Border Storm (16 page)

Quietly, Laurie said, “He does not believe that you can have done such a thing. Now, he thinks Scrope made a stupid mistake. I know of no reason why he should not continue to believe that until we can think of something credible to tell him—something that will not cast both of us straight into the suds.”

“You promised to protect me,” May whimpered.

“I know I did, but I cannot think how”—she broke off, then added thoughtfully—“the most urgent thing is to prevent our father from questioning you in this state. We have to decide exactly what you will say, and we must decide before you confront him. We need some time to think, May. Why are you in bed?”

“Because I cannot stop thinking about him going into the river,” May replied with a sob. “I’ve scarcely talked to anyone but you or Bridget since it happened, Laurie. If you had not been so busy, you would have seen that much for yourself.”

“I have been trying to keep out of your mother’s way,” Laurie said. “Recall that she was waiting for me when we got home that night. I fobbed her off then, but you know that she’d like nothing better than for Father to beat me soundly. Indeed, she nearly persuaded him to do it the day of Scrope’s raid.”

“I know,” May said with a sigh. “I wish you would find a man you could bear to marry. That would resolve everything, for all of us.”

“It would not bring Sir John back to life,” Laurie said dryly. “Or Martin Loder, if that’s who he was. In any event, he was English, and Scrope will scream till he gets some sort of justice.”

“Until he manages to hang me for it, you mean,” May said. Tears welled into her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.

Pulling a handkerchief from her own sleeve and handing it to her, Laurie said, “The reason I asked why you were in bed is that I think you are about to become sicker. Do you think you could manage to be sick at your stomach and manage to play the invalid at least until morning? It will mean missing meals.”

“I don’t care about that,” May said, slumping back against her pillows and mopping her face with the kerchief. “If you can keep Father from quizzing me, I will do whatever you say. Bridget will do anything I ask of her, but Isabel might tell Mama that I am not as sick as I say. Still, I can stick a finger down my throat. It will not be the first time I have done that.”

“I know,” Laurie said, smiling at her. “You do it now and again to keep from going to kirk. Your mother always believes you are really sick, too.”

May nodded, and Laurie stood up. “I’ll go now and tell them. Perhaps you ought to do the finger thing straightaway, though. If Isabel sees you do it, our plan will fail. The child has a tendency to speak whatever words come into her head.”

“Aye, she’s a prattler,” May said with a meaningful look. “I’ve not forgiven her yet for telling you about Sir John.”

Gently, Laurie said, “Do you wish that I had not followed you that night?”

May flushed. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come along,” she admitted. “The plain fact is that I might well have flung myself in after him rather than come home again to face everyone.”

“That is blasphemous, May. You mustn’t think such things! We got through that night, and we’ll get through this and what follows, as well. I promise.”

May sighed, but she got up and followed Laurie out of the bedchamber. When Laurie turned toward the stairway, May went toward the necessary-stool chamber shared by the three sisters and the maidservant who tended them.

In the hall, she faced Sir William and Blanche. “I’m sorry, sir, but May became quite unwell when I told her. She cannot possibly talk to you now.”

Sir William sighed and said, “I should have told you not to tell her why I wished to speak with her. I’ve no doubt that you did, did you not?”

“I did, sir, and I realize that I should not have done so. She already was feeling ill, and she flew into a panic. When I left, she had retired rather hastily to the necessary stool. I sent Bridget to her, but I’m afraid May has made herself sick.”

“I’ll go up to her at once,” Blanche said. “I am very vexed with you for upsetting her, Laurie, and with you, sir, for allowing such an upset. Instead of accusing poor May, you should be writing an angry letter of protest to Lord Scrope. The very idea of that dreadful Englishman accusing my darling of such a dreadful act! He should be ashamed of himself!” She turned with what in any less haughty dame would be described as a flounce and went out of the hall.

Laurie was left to face her father. “I’m sorry, sir. I should have known it would upset her. She has not been feeling well for days now.”

“It is probably no more than her time of the month,” he said. “I will talk with her tomorrow when she is feeling better, but I do not want you discussing this with her further before then. Do you understand me?”

“Aye, sir, I do.”

She understood him very well, but she intended to talk with May just as soon as she could be sure they would enjoy an hour’s privacy.

Since Bridget slept in an alcove adjoining Isabel and May’s room and Isabel was a very light sleeper, Laurie did not seek May out until early the next morning.

Then, knowing that Bridget would be up and about, helping the other maidservants, and intending to bring May to her own bedchamber to talk, Laurie crept silently in and went to May’s bed.

It was empty.

May was not in her room, or anywhere else in the castle.

Recalling her sister’s claim that, left to herself, she would have flung herself into the Liddel after Martin Loder, and terrified that May intended to kill herself rather than face a wardens’ meeting, Laurie went at once to Sir William.

“May’s gone, sir,” she told him, “and something she said yesterday when she was so distraught gives me to fear that she might do herself an injury. She was terrified of having to answer to such a charge.”

Rather distraught himself, Sir William sent for Blanche and told her the terrible news.

She paled but answered with her customary calm, “I am certain that she must be somewhere about, husband. She would not go outside the wall alone.”

When they discovered that Bridget was missing, too, Blanche grew calmer still. “Depend upon it,” she said, “they will both return soon.”

Mistrusting her confidence, Sir William sent men out at once to search the dales, but they found no sign of Bridget or of May. One of the men said that Bridget’s sister had come for her again, but when Laurie asked Bangtail Willie, he said he had seen no such person and that Nebless Sam had sworn no one had passed through the postern gate.

Blanche retired to her chamber and would speak to no one for days. When she emerged at last, she seemed as calm as usual, but she refused to discuss May.

The wardens’ meeting loomed before them, only days away, and still there was no sign of May.

Yett was our meeting meek enough,

Begun wi’ merriement and mowes…

Truce Day, Lochmaben

“F
ROM A GRASSY HILLSIDE
above the site set for the wardens’ meeting, just as dawn was breaking, Hugh Graham surveyed the landscape below with narrowing, speculative eyes. He and fifty of his men awaited Thomas Scrope’s arrival, but Hugh was in no hurry. The activities would not begin without them, and there was no sign yet of Sir William Halliot of Aylewood with the Scottish party.

Horses shifted, pawed, and occasionally whinnied. Men chatted quietly. At Hugh’s right, his captain, Ned Rowan, sat alertly on his black gelding, his restless gaze scanning the countryside and the surrounding hills.

On Rowan’s right, Meggie’s Andrew sat proudly on his gray pony. The lad’s behavior having been unexceptionable since his run-in with the captain, Rowan had suggested and Hugh had agreed that he should accompany them to Lochmaben. At least a few other children would attend the proceedings, and Hugh thought it would be a good experience for the lad.

Borderers enjoyed few opportunities for recreation, and Hugh knew from experience that folks from both sides of the line had been looking forward to the occasion with lively anticipation. At least, those who had a comparatively clear conscience and did not expect to find themselves too actively engaged in the proceedings looked forward to it. He realized cynically that despite evidence to the contrary—not least of which included the events succeeding the last meeting—most people believed that the truce guaranteed them safe passage until the next day’s sunrise. They wondered only what today would present for their entertainment.

The appointed meeting place was a Scottish field about a mile east of the point where the Water of Sark flows into the Solway. Some three hundred yards from the water’s edge stood a tall stone that was once—or so men said—part of a prehistoric circle. Nowadays, they called it simply the Lochmaben stone.

Already spectators from far and wide were converging upon the field, giving it the appearance of a holiday fair. A distant murmur of their voices drifted up to Hugh, punctuated occasionally by barks of laughter, as they picked their way over the moors and fells and along riverside tracks.

Some walked; others rode shaggy ponies.

Peddlers, tinkers, and other itinerant merchants already were setting up their stalls for business. Hugh knew that many of the men below would make wagers on the miscreants’ chances, and particularly on the fate of the unfortunate young woman the Scots were bound to present for trial. Doubtless word of the complaint against her had traveled on the wind by now to every cot and tower in the Borders.

The field soon teemed with groups of men, a few of their women, and here and there, a child or two, all gossiping and perhaps bargaining over horses or sleuth hounds. Everyone wore his or her Sunday best, although Hugh was certain that every man carried arms.

Once or twice in the past, someone—usually an English warden—had suggested banning weapons on such occasions. But never had the suggestion gone beyond the wish. Few Borderers on either side felt fully dressed without their weapons, since danger was part of their everyday lives.

A stiff, sea-scented wind was blowing toward them from Solway Firth, fluttering banners and causing more than one person to grab for cap or skirt. But winds usually blew through the Borders, even in summer, so although it meant the peddlers had to stake their tents firmly, no one else paid it much heed.

“Master, they come,” Ned Rowan muttered beside him.

Andrew nudged his brown pony closer, leaning near to hear Rowan and to see what he had seen.

Hugh saw at once that the Scots had arrived. Against the northeastern horizon, their cavalcade lined a hillside. Sunlight glittered on arms and armor.

“Them be the bluidy Scots,” Andrew said sagely. “Be they thinking they’ll attack us, then?” He sounded as though he relished the possibility.

Hugh turned to him with a quelling frown. “You are here today so that you can observe what takes place on a Truce Day, my lad, not to stir trouble.”

“I’ve seen Truce Days afore,” Andrew said, his tone irritated but civil.

“Not with my permission, you haven’t. If you want to continue to serve me when you grow up, then you must learn to follow orders and to pay attention now.” With a straight look, he added, “I thought you had learned your lesson, lad.”

“Aye, I have, and all,” Andrew said in a smaller voice, shooting an oblique, resentful look at Ned Rowan.

Satisfied, Hugh turned his attention back to the Scots. He knew that Rowan had skelped the lad, but he knew, too, that the big man cared more about Andrew than other men might. Rowan was nearly as hard a man as Hugh was, but Hugh knew that Andrew would learn from him, and he hoped that those lessons would permit the lad to live long enough to enjoy at least a few adult years in the always treacherous Borders.

“Will
they attack us?” Andrew asked curiously.

“That has been known to happen,” Hugh admitted, “but they have little cause at present to stir trouble, and I do not believe that Halliot is an aggressive man. He certainly is not as belligerent as Buccleuch.”

“What’s ‘belligerent’ mean?”

“Likely to make war,” Hugh said, still watching the Scots.

“Aye, well, I ken the Buccleuch,” Andrew said wisely. “He and all his bluidy reivers need hanging, me da said, but Mistress Janet—”

“Likely your father was right,” Hugh said, cutting in because he did not want to hear what his sister thought about Buccleuch. Another thought followed that one, and he wondered if Buccleuch would attend the proceedings. Dismissing the thought as it formed, he realized the Border leader was unlikely to attend just to watch others wield power. Hugh hoped he was right. A meeting between Buccleuch and Scrope just now, the truce notwithstanding, was likely to stir coals.

Curiously, Andrew said, “Who’s Halliot, then, and what’s he like?”

“He is acting warden of the Scottish middle march,” Hugh said. “King James of Scotland appointed him to take Buccleuch’s place in that role. I’ll wager he’d have liked to make him Keeper of Liddesdale, too, but he dared not.”

“The man would ha’ been a fool to accept,” Ned Rowan said grimly. “Few men ha’ the strength or power to rule Liddesdale.” A brief silence fell before he added, “They be waiting for us, master.”

“Let them wait,” Hugh retorted. “We don’t move until Scrope arrives.”

“What the devil are they waiting for?” Sir William Halliot growled testily.

“’Tis likely they wait for Scrope,” the tall, broad-shouldered rider on Sir William’s left said. “Buccleuch says that Scrope enjoys making folks wait. You must have learned as much, just trying to get Scrope to agree to a date and a site for this meeting. He prefers delay over action, Buccleuch says.”

“Aye, ’tis true,” Sir William agreed.

Laurie, sitting quietly nearby on her horse, had been watching the two as curiously as she had watched the scene in the open field at the foot of the hill. Her father’s companion was Sir Quinton Scott of Broadhaugh, the very man the English had arrested during the previous truce and husband, besides, of Janet the Bold.

Sir Quinton had served as Buccleuch’s deputy warden and now served Sir William in the same capacity.