Border Fire

by Amanda Scott

  Tip’s small, wiry image leapt to her mind. He had been kind to her from the start, and thanks to the fresh-baked bread she sent each week to his mam, he now seemed to worship her nearly as much as he worshipped Sir Quinton.

  “Perhaps he will help,” she said to the cat when it wandered in, looking for her. “Even if he will not, I do not think he will betray me.”

  She could not shout for him, however, so she went in search of him, finding him in the kitchen, flirting with the new cook’s daughter.

  “Tip, I want a word with you.”

  “Aye, mistress?” He regarded her expectantly.

  Janet did not speak.

  He got up, grinned saucily at the cook’s daughter, and excused himself.

  In the dimly lit stone corridor, he said, “What will I do for ye, mistress?”

  Drawing him away from the kitchen doorway, she said, “I need clothes, Tip.”

  “Aye, then I’ll fetch Ardith, mistress. I warrant she’s no gone far. Likely, I’ll find her in the great hall wi’ the other lassies, since the master said they was all t’ stay safe within the walls this night.”

  “I do not want Ardith, Tip. I want you. Come away from the kitchen, though, lest someone overhear us.”

  His expression changed, and he glanced anxiously around as if he expected to see the very stones of the corridor walls begin to grow ears.

  When they reached the stairway, Janet said, “I want boy’s clothing, Tip, or some from a small man—shirt, jerkin, breeks, and trunk hose.” She had been measuring him with her eyes, and he was not slow to catch her meaning.

  His mobile eyebrows shot upward. “Ye want lad’s clothing?”

  “Aye, or that of a small man.”

  “What for?” His tone now was decidedly suspicious.

  Janet grimaced. “I mean to follow the master, Tip. He is riding into danger, and he owes as much duty now to me as he does to Buccleuch and to his men.”

  “But them Kielbeck bastards raided and burned Cotrigg and murdered Ally the Bastard’s wife and cousin and his cousin’s three wee bairns,” Tip protested.

  “I know they did, but if our men raid them in return, the enmity will grow and grow until none of us remains alive and no building remains standing. Who will look after the livestock or the bairns then? Oh, don’t you see, Tip, someone has to take the lead. Both King James and Elizabeth of England have demanded peace, and neither is known for patience or for expending compassion on those who defy them. Already Elizabeth has ordered plump patrols set in place of the two-man patrols that used to guard the most common crossing places. What will happen to us all when she sends armies?”

  “We’ll beat them down,” the little man said stoutly.

  “Aye, perhaps, but what if we cannot? And what will we do when Jamie takes the English throne after she dies? Do you think the fighting will just stop?”

  He frowned, but she did not have time to debate the matter further. “I am going after them, Tip. If anything does happen, perhaps I can help, because I know many of the men who fight on the English side. At least, I know their commanders and most of the English landowners in the area. In any event, if I cannot help, at least I will know what became of them and can ride to Buccleuch for help.”

  “Aye, that’s true,” he said thoughtfully, “but ye ken, mistress, the master will ha’ left lads behind to prevent ambush on their return. ’Tis ever his way.”

  “He is taking only twenty men, Tip.”

  The manservant shrugged.

  Janet glared at him. “See here, I am going after them whether you help me or not, but I shall be much safer with your help than without it, shall I not?”

  “Aye.” He said no more but hurried along the corridor to the service stair, and she followed him up the several nights to his master’s bedchamber.

  “Why have we come here?” she demanded when he opened the door. “I cannot wear Sir Quinton’s clothes. They are miles too big for me.”

  “Aye, but neither can ye accompany me to my wee chamber, mistress. If anyone should see ye…” He grimaced expressively.

  She did not want to let him out of her sight. “I do not want to stand here waiting whilst you go in search of clothing, Tip. I must leave at once. If I do not, I will never catch up with them.”

  “Dinna fash yerself,” he said calmly. “I ha’ clothing here that ye can wear.” He disappeared into the tiny closet where he awaited his master when Sir Quinton was out late and would want help undressing on his return. In moments, he returned with garments draped over one arm.

  “Do ye ken how t’ put these on?” he asked. “Because if ye dinna ken—”

  “I do,” she said, blushing at the thought of Tip trying to help her. “I’ve worn my brother’s breeks, and I’ve helped dress small boys. It cannot be so different.”

  “Nay,” he said doubtfully.

  “Go away, Tip.”

  He fled to the corridor, carefully shutting the door behind him.

  As she pulled on the netherstocks, Janet wrinkled her nose. They clearly had been well worn since their last cleaning, and she was fastidious, but she could not think of that now. Noting that Tip had brought everything but boots, she decided that she would be better off wearing the fur-lined ones that she had put on earlier to stroll in the bailey with her husband. Pulling them back on, she stood and tucked into her belt the small, sheathed dagger she always carried.

  At last, regarding her reflection as well as she could and using Sir Quinton’s polished metal shaving mirror to view the hind bits, she hid a smile. No one would recognize her. She was all the wrong shape, for one thing. Her boots looked odd, because there was too much space between their tops and the bottom edges of the breeks, and Tip’s netherstocks were baggy on her slender legs. Not that anyone would notice that once she was safely on horseback. Until then, she would just have to take care that she did not attract anyone’s particular notice.

  A floppy knitted cap concealed her hair, and over her shoulders she draped a plain black cloak that she found in one of Sir Quinton’s chests. Though the cloak would be short on him, it was long enough on her to conceal nearly everything, and all the clothing she wore was dark. Even Tip’s shirt had been dyed a soft dark brown, which was just as well. Moonlight, however pale, would reflect from a white shirt and quickly betray her presence to any watcher.

  She needed her gloves, but then she would be as ready as she could be. Fastening the cloak’s clasp, she left the room and found Tip awaiting her just outside. He had changed his attire and was dressed now in much the same sort of clothing that she wore.

  “I must get my gloves,” Janet told him, “but you need not come out to the stable with me,” she said. “I can manage, and the less you have to do with this the better it will be for you.”

  “I be goin’ wi’ ye, mistress.”

  “No, Tip, you are not.”

  “’Tis of nae use to argue,” he said calmly. “I’ll ride wi’ ye or I’ll follow. I’d prefer t’ ride wi’ ye, for I ken the ground. I’ve fetched your gloves, and ye’ll be needin’ this, as well,” he added, handing her the gloves and a riding whip.

  Taking them, she grimaced. Knowing the ground was a point that she had not considered as carefully as she should have. Assuming that she had only to follow the track toward Hermitage, she had believed that she would find her way easily by moonlight and that, thanks to Quinton’s instructions when they had ridden to Hermitage together, she would be able to read the signal he would leave for laggards at the gathering place. Still, she wished that she knew the Scottish landscape as well as she knew the landscape near Brackengill.

  “I do not like putting you in danger,” she said, tucking the whip under her arm to pull on her gloves.

  Tip’s eyes twinkled. “Any danger we might encounter, mistress, would be as nothing to the danger in which I’d find m’self if I let ye ride after them alone. I warrant the master will say that I should ha’ locked ye in your bedchamber or sat on ye to keep ye here
.”

  “If you dared to try that—”

  “Nay, I would not!” Tip chuckled. “I took your measure long since, mistress, and I’m nae such a fool as to get wrong o’ ye. But I’m goin’ wi’ ye nonetheless. Ye’d best make up your mind to that.”

  She smiled. “I confess, Tip, that I shall be glad of your company, but I fear that you will pay heavily for helping me.”

  Aye, I will. Mayhap ye should give up this daft notion, he said hopefully.

  “I cannot. I keep feeling that this must be another trap, that my brother will catch Sir Quinton and this time there will be no one at hand to help him escape. I must prevent that if I can.”

  “Aye, sure, and d’ye think the master doesna take such risks into his mind each time he leads a raid? Mayhap ye dinna ken his grand reputation, mistress.”

  “Mayhap you forget that I first made his acquaintance in a dungeon cell,” Janet reminded him tartly.

  “Aye, well, there is that.”

  “We are wasting time,” she said. “If you are coming with me, make haste.” With that, she passed him and hurried down the stairs, delighting in the freedom the breeks gave her to do so. Skirts were a nuisance.

  “I’m thinking,” Tip said as he clattered down behind her, “that we’d best slip out through the kitchen. We can whisk round to the stable, and they’ll no pay us much heed.” As they reached the entrance to the kitchen, he added thoughtfully, “Ye might ha’ met wi’ trouble tryin’ to tak’ a horse on your own, ye ken.”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Do you really think anyone would dare try to stop me?”

  “If ye come over the mistress, and if the master ha’ failed to leave orders forbidding it, ye might win through—if the lads be no so shocked at seeing ye in netherstocks that they fall down dead in their tracks.”

  “In that event, they would not stop me,” she pointed out Realizing from his set expression that he meant to continue an argument he found promising, she added evenly, “You win, Tip. You have convinced me that I need your help. Tell them whatever you must in the stable, but hurry!”

  “Aye, sure.” He obeyed but not before muttering, apparently to himself, “They’ll be long gone and back afore we catch them up, any road.”

  Ignoring him, and using the glow emanating from the banked kitchen fires to see her way, Janet hurried to the door leading out to the bailey. Opening it and peering out, she said, “I doubt that anything bad will happen before the Bairns reach Kielbeck village, Tip, because ambushers are bound to want to catch them with the goods in hand. It is their safe return that concerns me most.”

  They fell silent while they crossed the cobblestones.

  Inside the dark stable, Janet helped saddle two horses that Tip selected, and they rode out through the postern gate, where the single guard barely glanced at the “lad” with Tip.

  “You see,” she said when they reached the rough track leading south along the ridge between the Teviot and Broadhaugh Water. “He scarcely looked at me.”

  “Aye,” Tip said, “because ye rode wi’ me, and because doubtless he thinks we ride to join the raid or to meet them on their return.”

  Knowing better than to continue the argument, or indeed, to continue speaking while they rode, Janet turned her attention to following him along the rough track. They had not reached the pass into Liddesdale before she realized that she had gravely underestimated her ability to follow a narrow, nearly invisible track in the dark. Often she had no idea what Tip saw that led him to take one way instead of another. When she realized that the misty moon, which had hovered to the left for most of the way, had apparently drifted ahead of them, she called a halt.

  “Where are we?” she demanded as she drew her horse alongside his. “I vow, Tip, if you are leading me in circles to keep me from finding them, at the first opportunity I will run you through with a sword myself.”

  “I wouldna lead ye astray, mistress,” he said.

  She heard injury in his voice, but she had not lived with a Border lord all her life only to accept what might be no more than a serviceable lie. “Why is the moon ahead of us then? It has stayed to our left until now.”

  “We’ve turned a bit is all,” he said. “D’ye see them two hills yonder, the ones that look like a lass’s soft bubbies?”

  Following his gesture, she saw the twin dark mounds ahead. “Aye, so?”

  “We were headed straight toward the one on the right. That be Cauldcleuch Head. Two thousand foot, at least, it be. Same as Greatmoor Hill yonder on the left. We aim to go betwixt the two, through the pass. Then we’ll follow the burn there till it meets wi’ Hermitage Water.”

  She nodded, knowing now where they were going. “When we can see the castle, it will become easier to see the track, will it not?”

  “Aye, well, that depends on if ye want them at Hermitage to see us or no.”

  Janet sighed. “I had no notion how many pitfalls I should encounter in this venture, Tip. You are right to be exasperated with me. I certainly do not want to have to explain myself to Buccleuch. Not before we find the others, at all events.”

  “Now, that’s just what I were thinking myself,” he said. “Himself wouldna appreciate the need we ha’ to look out for the master.”

  Detecting irony in his tone, she chose to ignore it. “Exactly so,” she said.

  Reaching the top of the pass did not take as long as she had feared, and by crossing Hermitage Water as soon as they reached it, they managed to pass near the castle without having to pass within sight of its great walls. The shrubbery on the banks of the rushing burn shielded them, but Janet was grateful when the moon chose the few minutes of their passing to slip behind a cloud. By the time the cloud drifted on, they had reached the northwest bank of the Liddel.

  With satisfaction she saw that she could easily have found the ford, but she made no objection when Tip slipped from his saddle to search for Sir Quinton’s mark. He found it quickly.

  “They’ve made for Larriston and Saughtree,” he said. “’Tis just as I expected. They’ll be wantin’ to cross over the line betwixt Saughtree and Deadwater—on the Larriston Fells, ye ken, the far side o’ Foulmire Heights.”

  “Why?”

  “’Tis the easiest route into Tynedale, that’s why.”

  “But won’t the English be watching the easiest route the most carefully?”

  “Aye, they will, but Foulmire Heights be well named, mistress. I doubt they ken them as well as the master does. And, too, because he kens fine that they’ll be somewhere about, he’ll spy them easily and avoid their lookouts. We’ll do the same if ye’ll trust to my lead.”

  “They will have mounted patrols, Tip.”

  “Do I no ken that? Does not the master? Mistress, ye’ve ventured into a business best managed by them who’ve managed it these hundred years and more.”

  “I warrant you are right,” Janet said with a sigh, resisting the impulse to point out that neither Tip nor his beloved master had been doing anything for a hundred years. “I cannot get it out of my head that they will need help tonight. How could I live with myself if I ignored that voice and something dreadful happened to them?”

  “Aye, that’d be gey hard, that would,” Tip agreed.

  “So you see, then.”

  He did not speak for some moments. Then he said, “I see, mistress, but I dinna think that either of us will persuade the master of such a need.”

  She sighed again. “What will he do, Tip—to you, I mean?”

  “Best if we dinna think about that,” he muttered.

  Guilt nearly sank her determination then, for it was as clear as if he had spoken the words aloud that he had resigned himself to a dire fate.

  “I’ll not let him flog you,” she said fiercely.

  “If ye can stop him, ye’re mightier than I think ye be,” Tip said.

  Janet swallowed hard. “Should we go back, then? I do not want you hurt.”

  Silence. Then Tip said, “Nay, then, we�
��ve come this far. We might as well go a bit farther and see what’s o’clock.” He gave spur to his pony.

  Relieved, Janet followed, hoping hers would have sense enough to avoid stepping into a hole.

  They passed through Larriston village without seeing so much as a dog or a cat. If any people remained in the cottages, they were keeping sensibly out of sight. Shortly afterward, Janet discerned the shadowy outline of Saughtree atop the next rise, but before they reached the village, Tip turned south. They rode uphill for a time after that, keeping to the darkest shadows and listening carefully as they rode.

  The ponies’ hooves made little sound on the grass-covered ground, but Janet knew that sound carried far in the night and that the two of them had to be making more noise than one. Still, she was increasingly grateful for Tip’s company. She would not have wanted to be alone in the wavering dark shadows.

  Sounds of a bubbling burn reached her ears, and she was glad to hear it. They were approaching the pass, the most likely place for watchers, but surely the noise of the burn would cover any sound she and Tip or their ponies made.

  She barely saw movement when Tip put one hand in the air, but she had been watching and drew rein at once. They were in deep shadow on a shrub-clad hillside.

  Tip slid from his saddle, tied his reins to a handy branch, and moved silently back to her.

  Leaning down, she murmured, “What is it? What do you hear?”

  “Naught,” he replied. “But we’d be fools to ride farther without first making certain the way ahead be clear. We’ll no follow the track, any road, but keep well to the right of it. There be another way—along that hillside yonder—and I dinna think the English ken that the wee track exists. A deer would ha’ trouble seeing it, the master says, and he kens it fine.”

  “Will you leave me here, then, whilst you look?”

  “Ye can come along if ye like, but ye’d be safer here. Tis dark and ’tis off the usual track and not easily stumbled on by them wha’ dinna ken it fine.”

  What he was thinking, she knew, was that he would fare better without her. He was more accustomed than she was to moving quietly when an enemy was at hand. She was rapidly coming to a new assessment of her prowess, and she did not much like it. Suppressing an unexpected shiver of fear at being left, she said, “Go then, Tip. I’ll stay with the horses. What do I do if I see someone?”