* * *
They left at gloaming, riding towards the River Esk, where they would join Carwell and his men. His father’s vest hung heavy on his shoulders. Norse moved steady and silent beneath him.
The plan was set. There was no more need for words.
It was comforting, riding shoulder to shoulder with Rob. An unfamiliar feeling, to be a brother again.
He and Cate had shared a final kiss before leaving the sanctuary of the room. As the men mounted, he glimpsed her across the courtyard, standing next to Bessie. Belde paced beside her, looking up at her as if expecting orders to join the hunt. His sister wrapped her arms around Cate, as if her grip was the only thing keeping Cate from mounting her pony.
She would stay safe and he would kill Storwick. He refused to think beyond that. To the men. To the king.
Yet, each step he had taken, each kiss they shared, each gallop over the hills, had drawn him closer to the land he was born to until, now, it was difficult to imagine leaving.
* * *
Carwell and his men joined them at the meeting place. ‘Shall I call you Black John, then?’ Carwell’s question told John he was wearing his mood.
‘I’ll smile when this is done.’
‘Then you’ll smile this time tomorrow,’ Rob said, his tone a match for John’s, ‘when we’ve wiped Scarred Willie’s Hell House off the earth.’
The next leg of the journey took them into the valley land, crowded with trees with night air so thick with mist it felt as if they rode through the river.
When they finally reached the edge of clearing, Willie’s tower stood in sight, just as it had been before. Still hidden by the trees, they paused to light their torches, tonight’s weapon, more deadly than a sword.
There was a reason towers were built of stone.
Rob, Carwell and John exchanged glances, but not words. Actions would be their measure tonight. Of Rob as the head man, of John as a Brunson, and of Carwell as an ally.
Rob nodded and they galloped towards the tower.
A thousand hooves thundered against the earth. Spears and pikes pointed straight ahead, ready to gut any man who ran from the burning building.
Close now, close enough that they should have heard some clash of steel and stone as the defenders roused from sleep.
Nothing stirred within.
No time to wonder at it. They were there.
Rob hurled the first brand, which landed on the parapet. Bad throw. A guard could throw it back. But they followed with the rest, a dozen or more, raining into the wooden structure like stars falling from the heavens.
The horses shied, uneasy at the smell.
Nothing stirred inside the tower but flames.
Fire licked the damp walls until the exposed wood above the stone sheath smouldered, sending roiling clouds of smoke into the dark, damp sky.
Still, nothing.
Then, flame by flame, the tower erupted into an inferno. Behind the stone sheath, the wooden shell disappeared.
And as the empty tower burned, John turned to Carwell. First Truce Day. Now a new betrayal.
He pulled the man from his horse, then jumped off his own and started pummelling Carwell as if he were Willie Storwick. Ashes drifted over them. Acrid air seared his lungs. Caught by surprise, Carwell was bested at first, but he landed a punch to John’s jaw before they were pulled apart.
Soot streaked Rob’s skin; anger strained his frown. ‘You’ll not resolve your quarrel here. They may still be close. Waiting.’
‘Or worse.’ John staggered to Norse and mounted, unsteady, head finally holding his emotions in check. ‘They may be at our tower.’
* * *
The tower was intact. Cate was safe. But the cattle they had stolen from the Storwicks a few weeks ago had vanished.
He thought Rob was going to put his fist through the stone.
Carwell had returned with them, not asking permission.
John turned on him. ‘Why is it that every time we trust you with a plan the Storwicks discover it?’
Carwell’s usual secret smile had turned to stone. ‘I don’t know. But I intend to find out.’
‘Hold him,’ he said to Rob, not stopping to ponder his assumption that Rob would need no further words to know his meaning.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Carwell said. ‘He’s on his way to my castle.’ One he’d left lightly defended. ‘Come along if you don’t trust me.’
‘We will.’ But first, he must face Cate.
And his failure.
* * *
Still covered with ashes, he wrapped her in his arms and they clung to each other, together and alive. Relief that she was safe warred with anger that he had failed her.
She did not ask, but lifted her face, now smudged with soot, and waited.
He let her go, undeserving of the privilege. ‘He was gone.’ Spare. Stark. True. The only words he knew how to say.
‘He came and was gone before we knew. If I had come, if you had taken Belde, we could have—’
‘Do not think of could.’
They had retreated to the wall walk and she paced, restless as the dog, looking towards the hills as if expecting a new threat.
He could not blame her. Too late he had learned the Borders’ lessons.
‘He knew,’ she whispered, looking to the west. ‘He must have known.’ Her eyes met his, then, strong as a comrade in arms. ‘What happens now?’
‘We find the traitor. And then, we find Storwick.’
‘Do you think it is Carwell?’
Did he? He no longer knew who to trust. ‘I don’t know.’ And if it were true, what did that mean? Was Carwell disloyal to the king or was it just the Brunsons he deceived? Or was the king himself playing a different game? What kind of personal congratulations had been in that envelope he had put in Carwell’s hand? ‘But I intend to find out.’
Strange, to echo Carwell’s own words.
And to do that, he must go to Carwell’s castle to see whether Storwick had attacked it or sought shelter there.
* * *
Carwell was ready to ride, but Rob and John insisted the men be allowed to sleep first. If Storwick had attacked, they were too late to stop him. Then, while Rob stayed with a contingent at the tower, John rode with the rest to Carwell’s castle.
Enough to fight the rest of Carwell’s men if need be.
Rob clasped his arm in farewell. ‘So go see how loyal your king’s warden is.’ His tone was as sceptical as his words.
John felt the same.
There was time and space to do no more than kiss Cate before he left.
Again, he had forbidden her to come and this time, she did not argue. ‘You won’t find him there,’ she said, her voice calm. ‘It’s not the time.’
He hugged her, and neither asked nor argued, hoping she was right. She could not possibly know where Storwick was, but sometimes, hunter and prey became linked in some way impossible to understand. Hunter never able to capture prey and prey never able to escape hunter.
* * *
Carwell pushed them without ceasing and they were within sound of the sea by nightfall. They approached the hold cautiously, wondering whether Storwick’s men might have overpowered Carwell’s.
But as they came closer, it was evident the raiders had come and gone. The moat had protected the castle, but an outbuilding on the flat land that sloped to the bay was a charred hulk.
‘There.’ Carwell waved his arm to the ruined hut. ‘There’s your answer.’
His voice held a bitterness that belied every smooth syllable John had heard him utter.
‘That’s no answer. You might have agreed that he would torch something unimportant.’
Carwell turned his back, riding across the drawbridge and into the courtyard. ‘Yes, I might,’ he called over his shoulder, too smoothly for John’s taste. ‘But I did not.’
Inside the gate, the man dismounted, arranged for the steward to see to the small army that rode with him and instructed
his lieutenants to meet him in the hall and tell him all that had happened.
As they walked across the courtyard and into the hall, Carwell’s stride now had the urgency of his own.
‘It’s more likely,’ he began, as if the conversation had not been interrupted, ‘that he discovered our plans another way. Maxwell men have married Storwick women. No doubt Brunson women have married Storwick men. It would only take one.’
Was that an explanation or an excuse? ‘But his family disowned him.’
Even in the uncertain light of the fire, he could see disbelief in the man’s expression. ‘His blood is unchanged. There are Storwicks who would shelter him if he rode to Stirling and bent a knee to King James.’
Aye, he’d been the naive one, the one who believed in laws and kings and pronouncements, none of which were as strong as blood. ‘If that’s true, where is he now?’
Carwell’s look was weary. ‘He could be anywhere. He’s got my fish and your cattle. He can feast for months.’
‘I’ve not got months to wait.’
‘Neither does the king,’ Carwell answered.
And neither did Cate.
‘The king will have to wait a few weeks more,’ John said.
In fact, the king might have to wait for ever.
Chapter Nineteen
Home again, he went directly to Cate, having to admit the quarry had escaped again. The two of them left the tower and walked to the stream alone. Along the banks, beneath leafless trees and a pale sky, the grass clung to its summer green.
She bent down to pick up a stick and flung it across the water. Belde splashed in to chase it. ‘I’m glad you didn’t find him.’
‘Why?’ She had said they would not. Was she glad to be proven right?
‘I must be there when you do.’ She spoke with harsh finality. ‘I must kill him myself.’
‘I told you I would find him,’ he said. ‘And I will.’ All this talk of being there, of killing him herself, would fade when Storwick was gone. There was no moving on, for either of them, until then.
‘I know.’ But she did not meet his eyes when she said it.
John put an arm around her and she let him, leaning against his chest, watching the dog. Belde’s tail wagged one way, his legs moved another, and then he pounced on the stick, grabbed it in his jaws and shook it, playful as a child.
His antics coaxed a smile from Cate.
Belde bounded back into the stream and up the bank, then shook all the water off his coat and on to them.
Laughing, Cate knelt down, wrestled the stick away from him and flung it back towards the tower.
Her smile faded when she stood. ‘Is it Carwell?’
He had told her the story on the way down. ‘I’m not sure.’ The man was full of his own secrets, but that did not make him a traitor. ‘But until I am, there’ll be no trusting him again.’
They started back to the tower. Belde ran towards them and John, without thinking, held out his hand. The dog brought him the stick, nudging John’s palm with a cold nose.
‘He’s not done that for anyone else,’ she said. ‘He must trust you.’
Do you? He wondered, but did not ask.
He played tug of war with Belde, then threw the stick halfway up the knoll. The dog bounded away, tireless, ran past its landing place, then loped in circles trying to find it.
Cate laughed again.
The sound warmed him. ‘Happy?’
* * *
Happy. A foreign word.
Was she?
She smiled back at him. Ordinary women must have many moments like this. Sunshine. A man beside them. Dogs, children, laughter.
A man and woman can be happy, he had promised, even when the world is harsh.
She had thought he was talking about a man and a woman, intimate and alone in bed. That was happiness she thought never to have. But the closeness she had shared with John in bed, imperfect as it was, had made this moment possible.
It reminded her of the way she had clawed her way back from numb despair. Being grateful for a stray sunbeam. Appreciating a scarlet sky at sunset.
And somehow, happiness now touched a man as well, something she had been afraid to ever hope for. Would it ever be more than this? Would she ever be able to love him fully?
And still, fear nipped at the heels of the thought. Somewhere in the hills, Willie Storwick rode free. He, too, had laughed.
But I am here. And I am not the woman I was before Johnnie came. Think of what is now, not what is past or to come.
Was she happy?
Her smile broadened. ‘Yes.’
* * *
John met Rob in the small, windowless chamber off the public hall where they had met Carwell. Where their plans would be private.
‘This time,’ John began, ‘we search for Storwick without Carwell.’
Rob nodded. ‘Can’t be trusted.’
His brother did not berate him. Rob had trusted the warden last time, too. No more.
‘Carwell claims Willie knew we were coming because Brunsons have married Storwicks.’
‘Any Brunson traitor enough to marry a Storwick would be traitor enough to do it.’
‘But once married, they would not go home again. How would they know?’
‘They are family still. Women sometimes visit.’ Rob’s good humour had fled. ‘But if I find the traitor, I’ll kill him. Or her.’
Rob was a blunt instrument, John thought, whose first and only impulse was to fight. Sometimes, there was no enemy. Sometimes, disaster was accidental, not deliberate.
‘Scarred Willie had to expect we’d come after him,’ he began. ‘What if a Storwick usually visited her cousin married to a Brunson on a Sunday? And what if she had word not to visit that day? That would be enough for him to know, even if no one else understood.’
‘Or it could be Carwell and the English warden.’
John nodded. ‘First we find Scarred Willie. Then we find who betrayed us. You talked to the Storwick head man. Would he help?’
‘No.’
No need to say more. Disowning a family member and handing him over to the enemy were two very different things. ‘What if Carwell is right? If word spread of our plans among the family, even accidentally, we could discover Willie’s whereabouts the same way.’
Rob studied his face. ‘Is everyone at court so devious?’ His voice held a hint of admiration.
A good sign. At least he might listen. ‘So, do we have any Brunsons married to Storwicks?’
‘It’s banned.’
‘So is reiving.’ His brother was not usually so concerned with the law.
‘I don’t mean by the king. I won’t have Storwick blood under my roof.’
John sighed. Stubborn as a Brunson, they said along the Borders. He knew where the phrase came from. ‘A Brunson woman married to a Storwick man, then. Living on their land.’
‘A few.’ A grudging admission, as if somehow he’d failed. ‘But we can’t just ride up and ask. There’d be an arrow in your chest before you reached the door.’
‘No, not you or me. Perhaps one of the Brunson women married to a Storwick man?’
‘Not if we don’t know whether there is a traitor.’
Who could be trusted now?
They sat, silent.
‘No,’ Rob said, ‘it must be Bessie.’
‘Bessie!’ He tried to picture his quiet sister as a spy. ‘But she can’t—’
‘She’s the head man’s sister. Mother used to visit every family member at least once a year. Even...’ he sighed ‘...those.’
It would be the perfect excuse. ‘She’s calm and quiet, but I don’t know whether she could tell a lie.’
Then he thought of all the truths she had withheld and paused. Bessie might make a better spy than he thought.
‘Do you want Cate to go?’
He glared at his brother. Cate could not even breathe Storwick air without gagging. ‘She’d fool no one.’
‘Ach! Enoug
h of this. Let’s just ride across the hills and attack them.’
‘And if he’s not there, then what?’ They would have escalated the feud while Willie still rode free.
Rob sighed and put a hand on John’s shoulder. ‘We’ll try it your way, then.’
The hand on his shoulder was a blessing. Acceptance. His plan. It was a slender one, but without some direction, they could ride the hills for years, chasing a ghost. ‘I’ll tell Cate, then we’ll ask Bessie.’
And he found himself, guilty, hoping Bessie would say yes, for without her, they had no plan at all.
* * *
John found Cate in the empty hall, mending the rips on his jack-of-plaites vest as if it were her right to do so. As if she would do so for years to come.
He explained the plan. ‘We’re going to ask Bessie,’ he said, finally.
‘Why Bessie? I’ll go. I’m not afraid.’
‘I know you’re not.’ He knew she did not want to be. ‘But no one will question why she has come, but you...’
‘They know I would as soon kill a Storwick as look at him.’ She sighed. ‘Why would a woman do that? Marry her family’s mortal enemy?’
Because she loved him. Yet he made no glib reply. Love was not enough to keep a man from his duty. Or shouldn’t be. Not at court. And not on the Border.
Yet he had let Cate keep him from his.
He blocked the thought. It was not to be dwelled on now.
‘Will you help me explain it to her?’ he said. ‘Bessie’s not like you. She’s...’ And he realised he was not sure what Bessie was. Quietly labouring in the background like that sister in the Bible who worked while her sibling listened at Jesus’s feet. She did what was asked and even what wasn’t.
Cate nodded finally, and rose, meeting his eyes. ‘She’ll be in the kitchen.’
They walked down the stairs and into the west courtyard. ‘Cate,’ he said, ‘you said he would not be at Carwell’s. Do you...’ what was the word? ‘...sense, where he is?’
She looked to the hills, her eyes dark and far away, as if trying to see. ‘Out there. Waiting.’
He was not sure whether to be disappointed or grateful she knew no more than that.
The smell of lamb stew drew them into the kitchen. Since Willie Storwick had stolen the cattle, the meal would have more broth and less meat.
Return of the Border Warrior Page 17
