Raider's Tide

by Maggie Prince

  He watches me push up his sleeve and remove the bandages. His flesh is almost healed, though extensively marked with deep red scars. I smile at him. “This really is better, isn’t it. We’ll leave these off today. You just need to get your strength back now.”

  Suddenly, instead of me crouching over him, he is crouching over me. I draw back into the herbs and straw of the floor covering. He makes no move to readjust the distance between us. Slowly I relax. He stands up, no longer trembling when he tries to make his limbs support him. “Aye, you’re right. I have to get my strength back. I must start walking and running and lifting. I’ll do a few jobs round the cottage, mend the wall and suchlike. Don’t worry. I’ll be careful. And dumb.”

  He stands straighter these days, less stooped, and seems taller than ever, too large for the rags I have provided. He looks down at me and asks, “Are ye wondering if ye’ve mended a monster, mistress?”

  I was.

  Outside, tree branches tap at the empty window, stick against stick in the rising breeze. We both speak at the same time.

  “I’m sorry… you first…”

  “No… it wasnae anything…”

  “I was just going to say that you’re better off without your weapons, Robert. They would be incriminating. I’ll give you a knife and bow to travel north with, so that you can feed yourself. What were you going to say?”

  “Just… it’s a pity there’s warfare between our people.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll not be coming here again. I suppose ye wouldnae…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You might come here again. You might raid us again if…” I break off sharply. I nearly became more of a traitor than I am already, by mentioning the raid planned by our own men against the Scottish borders. “I must go. Verity and I are taking the shearings to Kendal Wool Market today. I’ll be back in a day or two.”

  “Come back tomorrow.”

  “I’ll see.” I kiss him on the cheek, surprising both of us. It is an apology, I tell myself, for having misled him about the weapons.

  Chapter 13

  I ride to Kendal on Saint Hilda, with Verity on Meadowsweet, and George and Jonah, two of Father’s henchmen, on the cart with the wool. Half our shearings we keep and the other half goes to the Kendal Wool Market. The half we keep is made into woollen cloth by women from the valley, and half of that is then sold by Mother to wool merchants who travel from the south, going in a great loop from us round the wool farmers of the Yorkshire Ryddings, then down through Suffolk.

  Verity is oddly quiet on the journey, but at the wool market she brightens up and bargains even better prices than usual. There is something about her which seems to say take it or leave it, I hardly care. She laughs and jokes, ignores aggression and innuendo as though they had not happened, closes deals sharply as bewildered buyers name prices they had not intended. It is all rather impressive. On the way back I ask her, “What is it, Verity? You’re in a strange mood.” She looks at me, her cheeks flushed but her manner edgy, and for a moment I think she is going to tell me something momentous. Then she just laughs and shrugs her shoulders.

  I visit Robert the following day. I have been taking him juniper infusions to cleanse his blood, but today he pushes the cup away and says, “Enough! It’s vile.” He looks in dismay at the new set of clothes I have brought him. They are old and worn, filched from the cupboard at the back of the men’s common room, but at least they are bigger and likely to be a better fit. He takes them away to a place upstream where the beck flows between high, mossy banks, to lie and soak himself before putting them on. When he comes back, with the clothes disdainfully half laced and flapping, he says, “Beatrice, I need to get the strength back into my arm now. Will you bring me a bow?”

  I hesitate. A Scot with a weapon, on the loose in the woods, doesn’t seem like a good idea.

  “I could teach you to shoot, too,” he adds. I stare at him. To be taught to shoot by a Scot seems the ultimate crossing of boundaries.

  “I can shoot perfectly well already, thank you Robert,” I reply.

  “You could shoot better.”

  “You haven’t seen me shoot.”

  “I don’t need to. I’ve seen you push people off towers. That’s enough. You hesitate. You fumble. I owe my life to it.”

  “Are you sure you want to teach me to have a more decisive attitude towards killing, then?”

  “Aye, we might eat better if you go off into the forest and kill a stag or two, my sweeting. I can’t yet, wi’ this arm.”

  “Heavens above, you’re criticising the service now, are you?”

  We both start laughing. He takes hold of my right arm. “Are ye right-fisted?” He raises my elbow until it is level with my ear, and then slowly pulls it back. I can almost feel the arrow between my fingers, the bowstring pulling hard. Robert moves round to stand behind me, leans close, raises my left arm straight ahead of me. He says, “Bring a bow. Let me teach you.”

  I rub my arms. I am covered in gooseflesh. “I’ll see. I’ll bring you more meat anyway, Robert, some venison if I can, but I’m not going out shooting stags myself.”

  For the next two days I do not go to the cottage. Instead I accompany some of our henchmen who are helping the homesteaders rebuild their dwellings. There is a soothing satisfaction in seeing the open framework of upright and horizontal timber beams grow, and the vertical slats being slotted in neatly at top and bottom. I collect hazel reeds from the woods, and help weave them in.

  Verity and James are helping too. His rambling stone farmhouse survived untouched, so he is helping others rebuild. The two of them work together unspeaking, chopping straw and mashing it with clay from the foreshore to daub on the woven reed walls. When it is dry the Cockleshell Man scores it with his sharp knives. He is coming in from his clifftop more often these days.

  Several times I ride over the hill with the cart behind Saint Hilda to bring lime from the kiln on the other side of Hagditch. We pound it with stones until it is dust, and use it to make plaster for the outer walls. Each time I take the main track through the woods I am aware of Robert a mile to the east of me. I find that helping rebuild the houses has renewed my anger at him. I cannot bear the thought that all our hard work might be burnt down again next spring. Nevertheless, when I do return to the cottage on the third day, I take my bow with me. He wants me to be a better shot. Well, he may regret it if he should ever return.

  He is up a tree. I cannot find him at first. I have come silently through the woods and he has not heard me. I find him sitting high in a beech tree, chipping away at the bark. I am able to stand for several minutes watching him before he is aware of my presence. I load an arrow and draw back the bowstring. He sees me just before I let fly. The arrow thuds into the tree trunk below him. After an initial start, he recovers his composure and laughs.

  “You’ll be hard put to hit a barn wi’ that stance, Beatrice. Here, let me show you.” He swings down from the tree. I can see that it hurts his arm, but he merely grunts. I look up to see what he has been doing in the tree, then pretend I have not seen, because it is my own name carved there.

  “I thought you’d abandoned me,” he says.

  I tell him about my work rebuilding the houses, stressing the effort involved. He does not comment, and instead starts arranging me and my bow in what seems an overly dramatic pose. I want to say to him, stop, this is ridiculous. Yet there’s something about it which reminds me of the way I ministered to his limbs when he was ill, shifting them about, arranging them to my convenience. Now he arranges mine. He presses his hand to the top of my spine, saying, “Straighten your back there. Chin down. Eyes level. Look along the line of your arm. Let your arm be an extension of your eye.” For a moment I think he has kissed the side of my neck, then I am not sure, and to make a fuss about it if he hadn’t would make me look foolish.

  Robert tries the bow himself, but his own arm is still hopelessly too weak, so he carries
on teaching me through the long afternoon. He shows me how to stand. “Balance, Beatrice. Put your weight on your back foot and pivot from there. Follow your target with your eye and your hips. Have you seen statues of Diana the Huntress?”

  “Nay sir, but it sounds mightily heathen.” I make myself sound severe and old-fashioned, like Kate or old Parson Pattinson, and he laughs, and pretends to be afraid of me.

  As twilight draws in he sets targets for me: a red leaf from autumn which has somehow escaped winter’s deliquescence, a tuft of sheep’s wool, a curl of bark, satiny inside. I hit most, and miss a few. His praise is disproportionate to my achievements. He says, “We’ll try a moving target tomorrow. Let’s you and I go hunting, Beatrice.”

  “Hunt with a Scot?” I laugh. “I think not, sir.”

  “But will you come tomorrow?”

  I nod. “We shall get caught. I fear it. You must recover now, Robert, and be on your way. If I don’t come back tomorrow… if it is too difficult… I’ve brought you enough food to last. It’s nearly Midsummer. There’s a lot to do. We have the Midsummer Revels in a week.”

  “Midsummer? Is it June already?” His eyes become distant and look past me. “I had not thought to be so far from home at Midsummer.”

  I gaze at him. He is a very different sight from the poor, wounded thing he was. His eyes meet mine, and for a moment we just look at one another. With his new, blooming, healthy look it is going to be harder to pretend he is a dumb vagrant, if he should be discovered. His russet hair and bright hazel eyes make him look exactly what he is, a Scot. Yet he isn’t fit to go. His strength lasts no time at all. To journey to Scotland he needs to be strong enough to ride or walk for miles, hide from pursuers, forage for his own food. If only his arm were stronger I could find him a boat and he could row, but there is no likelihood of his muscles and sinews recovering enough in time for such strenuous usage. He must go, and it should be soon, but to misjudge, and for him to leave while he is still too weak, would almost certainly mean he would be caught.

  He takes hold of my hand, and this time there is no mistake, when he kisses me lightly on the cheek.

  On Midsummer morning I stand in the yeasty-scented dimness of the cow byre, and confront the fact that a day without visiting Robert is a day without purpose. I lean my forehead against the cool wall and think about him.

  Today we are garlanding cattle for the Midsummer Bonfires. I go to where our best cow, Elizabeth, stands. She stares at me from between her long, straight lashes. Her grainy black nose gives off dampness, and small hairs stand out around it like a halo. I reach for her garland of scabious and wild roses, wound on to three thin willow branches twisted into a circle. In the rancid, fermented darkness the flowers are sweet and bright. I pull her ears through and she tries to push me away. Grassy heat from her flanks laps at me. The overblown fertility of summer is all around, and I am here, alone in it. I want company, someone to be human and ordinary amid all this rampant nature. Mother is out with the other married women of the valley, ceremonially dressing wells with flowers, to ensure us water throughout the summer. Verity is on an unexplained errand. She often is, these days. Leo and Dickon are herding the rest of the cattle into the barmkin, to stop them panicking when the bonfires are lit and the music and dancing start. Hugh… no, Hugh would not do.

  I stroke Elizabeth’s ridged forehead. The cattle-smelling warmth is suddenly suffocating. I get out and walk quickly up the hill, before I can start dwelling on the thought of Robert in a cowshed.

  Chapter 14

  People are gathering in the meadow already. Somewhere in the tower Germaine is tuning her fiddle. I hurry up the spiral staircase. In the doorway between the living hall and his room I find Father putting on his stomacher. His scented leather cloak hangs over the back of his oak chair. “Good morrow, Daughter,” he greets me. He likes fairs and fests, with their reason to dress up and their excuse for getting drunk. “Are you ready to celebrate Midsummer, child?”

  “Yes Father. Here, let me help you with that.”

  He releases the laces on his stomacher and they whip out through the holes with surprising force. The garment sags round his thighs. I start to lace him back into it and he says, “Your Uncle Juniper and I are concerned, Beatrice.”

  “Oh?” I look up at him.

  “You and your sister are reputed to be running wild. Your uncle wishes to set a date for the betrothals.”

  “And you, Father?” I observe the shake in his hands as I lace the last of the holes and tie a firm double bow.

  “Aye well.” He looks at me for a moment, then says, “We have to have grandchildren for the farms, Beatie, you know that. You can’t put it off for ever.”

  I straighten up. “Give me until winter, Father.” The Cockleshell Man’s words are in my head: he’ll be fit to move by Allhallows, and home before winter sets in. I just need until winter. I drape my father’s cloak round his shoulders. “Father, how would it be if Verity and I stopped running wild and you stayed off the highways?”

  I have misjudged. I know it at once. Father’s brows draw together and his cheeks turn mottled. I back away, and am gone before he can co-ordinate his limbs to follow me, but I have wondered many times since, if I had not angered him then, if he had not been angry to start with, whether things might have been different later.

  Bonfires have been lit at the four corners of the long lea on the sea side of our tower. Homesteaders from all along the valley have brought their best cows or goats with garlands round their necks. The animals are all tethered round the meadow, and have set up a great commotion, disliking the smoke and excitement in the air. Their bellowing adds a sense of wildness to the celebrations.

  I put on a red silk skirt and chemise which Mother made for me from the material which Gerald bought Verity at the May Fair, and which she threw out of the window when she arrived home. Over it I lace an embroidered cream bodice. Then I stick a rose in my hair and go out to play.

  “Oh Lordy me, she looks like a gypsy,” Kate mutters as I pass her in the gatehouse. I notice that she is also uncharacteristically bedecked and frilled.

  Simon Sims, a travelling pedlar minstrel who visits us every year at Midsummer, has arrived with his fiddle, so we are spared Germaine’s playing. She comes over to join me, looking spectacular in grass-green silk. It’s Midsummer; I’m feeling good. I smile and walk down the hill with her, and into the crowd to dance.

  The dancing is in its first frenzy on the straw-strewn grass. We make up formations without thought, and whirl around, partnering anyone who happens to be near. After a while, out of breath, we stop, and gather round the minstrel to hear the latest gossip from across the north of England. He brings news of more devastation wrought by the Scots. “Fifteen died at Nether Kellet,” he intones. We knew this already, but he has a dramatic way of telling it. “Pillage and plunder at Priest Hutton. Twenty stone houses burnt to the ground at Keswick. All t’crops of oats and barley burnt at Allithwaite…”

  We cluck our tongues and lean closer to hear how much worse others have fared than we have.

  “They came by sea, here,” Kate offers, for we have to replenish his store of gossip, by way of payment. “They took all the cattle from over at Mere Point.”

  “Aye?” Simon shakes his head. “It were horseback riders further north. Regular moss-troopers. I reckon your boat-pirates’d pass t’cattle on to them.” He laughs, showing big, strong teeth. “They’d hardly tek ’em back by boat, would they!”

  After further exchange of horrors he takes up his fiddle again and starts playing Shepherd’s Hey. Hugh arrives on his new horse, a tall roan gelding which has replaced his stolen one. He tethers it at the beck and comes to find me, and we dance together. The music is growing wilder, the cattle lowing more loudly. Suddenly amid the din there is the unmistakeable sound of a goatskin drum, picking up the rhythm of Simon’s fiddle. It is James Sorrell, sitting on one of the hay bales at the edge of the dance. I know he has been making this drum for w
eeks. Now the heel of his hand comes down on the tooled leather in beautiful, perfect time. I dance past him and wave, and he flings his hand into the air in greeting without missing a beat.

  Gerald and Germaine appear to have gone mad. They are clasped together, swaying to the beat of the music. I wonder whether to go and warn them that Father is coming out, but what happens next makes the thought irrelevant. Verity has appeared next to James. She stands with her hand on his shoulder, smiling down at him. He beats out a fast drumroll with the flats of his hands, then stands up and kisses her. There are some ways in which James’s timing is not of the best.

  People near them stop dancing and stare. Verity pulls free, not horrified but amused. The next moment a violent blow sends James lurching to his knees, and my father stands over him, crimson-faced and gasping.

  “Get away from my daughter, lout!” he shrieks. The music dies. A murmur runs round the crowd. My father raises his handpecke, the small axe with one flat end and one pointed, with which he beheads chickens. For a moment it seems he will bring it down on James’s head. Instead he swings it high and smashes it into the drum. The decorated leather bursts open.

  “Father!” Verity’s rage is shocking because it is real, not the usual rough teasing with which she and Father address each other. She snatches the axe away from him. “How dare you!”

  There is a moment of teetering violence between them. They stare into each other’s eyes. Behind them, James gets slowly to his feet, a look of fury on his face. I can see that Father is bemused. He had thought he was rescuing Verity. He says, “Daughter…?”

  Verity takes James’s hand. She says, “I should like to marry James Sorrell, if I may have your permission, Father.” Her voice is shaking. Absolute silence falls across the crowd.

  It looks for a moment as if Father is going to suffer an apoplexy. His cheeks darken to purple. His nose stands out, almost blue. He is incapable of speech. Then, slowly, he begins to laugh. He says, “I like your wit, Daughter,” and sets off back up the hill to the tower, muttering, “Very good. Oh, very good.”