George Fraser - The Reavers

But at the moment he looks awful, having been pinched for vagrancy in Northumberland two weeks ago, set in the stocks, and then confined in Haddock’s Hole, the most verminous chokey in all the wide border. Paroled a couple of days since, flea-ridden and friendless, he has nowhere to go but up. He is English, goes by the name of Archie Noble, and is a broken man – which doesn’t mean he is a spent force, but is the local term for one who has no chief or protector to vouch for him or sign his passport application, no allegiance, no home, no visible means of support. A wanderer on the Marches, a denizen of Cardboard Hamlet, of no account, but don’t worry, he’s literate and normally quite couth, well-spoken when he wants to be, and once he’s had a bath and a shave and his rags pressed, you won’t know him.

For the nonce he wriggles in damp discomfort, munching a tuft of grass to allay his hunger, and trying to sing himself to sleep with one of those lovely, sentimental old border ballads which were to cast their spell over Wordsworth and the Grasmere Gang two centuries later:

We hangit twa cows on the gallows tree,

We hangit them high, wi’ screech and shudder,

They twisted and turned in the wild, wild wind,

And ye couldnae tell one frae the udder

quite unaware that in the neighbouring gully Destiny is approaching …

… in the unlikely and repulsive shape of Black Dod Pringle, a fell Scotch thief of Teviotdale, returning with his thuggish associates from a raid into Cumberland; he is a squat, ugly, villainous figure clad all in steel and leather, has bad breath, bites his nails, and is commonly called Bangtail – all reivers had weird nicknames, usually based on appearance or behaviour, and Bangtail’s signifies that he is not immune to the allurement of the female form. His gang are called Fire-the-Sheep, Blacklugs, Grunt, Slackarse, and Wandered Tom, and all are members of the Pringle family except the last, who thinks he’s a Turnbull but can’t be sure because he has lost his birth certificate (he says). Like the Mafia, borderers operated in family groups, with close friends and allies to make up the numbers; the big tribes, like the Armstrongs, Elliots, Johnstones, and Maxwells (of Scotland), and the Fenwicks, Grahams, and Forsters (of England) could sally forth hundreds strong, but the Pringles, although under the protection of the powerful Kerr family, were second division players, and Bangtail’s was a typical small raid.

It was also a disgruntled one, because they’d had no luck. Bangtail had got them all excited with big talk of descending like a thunderbolt on the Foulbogsyke Women’s Institute during its annual meeting, raping the committee, and making off with their prize entries of crochet and home-made jam, but the ladies had word of his coming and defied the raiders from the W.I. tower, hurling down missiles of potted meat, jellies, raffia-work, and blazing handbags. Foiled, Bangtail had to be content with running off the livestock, which consisted not of cattle and sheep, but of half a dozen hens and a couple of cats. So it is a sorry band of ruffians that we see riding through the murk, herding their clucking plunder before them, while Bangtail rides well ahead, gritting his teeth in frustration at the memory of the plump and roguish Institute treasurer flaunting her curves on the battlements as she blew him jeering kisses and invited him to climb up and show her his muscles.

Archie Noble came out of his doze at the sound of the reiver’s hoof-beats, starting up from his bed among the bracken. Bangtail saw the bedraggled figure not ten paces away, concluded that here was some lonely wanderer on whom to vent his ill-temper, and with a “Har-har!” of wicked glee clapped in his spurs, couched his lance, and charged, intending to open him up just for laughs. But it wasn’t a good night for Pringles, for the victim leaped smartly aside, whipped a poniard from the back of his waist, and with a tricky underarm throw planted it neatly in Bangtail’s neck, causing him to crash to the turf, his sensibilities outraged and his throat cut. After which there was nothing for Bangtail to do but thrash about a bit, go limp, gasp the word “Rosebud” (which was the name of the plump W.I. treasurer, actually), and expire.

And that’s Bangtail out of the story, and Archie Noble nicely into it. Moving with cat-like agility he retrieved his poniard, glanced keenly about him in alarm (for even heroes don’t expect to find themselves committing manslaughter before they’re properly awake), congratulated himself on his reflexes – and then his eye fell on the dead face glaring irritably up at the pale moon, and a startled wince caused the clotted debris to fall from his unwashed brow.

“Black Dod Pringle, alias Bangtail!” he exclaimed. “Dead by my hand, all unintentional! Now, harrow and alas, but here was dire mischance, and as for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, forget it! Nay, he’s past mending, and I in jeopardy o’ my life, for those hoof-beats I hear betoken not th’arrival o’ the Salvation Army, I warrant!”

It was customary, you see, for Elizabethan performers to speak their thoughts aloud, for the benefit of the groundlings. But having got his dismay off his chest, our hero moved like a well-oiled ferret (belying his nickname of Waitabout, from his habit of philosophic loafing). Trained frontiersman that he was, his senses told him that five riders, driving hens and cats, were just over the hill (Slackarse’s shout of “Keep them bloody poultry away from the moggies, you four, or the boogers’ll stampede!” merely confirmed his deduction), and with Teviotdale’s top gun going into rigor mortis at his feet, and a bloody poniard in his hand, Archie could see awkward questions being asked by the deceased’s buddies if he lingered. On foot he was coffin-bait, for those expert trackers would read his trail like motorway signs, wheresoe’er he turned and doubled. On the other hand, Pringle’s horse was hanging about, looking bored … yet our hero, hard man though he was, hesitated to take away a vehicle without the owner’s consent, and that was now unobtainable. Anyway, broken men got hung for horse-rustling, didn’t they? Decisions, decisions … and then as a frantic cat came rocketing out of the mist, with an enraged chicken in hot pursuit, and Slackarse’s cry of “What did I tell ye – the bastard hen’s run amok!” reached his ears, Archie Waitabout waited no longer. With one bound he was in the saddle, accelerating smoothly from nought to twenty-five in four seconds flat, and by the time the Famous Five had come on their defunct leader and were speculating about suicide, divine retribution, or (Wandered Tom’s theory) whether Bangtail had stopped to shave and ballsed it up, our hero was a mile away and going like the clappers o’er the misty moor, muttering “Land’s End or bust!” as he counted the cost of his fatal encounter.

Why, what’s to worry, you may wonder – no witnesses, no incriminating broken cuff-links or cigar ash left behind … file the serial number off the poniard, ditch it, and he’s well away, surely? Oh, yeah – what about the horse? In these parts, where everyone knows everyone else, including their livestock, he might as well carry a full confession in Day-glo on his chest. But dammit, you point out, he’s on the moral high ground (self-defence), and no previous record, your honour … But unfortunately, there is: Archie’s past is not entirely unspotted; necessity has driven him to hire out now and then to heavy mobs like the Charltons and the Maxwells; he has lent a hand, and reluctantly committed G.B.H., in those just-lawful pursuits picturesquely called “hot trods”, he has no references or paid-up insurance, and being a broken man and therefore heavily suspicioned of everything , he is ripe to be put in the frame for anything. Like killing, however innocently, the local equivalent of a Chicago capo , whose family have been known to pursue a feud as far as York, and Batley even.