The Tweedie Passion

by Helen Susan Swift

  'That is what I heard,' my brazen liar said. 'Why, Wild Will himself was there, shouting that he would capture the Bold Buccleuch in person and hang him naked from his rooftree, him and his women and all his household.'

  I said nothing, merely lowered my head from the acute examination of the two women as the bearded gallant touched a hand to the long blade he wore at his saddle. 'We'll see about that,' he said in a voice that was suddenly grim with menace. Whoever this man was, he was no earl spoiled with fur and ermines, not with that determined thrust to his jaw. Any sane man or coward would have turned back at the news that Liddesdale was riding, while this forward man signalled to a flaxen haired youth who sat his horse two strides behind the women.

  'Sound the horn,' the bearded gallant said. 'Bring our lads in closer. It seems that we shall be hunting before we reach Hermitage this day.'

  As flaxen-hair lifted the horn to his lips, one of the women walked her horse to the gallant man. I held my breath as she spoke to him, nodding toward me, and then the horn sounded a long, wavering note that rose to the sky and brought a host of wild geese rising from the grassland nearby.

  'We shall bid you farewell, my Lord,' Hugh touched a hand to his head.

  'You know me, then?' Yet it was to me the gallant looked and not to Hugh.

  'Why yes, My Lord, you are Walter Scott of Buccleuch.' Hugh touched spurs to his horse and walked on, with me a hands-breadth behind him with my heart in my mouth. The gallant was Walter Scott of Buccleuch himself: the Bold Buccleuch, the man who led the mighty Scott family, able to call up three thousand Border lances at a lift of his little pinkie. And as I watched I realised why Hugh had made up his tales about the Armstrongs. All along the ridges on both sides of us, men appeared, carrying their lances in their right hands.

  'Ride on,' I said, 'quickly.'

  'Save journey to you, friend,' Scott of Buccleuch, lifted a hand to Hugh. 'And to you, my lady.' His smile to me was entirely conspiratorial. Suddenly my disguise did not seem impenetrable in the slightest and my thoughts that men were not as perceptive as women also seemed wide of the mark. I mustered a half-hearted smile, kicked in my spurs and rode on, feeling very vulnerable and just a little humiliated.

  'We need no longer worry about the Armstrongs,' Hugh said. 'With Scott of Buccleuch and his men riding through Liddesdale they will have enough to contend with.'

  I nodded. Until that moment I had been more concerned with discovery than anything else but now more personal matters came once more to the fore. I thought what had I had done and how it altered my entire perception of myself. I had allowed my baser instincts to take over. I had betrayed Robert. I had failed myself and my family.

  How could I face him? We had been friends all my life. We had made an agreement to wed and we had been faithful to each other until I gave way to my own weakness and my own passion. How could I tell him? What could I say?

  'You are quiet,' Hugh said as we negotiated a pass between long green hills. I heard the call of a yorling and remembered that laughing, enigmatic man who had begun this whole adventure. Whoever he was, he had started a long train that led to my downfall, and personal discovery.

  'I am thinking,' I looked sideways at him.

  'About what we did last night?' Hugh asked.

  'About what we did last night.' I said no more.

  'I will come with you if you decide to tell Robert,' Hugh said. 'If he decides to kill me then the world will be rid of an ugly man. I will die knowing that my world could never get any better than it was with you.'

  I did not say that my world would also have been the poorer if I had not experienced the previous night. I was learning. Instead I nodded. 'It is kind of you to say that.'

  'It is no kindness,' he snapped that, which pleased me although I could not say why.

  'I do not wish you to be there if I tell Robert. You are at feud with us; my Tweedies would kill you as soon as you appeared near the Lethan.' That was only the truth. It was another reason that I was confused for if I admitted that I had bedded a Veitch I would be even less thought of.

  'You do not have to tell him,' Hugh said. 'That would be the simplest solution. Or perhaps…'

  'Or perhaps?' I hoped for a solution to my problem.

  'You do not have to return to the Lethan,' Hugh spoke quietly. He reached across and took hold of Kailzie's bridle. 'There are other valleys just as sweet, other towers as comfortable as Cardrona and other men who want you as much as Robert Ferguson does.'

  I shook my head. 'I have given my word,' I said. 'And there is more.'

  'What more is there?'

  We reined up there, with that evil valley of Liddesdale behind us and ahead the ragged road leading us home to Peebles-shire and the Lethan Valley. The sun had risen, casting our elongated shadows long and dark over the autumnal heather until they merged together at the head. I faced Hugh and told him what I nobody else knew except my mother.

  He listened in silence until I had finished. 'You saw yourself with Robert in a vision?' He asked.

  'Every year on my birthday.' I waited for the inevitable ridicule. People who have not experienced such things tend to mock, either through fear or scepticism, which is one reason that I did not tell anybody. My other reason was through fear of being called a witch.

  Hugh neither mocked nor called me a follower of Satan. 'I have never met anybody with such a power before.' If anything, he sounded sad rather than doubtful. Releasing the bridle of my horse, he began to move again. 'When I heard your voice in the dungeon I knew that you were above the common set of people and as soon as I saw your face I knew you were a most noble piece of work, a paragon.'

  'I am none of that,' I told him. I did not tell him of the ache in my heart every time I looked at him, or the lust in my loins. Some things are better left unsaid when one is riding alone with a vibrant man in the stark hills of the Borderland. Nor did I tell him of my sense of desolation when I compared him to my Robert. That, I decided, must remain for ever unsaid and only admitted to myself.

  'You have given your word,' Hugh seemed to have accepted my visions without a qualm. 'It is a sign of wonderful woman to keep your word after so long.'

  My hurt made me turn on him with some heat. 'Is it sign of a wonderful woman to bed a strange man within the Nine Stane Rig?'

  His silence was eloquent of the pain my words caused him. I know that men have the ability to hurt women with their physical strength. I did not then know that the best of men are vulnerable to equally deep hurt by the words of women for whom they care. We are a careless sex with our tongues, injuring sometimes without consideration and driving pain deep within the hearts of those we love and who love us most. Sometime a wise king may pass a law protecting women from the hands of men. It will need to be a wiser queen to pass a similar law protecting men from the tongues of women.

  I do not know how long our silence endured but we were many miles from Liddesdale before Hugh spoke again. He continued our conversation as if there had been no gap.

  'Am I still that strange a man? I find it unlikely that a woman such as you would bed a man she thinks a stranger.'

  I had also been thinking. 'A woman such as myself has a hot desire,' I said, still tart, 'and perhaps that desire will overcome any objections to the strangeness of the man I happen to be with.' Although the words were mainly directed toward myself, Hugh visibly flinched. I had hurt him again. I learned again how easy it is to hurt a man who loves you. It is the ones you hurt that matter most, always. If they did not care, they would not feel the wounds our tongues create. We do damage to our loves by such behaviour and wonder why our men seek solace with others with gentler words and comforting bodies. A woman's tongue is too potent a weapon to be misused.

  'So I was just one among many then,' Hugh had been stung to retaliate and I did not like his response. 'A woman of your ardent desire must have bedded many men, strange or not, in her lifetime.' It may have been chance that he rode an arms-length away rather than with our
knees near touching but I rather fancied that he was pulling away physically as I lambasted him verbally.

  Hurt by his words, I responded by inflicting more pain, hating myself while searching for venom. 'You are just one,' I told him. 'A man I met while on a journey, a male body on which to slake my lust. Nothing more.'

  I could not have wounded him deeper, or said words that were further from the truth. He turned away from me, a man who had sought grace from a graceless face and found vindictiveness when he hoped for a spirit as generous as his own. I should have apologised then; I should have withdrawn my barbed words and thrown myself on my knees to beg mercy from the kindest and most noble man I had ever met. Instead I tore the helmet from my head and threw it into the rough heather at the side of the road, allowed my hair to flow freely down my back and kicked in my spurs so I cantered ahead of him. Let him see my back, I thought, and the set of my shoulders. Insufferable man!

  We rode like that, with me forging the path northward to Tweed-dale and Hugh two horse-lengths behind. I nursed my wrath, keeping it warm as I told myself that Hugh had wronged me with his words and he deserved my scorn and vituperation, while all the time feeling the desolation of loss fighting the anger I stoked. Behind me, I did not know how Hugh felt. Sometimes I wished that he would spur forward, tip me off my horse and drag me into the heather to treat me as he had done so well within the Nine Stone Rig. I did not know, then, that good men did not act so. Good men gave their women respect and love; they did not act in such an ungentlemanly manner. I wished for Hugh to turn into a brute beast while still retaining his essential kindly qualities. Such things do not happen: Hugh was a gentleman in all the best meanings of the word. He remained behind me, silent, perhaps brooding and despite my gnawing temper and the lingering sting of my words, I knew that he would look after me if a mishap occurred on the road. There was a word for that; a word that I dared not say although within me I knew what it was.

  That word was love. Hugh had voiced it and I had rejected it, yet my rejection had not nullified the reality, only pushed it aside. I knew that Hugh loved me; men like him did not say such things without consideration and thought. I also knew that I loved him.

  That was a love that could never be admitted if I wished peace of mind. It was a word that turned itself over within my mind and tore great holes in my heart. It was a forbidden love that had caused me to react with such venom. I hated that love for destroying the certainty of my life and because I rejected that love I also rejected the cause and fountain of it. I hated Hugh for making me love him. In that confused oxymoron of emotions I rode along that damp track through the stark green hills of the Borders with my mood becoming fouler by the mile.

  When I was not hoping for Hugh to come to me, I wished only to be left alone with my thoughts, my unfair anger and my sense of impending loss. As I alternated between hatred and love, I did not want to see Hugh leave me, and leave me he must for with the feud between our surnames, he would be in grave danger the instant he rode into the Lethan Valley.

  'Horsemen ahead.' They were the first words that Hugh had spoken for hours. They jerked me out of my reverie and into the reality of our physical situation. I looked around and recognised where we were. The surrounding hills were only a dozen miles from the Lethan, with familiar shapes and friendly outlines. There was a late-season laverock trilling above, perhaps even that same bird I had heard as we harvested the crops only a few days and a lifetime ago. I could not see any horsemen.

  'A round score,' Hugh continued, 'moving slowly.'

  I wondered whether I wished to talk to him yet. 'Where?' I could spare a single word. It did not mean that I liked him, only that I had decided it was necessary to recognise his existence: nothing more.

  'They are in front and on the hills on either side.' Hugh was more loquacious. 'Four are on the road and the others are supporting. I can hear the rattle of equipment so they are armed.'

  'All men are armed on the road!' I injected a sneer into my words, still aiming to hurt him and feeling the stab of pain in my own heart.

  I heard Hugh unsheathe his sword. 'Keep close My Lady Jeannie,' he said quietly. 'They may not be our friends.'

  I nearly turned to face him. Instead I reined in, just slightly, just enough to obey his advice but not enough, certainly not enough, to allow him to think that he mattered to me.

  The horsemen appeared on the crest of the hill to my right, and then to my left. They rode in line abreast, each man with his lance and sword, each one with the steel helmet firm on his head, each one with the high morning sun on his face. Eight on each side and four on the road, exactly as Hugh had said, and I knew each man by name and reputation, by family and history.

  'Father!' I nearly screamed the word as I saw Father at the head, with his homely bearded face set, and then, 'Robert!' For Robert rode at his side, sturdy, freckled Robert Ferguson, my own, my very own Robert riding south to rescue me.

  Without a thought I shouted his name and put spurs to my horse, waving my hand in delight. And so I bade farewell to Hugh Veitch and rode to Robert. And my destiny. I hardly looked back, thinking that Hugh would be behind me.

  'Father!' I galloped to him as he spurred to meet me, shouting my name. The others, the vanguard of the armed might of the Tweedies of the Lethan Valley rode down from the hills to see me. We met in a maelstrom of shouts and a confusion of embraces and laughter, with Robert all a-grin and the boys of the Lethan asking a hundred questions.

  'Where did you get that horse from?' Robert asked. 'She's a beauty.'

  It was such a typical Robert response that I had to laugh and my father embraced me in his great bear-like arms as his grizzled beard tickled my face and his nose pressed against mine.

  'You are well?'

  'I am well,' I said excitedly, smiling into his wise, worried old eyes.

  'We were coming for you,' Father indicated the men who rode at his side.

  'We were going to rescue you!' Robert seemed excited at the prospect. 'We found out that you were down in Liddesdale.'

  'I was there,' I said. 'Wild Will Armstrong held us prisoner. Hugh and I escaped…' I looked around for Hugh. The excitement at meeting Father and Robert had quite driven my anger away and I was prepared to forgive him. I expected him to fall in with my moods, you see; I was a very thoughtless young woman in these days. 'Where is Hugh?'

  'Hugh?' Father raised grizzled eyebrows. 'Who is Hugh?' The sun caught the ring on his pinkie as he reached for his sword.

  'He is the man I escaped with.' I looked around, expecting to see his face among the familiar men of the Lethan. He was not there so I cast my gaze further back lest he was lurking at the fringes, waiting to be invited. That was the sort of thing a gentleman would do, I reckoned. 'I cannot see him.'

  'You were alone,' Robert said. 'There was no man with you. You were alone on the road when we saw you.'

  'No,' I shook my head so vehemently that my hair netted across my face and I had to claw it free. 'I was with Hugh. You must have seen him.'

  'There was nobody with you,' Father said.

  I eased out of the press and looked back; the road was as empty as the hills. There was no sign of Hugh anywhere. I had a sudden feeling of dread, as if I was wrong and Hugh had been somebody I dreamed up, or perhaps, horribly the spirit of the Tweed. We had made love once, when my Robert had been absent and we were in an ancient, sacred place, filled with the power of those stones.

  No. I shook those silly thoughts away. Hugh had been real; he had been as solid and real as any of the men in whose company I now stood. I had not imagined him or dredged him from some recess of my imagination. Or, God forbid, he had not emerged from the haunted Tweed to enchant me with his love and leave me with a sprit-child.

  Oh dear God in heaven! That was a possibility that I was with child!

  I tried to calm my fears as I forced a smile. 'He must have gone another way,' I said. 'It is not important.'

  'Who was this Hugh?' Robert asked. As alwa
ys he was like the cow's tail, always at the back. Even so it was good to see his face.

  'He was just a man I escaped with and who travelled the road with me,' I tried to sound as casual as possible. 'As I said, he was not important,' I dismissed Hugh and his love with as little apparent concern as if he had been a mouse I had passed, or a bird of the sky.

  'We will get you back home,' Father decided, 'and we will hear of your adventures.' He stepped back, holding my shoulders in both hands. 'You are looking well for somebody who was held by the Armstrongs.'

  'I was not held long,' I said, still searching hopefully for Hugh. 'They only had me for a day or so after the Yorling grabbed me.'

  I saw my father's face alter and knew there was something he was not telling me. This was not the time to ask. I wanted to go home. I also wanted Hugh. I knew I could not have both.

  Father looked me up and down, shaking his head. 'Did they force you to wear men's clothing?'

  I had forgotten that I was dressed like a man. 'No' I said. 'We put these on so we could ride through Liddesdale in safety.'

  'Tell me when we get home,' Father said again, as Robert asked me about Kailzie.

  Chapter Eleven

  LETHAN VALLEY

  OCTOBER 1585

  Can you remember the parable about the prodigal son and how his father killed the fatted calf when he returned home? Well that did not happen at my homecoming. Instead Mother looked me up and down, said: 'aye; you're home then,' and got on with her spinning. That was my welcome back to Cardrona Tower. No fanfares, no beating of drums or sounding of trumpets. A few words and a look, yet I was still glad to be home, in familiar surroundings and surrounded by friendly faces.

  Yet although everything was the same, everything seemed different. It was not of course: the Lethan was the same; it was me that had changed. I had been outside the confines of the Lethan Valley, I had experienced violence and theft, I had met a great many very unpleasant men and I had my first visitation of the Tweedie Passion. In short, I was a woman now while before I had been a girl.