Blythe Gifford - Return of the Border Warrior

His brother stepped up to the coffin, first man to be ready to heft it to his shoulder. John moved to take his place on the other side.

‘I’ve five other men already,’ Rob said.

‘None of whom is his son,’ John said, warning them back with a glance. Estranged as he might be from his father, from the family, this was his role, his right.

His duty.

The others stepped away, not waiting for Black Rob’s permission. In this, John had the right.

He took his place and at Rob’s nod, they lifted the coffin to their shoulders.

Bessie led them from the tower, singing of sorrow in a song that needed no words. Cate fell in behind her, ready to lend an arm if she faltered. Next to his sister, Cate, with her cropped hair, loose pants and knee boots, seemed as young as a lad.

The burden rested heavy on his shoulder as the men found their common step. Arms raised, he steadied it with both hands, feeling as if his father’s weight held him fast to the earth. But he would not be the first to cry off. And in the mile between the tower and the burial ground, they only paused once to let the coffin down.

The Brunson burial ground perched on the leeward side of a hill beside an empty church. The grave had been prepared beside his mother’s. All there was to do now was to take the body from the coffin and lower it into the ground with ropes.

Not for them the priest and the prayers, the laying on of hands, the final rites that might have eased his father’s passage. A few years ago, the Archbishop of Glasgow had banned the riding clans from the church and cursed them to eternal damnation with a vengeance that would have made a reiving man proud.

The priest had left.

The Brunsons remained.

So at the end, his father was laid to rest with only his family and the land he belonged to. Perhaps, he thought, as they consigned his father to the earth, this was more fitting.

John looked out across the valley his father had loved. Grey clouds had gathered atop the hills, shielding the sun, and he felt a stir of unwelcome emotion. This earth, this clay, had made him, too.

Yet now, he was a stranger to it. His brother and the others who rode it daily could find their way on a moonless night. To him, it was like a woman he had not yet bedded. The soft hills, the surface he could see, beckoned, but he did not know what parts of her body would respond to his touch. Hadn’t found the hidden places.

He found himself watching Cate, wondering what hid beneath her disguise. She embodied every dilemma he faced: a family who had disowned him, a land that kept its secrets, a way of life at odds with everything he wanted.

And yet, something about her tugged at him, tempting him to peel back her layers, to discover her secrets. And something about her made him mourn what he had lost.

The ancestral melody began. Bessie and Rob joined voices to sing the ballad of the Brunsons. The song that had come down from ancestors no longer remembered, except through song.

This is the story, long been told

Of the brown-eyed Viking, man of old

Left on the field by the rest of his clan

Abandoned for dead was the first Brunson man

Abandoned for dead was the first Brunson man .

Left for dead and found alive

A brown-eyed Viking from the sea

He lived to found a dynasty .

There were verses unnumbered, names and stories of the Brunsons since the first, and when the last had been sung, Rob stepped forwards to sing alone.

I sing today of Geordie the Red;

A Border rider born and bred

A man more faithful never found

Loyal to death and then beyond

Loyal to death and then beyond .

The last notes faded. The song had been sung. His father laid to rest and his legacy created. Loyalty. But did Rob sing of loyalty to king or to kin?

Or was he still struggling to choose?

They walked back to the tower even more slowly than they had left. Ahead of him, Rob and Bessie leaned towards each other, shoulder to shoulder, eyes on the life ahead of them.

A life in which he had no place.

Cate, to his right, was dry eyed, but none wearing the Brunson brown and blue had more vengeance in their gaze than she. More vengeance, he thought, than sorrow.

No, Rob would not, could not yield, he feared, as long as Cate held him to his father’s word. She was the key.

Well, women were changeable. The king’s own mother had sided with the English, the French and the Scots in turn, changing sides as easily as she changed husbands. This Cate would be no more steadfast if he gave her the right persuasion.

He just had to figure out what persuasion that was.

***

Last night, the hall had been full of talk, laughter and tears. Today, the guests were gone and only Rob’s and Cate’s men remained. And the silence of sorrow.

John escaped the tower, even the courtyard, unable to feign regret he did not feel. Outside, in fresh air, he would be able to think clearly on the challenge of Cate Gilnock.

He did not need her acceptance. He did not need, or want, to touch the woman. He simply needed her to release vengeance he still did not fully understand. He feared, however, that peeling away her layers could be even harder than peeling off her clothes.

Beyond the tower walls, the Galloway ponies dotted the field, left to feed themselves until the coldest weather came.

Let them find their own forage , his father would say . Makes them strong .

He paused to pat one of the bays on his broad, sturdy chest and the pony let him, nosing for a treat. John held up empty hands. ‘Not today, boy. Next time.’

In apology, he swept his hand down the reddish hair of the beast’s back, feeling warmth beneath his palm. When they were boys, Rob used to challenge him to mount a pony bareback and race around the tower. John won often enough that Rob dropped his dare. He beat his brother because he was more flexible, able to communicate with the horse, rather than forcing the creature to his will.

He grinned. He could probably do it still.

Seized with the memory, he murmured a word or two and stepped away to allow a running start. The pony waited patiently as John approached, jumped, then pushed himself up and swung his leg over to settle astride.

Well trained, the pony lifted his head and waited his command. No saddle held John on. No reins helped him guide. And no armour separated him from the feel of his mount’s muscles, flexing beneath him.

He guided with his legs and, by shifting his weight, headed out to where the Liddel Water skipped down the valley. He was surprised to discover that, once mounted, he remembered paths his head had long forgotten.

Following the stream, he saw Cate in the distance, wading across in water that reached near to her waist. She carried a wad of cloth and kept glancing downstream, as if looking for someone.

Instead of calling out, he stopped the pony in a thicket of trees where they could not be seen, curious.

She dropped the cloth on the other side of the stream, then waded back across. Man she might try to be, but now he knew the truth. Now, he could appreciate the shades of ash and flax mixed in hair that did not reach shoulders too slender to be mistaken for a man’s. And as she climbed out of the stream, wet cloth clung below her waist, drawing his gaze to the place her legs met and putting him in mind of what might happen if she spread them for him. Strange that a place normally hidden behind a skirt should be so tempting when clothed in breeches.

Pausing, shoulders hunched, she looked from tower to valley to hillside, as if wary of danger. Storwicks could be around any bend, true, but it was early in the season and still daylight. An attack was unlikely.