Chapter Two
LETHAN VALLEY
For a moment I could not react. I was twenty years old and although we had lived with the constant possibility of danger, I had never experienced it first-hand.
I had been too young to remember the excitement of the days when Queen Mary had been in power and armies had marched and countermarched across the country, and as I have said, the Lethan is a bit too far north to be raided by the predatory riding families and any Veitch raid had merely reived a few cattle or burned the odd cot-house.
Yet here they were now, reivers were loose in our valley and all its men were deep in the hills. All that was left were the women, children, and old men.
'Get the spears.' Mother was surprisingly calm. Raising her voice, she shouted out: 'Riders coming up the valley! Spears and bows! Take your places!'
We all knew what to do. Father and Mother had drilled us in case of just such an emergency, so we grabbed what weapons the men had left us and ran to our stations.
I know I should have felt frightened. Instead, I found it all rather exciting really.
Life could be so dull stuck up there at the head of the valley counting cattle and tending crops.
It was good to have something different happen.
'Shall I light the beacon?' I had always wanted to put flame to the great beacon fire that sat in its iron cage on the roof of the tower. The purpose was to send out a message to our neighbours that there were raiders, so they could prepare and send men to help.
'Wait,' Mother said. 'Wait until we are certain. The reivers, if they are reivers, must have passed Whitecleuch to reach us, yet the Fergusons have not fired a warning.'
I bit off my disappointment, peered down the valley and waited as the hoof beats came closer.
I heard the hail. 'Tweedie! Are you in?' The voice came from outside the walls, loud, powerful, and a stranger. 'Adam Tweedie of the Lethan!'
'I am Elizabeth Tweedie of the Lethan!' my mother replied, equally as loud. 'Name yourself and state what you want in our lands!'
'I am the Yorling!' the claim was simple and direct. 'I want your gear and insight.'
'Oh, sweet Mary Mother.' Although Scotland had been officially Protestant for decades, mother still clung to the Roman Catholicism with which she had been raised. I saw her cross herself. 'It is a ghost, risen from the dead.'
I stared into the dark, hoping to see this ghost yet glad of the high barmekin walls around us. 'Who is the Yorling?' I asked stupidly.
'You will get nothing here.' Mother ignored my question as she shouted into the dark outside.
That same voice sounded from beyond the dark. 'I will take what you do not give me! I am the Yorling.'
'The only thing you will get here is an arrow through your eye or a spear in your stomach!' I hoped that only I could detect the fear in Mother's voice.
'Who is the Yorling?' I asked urgently. 'I have never heard the name.'
'Pray to God you never hear it again,' Old Martin spoke through a silver-white beard. 'He is the worst of all of them except Wild Will Armstrong, a wild man from the Debateable Land. I am surprised he still rides.'
'So am I.' Mother had controlled her nerves as she spoke in a low voice. 'He must be an old man now. 'Let's see him.'
'If you are the Yorling,' Mother raised her voice again, 'show yourself!'
'I will do that,' the Yorling replied the instant that Mother finished speaking.
The sudden flare of torches took me by surprise.
One moment the valley was in darkness, the next there was a score of torches flaring around the barmekin walls and down the Lethan Water.
The horsemen who carried them were constantly moving, so torchlight reflected from the water and then flickered across the top of the wall.
Except for the Yorling, they rode in an ominous silence that made them even more frightening.
And then I saw him. He was directly in front of the gate, sitting proud on a pure black horse. He was bareheaded, with black hair cascading to his shoulders and overflowing onto the yellow padded jack he wore as protection against swords and arrows.
Behind and around him were his men; I saw twenty, young and lithe like himself. With the nine-foot-long Border lance and with swords and dags, the heavy pistol, at their saddles, they looked a handy bunch.
'You are not the Yorling,' Old Martin said loudly. 'You're nothing but a cub!'
'A cub from the lair of a wolf,' the Yorling said cheerfully. 'Open up now before we storm the tower.'
I heard my mother tut in exasperation. 'Be off with you,' she said and reached for the bow that leaned against the beacon.
'That must be the son of the Yorling,' Old Martin was always good at explaining the obvious for the sake of those of lesser intelligence than himself.
'He will be a dead son in a second.' Mother pulled back the bowstring with as much dexterity as any Ettrick archer.
She marked her target and loosed with a single flowing movement and the arrow sped on its way.
The dark prevented me from watching its progress.
Now, I can ask this without any hope of an answer: why did I hope that the arrow missed its target?
This Yorling was threatening Cardrona Tower, our home.
I did not have to hope for long, as the Yorling moved sideways in his saddle so the arrow hissed past to bury itself in the ground behind his horse.
'Ha!' His voice mocked us as he pulled his horse, so it pranced on its hind legs. 'If that is your answer then Cardrona is ours!'
I do not know what would have happened next for at that moment Father arrived. I heard his shouting before I saw him.
'A Tweedie! A Tweedie!' And then father led all the men of Lethan in a mad charge into the body of the reivers.
I watched in rising excitement as Father rode straight into them, as he had so often told us he had done at Langside battle when he was a young man.
I had never quite believed his tales until that moment as he led the attack with a lance under his arm and fire in his voice.
'That's my man!' Mother said and I had never heard such love in her voice or seen such brightness in her eyes.
It was as if she relived her youth as father crashed into the reivers.
Unfortunately, as soon as the fighting started, the reivers dropped their torches so I only had intermittent glimpses of what happened as men rode past those torches that had not been doused in the Lethan Water.
I watched eagerly, looking for Robert in the press of horsemen that followed Father.
Not all the men were from the Lethan, I realised.
I saw Archie Ferguson of Whitecleuch there as well, Robert's father, roaring his head off as if he was twenty and not forty-five with a paunch like a woman near her time.
I saw Bailie Marshall of Peebles as well and guessed that father had gathered all the able men of the district to fight off this reiver band. And then I saw Robert.
He was in the middle of the Lethan men, pushing hard to get to the front.
I watched him, hoping he could sense my eyes on him.
He drew his sword elegantly, hauling the broad blade of the backsword from its scabbard with skill.
As he should, for we had practised it often enough on the green slopes of the Hundlestone Heights above Peebles.
I saw him open his mouth in the old Lethan yell, saw him thrust in his spurs as he urged his horse on and I had never seen anything finer in all my days. That was my chosen man charging into battle to fight for our lands and the gear of Lethan.
The Yorling saw him coming and I thought he must have selected him as the most worthy opponent for he turned his great black horse to meet him.
I felt my heart race as Robert charged forward, head down and sword outstretched to meet the leader of this outlaw band.
The Yorling did not charge but merely trotted, flicked poor Robert's sword aside and smacked his horse on the rump with the flat of his blade so it blundered past, carrying Robert with it.
He vanished into the darkness beyond the sputtering light of the torches.
I heard my mother sigh and glanced at her. She was shaking her head sorrowfully.
'Come on, Robert,' I breathed. 'Try again.
Don't let that Yorling beat you so easily.
' Yet even as I said that I could not help but thrill at the skill with which the Yorling turned his horse, dismounted one of our men by casually cutting away one of his stirrups and tipping him out of the saddle, and readying himself to meet Robert's next charge.
'Go on, Robert,' I spoke louder, knowing that Mother was also watching, judging my man by his prowess against this vibrant intruder.
The rest of the battle mattered nought to me.
My entire attention had coalesced to that single encounter between my Robert, broad of shoulder, slow of speech, and the lithe, elegant black-haired Yorling with the bright yellow jack and the long sword that he carried with such grace and used with such skill.
'Go on, Robert!' I shouted the words loudly enough for them to be heard above the noise of the battle so that both participants in my own little duel heard and both glanced up to the head of the tower.
I caught Robert's eye and gave him a wave of encouragement, just as the Yorling kicked in his spurs.
'Robert!' I yelled.
He waved and met the Yorling's attack with a wicked swing of his sword that, if it had connected, would have taken that man's head clean off his shoulders.
Instead, the Yorling lifted his sword to parry.
I heard the clatter of steel quite distinctly from where I stood and saw the Yorling swerve his horse to the side and slice through Robert's stirrups, as he had done to that anonymous Tweedie a few moments before.
Robert swayed in the saddle and tried to maintain his balance, until the Yorling closed, put one foot underneath his and tipped him out.
'Robert!' I screamed.
As Robert sprawled face forward, the Yorling lifted his sword and delivered a resounding whack across his rump with the flat of his sword.
I heard my mother grunt with either satisfaction or malice or a combination of both, and then the Yorling was raising his sword high in the air as his horse danced on its back hooves.
'For you, my fair Lady of Lethan,' he said, kissed the blade of his sword, and saluted us. Or rather, he saluted me for his gaze fixed on me before he gave the most charming of smiles and, shouting to his men, galloped away.
I watched him go, marvelling at his horsemanship as he darted between Father and Archie of Whitecleuch and headed straight up the hillside with his men following, whooping and yelling as if they were demons from the deepest pits of hell that the Reverend Romanes so loves to gabble on about.
That man was so thrilling that I watched him long after he disappeared into the dark.
I wondered who he was and why he was here and where he was going.
I wondered other things as well, but they are for my own private thoughts and should not be allowed out to graze, lest you think more ill of me than you probably already do.
I knew that my Mother thought ill of me that September day.
'Well.' Mother broke my thoughts with her usual stern rebuke. 'Are you not going to see if he is injured?' She was watching me, her head to one side and her eyes narrow, wise, and all-seeing.
'He is all right.' I stared into the night.
'He is lying there groaning on the ground.' Mother nodded to where Robert lay.
'Oh!' I recollected myself. 'Oh, Robert!' And I nearly ran down the stairs in my sudden anxiety to redeem myself. And to ensure that Robert was all right, of course.