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  He understood Scrope better than he understood Loder. Scrope was determined to teach Liddesdale a lesson, and Hugh understood his fury, for Liddesdale was a notorious reivers’ nest. The whole, wide valley was a grim, forbidding place dotted with robber towers. Shut in by bleak fells, it consisted largely of quaking morass and vast primeval forest. Reivers flourished in every march, but in Liddesdale, every able-bodied man was one.

  Just months before, a small army of Liddesdale men and other ruffians—doubtless under the direction of their powerful leader, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch—had raided Carlisle Castle to free one of their own. Carlisle was Scrope’s stronghold.

  Having made the English warden look foolish, they had to pay. Sir Hugh had understood that from the outset. He had supported Scrope when, immediately after the Carlisle raid, determined to punish the raiders, Scrope had organized several forays against them with the official blessing of the Queen and her Privy Council.

  Those forays accomplished little of note, however. Buccleuch had retaliated each time, with the result that livestock moved back and forth across the line so frequently that men said the poor beasts were losing weight as fast as they gained it. As a result, many would likely be too weak to survive the winter.

  Elizabeth of England was as offended as her warden over the high-handed way the Scots had freed his prisoner and royally indignant at Buccleuch’s continued forays into her realm. She had written angrily to King James of Scotland, demanding the Borderer’s immediate surrender to her authority.

  So far, the King had refused to comply with that demand, and Hugh was certain that if James enjoyed the same freedom that some of his predecessors had, he would have continued to repel all her demands. But James hoped to succeed to the English throne on Elizabeth’s death. Knowing that she could squash those hopes with a word, he feared her anger and thus bowed to the inevitable.

  James did not prostrate himself, however. He merely ordered Buccleuch into ward at Blackness Castle, which overlooked the Firth of Forth a few miles outside Edinburgh. If he had hoped to placate Elizabeth with the compromise, however, he had failed.

  The English Queen, like nearly everyone else in England and Scotland, soon began to hear tales of Blackness luxury and of James and his favorite out hunting together. She heard tales of dicing and playing chess and, worse, tales of the two of them laughing together at Scrope’s fury. Her demands became more imperious. James, she insisted, must hand Buccleuch over to English authorities.

  In the meantime, with Buccleuch safely out of the way in Edinburgh, Scrope had stepped up his activities until, in Hugh’s mind, the present one overstepped the bounds of what was fair and reasonable. He had dutifully supported the warden’s earlier raids, understanding as all Borderers did the need for immediate retaliation. But it was not long before he began to suspect that Scrope was not acting out of a sense of duty but out of plain vengeance against Buccleuch. The rescue of the prisoner had deeply wounded Scrope’s pride, and now he was extracting a far heavier toll than even blackguard-ridden Liddesdale deserved to pay.

  In truth, Hugh reminded himself, Buccleuch had taken Carlisle by stealth and cunning with less than a hundred men. Many were not even Liddesdale men but were followers of Rabbie Redcloak, the man Scrope still pretended to believe he had captured.

  And to be fair, they had had reason for the raid. Scrope’s erstwhile prisoner was actually Sir Quinton Scott, Buccleuch’s cousin and deputy warden, and Sir Hugh’s cousin, Francis Musgrave, had seized him unlawfully during a truce.

  Scrope had ignored these details, however. He had also ignored the fact that no one had suffered in the raid (since he had mounted no resistance), and as time passed, he developed a veritable passion for revenge, culminating in the Liddesdale raid. Hugh knew that Scrope had acted out of pique and thought less of him for it.

  “Looks like the cowards have fled,” Loder said, snapping Hugh’s thoughts back to the present.

  Realizing that they had reached the clearing Loder had mentioned and that the three cottages showed no sign of life, Hugh felt a wave of relief. Was he growing soft? Surely Scrope would say that he was if he ever learned about the girl in the tree.

  Loder said, “We’d best fire these cots.”

  “Leave them,” Hugh said curtly. “Only the thatch and doors will burn, and the smoke is likely to draw our men nearer. This deep in the woods, we’d lose any number of them to bogs, if not to armed Scots perched in those damned trees. I don’t know what drew you here, Loder, or how you found this place without miring us in a swamp, but I’ll be happy just to get out of here alive.”

  “I know the way,” Loder said. Shooting a look at Hugh, then looking away again, he muttered, “Had cousins hereabouts when I were young.”

  Since he said no more, Hugh assumed that the cousins were not friendly now. Such was the way of life in the Borders.

  He expected an argument over whether to leave the cots or burn them, but Loder offered none. He merely suggested that they look inside each cottage to be certain that the occupants had gone and had left nothing worth the taking.

  “You check,” Hugh said. “I’ll keep watch out here in case of ambush. At least the rain seems to have stopped.”

  Nodding, Loder walked his horse to the first cottage and dismounted.

  Hugh kept his pistol at hand. The presence of the girl in the tree meant that there were folks about, but instincts honed over years of service told him that no danger threatened him. He watched alertly while Loder took his time to search the first cottage but relaxed when he entered the second without incident.

  They had made little noise, but there were still only two of them. If armed men waited in the trees, they would likely have seen or heard some sign of them by now. Indeed, they would likely be dead. Although he and Loder were both skilled at defending themselves, the odds were not in their favor. He wondered again why Loder had seemed so willing to enter the woods alone.

  Loder was not a friend. Having made no secret of his belief that Hugh served as deputy warden only because he had a powerful kinsman in London, he also made it plain that he thought he, Loder, would make a better deputy. If he laid eyes on the girl, he would surely tell Scrope that Hugh had seen her and tried to protect her. He would do that just to make trouble, and Hugh knew that Scrope would listen.

  He did not trust any of Scrope’s men. Most were mercenaries who, for a price, would do whatever Scrope told them to do. They cared little for folks on either side of the line. On the other hand, Hugh believed that his own men generally felt as he did about the attack, especially with regard to the burning of so many crops and cottages, and the terrorizing of women and children.

  The burned cat-and-clay cottages did not matter much, because their owners could rebuild them quickly—usually in a day. Stone towers were easily patched, and doubtless many people had managed to remove their belongings, just as those in the clearing had.

  As for cattle and other livestock, Hugh told himself sardonically that any loss would be a temporary annoyance at best, because the Liddesdale men would just steal others to replace them. Crops were a different matter, though, for without them people could starve, which was why Scrope was so bent on destroying them.

  Borderers on both sides of the line disapproved of burning crops and had since the beginning of the violence a century before. When the Earl of Hertford had served as a march warden, he had once had to hire Irishmen to burn the Scots’ standing corn. His English Borderers had refused to burn their neighbors’ crop.

  The size of Scrope’s army precluded such refusal, and Hugh’s men dared not disobey Scrope’s orders, in any case. They knew that many Grahams were already at risk, because Scrope suspected that members of the tribe had helped Buccleuch with the raid on Carlisle. He blamed them as fiercely as he blamed Buccleuch, and he was bent on punishing as many as he could catch and convict.

  Still, Hugh thought, it was one thing to order men to pursue someone who had just stolen one’s cattle, or to
help carry out a righteous act of vengeance. But Grahams, like other clans with members on both sides of the line, disliked setting off in cold blood to harry folks who might be allied in marriage or otherwise to them or their kinsmen. Their way of life, after all, was much the same.

  Even Scrope’s mercenaries had displayed certain wariness upon entering Liddesdale. They had obeyed Scrope’s command, but Hugh knew that they hated and feared the area.

  Liddesdale fairly teemed with scoundrels, but the forests and bogs that protected their hideouts terrified most invaders. Even the mercenaries knew that any safe paths—if the reivers had not blocked them with tree trunks or the like—were imperceptible to untrained eyes. Added to the ever-present risk of ambush, therefore, invaders risked floundering, even drowning, in a stinking swamp.

  With these thoughts stirring his unease again, and reminding him again that one girl in a tree might mean many men in other trees, Hugh was glad to see Loder emerge from the third cottage, shake his head, and go to mount his horse. Watching him, hearing nothing more menacing than water still dripping from the leaves of the trees, Hugh wondered if the massive raid would accomplish anything positive.

  Many—Scrope’s men and Hugh’s as well—had commented quietly on Scrope’s weak justification for so great an invasion. The usual excuse for a warden’s raid was that he had goods to pursue. That was not so today.

  A warden could also pursue a man he wished to bring to justice, but that required him to declare a “hot trod,” and such a pursuit had to take place within six days of the offense. One could hardly argue that a military invasion taking place months after the offense fit that definition.

  However, Scrope had offered the third excuse, declaring that the activities of a particular surname—to wit, the heathenish Scotts—had become so obnoxious that they warranted the laying waste of Liddesdale with fire and sword. Even that excuse was feeble, though, considering that their leader lay in ward at Blackness.

  “I still think we should fire the cots,” Loder said as he joined Hugh. “There’s still smoldering peat on the hearth in each one, and only the outer thatch will be wet. You saw how easily the ones in the dale caught fire despite the rain.”

  “Leave them,” Hugh said again.

  Shrugging, Loder turned his horse back up the slope the way they had come.

  Hugh nearly suggested that he take another route, one that would not pass near the tree where the girl was hiding. He dared not, though. Not only would any other route likely prove more dangerous but he did not want to take even a chance of stirring Loder’s curiosity.

  They entered the shadowy gloom of the woods.

  “Look at that,” Loder said abruptly.

  Although the shadows were dense, Hugh thought at first that Loder had seen the girl in the tree. He was looking that way.

  Even as that thought crossed his mind, however, he heard a snarl and saw a wild black boar angrily pawing ground near the base of a tall beech.

  Almost certain it was the tree where he had seen the girl, Hugh grabbed his longbow and swung it into position to shoot. Quickly nocking an arrow, he let fly, aiming to wound the boar rather than kill it.

  “Bad shot,” Loder said when the animal dove screeching into underbrush.

  Hugh quickly sent a second arrow after the first and was nocking a third when the screeching stopped.

  “You got him!” Loder exclaimed. “We can take boar steaks to his lordship.”

  “Let’s see if we can fetch him without falling into a bog,” Hugh said.

  “I never thought you could hit him,” Loder said, clearly impressed.

  “It wasn’t as hard as you might think,” Hugh said. “I shot too quickly the first time; that’s all.”

  His eyes still alight at the thought of roasted boar meat, Loder urged his horse to a trot and rode on ahead.

  Hugh followed at a more leisurely pace. Glancing up as he passed beneath the tall beech, he could see no one.

  Three

  Say thou, lady, and tell thou me

  How long thou wilt sit in that tree.

  LAURIE FELT AS IF she might tumble from the tree out of sheer relief when the two men rode away. She heard them stop to truss up the boar, and for a few moments her terror returned, but then they were gone. For a long while, the only sounds were the faint gurgling of a nearby burn and the soft drip-drip of rainwater falling from leaves to the forest floor.

  Not until she heard the chatter of a squirrel and an exchange of birdcalls did she say quietly, “Are you all right, Sym?”

  “Aye, sure,” the lad muttered from his precarious perch above her on a branch that strained even under his slight weight. “’Tis odd he missed the creature when it were standing and then hit it when it were running. Me dad says that’s the hardest bowshot to make, ’specially through shrubs like that.”

  “You heard what he said. He shot too quickly the first time. Likely, his nerves were twitching a bit here in our woods.”

  “Aye, he did say that, too,” the boy agreed, adding with disdain, “English.”

  “They found their way to your clearing, Sym. Few on this side of the line know where it is. It is never wise to underestimate the English, laddie.”

  “Well, at least they didna fire our cots,” Sym said practically. “Can we get down now, Laurie, d’ye think?”

  “Aye, I doubt they’ll come back here today.”

  “Can ye get out o’ the tree wi’out help?”

  She grinned. “Can you?”

  “Aye, sure, I can,” he retorted indignantly.

  “Well, I’m going to get down first,” she said.

  “Ye’ll ha’ to,” he agreed. “I canna very easily get by ye.”

  Not until she moved did she realize how stiff she had become, sitting there tightly tucked against the tree’s stout trunk. When the two men had ridden into the clearing, she and Sym had crept precariously upward until she could no longer see the forest floor through the leaves and branches of the beech. Then, when the boar had rushed the tree, either stirred by their scent or simply by its own cantankerous nature, she had thought they were spent. Surely, the two men would come straight to their tree to see what the boar was after.

  What good fortune it was that the Englishman had missed his first shot and had sent the beast charging off away from them!

  “Watch well,” Sym muttered from above her as she carefully made her way to the low, stout branch onto which Davy had first hoisted her.

  “Aye,” she said, thinking the distance to the ground looked farther now than it had when Davy had stood below them. Then it had not looked nearly far enough.

  Taking a deep breath, and using her bare feet against the rough trunk to steady herself, she slipped from the branch until she was hanging by her hands. Swinging just enough to miss the thick root ball at the foot of the tree, she let go.

  She felt her overskirt snag as she dropped but was too intent on landing without hurting herself to pay much heed to it. Flexing her knees, she landed inelegantly on all fours but stood upright at once, feeling pleased with herself.

  “You next,” she said.

  “Aye,” he muttered, looking down at her with a doubtful grimace. “’Tis a wee bit farther for me t’ fall, ye ken.”

  “You’ll make it,” Laurie told him confidently. “I’ll help you as much as I can, but you’re too big for me to catch, you know, so be sure you land lightly.”

  “Aye, sure, like a wee feather,” Sym growled.

  He did not hesitate, though, swinging himself over in the same way that she had. Then, as if he dared not give himself a moment longer to think about the danger, he dropped at once.

  Laurie caught him by his slim waist, intending only to slow him, but when his weight hit her, the pair of them tumbled together to the ground with Sym landing on top of her.

  Chuckling, she pushed him off and stood, holding out a hand to him.

  Sym lay on the ground, looking up at her, grinning. “Ye’re a sight, Laurie.”
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  “I’ll warrant I am,” she agreed, wrinkling her nose at a stench she had noted when they fell and realizing now what it must be. “I’m afraid that first arrow had a purgative affect on the boar’s bowels and I landed in the result,” she said. “Are you getting up, or are you hurt?”

  “I’m up,” he said, suiting action to words, then stepping hastily away from her and from the mess between them on the ground. “Och, aye, ’tis nasty,” he agreed. “We’d best not linger, anyhow. We should find me dad and the others.”

  “You should find them,” she said. “I should go home. I’m sure I’ll find trouble awaiting me when I get there, as it is.”

  “Aye, ye will that,” he said as his critical gaze moved from her head to her dirty bare feet. “But ye canna go till ye’ve got your pony back, and I think ye’d best clean your skirt some afore her ladyship sees ye—or smells ye.”

  She could not deny the worth of that advice. Not only did she reek of boar scat but also her feet were filthy, and neither the rain nor the trip up the tree had done her overskirt any good before she landed in the mess. Even the front was mud stained and torn.

  “I’ll do what I can, but I do not think that I can repair things to Lady Halliot’s satisfaction,” she said as she gathered a handful of moss and wet leaves and tried to remove the worst of the feculent mess on the back of her skirt. “At least this time I can throw a portion of the blame onto the English.”

  “Aye, tell her ye had to hide from ’em under a privy,” Sym recommended.

  By the time that Laurie and Sym had met the rest of his family at the cave in which they were hiding, persuaded them that the forest was safe again, returned with them to the cottages in the clearing, and Laurie was able at last to return home, more than two more hours had flown by.

  The rain had stopped, but although she assured Davy Elliot that she did not need an escort, he and his brother Dougald insisted upon seeing her safely home, and Sym begged to accompany them, as well. By the time the four approached the foot of Aylewood Fell on the west bank of upper Tarras Burn, the gloom of the morning’s rain had given way to a sunny noontime sky dotted with scudding white clouds and a rainbow arced behind the square tower dominating the crest of the hill.