P. Chisholm - A Famine of Horses

“I’m for home,” she announced, “I’ll want to be there before nightfall with things as they are.”

Dodd followed her out where they ran smack into Bangtail coming from the midden. He smiled weakly at her and rejoined the game.

“There he is,” she said pointing at where the beautiful horse was whickering and pulling at his tethering reins. Dodd went up and patted the silky neck, his face filled with happy dreams of golden bells and showers of silver. “What shall we call him?”

Dodd had unhitched him and was walking him up and down again.

“He walks so nicely,” Janet said consideringly, with her head on one side, “like your new Deputy Warden, somehow.”

Dodd grinned at the poetic fancy. “There’s his name. Courtier. How about it?”

“I like it,” said Janet approvingly, “they’ll know he’s out of the common. Do you want to keep him with you in the castle or shall I take him back to Gilsland?”

Dodd hesitated. “Lowther might spot him and take a fancy to him. Or the new Deputy. Better keep him in our tower. But will you be all right on the road back, it’s a long way and I canna come with ye.”

“I willna be alone. My cousin Willie’s Simon is here today, I heard. I’ll offer him a good meal at Gilsland and a bed for the night if he’ll bear me company.”

Dodd nodded approvingly. It would help if some thought the horse belonged to the Armstrongs rather than him.

Janet kissed him and then took the horses out of the yard. Dodd went back into Bessie’s and set about losing the rest of his pay. He didn’t succeed, if only because Bangtail had already gone. Archie Give-it-Them said he’d muttered something about an errand for his wife and Dodd was too pleased at the possibility of winning to wonder at it.

That night Dodd dreamed he was about to be hanged for some crime he could not remember. He could hear the Reverend Turnbull intoning his neck-verse in a huckster’s gabble.

“Have mercy upon me, oh God, according to thy loving kindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

“Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin…”

He was just trying desperately to think of something to say as his last words when the drums leading him to the gigantic scaffold turned out to be a fist hammering on the door of his little chamber.

“Sergeant!” roared Carey’s voice, “Up and rouse out your men.”

Dodd was already hauling on his hose and shrugging on his doublet. He put on his second-best jack, the one Janet had spent hours reinforcing with bits of secondhand mail where ordinary steel plates would chafe. By the time his eyes were properly open he had laced himself up, buckled on his sword and found his helmet under the bed, and he was following Carey down the dark passage past the tackroom to the barracks door, as the Carlisle bell started ringing.

“Where’s the raid?” he asked.

“A boy came in a quarter of an hour ago and he said the Grahams lifted ten head of cattle and three horses out of Lanercost at midnight.”

“How many reivers?”

“Between ten and twenty men, he thought.”

“Forty in all then,” said Dodd, and Carey nodded. He was already booted and spurred and his own jack seemed well-worn and serviceable. No way of telling the man’s courage though when it came to it, Dodd thought, he wished he’d seen Carey in a fight before having to follow him on a hot trod. What was wrong with a cold trod, anyway, they had six days to follow in for it to be legal, and nobody blinked much at a day or two to spare? Which would be worse? A fire-eater or a man who was all bully and brag and no blows? His face settling into its customary sullenness, Dodd decided he was hoping for a coward who would follow the trod well back and discharge his duty without too much sweat. But seeing Carey’s grin and the sparkle in his eyes, Dodd began to feel uneasy.

By the time the men had turned out and were in the castle yard, with sleepy hobbies snorting and stamping protestingly and blowing up their barrels to prevent their girths being fastened, another boy had ridden in with news of a herd of horses gone missing from Walter Ridley’s fields and a farmhouse broken into on the way. Estimates of the Graham’s strength ranged from fifteen to forty men and Dodd nodded.

“Where are the Elliots?” he asked.

Carey turned to the most recent arrival, a lad of about twelve on his father’s fastest pony, his face flushed with the ride and the excitement.

“We didna see them,” he said.

“The Grahams don’t always ride with the Elliots, though Sergeant?” Carey asked, raising his voice to be heard above the clanging of the bell.

“Not always,” Dodd allowed, “Usually. It could be Johnstones or even Nixons or Scotch Armstrongs. Tom’s Watt Ridley,” he called to the other boy, “Did your uncle say aught about the Scots?”

“Only he hadna seen none,” said Tom’s Watt, helpfully. “It was all Grahams.”

Dodd sucked his teeth.

“Are these out of Liddesdale, Tom’s Watt?”

“Oh ay.”

Red Sandy came bustling up, with his steel bonnet in his hands and a crossbow under his arm, followed by his two sleuthhounds. The two dogs were bouncing around him, panting and leaping up with their paws and making the odd excited strangulated squeaks of dogs that have been taught not to give tongue.

“No sign of Bangtail,” he said, “no sign of Richard Lowther either. The Warden says Sir Robert’s to lead the whole castle guard.”

Carey nodded and looked pleased. If he had any worries about it they didn’t show.

“Sergeant, if you were the Graham leader, where would you be taking the animals?” asked Carey.

“Into Liddesdale across the Bewcastle Waste,” said Dodd instantly. “There’s plenty of nice valleys in the dale with pens for holding booty in, no better hiding hole.”

“I take it we don’t want to be pursuing them directly into Liddesdale?” said Carey.

Dodd winced while Red Sandy looked appalled.

“No sir.”

“Name me a meeting place within two miles of the mouth of Liddesdale.”

Dodd named the Longtownmoor meeting stone which was a mile from Netherby, held by an unfortunate Milburn who paid blackrent to everyone.

Carey smiled at Tom’s Watt, drew him aside, spoke for a time and gave him a ring from his hand before drawing his gloves on. Dodd mounted up and trotted between his men to see all of them were properly equipped. The few who owned calivers had left them behind because of the rain. Dodd himself took the burning peat turf on the end of his lance that signified a hot trod. The horn he was supposed to blow in warning if they had to cross over into Scotland was at his belt.

“Sergeant, do you know the Bewcastle Waste well?”

Dodd considered. “Ay sir. Well enough.” Red Sandy snorted at this modesty.

“Up here by me, then. I know it not at all and am in your hands.”

With the Carlisle bell still clanging irregularly into the night behind them, they walked their horses through the town, glared at by cats interrupted in their own reiving. Once through the gates they came to a canter northwards, the darkness about them sparsely sequined with signal beacons.

They picked up a trail of several dozen cattle a little to the south of Lanercost, the hounds lolloping and panting along and giving no tongue as they had been trained. At least Carey seemed in no hurry to close with the Grahams. As soon as he could the Graham leader dodged into the Waste, and as the sky greyed and the rain fell again, Dodd was threading through the bogs and scrub with Carey uncharacteristically quiet beside him. He rode well enough, Dodd allowed grudgingly, perhaps a little too straight in the saddle for endurance, a little too reluctant to let his mount judge her own pace.