Border Fire (4 page)

Janet hurried to meet her, forcing a path between the slow-moving sheep with the crook. “Meggie,” she scolded as soon as she was within earshot, “you should not have come off away up here all alone like this. What if the babe should come? What would you do?”

“Sit me down and have it out, I expect,” Jock’s Meggie said with a smile. “I could not let the bairns fetch them, Mistress Janet, not with reivers about. They say they got away with every cow, horse, and sheep at Haggbeck in the night; but Sir Hugh, bless him, set a trap and caught that dreadful Rabbie Redcloak at last.”

“So Andrew told me.”

“They say that devilish Scot’s killed more than a hundred good Englishmen, mistress, and likely my Jock amongst them. It’ll be a boon to us all an Sir Hugh hangs him high.”

Taking the lead and wielding her crook expertly to encourage stragglers and wanderers to keep with the flock, Janet said, “So you also heard that Sir Hugh means to hang the reiver, did you?”

“Aye, ’twas Small-Neck Tailor told me, and he had it straight from one o’ Sir Hugh’s men-at-arms. Said he’ll hang him within the sennight, did Small-Neck.”

“Indeed.” Janet’s thoughts raced. She could not let Hugh do something so egregious, because once men of property flouted the laws of the Borders, they might as well have none. Already, many called the Borderers lawless and unruly—worse things, too. It was Hugh’s duty to improve the situation, not to make it worse. It was fine that he had caught the villain, but she would have to make him see reason before he hanged him. She would have to persuade him to take his captive to Carlisle Castle to await the next Truce Day, when he could file a proper bill of complaint against him. Once Hugh got his judgment, then he could hang the reiver.

An hour later, having helped Meggie pen her sheep, Janet mounted the gray gelding and started for home, her agile mind sifting ways to deal with her brother. By the time she reached Brackengill she had considered and rejected a number of plans and knew only what she had known from the start, that first she must manage to bring up the subject without pitching him into one of his infamous tantrums.

Riding through the gateway into the bailey, she looked around for signs of anything unusual and saw none. Men-at-arms were everywhere, but that was as it should be. Five were casting dice in a corner. A pair of others wrestled in the center amidst a small group of onlookers. As she rode past them, a lad ran out of the stable to help her dismount and to take her horse.

Still alert for the slightest indication that the castle held a notorious prisoner, she strolled to the well near the kitchen entrance and dipped water from the bucket on the stand. Drinking from the dipper, she continued her examination, and decided that if Hugh was holding such a prisoner on the premises, he certainly had done all he could to conceal the fact.

Tucking her whip under her arm and pulling off her gloves, she went inside through the main entrance and up the spiral stone stairway to the great hall. Stepping over the threshold, she sniffed automatically. In the same instant that she decided the rushes needed changing, she swiftly scanned the chamber to be certain that her brother was presently its sole occupant.

Sir Hugh Graham sat in his armchair at the big oak high table near the far end, writing in his ledger. Near his feet, two dogs scuffled, snarling, and behind him a fire roared in one of the two enormous fireplaces that faced each other from the ends of the hall. He did not look up.

A lackey came to take Janet’s cloak, gloves, and whip. Dismissing him, she moved past her brother to warm her hands at the fire.

Hugh looked up then with a frown. “Where the devil have you been?”

“Visiting Jock’s Meggie and others, as I do every Thursday, Hugh. We bake on Wednesday, and I take our extra baked goods to those who need them on Thursday. I have done so for years, and every week you ask the same question.”

“You’ve no business riding out alone,” he growled. “I tell you that every week, too, my lass, but you never heed me. One day, some heathenish Scot is going to abduct you, and when he does, I hope you won’t expect me to rescue you.”

“I shan’t, Hugh. I believe you’d warn him to have a care, though.”

“Aye, of your sharp tongue.” Grudgingly, he smiled at her. “Truly, Janet, you should take one of the lads with you—a groom, a lackey, the kitchen boy. I do not care who it is, so long as he carries a weapon of some sort.”

“I’ve got my dagger, Hugh. I never go out without it.”

“Much good it would do you if you were attacked. A wench against a strong man is no contest, as you’ve found out to your cost more than once.”

She did not reply, for it was true, and it was not a subject that would grow more agreeable with discussion. Sir Hugh, like most men she knew, was quick to violence, and his response to any confrontation was to exploit his physical superiority. He was more likely to knock a man down than to reason with him, and a woman, too. As a result, Janet chose her battles with him carefully.

Now she said casually, “I heard that reivers struck Haggbeck last night.”

“Aye, they did.”

“One of the lads said you caught some of them.”

“Aye, well, we caught one.” His gray eyes gleamed, but he said no more.

“Only one?”

The gleam turned to flint. “In this instance, one is enough.”

“Indeed, sir, and how is that? I should think that the people of Haggbeck would prefer you to catch them all and save their livestock a trip across the line.”

“The one we caught will save more than their livestock. We captured Rabbie Redcloak. What do you think of that, eh?” Smug triumph underscored his words.

“Well done, Hugh. Lord Scrope will be so pleased that I warrant he will write the queen and tell her how grateful she should be. Did you ride to Carlisle last night, then? You must have ridden swiftly to go so far and yet return so soon.”

“I did not ride to Carlisle.”

“Ah, then you trusted one of your land sergeants to deliver him to his lordship. That surprises me, but I do not question your judgment in such matters.”

“He’s in the dungeon,” Sir Hugh said curtly, “and in the dungeon he’ll stay.”

“
Our
dungeon? But surely you must take him to Carlisle, Hugh.”

“Nonsense. My dungeon here is as stout as any at Carlisle and will be all the stouter for the fact that his Bairns do not know where to find him.”

“But, Hugh—”

“That’s enough, Janet,” he said implacably. “Rabbie Redcloak has led more raids into Cumbria, Redesdale, and Tynedale than any other six of those damned Scotch villains. The sooner he meets his Maker the better it will be for all of us. I aim to hang the bastard at first light Wednesday morning.”

Thinking of young Andrew and deciding that men sounded much the same at nine or ninety, she said, “Hugh, you have sworn to uphold the law.”

“Aye, so?”

“Border law is clear on such matters, sir. When you capture a man from the other side, you must offer him for ransom until you can present a bill of griev—”

“You know nothing about it,” he snapped. “Go tend to your woman’s work.”

“But I do know,” she said calmly. “What your tutors did not teach me along with reading and writing, you taught me yourself, Hugh. You explained about wardens’ meetings, and less than a fortnight ago you were complaining because Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch had refused to agree to the site Lord Scrope suggested for the next one. You blamed Buccleuch for delaying it, but then you and Scrope refused to accept the site he suggested, or was it the date? I do not recall precisely, but Truce Days originally were supposed to occur once a month, were they not? Mayhap the reason they now occur only a few times a year is because you men can never agree when or where to hold one.”

“Don’t you have household duties to attend?”

“Aye, I do, but I want to understand this because I am a Graham, sir, just as you are. When one Graham breaks the law, men call us all lawbreakers.”

Surging to his feet so hastily that he overturned his chair, he leaned across the table and roared, “Hold your tongue, woman! You speak of affairs that do not concern you.”

“But they do,” she insisted. “We must never forget that the Scottish Grahams are a broken clan, Hugh. It is they and men like them who have kept the Debatable Land a haven for lawlessness. Though we strive constantly to separate ourselves from those Grahams, ’tis only by the greatest good fortune that Thomas Scrope likes you well enough to have named you his deputy.”

“’Tis men’s business to deal with reivers,” he snapped, ignoring, as was his custom, a point that he did not wish to debate. “It is your business to tend the kitchen, or your needlework or tatting, or whatever the devil it is that you women find to eat up your time. You ought to be married by now, Janet, but will any man have you? No, because you cannot keep a civil tongue in your head. You dare to look every man in the eye as if you too were a man. What you need, lass, is a good beating, and if you do not take yourself off at once, that is what you will get.”

He meant it, and she knew that she dared not press him further. Bobbing a curtsy, she said, “I will go, sir, for I had no wish to infuriate you, but I do think it is unfair that you men make all the rules and simply expect us women to obey them.”

“Well, at least you know how it should be,” he muttered. “You might put that knowledge to use, lass, and behave as a well-brought-up young woman should. Now, go,” he said, adding, “I doubt that my prisoner would thank you for your interest. Doubtless he feels sorry enough for himself by now without your pity.”

Although the prisoner was not one who wasted time in self-pity, when the door at the top of the stone steps had slammed shut, the blackness enveloping him had seemed absolute, even terrifying. He had been unable to see anything, and his other senses seemed to have shut down along with his sight. He knew he was locked in an underground cell behind a stout, ironbarred door, with a crude stone bench at the back. The state of its stone floor told him his host had imprisoned others there before him and was not a man anyone would praise for his housekeeping. That he had been right to expect a lack of comfort gave him no satisfaction, however, and when the blackness enveloped him, the shock of its totality was petrifying.

Time seemed to have stopped, and in that moment, that unnaturally lengthening and expanding, timeless moment, his imagination had conjured up a swirling, bottomless pit that surrounded him. He felt as if he stood on a pinnacle of stone no bigger around than his own two feet. He had always thought them huge, but suddenly, in that pitch-blackness, they seemed unnaturally small and growing smaller by the minute. He felt dizzy and terrified that he might fall, a terror not mitigated in the least by his vague awareness that it was wholly unreasonable.

Mockingly, as the terror began to ease, he recalled his surrender, remembering his brazen attitude and the way he had taunted Sir Hugh. He remembered smiling at the thought of his own laird’s fury at having to ransom him at the next Truce Day. His belief then in the safety of his name, in the protection that his position as a legendary leader of men would provide him, seemed in the sudden, oppressive blackness of his lonely cell like pointless arrogance.

In his mind he could still hear the echo of Sir Hugh’s departing words. No Truce Day, no ransom, no removal to Carlisle Castle to await a meeting of the wardens and the redress of grievances. Before then his greatest worry had been the knowledge that he would have to stand before Buccleuch, to see his fury and know that later he would have to deal with that fury face-to-face. Buccleuch was no man to cross, certainly no man to infuriate; but with the thought of death by hanging swirling around him like that bottomless pit, facing Buccleuch suddenly represented safety and nothing more.

A scrabbling sound startled him from his shock, abruptly diverting his thoughts. He knew that starving rats could devour a prisoner, and instinctively he drew his cloak protectively around him. That sudden movement and the feel of the thick, silk-lined fur steadied him. His knees still felt as though he would be wise not to trust them, but solid good sense told him that there was no pit, that the dizziness he still experienced was merely a disorienting result of the sudden blackness.

Drawing a deep breath, ignoring the dry ache in his throat and his bladder’s sudden, nearly overwhelming demand for relief, he reached out with his right hand and took one careful step at a time until it touched stone. It was not far, because the cell was small. Feeling along the wall, he found a corner, then the bench.

Though gratified by the small accomplishment, he knew he would not sleep until he had relieved his bladder. Stooping, using the wall to guide him and hoping that his fingertips would not encounter alien fur or sharp little teeth before he found the bucket he was certain must be there, he groped around until he found it.

Carefully relieving himself, he replaced the bucket and groped his way back to the bench, where he wrapped himself in his thick, hooded cloak and lay down. His thigh-length leather jack contained steel plating, and was not generally meant to sleep in, but it would help keep him warm and thus it was bearable. Using the hood to pillow his head, he slept.

When next he opened his eyes, he was astonished to see light. Not much light, to be sure, but enough to discern the bars of his cell. Getting up, aware that his body ached from his unforgiving couch, he walked stiffly to the bars and looked up the steep stairway.

The light’s source proved to be a narrow crack beneath the door, and he decided that it must be sunlight. It faded to darkness and then showed light again for some time before a pair of guards finally came to empty his slops bucket and to give him a small jug of water.

Sunlight flooded the stairway and cell when they opened the upper door, making him wince at its brightness. Then one aimed a cocked pistol at him and ordered him to stand back while the other opened the barred door to exchange the bucket for the jug and an empty bucket. Aside from the gruff order, neither had spoken, nor did they return before the thin line of light faded again and returned.