Fair Helen

by Andrew Greig

  “Still not enough,” Jed muttered.

  But among so many men, my nag indefatigable and sure-footed, my borrowed jack fair set to turn aside a blade, I felt myself invulnerable. Just cause was on our side.

  Still, the drink was wearing off and I was arse-nippit by the time we came down through trees to the Kershope burn and gathered there. The dogs panted, their warm moist breath rising in clouds from the little bellows of their chests. Our leaders talked. Once across, we were in England. Law allowed our hot-trod pursuit, but since when did Law count for much in the Debatable Lands?

  In the soft banks we could see the clart and stir from many hooves. A muddy trail wound up the far bank, over the brae and away into scrub and trees. Angus talked to Bell, Will Irvine and Dand hung close by. Adam glanced round at me, grinned sardonically.

  Earl Angus raised his sword and rode hard into the Kershope, Rob Bell tight in behind. And we all followed, our nags sure-footed among the tumbling waters.

  Once across, I have to say England looked very much like Scotland.

  We passed Bewcastle Fort at a distance, scanning anxiously, but none rode out to challenge us. It seemed our way had been made clear. At the far end of the dene, three burns descended, one made a bonnie watergaw, the colours hanging in moistened air. The sleuth-hounds hesitated, ran this way and that.

  It seemed the raiding party had split up three ways. The prints were least by the western burn. Another quick parley. This time the lesser heidsmen were called in. Jed sat in the saddle, munching silently, his face impassive as he kept scanning the hills and woods around us.

  Some of the impetus had gone from our hot-trod. What were the Warden’s kye to us, or us to them? Only loyalty kept us there, awaiting our heidsman’s word. Some shifted in the saddle, muttered among themselves. The raiders and their booty would soon disappear into the Solway Moss and the innumerable valleys that lay beyond. Yet the trackers insisted the animal prints were fresh-pressed. If we hurried on, we might catch up with them.

  Dand and Adam came back to us. Our mixed party of Bells, Irvines and Flemings would continue pursuit along the burn that coursed deep into England. The bulk of the Warden’s men would take the middle way. The third trail we would have to leave, for our numbers were not enough.

  “Not enough as it is,” Jed said quietly.

  Robert Bell and a dozen or so of his closest men rode over to us. He clasped Dand Fleming by the shoulder as a man might clasp a flagon of wine he intended to drain to the last. He stared at Adam, ignoring me. My friend looked impassively back. Jed stirred at my side.

  “We ride with you till this is settled,” Adam said.

  “Glad o’ that,” Bell said, then turned his horse and led on down towards the paler sky that stretched above the Moss.

  Snuck in behind Adam, I looked back to see the Warden’s party dwindle and disappear away to our left. We were barely sixty now, and the short day was well advanced. Buccleuch’s man, Davy “The Lady,” rode easy nearby, reins in one hand, the other lightly on his sword hilt.

  Still we pressed on. Marvelling at the endurance of Handsome Jenny, I leaned forward in the high saddle and brushed my hand over her ears. She shivered impatiently. Horse and dogs and men, all had such stamina.

  We turned the shoulder of a steep and narrow cleuch. At the bottom of the wooded valley spread a wide, glinting burn, and on the far side of it were gathered many fat kye, sheep herded by dogs, and fine horses led by halters. The last of a group of armed men were still splashing through the river. They were scarcely half our number, looking back at us as they tried to herd their booty away into the willow scrub and woods beyond.

  The Bells unhitched their lances and crossbows, we unsheathed our swords, and all rode hard for the river. Robert Bell plunged first into the water and held his cob’s head steady, pistol held high in one hand, sword in the other, crossbow bouncing on its hanger. Unencumbered by caution or doubt, he seemed unstoppable. The others followed in narrow file, for the crossing place was not wide. The men on the far side fled for the trees, leaving the sheep behind.

  The first of our party heaved up onto the far bank. The next group were mid-stream. The remainder, we Flemings and Irvines, were still on the near side, waiting for the ford to clear.

  “Well, fuck me sideways,” Jed muttered. Then he bellowed, “Ambush!”

  Horsemen burst from the trees up to our left. On the far side of the river, the men who had seemed to be fleeing rode back down the hill, joined now by many others riding out of the scrub. Our men who had been crossing now hesitated mid-stream. I heard pistol reports, and the first man slipped from his horse and was carried away face down in the water.

  We’d been proper shafted.

  I turned Handsome Jenny to flee the horsemen sweeping down on us, but Jed grabbed my bridle and pulled her head round. He pointed to a thicket on higher ground, off to our left, then put his head down and went hell for leather. Adam was beside him, myself just behind, Philby at our heels, Dand and his retainers lagging as we galloped across the line of the attack for the succour of the trees.

  The charge swept down on us, yelling obscenities, swords and lances flashing. I made it into the copse and the charge swerved away like a torrent turned by a boulder. Looking back, in the stillness of the moment I saw the boy Watt raise his sword as the leading lance tore into him. He was hoist into the air, sword flying from his hand, then trampled over.

  I hear that thin scream yet, and the silence at its end.

  That ambush bore away a dozen of our men. Dand had vanished. The remainder of us huddled in the trees. Adam looked to Jed, who shook his head. We were but five, and one was Buccleuch’s man Davy the Lady, who set me quite on edge.

  Across the river, a swirl and scatter of horse and men. I could see Rob Bell unhorse one rider and hack down another as he called his men back. The mid-stream company hesitated, then turned back our way. Perhaps our deepest instinct is to die nearer home.

  Bell rallied his force at the far bank, then set them back across the river. Jed grunted, leaned forward on his saddle like a man attending the argument of a play. Downslope, the ambush party were finishing off the last of our men. They would come for us next.

  I looked to Adam.

  “Exam time, mon ami,” he said. I reached inside my jack and plucked out the stiletto. Well used, I could take one or two with me when they came. Philby looked up at his master, whined anxiously. Adam quelled him with a downward gesture. The bedraggled lurcher stood and waited for whatever happened next.

  Jed was still studying the river. Robert Bell was mid-stream now, his horse moving slow through the water. Two men were right behind, gaining on him, one with lance, the other with sword levelled.

  I saw it most clearly. At the last moment Bell leaned across and let the bright lance go by. Then he twisted in the saddle, brought up his pistol and shot the man full in the face. The second rider hesitated. Bell’s sword descended and cut him clean between helmet and jack. Then he urged his horse and his remaining men on towards our bank.

  “Yon big cunt is a bonnie fighter,” Jed said. “But they are too many.”

  Indeed they were. A dozen were riding warily up the slope to our small stand of trees. The rest of their force, several score, turned to face the Bells gathered at the riverbank.

  Adam looked at me and grinned like a man who has placed a bet and just understood the foolishness of his wager. “I long wondered what you carried by your heart,” he said.

  I turned the stiletto blade, so thin, so sharp. “So now you know.”

  All had gone calm and slow-clear, as in the Langholm pend. The hot pish cooled in my britches, willow leaves drifted down against my face. Davy Graham lifted his sword and for a moment stared calmly into my eyes, then winked. He then turned to face the approaching riders. For myself, I saw the yellow coif of Elenora Jarvis crown the newel post before she closed the door and turned to me for pleasure, and my father’s calm face as his hammer descended on the barrel hoo
p.

  The horsemen began to encircle the trees. Philby’s hair stood up like grey grass, his growl unrelenting.

  “Kerrs,” Jed said, and flexed back his great shoulders.

  It was then that the Johnstone men came down the eastern brae like wild boar, if boar had sword and lance for tusks, and could roar oaths. And the Kerrs were gone, galloping downstream. They did not get far before they were unhorsed and cut down. As we emerged from the trees, their force by the river were already urging their streaming horses up the far bank and away.

  James Johnstone reined up by Robert Bell. Dand Fleming dragged himself out from under his dying horse and limped over to join them and the other heidsmen. I had to admire his determination to stay close to where advantage might lie.

  My calm left me. My stiletto shook as I put it away, and I had a crunching headache. I was also beginning to smell. I was thankful when our heidsmen decided we would collect what beasts remained and head home to cross the Border before night fell.

  The ballad of our heroic foray—folly, I should write—has, mercifully, already died out. “The Ballad of Jarrall Burn, or Earl Angus’s Revenge” did not speak of the disposal of the dead. I am no singer, so I will.

  We had need of haste. Deep in the English Western March, we were far from our lands and allies. The raiding force had scattered but could regroup. Already mist and dimness silted up the fields and hedgerows.

  So we did not bury our dead, nor even drag the last few from the river. While some rounded up what cattle and horse the raiders had left, we stripped the corpses of what was of use. I strapped a bundle of jacks and a clutch of swords to the pommel, pouched one liquor flask and drained another.

  The dead were too weighty to add to our already weary nags. A couple of minor heidsmen flopped like long sacks of flour across the horses we had recaptured. Blood dulled the hilt of Davy Graham’s sword as he hunkered to wash clean his long fine hands in the burn. I turned away to see Dand Fleming without expression strip jack and boots from young Watt, then lift him in his arms, place the ruined boy across behind his saddle, make him secure.

  I had to honour him for that. The others we left behind where they had fallen. The Kerrs still lay in a strew by the river. In time flocksmen would come, sort out their own and bury the rest or leave them to fatten corbie and fox.

  Riding close together, glancing round, our dogs herding beasts along, weary to death we scuttled back towards Bewcastle Waste. The valley below smelled of dankness, blood and shit. In the ballad they call it the Jarrall, but we just called it yon place.

  None looked back as we crested the brae. I could not find it again. I have never entirely left it.

  Young Watt’s mud- and blood-smeared head bounced on the flank of Dand Fleming’s nag. My eyes fixed on that horrid bounce and flop till he began to stiffen and darkness took us all.

  Hameward

  On the sole shelf in my garret cubby-hole, peat-brown Monsieur Montaigne leans up against faded blue calfskin of Titus Lucretius Carus. What stops them falling over is a pile consisting of my big black King’s Bible (lest some suspect me of Papist tendencies), Tacitus, The Republic (overly provocative in these times?), a few quarto plays by Ben Jonson, signed during his second visit here, and a bound handwritten prompt of Love’s Labours Won, memento of a night long syne.

  The point being? That I have abandoned much in the course of my life. That my host’s library downstairs is more than sufficient to my needs. That in truth I am no scholar.

  Of all the books I have known, it is the upright two that most speak to and for me. I take down my precious Florio translation of Lucretius. (A lifetime ago I showed Fowler my first attempt at De Rerum Natura. He handed it back with a sorrowful shake of his head. On the way home I dropped it in a watchman’s brazier.) I open a page at random, scan . . . “If men saw that a term was set to their troubles, they would find strength in some way to withstand the hocus-pocus and intimidations of the prophets.”

  I return the volume to its brother, inspired and chastened by my presumption. I lack one man’s wit and the other’s metaphysics.

  Nothing to be done about that! I return to my scratchings on middle-grade rag paper. When I am dead—my bones whisper this will be my last winter, though they have lied these past ten—a servant clearing out this room will find all I have written in the box under the bed. Illiterate, he will consign them to the flames along with my few and heavily patched (and faintly malodorous) clothes.

  And yet I will not stop my story, but hasten it on.

  Earl Angus and his party were already waiting for us at Tinnis Hill. It seemed they had secured a number of yowes and some lame kye, left behind by the fleeing reivers, who had disappeared into the hills with their booty.

  Earl Angus, for all his hauteur, looked weary, and seemed to have lost one of his pretty daggers. As we approached, with the triumphant Johnstone at our head, I thought the former Warden gazed on the present one as a dog eyes a well-presented bone.

  I had seen the gathering of a gang, now I witnessed its sundering. Many went their own way at Tinnis. It was dawn of the day by the old standing stone, cold and red-pink as lifeblood carried downriver. With just a quick shake of the hand and slap on the shoulder from their heidsman, each rider and their dogs hurried homewards, duty done.

  The rest of us pressed on, driving what beasts we had recovered. Angus’s head was down as he rode beside Robert Bell, who seemed in high spirits. James Johnstone and his men kept some way off, and he appeared very pleased with life. Behind them Will Irvine and Dand Fleming were in converse, Adam a few paces behind.

  I came up alongside Jed. He looked at me and shook his tousled head.

  “Never ride awa from an ambush,” he said. “They’ll cut you down from ahint.”

  “Robert Bell managed it,” I said. I could not forget the man’s agility as he’d slewed round on the saddle mid-river, shot one, cut down the next.

  “You are not Robert Bell.”

  “Nor wish to be.”

  He chuckled, took a swig and passed me the flask.

  “So what d’you think of your first hot-trod?”

  I poured some liquor down my throat. “At the time, I feared it would be my last,” I spluttered. “Now I pray it will be.”

  I passed the flask back. It was the very worst brandy I ever tasted. Jed took it, laughed and rode on. I looked at him with some curiosity.

  “How do you live like this and smile?”

  He turned in the saddle and looked me in the eye. “Because, laddie, I ken I am going to die.”

  He rode on, singing under his breath. It has taken me forty years, much thought and reading, to grasp in entirety what he offered me that day.

  What was left of our company gathered at the home farm by the Hermitage. It was the first time I’d seen the Warden’s stronghold. It was near big as Embra Castle, and as cheerless.

  “Heating yon must cost Angus,” Jed murmured.

  “I doubt he’ll have it for much longer,” Adam said, and we sat, saddle-weary, watching Earl Angus formally shake hands with a triumphant Sir James Johnstone.

  The sheep, kye and a handful of young cobs were sorted and counted. Earl Angus stood high on his stirrups and shouted out his thanks. Words like loyalty and honour and rightfully ours were shredded on the wind. Johnstone stood nearby, grinning.

  “Six Wardens in as many years,” Jed muttered. “I’ve kenned better-ordered whorehouses.”

  Earl Angus raised his hand to his following, then turned away and went into the Hermitage, motioning the other senior men to follow. After a short hesitation, Adam slid from his saddle, passed the reins to Jed and followed them inside.

  With relief I slid off Handsome Jenny. I walked up and down, kicking cramp from my legs. I never wanted to sit astride a horse again. My wee legs would be bowed forever.

  “Boss wants to see you.” It was the slab of cliff that passed for Buccleuch’s guard. Just looking up at him gave me vertigo.

  �
�I’ll send him my report.”

  “In person. Crichton Castle.”

  “Bless me,” I said. “A conducted tour.”

  “Prick,” he said. Spat on the ground.

  “You should meet my friend Snood,” I said. “You two would have a fine blether.”

  “Never fuckin’ heard of him,” he said. “Be there, soon.”

  He lumbered away.

  “Pal of yours?” Jed asked at my elbow.

  “Admirer,” I said. “Can’t seem to shake him off.”

  Then we sat and waited, as such as us do the world over, for our heidsmen to reappear to say we can go hame.

  Mother

  I wrote nothing yesterday. I sat at the table, a mass of aching dough. The feathery quill lay ready but I hadn’t the heart to make it fly. It is that time of year when some whiff in the air, some change in the light, minds me of her.

  At last I gave up, and creaked down the winding backstairs, shuffled across the courtyard and into the Drummond chapel. Chill in there. I chose a candle, dropped coin into the poor box then struck the flint, set the bougie at the feet of Mother Mary, and with difficulty bent these penitent knees.

  The sweating sickness, the falling sickness, apoplexy, wet lung and Lowland fever—I have seen these raptors swoop down, take grip on the body, adjust, then carry another from this world. They leave behind the living, shaken, bereft, relieved that it was not us, not yet.

  Most men, women and children die of causes that remain mysteries to us. But the sword into the belly, dagger in the heart or knife across the throat, the hangman’s noose that choked off Black Jock Armstrong and many another reiver as that long song ended—they are understood by all. They are truly natural causes.

  We give our illness common names, the doctors cry them in Latin as if that meant something better understood. We blame them on rats and fishwives’ curses, witchcraft and outsiders and contagion from the stars that fall. In my days I have sat alongside doctors, herbalists, necromancers, dispensers of oils, spells, leeches and charms, users of the philtre and the surgeon’s saw, and I have seen and heard enough to know that they know nothing and understand less. The only one I value is the apothecary who dilutes pain, and the wine-maker who can for a few hours let us forget it.