Dacre's War

by Rosemary Goring

  A crescent of elms topped Blinkbonny Hill, stark against the sky. Crows circled overhead, but they were the only creatures abroad, their cawing the solitary sound. Concealed behind a thicket of scrub overlooking the hill, Crozier and his companions waited.

  The sun had not quite reached its peak when there was a crackling of undergrowth from across the valley as riders approached through the woods. When two horses came into sight, crossing the stream that meandered around the foot of the hill, Crozier leaned forward on his mare’s neck.

  Ethan Elliot rode ahead of his son, his girth swaying in the saddle. A once swaggering figure, with a bull’s neck and barrel chest, now Elliot’s head drooped as if he knew the fight was over. Crozier frowned. This was not what he had expected. Had he been summoned to hear a confession and clear an old man’s conscience before he met his maker?

  Plodding up the hill, the Elliots took their place under the elms, where they sat so still they might have been carved from wood. Time passed, and the sun rose higher, as Crozier waited to see if the robber had been followed, or if his henchmen were already in hiding, encircling the hill and its players.

  In years past, no man would have ridden to meet Ethan Elliot without first bidding his loved ones a long goodbye. Even Elliot’s allies knew better than to turn their backs in his presence. The man had a temper like a rabid dog, they said, docile one minute, savage the next. His corner of Liddesdale, already famed for its outlaws, had become so feared that the common tracks across his lands were overgrown with weeds, few daring to pass that way in case they crossed his path.

  But some could not avoid him, no matter how hard they tried. From his fortress-like castle Elliot’s hands hovered over the region, casting shadows across the sweetest harvests and fattest cattle, swooping to pluck the best for himself. Retreating to gloat over his spoils, he would for a spell be sated. There were weeks of quiet while he wined and wenched, gambled and squandered, and grew another chin. Then, when his cellars and coffers and larder had dwindled, he’d go back on the prowl, he and a hundred men, whose hoofbeats and yowling filled the border nights with dread.

  Only a leader with greater courage and more men could bring him to heel. One such was Sly Armstrong, whose band of thugs was almost as feared as Elliot’s, and five times the number. Nobody who valued their skin would say no to Sly and his brothers, and from time to time Elliot did their bidding. But more commanding yet was Thomas Dacre, Warden General and lord of the marches. Dacre was the only man on earth – and beyond it – who scared Elliot. Though the thief had no scruples, he was not without brains.

  When it seemed to Crozier that Elliot had come alone, he, Tom and Wat made for the hill. Dismounting at its foot, they led their horses up the slope. There was no sound but the horses’ breath, and the slither of leaves as they advanced towards the watchful figures ahead.

  As they drew close Edward Elliot got off his horse, but Ethan stayed in the saddle, swaddled in furs. It galled Crozier not to meet him eye to eye, but when he saw the pallid sheen on the old thief’s face, the tremor in his hands, he knew he was looking at a dead man.

  For a moment, nobody spoke. Ethan’s eyes were red-rimmed and weeping, but they held no hint of remorse. ‘Aye, lad,’ he said, in a voice still flavoured by his reiver’s roar. ‘Well might ye stare at me like that. I’ve done ye no favours, I know. And if you’d been in the room that night alongside your da, I’d have slit your throat as well. I’m no here tae make amends, if that’s what you’re thinking. God forbid!’

  There was a movement at Crozier’s side as Tom started forward, drawing his sword. He did not have time to loosen it before his brother’s hand pinned his arm to his side. ‘Stay back,’ Adam said. ‘Leave him to me.’

  He reached the robber’s horse, and put a hand on its bridle. He looked into his enemy’s eyes. ‘Tell me what was so urgent that we had to meet, and have done with it.’

  Elliot laughed, loosening a rusty nail in his throat. ‘Man of few words, eh? Unlike your father.’ He raised a hand to ward off Crozier’s rising irritation. ‘Aye, aye, I’m coming to it. Show some respect to your elders, boy. Were Nat alive he’d be a dribbling husk, just like me. Time reaches us all, son, though we all think we can outrun it.’ He wiped his rheumy tears. ‘As ye have no doubt guessed, I’m not long for this world. I have spent sleepless nights these last few months, thinking over the past. There’s been a lot of memories to keep me company. I’ve had a fine, full life.’ He looked at his son, and his expression hardened.

  ‘One thing aye irked me, though. It was said I had killed your father, and so I did. Clean and fast, as always. Believe me, lad, he suffered less in that last minute than I do now each hour of the day. I’ll burn for what I did to him, no doubt, and for worse sins too. But I wanted you to know it was not my doing. Or at least’ – he coughed and dragged his hand over his mouth – ‘not mine alone.’

  ‘Baron Dacre?’ asked Crozier quietly.

  Elliot nodded. ‘The very same.’ He reached under his jerkin and pulled out a folded paper. ‘In case ye dinnae believe me.’

  Crozier took the yellowed message. It was short, and creased with age. Ink splattered the page, showing the writer’s haste. Despatch our mutual foe, it said, and your reward will come far sooner than in heaven. Signed with Dacre’s vigorous sprawl, it was dated the day before Nat Crozier’s death.

  A hush fell over the wood. Crozier’s pulse was steady, his heartbeat slow, yet he seemed to be viewing the scene, and himself in it, from somewhere high above. His voice sounded far off and foreign when he asked, ‘Can you tell me why? What had my father done to Dacre that he deserved . . . ?’ He swallowed, remembering the scene after Elliot and his men had left, his father bled white like a butchered pig, his mother crazed with terror.

  Elliot looked down at his hands, but said nothing. His son stared at him, as if willing the hanging head to rise, but the figure in furs could have been made of straw for all the life it showed. Tom and Wat exchanged looks, but Crozier did not move.

  Just as it seemed the thief had run out of words and this audience was over, he drew a rattling breath that lifted his chest like a sail catching the wind. He stared at the borderer, a glint of his arrogant younger self reflected in his eyes. ‘Dacre needs no reason. There’s some men he admires, and others he hates. But nobody threatens Dacre, or not for long. He owns this land from sea to sea, on his side of the border, and on ours too. He can crush anyone he likes, howsoever he likes, and the king far off in London town won’t lift a finger.’

  He coughed, and stared at Crozier. ‘So long as the baron is in charge, the east march, the west march, and the middle march are his private playground, and we, my lad, are nothing more than his toy soldiers. Your father offended him, I know not how, and he simply wanted him dead. I don’t understand it myself. It’s not as if Nat was a rival . . .’

  He broke off, exhausted, and clutched one hand over the other, to steady their shake. His mouth was slack and wet. Edward stepped forward and stood by his father’s side, a reminder that the old man might be helpless, but he was not alone.

  Crozier shook his head. ‘My father was an insolent man,’ he said, ‘and he often defied the baron, but there were many as bad who crossed him and swindled him, yet lived to die of old age. You are either afraid to tell me the truth, or Dacre did not trust you with it.’ He stared into Elliot’s sagging face. ‘And who,’ he added softly, ‘could blame him for that?’

  Elliot shrugged. ‘What do I care? He paid me well enough.’

  ‘But as Dacre said, my father was your enemy too. What was your grudge, to risk killing him in his bed like that?’

  ‘No, laddie,’ said Elliot, his face lighting up with a malice that had never failed to come running when called. ‘I had no beef against your da. I only played along with Dacre’s dislike, so’s to secure the job. Tell the truth, I liked Nat. We were two of a kind. If he hadn’t grown lazy and slow, more keen on mischief than money, it could be my bones lying under the
trees and your old man sitting here, richer than the regent king, and a life of pure pleasure ahint him.’

  He leaned forward, his mouth working. ‘But just for the record, since I’ve come all the way here this morning to set things straight, he was also a poxy wee man, your da, a troublemaker, and a braggart. He was as big a thief as I ever was, but not as smart. When he was buried, it wasn’t just Dacre was glad he had been despatched. The whole dale rejoiced, though mibbe not all they wenches carrying his bairns.’

  A smile was spreading across his face when Crozier drew his sword. At the rasp of steel, wood pigeons rose from the trees with a clapping clatter and flapped over their heads. Elliot’s horse shied, wrenching the bridle out of the borderer’s hand, and with a grunt the thief slid from the saddle, landing upon the woodland floor with the sound of a rock hitting water. Edward started forward, then checked himself. His father sprawled, his hat cast aside, his bald head blotched yellow and black like a sycamore leaf in winter. He peered up at Crozier, whose sword was pressed at his neck.

  ‘You miserable piece of filth,’ Adam said, so quiet in his rage that none but the Elliots could hear. ‘You kill my father, destroy our family, just to keep in with the warden. You’re as despicable as Dacre himself. You sicken me.’ The blade found a chink in the furs and probed deeper.

  ‘Go on, lad, you do it,’ wheezed Elliot, pulling his shirt aside to bare his throat. ‘I dare ye. Show you’re better than your old man. If there was one thing he couldnae do, it was finish the kill. He got others to do his dirty work for him. Gutless, was Nat.’

  The sky narrowed, the day darkened, and Crozier was about to slide the blade home when he caught the look on Elliot’s face. His smiling bravado was not well-disguised fear, but secret relief. His body was tense, but not terrified. He was waiting for his end, and eager for it. This was what he had come here for.

  Crozier glanced up, and saw Ethan’s surly son, head turned away. What boy would not have leapt to his father’s defence? But Edward was following orders, and finding it as hard as any would to watch his father threatened.

  The borderer’s head cleared. He took a deep breath, and sheathed his sword. ‘Get up,’ he said. Like a wounded bear, the mound of furs stirred as, slowly and shakily, Elliot got onto his knees. Edward helped him to his feet, and he leaned against his boy. He was trembling, all expression wiped from his face.

  ‘Go back home, old man,’ said Crozier wearily. ‘I won’t be your executioner, whatever you’d come here hoping.’ Taking the reins from Wat, he got into the saddle, and wheeled his horse close to father and son. He looked down at Elliot, into his bloodshot eyes. ‘Maybe you’ll find another who’ll be happy to murder you – a man of your own sort, no doubt.’ His mare kicked up leaves as he rode out of the wood, their flutter mocking Elliot’s palsy as he stood, shaking and helpless.

  The buzzard was at his post when he heard the riders return. They were moving fast, approaching the wood from across the night-time hills. As they passed in darkness under his sentinel tree, his yellow eyes blinked.

  A day’s ride away in the west, the clouds parted and a half-moon lit the scene. A black shape dangled from the bough of a tree, knotted reins around its neck. Some distance from the swaying boots, the unbridled horse cropped the grass and, several miles beyond, the hanged man’s son was galloping home at his father’s command, believing him not far behind.

  The borderer was close to home when Ethan Elliot died, but it was quickly rumoured, then accepted as fact, that he had murdered the old man as the first of his acts of revenge.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Whitsuntide Sunday, May 1523

  The forest lay in darkness as midnight approached, but all was not quiet. Over the tops of the firs and oaks came the sound of music. The valley was for a moment hushed, foxes freezing, owls fluttering onto perches, deer lifting their heads from their hollows. In place of their cries could be heard the strains of a dance, pipes and fiddle sweet as a linnet, drumbeats quick as a boar on the charge.

  A pinprick of light flickered at the head of the valley. In the courtyard of Crozier’s Keep a bonfire was crackling, sparks flying brighter than the stars overhead. The ramparts were lit by torches, pitch flames casting a molten glow that did nothing to melt the gloom of the clifftop where the keep clung, dizzying as an eyrie.

  By day, here in the heartland of Teviotdale, golden eagles would circle as if spinning invisible threads around the keep’s turrets. The forest and ravine had been their home first, and their image was stamped on the Crozier crest, an eagle facing the sun. With his cold grey eyes and beak-like nose, Adam Crozier had, if not the look of the bird, then something of its manner. Few could hold his stare, which seemed to see to their marrow.

  This night he was seated on a dais in the keep’s great hall, his wife Louise at his side. Gathered around them, goblets in hand, was a posse of chieftains, heads of the dale’s lesser clans. Their finery outshone that of their leader, as did their conversation, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Crozier was lord, of this domain at least.

  In place of his usual drab riding gear the borderer wore a silver-buckled cloak. Dressed in green, as was his wife, it was as if the pair had grown out of the woodlands around them, one in winter ivy, the other in springtime leaves. On Crozier’s wrist a hooded kestrel perched, bell tinkling as its head swivelled, watching their guests. Louise’s hair was netted in gold, and pinned by a circlet of blossom. She was laughing at the sight of her brother cavorting in a jig, a beer cask bobbing in a lade. Crozier bent closer to catch her words. He did not smile, but it was obvious to any who watched that when his wife spoke, he listened. The men standing near them smiled indulgently, but two glanced at each other and, as if they too were in a dance, peeled away and left the stage, making towards the trestle tables at the end of the hall where ale and wine were being served. Around them was a seething mill, the music setting feet stomping and loosening throaty yells. Arms were raised aloft like fire tongs, and clansmen whirled their women, or those they hoped would soon be theirs, around the rush-strewn floor.

  The Whitsuntide feast at Crozier’s Keep was famed across the dale. It had begun as a small event, years ago, at Louise’s suggestion: a day when the villagers from the valley could forget their work and quarrels, and kick up their heels to the play of skirling pipes. The smell of roasted boar would waft over the forest from early morning, and by noon the path to the keep was churned into mud by villagers enticed up the trail by the mouthwatering scent.

  These were anxious years, in the aftermath of Flodden, when Scotland trembled at the thought of what fresh disaster might be coming its way. People were right to be afraid. Almost before the battlefield had been cleared of bodies and bones, Teviotdale and the Merse were ravaged by a series of raids, the border left smoking as Henry VIII of England took a boyish glee in deepening his enemy’s despair. Like a child who wearies at last of tormenting a tethered dog whose whimpers have begun to bore him, the king eventually turned his army elsewhere. In time the borderlands grew to fear others more than Henry, kept in a state of perpetual unrest by the assaults and thieving of other clans from both sides of the border.

  Nearly ten years earlier, when Louise Brenier, daughter of a sea merchant from Leith, married Adam Crozier, the keep had been unkempt, the clan ragged, and her husband exhausted, maintaining order, filling their barns against the long winter, and warding off the threat of raiders. Seeing him harried by clansmen from neighbouring lands who had more reason to be their allies, Louise suggested he repair the friendships his hot-headed father had broken. It had taken only that for Crozier to realise what he had to do. ‘You are a clever woman, and many other things besides,’ he said, kissing her before saddling up and riding out to turn their lives around.

  ‘They say my father was a pirate,’ she replied. ‘I get my cunning from him.’

  In the early months of his venture, he did not take his brother with him. Tom was too quick-tongued, his temper unpredictable, and C
rozier feared a cross word or thoughtless insult would jeopardise the fragile new bonds he was forging. But where old Ned had been shortsighted and petulant, Tom soon proved he was sharper. Not only did he applaud his brother’s tactics, he began to mimic them, turning his youthful fighting foes from nearby hamlets into a loyal band of guardsmen who looked to him for orders.

  In the quiet of their chamber, Crozier admitted to Louise that he had misjudged him. ‘He has a way about him that makes men like him. Trust soon follows, drunk though they usually are by that stage.’ He sighed, and his wife looked at him thoughtfully.

  ‘But you, my love, do not need to be liked. Better, perhaps, that you are not.’ She rubbed his hands, as if to soften her words. ‘At times like these, you must instil fear in your enemies and courage in your allies. Friendship can follow later, when our troubles have passed.’

  ‘But will they ever? That’s what I want to know.’ Crozier closed his eyes as if to keep at bay the question that rose before him every hour, its answer all too plain.

  It did not take long to persuade his father’s old friends that an alliance was in their best interests. Samuel Jardine was first to pledge himself to Crozier’s band. ‘I aye liked your faither, Adam, thistly though he was. It has grieved me to be at odds with your family. This is a bright day for all of us,’ and he gripped Crozier’s hand so tight, his thumb ring left a weal.

  This bald, bearded giant brought with him the clans of the eastern dale, among them the foul-mouthed, stout-hearted Bells, the Scotts with their flying axes, and the Taylors, whose laburnum-tipped arrows made them as fearsome in the saddle as the Scotts were on foot. Between them they created a cordon protecting the middle march, a steel army whose size might not equal that of the Elliots or the Armstrongs, but whose mettle was a match for any.