by Alex Dylan
There was no way they were going to arouse suspicion by making unusual noise in the gathering gloaming. If they needed to, they could signal to each other by yipping like foxes.
Most of the men rode hardy Galloways. Some of the hobbies were so sturdily small that the men’s legs were wrapped round their bellies, but this was the way the riders controlled them. The shaggy ponies were nimbly agile and could ride for a hundred miles without tiring. They picked their surefooted way across the stony beds of shallow fords, jinking across the uneven ground. A few men, Heughan included, rode horse and had to pay more attention to where they were going as the bigger mounts lacked the ponies’ ability. Slipping across steep hillsides, they trod more warily to find the steady footholds amongst the deceptive tussocks of sucking bogs. The column wound its way through lichen-shrouded boulders and lumpen hills, seeking an easy path like the winter snowmelt, while the wind whistled out of the west, bringing with it squalls of spattering rain.
Wrapped in their cloaks, the riders endured the misery of the cold and wet and rode grimly onwards. The mass of a solitary watchtower loomed darkly huge. Heughan saw no lights. If there was a patrol, he hoped for their sakes that they were looking the other way. If they heard anything shrieking out in the formless waste of the fells, they would assume it was nature at its most brutally raw. His men meant business tonight. He hoped the rain would be sufficient deterrent for the sentries to keep to their beds and not cause trouble. The simplest way was always the best.
It was dangerous to ride this deep into Liddesdale but they were after rich pickings; four-score head of cattle and oxen, over-wintered with barn-fed hay and newly turned out to the first spring pasture. Plump enough for the picking; not so fat they couldn’t run. Hamish had reported there were horses too, mostly mares. If any were in foal, it would be a double benefit.
In the comfort of the farmsteading, the dogs dozed and scratched at hopping fleas. The shaggy cattle snuffled in tentative groups, nibbling at grass, whilst the horses stood asleep on their feet. The night lay in wait, tense and secret, crouched in a corner. Speed and stealth were what Heughan’s men needed. He divided his group. Most waited to round up the beasts and catch the horses. A half dozen dismounted and crept towards the sleepy warmth of the shuttered farmhouse. Heughan kept back and hoped there would be no need for unnecessary drama this time.
Hamish lifted the latch and snuck inside. The family were sleeping, until Willie roused them by pricking a dagger point into some tender places. There was a moment’s resistance, quickly subdued by some rough handling from Black Ned. He dragged the cowering family into the corner and bound them. The head of the family protested when they started to ransack the house looking for valuables until Ned dragged a squealing daughter outside with a dagger at her throat. Hamish kept his daggers turned on the family. Everyone held their breath, straining not to listen to muffled sounds of sobbing and rhythmic thumping. After an agonising wait, a leering Ned slammed the door open again and thrust the newly submissive girl back into the relieved embrace of her family. No one made murmur after that.
Out in the fields the raiders gathered the cattle into a tight pack, wheeling the nimble ponies about to herd them close. The ground was softly muddy and the cattle were slow to drive. The ponies kept up a steady push, forcing them onwards. Jack and Desmond led the men to catch the mares by their halters and string them together in pack lines, ready for their escape.
Willie doused the hearth. The family could shiver together to stay warm and were less likely to have the nous to raise a signal if they lacked a fire.
The moon hadn’t had time to rise before the reivers were done. Heughan lead his men back the way they had come, the ponies sniffing for the scent of home. It was slow progress goading the lumbering cows even when the ponies could find ground firm enough to trot. Heughan glanced anxiously at the sky. The border was close but the dawn seemed closer. He rode up and down the line, urging men and beasts onwards.
As the first pale blue of the new day crept along familiar ridges, they lurched downhill and across the boundary burn. The party divided. Hamish and Willie took a handful of men and the cattle onwards to the Beeftub. Ned and others headed south with the horses. Heughan, Seamus and the last remaining men turned towards Carlisle.
Heughan had a smile on his face. He was well pleased with the success of the night. He could ride into the city with the pre-dawn traffic, pay his compliments to Letty and be through to meet with the men by the Solway Crossing.
He surprised Seamus by whistling a happy tune to himself as they picked up the pace to head home.
Beyond the divide of the channel, along the lonely track out to the marshes between Burgh-by-Sands and Bowness-on-Solway, the laneways were empty until Heughan caught sight of Adam Routledge. He was morosely digging at the lumpen soil of his ramshackle holding. Adam looked up nervously as he heard the horses and grimaced into the dazzle of low lying sun, relief lighting his face when he saw Heughan. Heughan smiled sympathetically; what reiver wanted to be caught out farming? The Routledges had the nickname of being ‘every man’s prey’ but Heughan liked Adam; he was an uncomplicated, stubborn man. His mother would have called him ‘t’ick’, in the way the Irish had of speaking, meaning he was too stupid to know that he was stupid.
Heughan could make out the rounded silhouette of Adam’s heavily pregnant wife Elaine, standing a little way off in the lee of the stone pele tower. Even in this remote area, a man needed a secure stronghold where he could retreat from raiders. The coast might look deserted but it was peppered with squat fortifications. It was rare to catch the reivers unguarded. Elaine appeared to be in earnest conversation with someone else, talking in the language of the Scots. Heughan glimpsed her companion was wearing leather breeches and shifted a hand to his quillon reflexively.
Adam caught the movement and shouted to Elaine, “Company, woman! Shut your jabbering, you daft bitch, before someone thinks I married a Scotswoman and tries to hang me for it.”
“It never seems to bother Willie,” observed Seamus.
Adam wiped muddy hands down the front of his smock. “Aye, well La’l Un’s got friends in high places to watch out for him. The rest of us have just got to watch out for ourselves,” he grumbled, looking sideways at Heughan.
“Just keep paying your black rent to Old Man Kerr, Adam, and we’ll all keep on friendly terms,” Heughan said easily. He looked back to Elaine, wanting to identify who else was abroad so early in the day. The other figure was still hidden behind the wall of the cottage, and Adam was acting shifty. He gave him a hard stare and Adam dropped his eyes.
Seamus eased sideways in his saddle to check Adam’s efforts. “You’re late in the year for planting, aren’t you?”
“I’m not putting it in, boy. I’m digging it up,” replied Adam tetchily. He picked up the spade and resumed his unproductive turning of the sods.
Heughan had only half an ear on the exchange; he was watching the figure with Elaine. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled warningly. The figure shifted but still with their back to him. From around their neck they took a gold ring on a chain, the sun’s first rays betrayed the glint of it, and held it over Elaine’s swollen belly, watching it swing. He knew in an instant it was Melisande.
“Morning, my lady,” he called out boldly and watched in satisfaction as she whipped round with a look of wary surprise on her face. “You’re a long way from home so early in the day. Busy night of mischief-making, was it?”
“I could say the same to you. Why don’t you mind your own business, and I’ll mind mine?” she replied tartly, turning back to Elaine and rudely resuming the conversation in Scots, purposefully excluding him.
“Shut your mouth, Elaine, and never mind that popinjay,” Melisande said.
Elaine pulled her thick blond eyebrows together in consternation, making her long square face look even more mannish than usual. She was a tall, strong woman, a good match for Adam’s height and build, with evidence of her Viking
heritage through her colouring. She dragged her attention back to Melisande and watched the small gold band swinging back and forth.
“Well,” she asked impatiently, brushing long tawny tresses away from her face, “is it a boy or a child?”
“Oh, it’s a boy all right,” said Melisande confidently.
Elaine smiled and looked over to Adam. She patted her belly and nodded at him. He smiled back vacantly.
“You’ve little enough to go yet,” said Melisande, replacing the chain around her neck, “another moon, I’d reckon, no more.” She reached inside her satchel for a small hessian sachet. “You can start to drink these in a warm posset. A few leaves only, just once a day, mind; it’ll help with the ripening. How many’s this now, Elaine?”
“Seven still above ground,” she said, “including the wee lasses. This boy’s impatient. I’ve been feeling the pains already.”
Melisande shook her head. “You’re overdoing it. You need to get more rest.”
Elaine snorted, “Piss poor time of the year to be trying to rest. There’s a raid on most nights, and it’s all we can do to keep hold of the cattle we have, never mind fetch any more in. Adam can’t manage by himself and is all for taking the lads out but they’re young yet. Aye, ‘big enough to sit a horse, big enough to fight’, I know what they say round here. But they’re still my wee bonny boys, and I want to keep them by me a whiley yet.”
“Is that why Adam’s working the land to keep paying the black rent?” asked Melisande, scowling forcibly at Heughan.
“He told Heughan the truth; he’s taking it out, not putting it in.” Elaine half laughed but wouldn’t say more. From a leather purse around her neck, she pulled out two coins and offered them to Melisande, who smiled her thanks but refused it. Elaine was persistent. “Nay, tek it, please. You’ll be there for me when I need you.”
“I’ll be there, Elaine. Keep your gold. You don’t need to try to buy me.”
“’Tain’t buying. It’s protection.”
Melisande stiffened with offence. “I’m not some bastard reiver who can be bought off, Elaine. Keep your money for those who give some value to it.” She glanced disapprovingly at Heughan.
“It’s got value to all of us,” Elaine said stubbornly, her eyebrows twitching. She pushed the coins into Melisande’s hand and closed her fingers around them. “If you don’t want it, use it to buy some good for others. It’ll be lucky for you, it’s faerie gold, see? Just be there for me when I need you.”
Melisande frowned and opened her fist again to look at the winged man on the uppermost coin. The gold angel was so-called because it carried the image of the archangel Michael crushing a serpent underfoot. The touch of many hands over time rubbed away the gold until the image was distorted into a winged figure with a fish tail; a faerie. Two such coins represented a lot of money for the Routledges, especially when they were harried by other reivers. Melisande scowled in Heughan’s direction.
He was watching them. Without understanding what they were saying, he knew it concerned him somehow and that Melisande was displeased with him yet again. He tried to shake off the feeling of guilt she managed to engender in him. That way she looked at him with the same eyes as his father; shuttered doors that closed politely and firmly in your face even as you approached them.
He sat unmoving as she grasped the pommel and swung herself hard into her saddle like a man. She wheeled her horse around as though preparing for a parting exchange with him. He said nothing; just stared through her. She glared back, resisting a childish temptation to stick her tongue out at him, before spurring her horse into a fast gallop along the edge of the sand towards Monkhill, its hooves taking furious bites from the edges of the incoming tide.
It was mid-morning when Heughan and Seamus reached the edge of the Solway. Heughan searched for the wind on his cheek; the direction would tell him if it was safe to venture out onto the mudflats. All was still. He shifted in his saddle; he hated this place, he hated this crossing. He looked behind him at the hamlet of dirty huts that made up Bowness-on-Solway. A wisp of smoke rose vertically from one. His belly ached for breakfast but he didn’t want the company.
The north lay a short distance across the Firth, enticing in its proximity. Heughan licked his lips, feeling the salt spray on them as he tried to make up his mind. He heard Rodrigues’s voice in his head, ‘The haste of a shortcut will just leave you all the longer to rue taking it.’
He looked at Seamus. The boy was scared. This would be his first time and he knew all the stories. “All right, lad,” said Heughan. “Don’t worry yerself, I’ll get you over.”
They climbed down to walk the first mile to reassure the horses and to get their hooves used to the soft ground. Heughan looked at the current. It was already higher than he would have liked. He figured he had less than an hour. He watched the tide shimmering to his left. If it started to bubble, he knew the incoming rush of the Irish Sea would kill them if they were not already through the middle.
They pushed on steadily but deliberately, weaving in and out of small water deposits. Down they would go into sculpted gorges of soft mud, avoiding the deeper water, then back up again onto the as yet uncovered grass. The landscape was different after every tide, so Heughan was going on instinct as much as memory.
After half an hour, they were in the main channel, waist deep. Aluino was pulling against him at times. Sometimes he would slip under and haul himself back out on the edge of the rein. Heughan had put Seamus downstream level with him. He could see his marker, the line of rock they were aiming for, indicating firm ground. The water was so cold it numbed both his mind and his blood but his heart was pumping hard and he was only focused on that rock. Gently, they drifted into the current, off the ground now. Heughan held onto the pommel of the saddle and the horse was in charge. They floated a little too quickly but there was nothing Heughan could do. He trusted God, anyone’s god, he didn’t have a favourite; any would do at a time like this.
He kept shouting to Seamus to reassure him. “Don’t panic, lad. Keep going for the rock. Hold onto the horse, boy, he’ll take you.”
After ten more minutes, they were too far down and still in the middle of the channel. Heughan urged Aluino on, “C’mon boy, pull it, you know where we’re going, we’ve done this dozens of times,” and at least this time it was in daylight, he reasoned. He mustn’t panic the horse. He started to paddle too, pulling Aluino with him. He was aching, his arms burning.
Seamus was panicking. He was scared and his horse could feel it. Seamus was shouting louder in his confusion but still Heughan could only make out half of what the lad was saying. He thought about throwing him his own rein but knew the boy would never catch it.
Heughan heard the noise first. Seamus was too busy flapping about to notice. Heughan stared at Seamus, unable to speak. He didn’t want to frighten the boy just before he died. He looked back at the rock, dragging it closer with his eyes. The noise was louder now and Seamus screamed, “What is it?”
Heughan shouted over his shoulder, “Push, boy, come on,” but the rumble of the bore was upon them and under they went, Seamus and beast. Heughan caught sight of the boy’s hands above the water. He thought for a second about trying to reach him but knew if he was to live, he had to look ahead and hang on. He and Aluino were being swept along riding the top of the bore. Seamus’s horse appeared above the foam but the boy was nowhere to be seen.
Heughan knew he had lost him. He could see the shallows on the other side now. The water slackened a little behind the bore and they might make it. Just then he felt the bottom, the earth rising to meet him. He planted down both feet but too early. He sank into the mud and his head dropped below the water. He was taking in seawater with very little breath left in his lungs. He thought that if the horse stood down too, they’d be gone. He tugged on the reins to pull himself into the air, hoping he would not submerge the horse. He was dragged along but still under the water. Drowning was never the end he had in mind. He pull
ed again. The horse was still moving, floating. “Good lad!” he encouraged. “Get us up and out of here.”
He breached the water and could see a flat plain of dry grass very close. Aluino was thrashing his head about looking for him. Heughan called to him with what little breath he had left, ordering him up and on, up and on. Down he went again but this time he felt the grass brush against his shins. It was firm; he stood down and pushed himself up for air. He knew he had to let the horse go. He was closer to the shore, he could make dry land now, and he couldn’t let the horse make a mistake and pull him back into the channel. He looked at him for perhaps the last time, shouted encouragement to Aluino and released him.
Heughan thrashed through the shallows with the last of his effort and landed on the bank, way past the rock he had aimed for but safe. He was exhausted but he couldn’t rest. He dragged himself to his feet to look for the most important partner he had in life. He could see Aluino floundering in the shallows half stuck in the mud but his head out of water. They looked at each other. Heughan called to him firmly, lovingly, “C’mon, lad, we’re not done yet.”
Heughan edged gingerly towards him, laid down in the shallow water and reached for the rein with his fingertips. Slowly, very slowly, he got more tension on the line till he could pull him, stretching the horse’s neck till he could smell his breath, both of them panting. Out walked the horse till he stood motionless in a puddle of dirty water on solid ground. He shook himself all over Heughan, which seemed reasonable.