Chapter Six
ETTRICK AND TARRAS
I heard the drumbeats of hooves and wakened from what had been an exhausted slumber. I sat up quickly, opened my mouth to shout a warning and closed it again very quickly. Thinking that it might be Father or even Robert, I lay still with my eyes open in hope.
That was perhaps the worst decision I had ever made in my life; or perhaps the best.
The horsemen came onto the sleeping camp like a torrent. They did not say a word until they were amongst us and then they gave a series of co-ordinated yells that raised the small hairs on the back of my head.
'An Armstrong! An Armstrong!'
There was instant consternation in the camp as the youths rose to meet this threat.
I saw the Yorling raise his sword, to be instantly knocked to the ground; I saw the young boy who was saved from the hangman's noose bowled right over and others brushed aside as if they were stalks of barley falling before the reaper's hook.
'An Armstrong! An Armstrong!'
The cry rose like the thunder of battle, deep-throated, menacing like no other.
Of course, I knew all about the Armstrongs, the most dangerous riding family in all the Borderland.
Based in Liddesdale, that cockpit for half the trouble in Scotland, at their height they could raise three thousand lances and their towers and strongholds nailed Liddesdale to the blood-soaked ground.
They terrorised their neighbours and raided from a few miles outside the royal castle of Edinburgh to deep inside England.
Of all the reivers, they were the most notorious and the most dangerous.
And now they were upon us on that exposed hillside deep in the Ettrick Forest.
'Horses!' a deep voice roared and some of the Armstrongs veered off to round up the Yorling's small herd.
By that time, I had scrambled to my feet, staring.
Things were happening so quickly that I could not make any sense of them.
I saw the Armstrongs, tough, mature men, scattering the Yorling's young callants, slashing at them with swords and thrusting at them with lances.
The Yorling was lying still, bleeding from a wound in his head. Although it was he who had snatched me from the Lethan, I still felt that strange bond. I ran to his side, hoping to help. To do so I had to pass one of the Armstrong riders and he saw me right away.
'A woman!' he shouted, 'I have a woman!'
For the second time in two days, I was hoisted off my feet and plumped over the back of a horse.
'Stop!' I yelled, uselessly, and was rewarded with a hard crack on the back of my head that temporarily knocked all the fight out of me. I lay across the horse seeing nothing but stars as the Armstrong who had grabbed me kicked in his spurs and sped across that night-dark hill.
Only half conscious, I cannot say how long we travelled for.
It may have been one hour, and it may have been twelve hours.
I only know that I was aching in every muscle, hungry, parched with thirst, and totally exhausted when the Armstrongs finally stopped their mad canter across the bleak moors and hills.
'Get off.' The words were abrupt and followed by a rough shake that rattled my teeth inside my head.
'Who are you?' I asked.
'You'll know me,' the man said and tipped me roughly onto the ground. 'Or you know of me.'
I lay there, dazed and sick, wondering who he was until a hard foot dug into my ribs. 'Up!'
I tried to rise, but too slowly for my captor, who grabbed a handful of my hair and raised me to my feet. 'I said up!' He backhanded me hard across my face, drawing blood. 'Who are you?'
I looked around, desperate for hope. Instead, I experienced nothing but despair.
We were outside a tower that could have been the image of Lethan, except for the armed men who lounged outside and the situation.
While the hills of the Lethan Valley were cultivated and green, dotted with sheep and smeared with patches of purple heather, the hills I now saw in the background were dark with menace, scattered with grey granite rocks and reamed with the gulleys of intermittent burns.
There was no beauty here, only grim rock and uncultivated moorland, with the tower in the midst of extensive moss.
I knew without asking that this was the Tarras Moss, the last refuge of the Armstrongs and a place whose secret paths were known to none other.
There was a solitary dry patch immediately in front of the tower, with a piece of rising ground off to the right, where the Armstrongs were driving their stolen cattle.
The scarred man poked a hard finger into my ribs. 'I asked you a question.'
I felt inside my mouth with my tongue, searching for loose teeth. 'I am Jean Tweedie of the Lethan,' I told him, hoping that the name would put some manners into him. I may as well have asked to ride to the moon.
He grunted. 'You're a Tweedie then. Why were you with the Grahams?'
I did not wish to tell him that I did not know I had been with the Grahams. 'That is not your concern,' I replied and yelled as he backhanded me again.
I fell on the ground, dazed. He picked me up again with his hand twisted in my hair and pulled me close.
I stared into the most evil face I had ever seen in my life.
The farm boys and middle-aged men of the Lethan were tough as nails and hardy as anybody yet compared to the viciousness in this man's face, they were soft-hearted innocents.
'Why were you with the Grahams?' He repeated the same question, drawing back his hand to hit me again. Now I know that I am stubborn, but I am not stupid enough to allow myself to be beaten to a pulp merely for the sake of it.
'I don't know.' I flinched, expecting another blow. 'They grabbed me as I was outside the tower and carried me away. They did not tell me why.'
The Armstrong nodded. 'Ransom,' he growled and looked closer. 'That's not their normal practice.'
I could not answer. I did not know their normal practice.
'It's a long way to come from the Debatable Land to grab a woman. You must be more important than you look.' He twisted my head back for a closer inspection. 'How many?'
'How many what?' I was aware of the other Armstrongs gathering round. Some looked curiously at me, others barely spared me a glance as they busied themselves with counting cattle and horses, the spoil of their raid.
'How many horses? How many cattle? What were the Grahams after when they took you?
' He pulled me closer to him with each question, so I was pressed right against that wicked, flint-eyed face with the livid white scar that ran from the outside of his right eye to his chin and which writhed with every word he spoke.
'I don't know!' The panic in my voice must have been evident for the Armstrong merely grunted and threw me back to the ground.
'We'll find out.' He raised his head, 'Take this woman to the dungeon until we see if she's worth keeping.'
'No…' I knew enough about dungeons to not wish to visit one. Cardrona Tower had its Black Hole which was a small space underneath the storeroom. I soon discovered that it was a palace compared to the dungeon in which I was cast.
Ignoring all my protests, two of the Armstrongs grabbed hold of me by the arms and hauled me inside the gateway of the tower. I looked around, seeing a handful of slatternly women huddled around what I took to be a well and a stall of well-cared-for horses along the wall.
There was a trapdoor in the ground, which two of the women opened and I was tossed down, head first.
'You'll be in here until Wild Will decides what to do with you,' one of the women said, and the trapdoor slammed shut leaving me alone in the dark with my thoughts and my fears.
Wild Will. I repeated the name in my head; Wild Will Armstrong, the worst of the worst, and I was in his power.
I looked around me as my eyes gradually accustomed themselves to the dark.
I had expected the dungeon to be something like the Black Hole in Cardrona, but it was fouler.
There was a thin scattering of straw on the ground, enough to cushion my fall but not enough to give even a small measure of comfort.
I heard the faint rustling and knew I was not alone.
'Who's there?' I tried to quell the faint quaver in my voice. 'Speak to me.'