by Amanda Scott
They had made little noise, but there were still only two of them. If armed men waited in the trees, they would likely have seen or heard some sign of them by now. Indeed, they would likely be dead. Although he and Loder were both skilled at defending themselves, the odds were not in their favor. He wondered again why Loder had seemed so willing to enter the woods alone.
Loder was not a friend. Having made no secret of his belief that Hugh served as deputy warden only because he had a powerful kinsman in London, he also made it plain that he thought he, Loder, would make a better deputy. If he laid eyes on the girl, he would surely tell Scrope that Hugh had seen her and tried to protect her. He would do that just to make trouble, and Hugh knew that Scrope would listen.
He did not trust any of Scrope’s men. Most were mercenaries who, for a price, would do whatever Scrope told them to do. They cared little for folks on either side of the line. On the other hand, Hugh believed that his own men generally felt as he did about the attack, especially with regard to the burning of so many crops and cottages, and the terrorizing of women and children.
The burned cat-and-clay cottages did not matter much, because their owners could rebuild them quickly—usually in a day. Stone towers were easily patched, and doubtless many people had managed to remove their belongings, just as those in the clearing had.
As for cattle and other livestock, Hugh told himself sardonically that any loss would be a temporary annoyance at best, because the Liddesdale men would just steal others to replace them. Crops were a different matter, though, for without them people could starve, which was why Scrope was so bent on destroying them.
Borderers on both sides of the line disapproved of burning crops and had since the beginning of the violence a century before. When the Earl of Hertford had served as a march warden, he had once had to hire Irishmen to burn the Scots’ standing corn. His English Borderers had refused to burn their neighbors’ crop.
The size of Scrope’s army precluded such refusal, and Hugh’s men dared not disobey Scrope’s orders, in any case. They knew that many Grahams were already at risk, because Scrope suspected that members of the tribe had helped Buccleuch with the raid on Carlisle. He blamed them as fiercely as he blamed Buccleuch, and he was bent on punishing as many as he could catch and convict.
Still, Hugh thought, it was one thing to order men to pursue someone who had just stolen one’s cattle, or to help carry out a righteous act of vengeance. But Grahams, like other clans with members on both sides of the line, disliked setting off in cold blood to harry folks who might be allied in marriage or otherwise to them or their kinsmen. Their way of life, after all, was much the same.
Even Scrope’s mercenaries had displayed certain wariness upon entering Liddesdale. They had obeyed Scrope’s command, but Hugh knew that they hated and feared the area.
Liddesdale fairly teemed with scoundrels, but the forests and bogs that protected their hideouts terrified most invaders. Even the mercenaries knew that any safe paths—if the reivers had not blocked them with tree trunks or the like—were imperceptible to untrained eyes. Added to the ever-present risk of ambush, therefore, invaders risked floundering, even drowning, in a stinking swamp.
With these thoughts stirring his unease again, and reminding him again that one girl in a tree might mean many men in other trees, Hugh was glad to see Loder emerge from the third cottage, shake his head, and go to mount his horse. Watching him, hearing nothing more menacing than water still dripping from the leaves of the trees, Hugh wondered if the massive raid would accomplish anything positive.
Many—Scrope’s men and Hugh’s as well—had commented quietly on Scrope’s weak justification for so great an invasion. The usual excuse for a warden’s raid was that he had goods to pursue. That was not so today.
A warden could also pursue a man he wished to bring to justice, but that required him to declare a “hot trod,” and such a pursuit had to take place within six days of the offense. One could hardly argue that a military invasion taking place months after the offense fit that definition.
However, Scrope had offered the third excuse, declaring that the activities of a particular surname—to wit, the heathenish Scotts—had become so obnoxious that they warranted the laying waste of Liddesdale with fire and sword. Even that excuse was feeble, though, considering that their leader lay in ward at Blackness.
“I still think we should fire the cots,” Loder said as he joined Hugh. “There’s still smoldering peat on the hearth in each one, and only the outer thatch will be wet. You saw how easily the ones in the dale caught fire despite the rain.”
“Leave them,” Hugh said again.
Shrugging, Loder turned his horse back up the slope the way they had come.
Hugh nearly suggested that he take another route, one that would not pass near the tree where the girl was hiding. He dared not, though. Not only would any other route likely prove more dangerous but he did not want to take even a chance of stirring Loder’s curiosity.
They entered the shadowy gloom of the woods.
“Look at that,” Loder said abruptly.
Although the shadows were dense, Hugh thought at first that Loder had seen the girl in the tree. He was looking that way.
Even as that thought crossed his mind, however, he heard a snarl and saw a wild black boar angrily pawing ground near the base of a tall beech.
Almost certain it was the tree where he had seen the girl, Hugh grabbed his longbow and swung it into position to shoot. Quickly nocking an arrow, he let fly, aiming to wound the boar rather than kill it.
“Bad shot,” Loder said when the animal dove screeching into underbrush.
Hugh quickly sent a second arrow after the first and was nocking a third when the screeching stopped.
“You got him!” Loder exclaimed. “We can take boar steaks to his lordship.”
“Let’s see if we can fetch him without falling into a bog,” Hugh said.
“I never thought you could hit him,” Loder said, clearly impressed.
“It wasn’t as hard as you might think,” Hugh said. “I shot too quickly the first time; that’s all.”
His eyes still alight at the thought of roasted boar meat, Loder urged his horse to a trot and rode on ahead.
Hugh followed at a more leisurely pace. Glancing up as he passed beneath the tall beech, he could see no one.
Three
Say thou, lady, and tell thou me
How long thou wilt sit in that tree.
LAURIE FELT AS IF she might tumble from the tree out of sheer relief when the two men rode away. She heard them stop to truss up the boar, and for a few moments her terror returned, but then they were gone. For a long while, the only sounds were the faint gurgling of a nearby burn and the soft drip-drip of rainwater falling from leaves to the forest floor.
Not until she heard the chatter of a squirrel and an exchange of birdcalls did she say quietly, “Are you all right, Sym?”
“Aye, sure,” the lad muttered from his precarious perch above her on a branch that strained even under his slight weight. “’Tis odd he missed the creature when it were standing and then hit it when it were running. Me dad says that’s the hardest bowshot to make, ’specially through shrubs like that.”
“You heard what he said. He shot too quickly the first time. Likely, his nerves were twitching a bit here in our woods.”
“Aye, he did say that, too,” the boy agreed, adding with disdain, “English.”
“They found their way to your clearing, Sym. Few on this side of the line know where it is. It is never wise to underestimate the English, laddie.”
“Well, at least they didna fire our cots,” Sym said practically. “Can we get down now, Laurie, d’ye think?”
“Aye, I doubt they’ll come back here today.”
“Can ye get out o’ the tree wi’out help?”
She grinned. “Can you?”
“Aye, sure, I can,” he retorted indignantly.
“Well, I’m going
to get down first,” she said.
“Ye’ll ha’ to,” he agreed. “I canna very easily get by ye.”
Not until she moved did she realize how stiff she had become, sitting there tightly tucked against the tree’s stout trunk. When the two men had ridden into the clearing, she and Sym had crept precariously upward until she could no longer see the forest floor through the leaves and branches of the beech. Then, when the boar had rushed the tree, either stirred by their scent or simply by its own cantankerous nature, she had thought they were spent. Surely, the two men would come straight to their tree to see what the boar was after.
What good fortune it was that the Englishman had missed his first shot and had sent the beast charging off away from them!
“Watch well,” Sym muttered from above her as she carefully made her way to the low, stout branch onto which Davy had first hoisted her.
“Aye,” she said, thinking the distance to the ground looked farther now than it had when Davy had stood below them. Then it had not looked nearly far enough.
Taking a deep breath, and using her bare feet against the rough trunk to steady herself, she slipped from the branch until she was hanging by her hands. Swinging just enough to miss the thick root ball at the foot of the tree, she let go.
She felt her overskirt snag as she dropped but was too intent on landing without hurting herself to pay much heed to it. Flexing her knees, she landed inelegantly on all fours but stood upright at once, feeling pleased with herself.
“You next,” she said.
“Aye,” he muttered, looking down at her with a doubtful grimace. “’Tis a wee bit farther for me t’ fall, ye ken.”
“You’ll make it,” Laurie told him confidently. “I’ll help you as much as I can, but you’re too big for me to catch, you know, so be sure you land lightly.”
“Aye, sure, like a wee feather,” Sym growled.
He did not hesitate, though, swinging himself over in the same way that she had. Then, as if he dared not give himself a moment longer to think about the danger, he dropped at once.
Laurie caught him by his slim waist, intending only to slow him, but when his weight hit her, the pair of them tumbled together to the ground with Sym landing on top of her.
Chuckling, she pushed him off and stood, holding out a hand to him.
Sym lay on the ground, looking up at her, grinning. “Ye’re a sight, Laurie.”
“I’ll warrant I am,” she agreed, wrinkling her nose at a stench she had noted when they fell and realizing now what it must be. “I’m afraid that first arrow had a purgative affect on the boar’s bowels and I landed in the result,” she said. “Are you getting up, or are you hurt?”
“I’m up,” he said, suiting action to words, then stepping hastily away from her and from the mess between them on the ground. “Och, aye, ’tis nasty,” he agreed. “We’d best not linger, anyhow. We should find me dad and the others.”
“You should find them,” she said. “I should go home. I’m sure I’ll find trouble awaiting me when I get there, as it is.”
“Aye, ye will that,” he said as his critical gaze moved from her head to her dirty bare feet. “But ye canna go till ye’ve got your pony back, and I think ye’d best clean your skirt some afore her ladyship sees ye—or smells ye.”
She could not deny the worth of that advice. Not only did she reek of boar scat but also her feet were filthy, and neither the rain nor the trip up the tree had done her overskirt any good before she landed in the mess. Even the front was mud stained and torn.
“I’ll do what I can, but I do not think that I can repair things to Lady Halliot’s satisfaction,” she said as she gathered a handful of moss and wet leaves and tried to remove the worst of the feculent mess on the back of her skirt. “At least this time I can throw a portion of the blame onto the English.”
“Aye, tell her ye had to hide from ’em under a privy,” Sym recommended.
By the time that Laurie and Sym had met the rest of his family at the cave in which they were hiding, persuaded them that the forest was safe again, returned with them to the cottages in the clearing, and Laurie was able at last to return home, more than two more hours had flown by.
The rain had stopped, but although she assured Davy Elliot that she did not need an escort, he and his brother Dougald insisted upon seeing her safely home, and Sym begged to accompany them, as well. By the time the four approached the foot of Aylewood Fell on the west bank of upper Tarras Burn, the gloom of the morning’s rain had given way to a sunny noontime sky dotted with scudding white clouds and a rainbow arced behind the square tower dominating the crest of the hill.
“Ye’ll be safe enough riding alone from here, mistress,” Davy said. “I’ll warrant they’ve seen us, any road.”
“You need not have come this far,” Laurie said. “We saw no English, after all. Doubtless, they had no interest in coming this far up Tarras Burn. Mayhap they have even gone back where they came from.”
“I doubt they’ve left Liddesdale yet, but they’ll leave muckle destruction and misery in their wake when they do,” he said curtly. “Aye, well, Himself will mak’ them pay dearly enough for their devilry when he comes home from Blackness.”
“Who knows when that may be?” Laurie said with a sigh, knowing that Davy was talking about Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch, Keeper of Liddesdale and of its great royal stronghold, Hermitage Castle.
“They say he’s enjoying himself, for all he’s in ward,” Dougald muttered. “He’s been out hunting wi’ our Jamie, they say, and dicing and playing chess, too.”
“Aye,” Davy agreed, “and they’ve had a good laugh till now over Scroop’s fury, the pair o’ them. What’s more, Himself wields as much power from Edinburgh as he does when he’s right here in Liddesdale. We all ken that. I’ll wager his captain at Hermitage be raising an army even now to ride after them villains.”
“Rabbie Redcloak will make them pay, too,” Laurie said. “Surely he and his Bairns will not let Lord Scrope get away with what he and his army did today.”
“The less said o’ Rab the better,” Davy said, hastily looking around as if he expected to see ears popping out of the shrubbery. “He’s no shown his face abroad since the raid on Carlisle, ye ken.”
“He will show it now,” Laurie said confidently. “You’ll see.
“Mayhap, he will, but ye’d best go now, Mistress Laurie. Sir William’s like t’ be displeased with ye as it is.”
Laurie shrugged, concealing the apprehension Davy’s words stirred. “My father is rarely pleased with me, Davy. You know that as well as I do.”
“Aye, but shaking straw at a boar will no ease his temper much,” Davy said. “Off ye go now.”
Thanking the three Elliots again for their escort, Laurie obeyed him, urging her pony to a trot and not looking back. She held her head high, knowing that guardsmen were watching her from the eight-foot-high wall of the barmekin that surrounded Aylewood Tower.
In the course of telling Davy and the others about the two men who had nearly caught them in the tree, Laurie had also told them about the boar—not that she had had to, since despite her efforts, they could still smell its leavings. Her pony had not liked the smell either. But although Davy’s parting words had stirred a mental vision of the red-haired man’s handsome enemy face beneath his steel bonnet, that vision soon vanished, replaced by that of her father. Davy had not overstated the matter. Sir William would not be pleased.
The gates swung open at her approach. Nodding at the two men-at-arms holding them, she rode through into the cobbled forecourt, which revealed no sign of disturbance. As she and the others had deduced on their way to Aylewood, the English had not penetrated so far up Tarras Burn. Liddesdale proper—the wide part of it that actually bordered Liddel Water—had suffered the brunt of the attack.
A lackey came running to help her dismount. “Your father would see you straightaway, Mistress Laura,” he said, his countenance carefully wooden.
“Tha
nk you, Willie. Must I truly go to him at once, or have I time to make myself tidy? There was a raid, you see, and—”
“Aye, we ken well about the raid, mistress. Were ye… That is—”
“I barely saw them,” Laurie said, cutting in to allay his embarrassment. “One of the shepherd lads brought warning, and we hid. That’s why I look such a fright.”
“Well, he did say ye should come to him straightaway, but I wager he’ll no mind if ye brush your hair and… and mayhap change your gown first.”
“Where is he?”
“In the hall, I expect. That’s where he said to send ye.”
“Then I shall go in through the kitchen,” Laurie said.
Hurrying across the forecourt, away from the main entrance in the tall, square tower that housed the great hall and two floors of bedchambers, she approached the newer section, housing the kitchens and a ladies’ parlor above them.
The door into the kitchen and bakehouse stood ajar, but she slipped silently along the stone passageway between them to the narrow, circular service stair that led to the upper floors.
Her bedchamber and the one that her two younger sisters shared were two floors above the great hall, but to reach them, she had to pass by the southeast corner of the ladies’ parlor. Although she knew that she could rely on the servants not to tell her father she had returned unless he asked them, she hurried, her bare feet nearly silent on the stone steps.
As she approached the servants’ entrance to the ladies’ parlor, she slowed, straining her ears to hear the slightest sound from within.
She could not see directly into the parlor, for an angled wall blocked her view. That wall separated the parlor from the ladies’ closet and the servants’ stair.
On tiptoe now, holding up her skirts with one hand, she used the thick, oiled-rope banister with the other as she went up. She had taken but three steps beyond the parlor entry, however, when an all-too-familiar voice stopped her in her tracks.