘First, because old Wat Scott of Buccleuch will be there, aching to provoke the bloodiest kind of battle with the Kerrs who, he thinks, murdered his son. Second, because the cream of the English northern command will be there, and for all our sakes we must impress them. And third, because someone thought it worth while to see that two separate messages, from the English Warden and from Tosh, my man watching Buccleuch, about this change of date didn’t reach us.’ Arrived at the doorway, he stopped and turned. ‘Kate Somerville, thank you. You did it against your will. But if you hadn’t let Jerott in to wake me.…’

  ‘Gabriel would have taken the command,’ said Kate gently. ‘Would that have been so terrible?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lymond; and cold temper grated suddenly in his soft voice. ‘Yes, it would.’

  *

  That night at supper, Kate found her daughter poor company. And since, nerving herself for the reasoned exposition she was about to make, she had remarkably little appetite herself, the meal was funereal in the extreme, and she was quite thankful when Philippa said, out of the blue, ‘I didn’t stay in the kitchen.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Kate, running her mind rapidly over several snatches of dialogue.

  ‘No. I heard what that man said about the Hot Trodd.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Kate.

  ‘You believed him when he said he didn’t ill-treat that baby,’ said Philippa.

  ‘The gullible sort,’ agreed Kate.

  There was a pause. Philippa’s small, sallow face with the ringed brown eyes was pale, and a strand of mud-coloured hair, unregarded, fell over her cheek. She said eventually, ‘He thanked you. You wakened him, and it was horrible; and he thanked you.’

  Kate hadn’t known that Philippa was there during that little exercise in sadism. She said, ‘He had a duty to do, chick. It was more important than sleep.’

  ‘But he came here to sleep. Didn’t he?’ said Philippa.

  ‘No,’ said Kate, her stomach snail-like within her. ‘Come and sit in the garden before you crumb the whole table.’ And, sitting on the grass under the apple trees, with both their gowns becoming irremediably stained: ‘No,’ she repeated. ‘He didn’t come here to sleep. He came to make sure of your safety, and did without sleep to do it. He thinks someone is trying to harm you.’

  ‘Harm me!’ Philippa’s lashes flew open, and her mouth widened of a sudden in a charming, uninhibited grin. ‘But that’s stupid! He harms me himself.’

  ‘You heard why he did that,’ said Kate shortly. ‘He thought it too much of a coincidence that the Turnbulls’ settlement and Liddel Keep should be so close together. And he thought our fire here was much too mysterious. So he wanted you away from the Keep quickly. It was your own silly fault you didn’t do as you were told.… He was asking me,’ said Kate, picking her way among her responsibilities and the fragments of her conscience, ‘why anyone should want you out of the way. All I could think of was George Paris and his little secret.’

  ‘So you told him?’ said Philippa thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes. He knew already,’ said Kate defensively. ‘So I wasn’t exactly giving away the privy code book. But he didn’t know you knew.’

  ‘And does he think,’ said Philippa cheerfully, ‘that Mr Paris wants to murder me?’

  ‘I think he finds it a little hard to believe. But it’s not impossible. Anyway, until we know, I’ve promised to put you in irons, Philippa. No more trips to the village without me. No visits at all away from home. And Charles or some other unfortunate sufferer has to keep an eye on you even in the garden. We’re not taking any chances.’

  Her heart sinking, she saw her daughter seize unerringly on the one reprehensible element. Oh, Francis …!

  ‘But,’ said Philippa, ‘all Mr Crawford need do is denounce George Paris as a double agent, and the Queen Mother of Scotland would put him in prison, and I should be safe.’

  It would be easy to say that, in belated patriotism, she had made Lymond promise otherwise. Kate instead baldly told the truth. ‘One of the people in league with Paris over a little piece of chicanery is a friend of Mr Crawford’s. He can’t expose Paris without involving his friend as well.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t Sir Graham Malett expose Paris? He wouldn’t care about Mr Crawford’s criminal friends,’ said Philippa.

  ‘He doesn’t know who Paris is,’ reminded Kate patiently. ‘Paris gave him a false name, remember? It was all very adult and tortuous.’

  ‘I don’t think it was very adult,’ said Philippa after a moment. ‘I … Oh, I see. Sarcasm again. All right. But then,’ said Kate’s daughter, pursuing it doggedly, ‘why didn’t you denounce Paris?’

  ‘Because,’ said Kate, getting up and shaking the cut grass and insects off her skirt, ‘I have some shreds of respect left for my nation, if none for the extraordinary creatures who are attempting to run it at present. If George Paris is exposed as a double agent, he can’t work for the English King any more.’

  ‘I must say,’ said Philippa getting up, ‘Mr Crawford doesn’t seem to be worried. He must think a lot more of his friends than he does of his country.’

  ‘Um,’ said Kate, eyeing her child in the mellow glow of late sunshine, prettily backlighting the apple leaves. Philippa looked terrible. She supposed she looked terrible too. She made up her mind to get a new dress and something that would contain her hair, and then changed it abruptly. Character was all. She said, ‘If you think Mr Crawford isn’t worried, you’re blind. He’s nearly out of his mind with worry.’

  ‘About himself,’ said Philippa. ‘The trouble about Mr Crawford is that he has no social conscience.’

  ‘The trouble about Mr Crawford,’ said Kate, ‘is that he puts up with his enemies and plays merry hell with his friends. Come on. Let’s go inside, before my mother-love slips and I give you a bruise on the other side of your jaw.’ And hugging her daughter rather desperately to her side, Kate Somerville went indoors.

  X

  The Hadden Stank

  (March Meeting, June/July 1552: Algiers, August 1552)

  THE Hadden Stank, a boggy meadow almost precisely on the Scottish–English Border and a few miles from the English castles of Carham and Wark, over the river, was not England’s most popular spot for a meeting of Wardens. This dated from some twelve years back, when an English army of three thousand gallant horsemen was severely trounced on the low ridge in whose shadow the Stank unrolled. It was not popular either with the Douglases, who were on the English side at the time.

  It was therefore with a great deal of unconcealed pleasure that Wat Scott of Buccleuch, riding north from Branxholm to the March, encountered Jamie Douglas of Drumlanrig, the Baron of Hawick himself, and the most active member now of all that great house, riding morosely ahead of him to take his place as Scottish Warden and Justiciar of the Middle Marches. Until two months ago, the appointment had been held by Buccleuch. He had given it up, with other public duties, when his son Will had died. Watching him ride beside her now, grimly jovial, chaffing Sir James, his wife saw t
hat Buccleuch didn’t regret renouncing this at least; a Wardenship counting near-sovereign power.

  Her suspicions seethed. Over sixty, with a life of violence behind him, Buccleuch had been a broken man after the affair at Liddel Castle. More recently, however, the light of purpose had entered his eye, and, nimble as an elderly rectangular goblin, he had vanished and reappeared at Branxholm until they had all gone off their food.

  Wat Scott of Buccleuch knew very well that to lay an unprovoked hand on the Kerrs would mean serious trouble for his house. The murderer of his son had never been found; and the law had ruled that the Kerrs, believing however incorrectly that the Scotts had killed all their cattle, were not to be blamed for retaliation. A heavy fine from Cessford and Ferniehurst had closed the incident.

  Janet Beaton, Lady of Buccleuch, whose sister had married the dead boy, didn’t think, in spite of her alarming forecast to Lymond, that Wat would provoke either Walter or John Kerr in person. In other respects she distrusted him to the uttermost, and her comely, uncompromising presence, planked sidesaddle on her mare between Buccleuch and Sir James Douglas and dividing a hard stare between both, at length drove Sir Wat into unwise speech. ‘We’re lamenting the price of auld stots. Will ye take your lang neb out o’ my shouther?’

  ‘I can hear ye. Ye’re not lamenting the price of auld fools, Wat Scott?’ said his wife instantly. ‘Ye could be at home this minute with your doublet off and your slippers on and a stoup of good wine in your fist. What for are ye interfering in Sir James Douglas’s business?’

  ‘Because I wrang-wisely thocht I’d chaipit the auld bag at hame!’ said Sir Walter furiously. ‘Ye’ll be the only female there, barring the hoors!’

  Smiling, his wife nodded her handsome, positive head. ‘Dod, Wat! It’s every young lassie’s dream!’

  ‘Well, you’re nae young lassie!’ roared Sir Wat. ‘Thrice merrit and six times a mother! They’ll hae ye in and out o’ their tents like a row o’ fishermen gaffing a salmon, and ye needna look tae me for succour!’

  ‘Wat, Wat!’ said Lady Buccleuch with reproach. ‘You’re affronting Sir James. It’s a perjink, weel-conducted March meeting we’re off to attend, not a brothel.’

  Sir James Douglas of Drumlanrig smiled, if a shade sourly. A slender, comely man, well and expensively dressed, he had been casting a shrewd eye, Janet knew, over the ranks of orderly Scotts and cousins following Sir Wat, each burnished as never Scott ever troubled to glitter before, and modestly armed with sword and knife. ‘It should,’ he remarked at length, ‘be an unusually orderly meeting. The new army at St Mary’s has been summoned, I believe, to keep guard.’

  So much for Mr Francis Crawford’s beautiful surprise, thought Lady Buccleuch, and caught the eye of their servant Tosh, riding discreetly behind. But, ‘Oh, I ken, I ken,’ said Sir Wat airily. ‘Auld Wharton must fairly be past it, calling in yon giddy sprig o’ gentrice and his pack o’ priests. I trust they won’t have to bestir themselves overmuch, that’s all. I wouldna like my lord count to sweat up one o’ his sarks.’

  ‘Wat!’ said his wife Janet warningly.

  ‘Eh, my dear?’ said Sir Wat. ‘We’re nearly there. I think ye should just take a hud o’ my wee dirk. Your chastity is the Buccleuch honour, ye’ll mind. And in case of contumaceous language, I’ll just thank ye tae shut off your lugs.’

  ‘Wat Scott of Buccleuch!’ shrieked his wife. ‘After all the contumaceous language that dirled in my ears and the ears of your poor innocent bairns from cockcrow to compline, is there a wee naked dirty word on the face of the earth that’s no acquent wi’ Buccleuch?’

  ‘Hud your whisht,’ said her husband genially, and rode past the first crofts of Hadden. Ahead, flat between river and hill, lay the Stank, the March banners flying. The Homes had arrived, he noted. Also the Elliots, the Armstrongs, the Veitches, the Burnets, the Haigs and the Tweedies, who were the mortal enemies, as it happened, of the Veitches; who were also at loggerheads with the Burnets. Plain in the middle of the field, bright with early sunshine, there flew also the standard of Richard, third Baron Culter, Lymond’s brother.

  *

  On the stroke of eleven, the English Warden rode on to the field. By that time all the English families were there too: the Dodds, the Charltons, the Milburns and the other freebooting clans: the Ridleys, the Robsons, the Halls and the Grahams who inhabited both sides of the Borders. The banners stuck like gooseberry stalks out of the crowd, helmeted, cuirassed, and spilled like leadshot in heaps throughout the big meadow and along all the roads into it.

  The tents were up by then, and the tented booths, score upon score, where anything from a whip to a copper kettle could be bought, at a price. In the middle was the platform under its awning, where the two Wardens of Scotland and of England, with their deputies, clerks and officers, would hear cases and pass judgements. Nearest to these, on the Scottish side, were the stations of the Scotts, and of the Kerrs. Behind Sir James Douglas’s place on the platform there stood, ranged on the dusty grass, rank upon rank of Drumlanrig men. Behind the English Warden, stood dismounted the hundred light horsemen permitted Lord Ogle to discharge his duties.

  But Lord Ogle, as they all knew, was sick; and Lord Dacre, whom he represented, was in the Tower. The office of Warden of the Middle and East Marches itself had been appropriated, at a salary of a thousand pounds per annum, by the Earl of Warwick, the Saviour of England.

  Since the Earl, owing to pressing duties in London consisting largely of hanging the Government, was unable to attend personally to his office, this was normally occupied by a deputy. The deputy in this instance, brought hither by curiosity as well as duty, and accompanied by Sir Thomas Palmer and by Master William Flower, Chester Herald in person, was Thomas, Lord Wharton, Deputy Warden General of the Three Marches, straight from Carlisle.

  Small, tough, self-made; a member of the English Parliament; one of the peers who tried and condemned the Duke of Somerset, England’s Lord Protector, the previous year; veteran of every recent war on the Scottish frontier and ancient enemy of Lymond, Lord Wharton rode on to the field, his helmet pushed back from his grim, teak-coloured face, his hand held high in traditional token of good faith. Francis Crawford, who had been riding, chatting amiably, at his right hand, dropped behind and sat, still mounted, to one side of the dais while behind him the quietly shining ranks of St Mary’s deployed alongside the Warden’s men, officers, mounted also, at their sides.

  The meeting with Wharton had been fortuitous. But the staffwork which had united Jerott and Lymond with the company and brought them here, fully armed and provisioned in perfect order, was not. Sitting beside Graham Malett, watching the Wardens cross the green grass, approach and embrace, while all around them the soft earth and flowers of high summer were metalled with armour, blinding under the kind yellow sun, Jerott was elated.

  They had done the impossible. And Crawford was good: God, he was good. Good enough to do what had to be done and, in the middle of it, deliberately waste two hours on sleep. Two hours to the minute, and then the cutting edge was back. Christ, thought Jerott, Wharton must have wondered what was happening when they met. He hadn’t tried to patronize after that.

  Jerott glanced behind him at the still ranks of his own men. He lifted his eyes to the pale, airy void above him, and then across to the sunlit, classical profile of Gabriel, sitting still on his horse. At the same moment, Graham Malett looked round, and smiled.

  Jerott’s white teeth shone in an answering grin. Come what may, this was life.

  *

  A day of March dealt with crimes of the Border, too trivial to be referred to head Government. All thefts, robberies, depredations, homicides and fire-raisings and similar cruel, dreadful and iniquitous crimes committed by the inhabitants of these parts upon her Majesty’s faithful subjects were in time referred to the Governor-General and Justiciar of Liddesdale, old Buccleuch. For as Warden of the Middle Marches he could both capture criminals and hold assizes to punish them, with all the clerk
s, sergeants and judges he needed.

  In its day, a Wardenship had been a prize worth a small fortune, and handed out only to favourites. Even now, some thought went into the choice. In their hands lay negotiations that would daunt a first-class ambassador. One slip could cause, and had in the past caused, a war.

  They punished criminals according to the law of the country in which the crime was committed. They had to hand over refugees if required, always bearing in mind the possible riposte from head Government for doing so with too great an alacrity. They had to arrange for reparation, and to crush trans-Border feuds.

  It worked, in a perilous way. Before each advertised meeting, injured parties sent in bills of complaint to their Warden, who passed them to his opposite number across the Border. He in turn either arrested the accused men or summoned them to the next March meeting where each appeared with his two witnesses and his following and was tried, judged and sentenced or allowed to go free. In time of war, the Wardens took their own heralds, formally to demand and concede truce until sunset next day. In time of peace, as today, Chester Herald in his red and blue and cloth of gold merely had a formal exchange, followed by a good gossip in private with Bute Herald, while suits were being called and the rest of the formal fencing procedure got through by which the Warden’s meeting was legally constituted. As the suitors filed in and took their places on the two long benches reserved for the victims, Scottish and English, of theft, bloodwite, spulzies, ejection and wrangeous intromission, as reeled off complacently in lawyer’s Scots by Fergie Hoddim in an undertone, the two Wardens now settled side by side under the awning looked with careful indifference at the raw material of the day’s work.

  There were a great many women among them. Lord Wharton, the English deputy Warden, turning to big Tommy Palmer at his side, said in an undertone, ‘Have you Ogle’s list of pursuers there? Are these women related?’