P. Chisholm - A Famine of Horses

Long George slapped him across the face. “Speak civil to the Deputy Warden,” he said.

Young Jock spat on the ground. Carey looked at him narrow-eyed for a moment, suddenly not seeming angry any more. He turned to Red Sandy who was bustling up with ropes over his shoulder.

“Take a list of the Fenwicks, Musgraves and Carletons that helped us,” said Carey, “see they get their share for backing a hot trod.”

Long George was amused. “Och sir, Captain Carleton’ll see to that, never fear.”

Captain Carleton was overseeing the gathering up of the Graham weapons and horses. His voice boomed over the moor, saying that the wounded man could bide there until his friends came back for him.

“The prisoners, sir? Shall I find some trees?” asked Red Sandy.

“Trees?”

“To hang them on.” Dodd gestured with his thumb. “We caught them red-hand on a lawful hot trod, we have the right.”

Carey put his hankerchief away while he thought about it. Archie Give-it-Them put a rope round Young Jock’s neck and mounted his horse ready to lead them. Young Jock looked surprised and worried for the first time. He seemed to have a boil in his ear which he was trying to scratch with one shoulder.

“Not today, Sergeant,” said Carey, clapping a hand on Dodd’s shoulder comfortingly, “they’ll hang at Carlisle after a fair hearing.”

Red Sandy stared at him in shock. “But sir…” he began.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” Carey reproved them, “be practical. I want to find out where the reived horses have gone.” He slapped his horse’s neck, and mounted the tired beast gently. “They can’t tell me anything if they’ve long necks and black tongues, now can they? Have them run back to Carlisle.”

He sent the prisoners off with ten men and with the remaining nine he set about recapturing the cattle. These were long experienced in being raided and had settled down out of their stampede to munch at what fodder they could find.

Dodd and his men urged their weary horses round about the cattle to gather them again, with the dogs darting and nipping among the legs to help them. It took a while, but they had the cattle running in a stream southwards when Dodd cantered up to the Deputy Warden and asked if he wanted them brought through the Waste again.

“No,” said Carey, “we’ll bring them through Lanercost valley and through the pass, and not too fast or the milch cows will take sick.”

Dodd privately objected to being told something he had known before he was eight, but only turned his horse and yipped angrily at an enterprising calf.

At Lanercost Carey took his Warden’s one tenth fee in the form of a cow and a soft-eyed heifer after a ferocious argument over which cattle exactly belonged to the Ogle there, seeing he had not yet got round to branding some of them. A similar argument and arrangement followed with Walter Ridley, whose nephew Tom’s Watt watched with interest. Driving their fees ahead of them, they caught up to the prisoners, almost into Carlisle. The reivers were gasping and dripping with the brisk run over rough ground forced on them by the grinning Archie Give-it-Them.

“Yah, get on with you, ye’re soft as southerners,” he was sneering happily at their protests when Carey came trotting alongside.

“Bastard,” croaked Young Jock over his sweat-soaked shoulder when he caught sight of Carey. “Fucking bastard Courtier…”

Carey raised an eyebrow a fraction, tutted, looked critically at the prisoners and told Archie to take them for a little run round the walls of Carlisle before he put them in the dungeons, since they still seemed so fresh and lippy.

At the same time as Dodd was hearing his neck-verse in his dream, Janet Dodd was shaken awake by one of her women, a young cousin by the name of Rowan Armstrong.

“Mistress, mistress,” she hissed, “Topped Hobbie’s ridden in, there’s reivers coming.”

Janet was instantly awake. She pulled her stays over her head and her petticoat, while Rowan fumbled her kirtle off the chest. “How far?”

“A few miles away. He could hear them but not see them.”

“What are they doing out on a night like this? Are the men awake?”

“I told him to fetch up Geordie.”

“Good girl.” A horn sounded from the barnekin, loud and urgent. Janet disappeared in the midst of her kirtle, reappeared, her fingers flying among the lacings. She went to the narrow window, opened the shutter and leaned out into the muggy darkness-cloud and no moon, a fine soaking rain. “Did Topped Hobbie say who it was coming?”

“He thought it was Grahams, but he doesn’t know. He thought he heard Jock of the Peartree’s voice, mistress.”

Janet pulled her lip through the gap in her teeth. “You go and wake the other maids, get yourself dressed and booted, then go help them bring in the cattle and the sheep nearby.”

“What about the horses, mistress?”

“Shilling and Courtier are both in the lower room of the tower already.”

The horn stopped blowing, there were torches being lit in the barnekin. She peered out into the blackness as she pulled on her boots. “Geordie,” she shrieked.

“Yes, Janet,” her brother’s voice sounded strained.

“Is the beacon lit?”

“As soon as we can get the kindling to catch, Janet. There are other beacons alight already, the March is up.”

“Are the men in harness?”

“They will be. We’ll ride out and fight them in…”

“You will not. You will bring in every beast we have and bar the gate, then get on the wall with your bows.”

“We canna catch them all in the time.”

“Bring in what you can.”

“But if he fires us…”

“Every roof is wet through. Do as I say.”

Janet ran down the stairs with her skirts hitched over her belt, out the door of the tower and into the barnekin which was already filling with desperately lowing cows, two half-panicked horses and frightened women trying to control over-excited children. Janet ran out of the gate and climbed on a stone to direct the running traffic of cattle, horses, men, boys, chickens, pigs, children, and, she would have sworn, rats as well. They could hear hooves; she waited as long as she dared, then shook her head.

“Come in, Geordie and Simon and Little Robert, leave the rest!” she yelled. “Come on in.”

Her cousin and her brother came galloping out of the mirk on their own horses, and Willie’s Simon had an arrow in his arm. Janet waited on them as the hooves and the shouting grew louder, slid through the narrow gate last of all, helped Geordie shut it and bar it and barricade it with settles from the hall, as a couple of arrows thudded into the wood. There was whooping and the flicker of torches on the other side.

“Go to the kitchen,” she told Willie’s Simon who was white-faced and gripping the place where the arrow had pinned the muscle of his upper arm to his jack. “Kat Pringle will see to it. Give your crossbow to the best shot among the men. Where’s Little Robert?”

“I thought he was already in,” said Geordie as he took the crossbow and began winding it up. Willie’s Simon slid awkwardly from his horse and walked away.

“He’s not in the tower,” Janet said, frowning. “He must be outside still, God help him, I hope he has the sense to lay low.”

There was loud shouting outside and the noise of a scuffle. Janet looked about for a ladder to the fighting platform, and then motioned Geordie to go up it first.

“Janet…” he began to protest.

“Shut up.” He obeyed, climbed the ladder and stayed crouched like the other men on the platform, while she climbed up behind and squatted beside him. She peered cautiously over the pointed wooden stakes.