Книга - Raider’s Tide

Raider’s Tide
Maggie Prince


Strong historical fiction and powerful romantic drama set in border country during Elizabethan times – forbidden passions and family loyalties; heresy and witchcraft, but at the heart of it, the burgeoning love of a young girl.The year is 1578 and Queen Elizabeth 1 is on the throne. Sixteen year old Beatie, the daughter of a North Country farmer is defying her family over the matter of her proposed marriage to her cousin Hugh. She is too busy being the elder daughter and watching over her family – overseeing the kitchen work; riding her horse, Saint Hilda, and most importantly keeping a watchful eye out for the first sign of marauding Scots from over the border.The family live in Barrowbeck Tower – a stronghold which should keep out invaders. But the Scots do invade and Beatie has to push at the face of one of them who appears – courtesy of a grappling iron – at an upper window. It is a young face and one that Beatie will never forget. It is the first Scot she has injured, probably killed. Next day, Beatie finds a dirty, bleeding body in the old hermit’s hut in the wood, and discovers that it belongs to the Scot she pushed from the window. Through guilt she determines to nurse this enemy back to health, despite the terrible danger to herself which could have her burned at the stake. A smouldering tension of love and intimacy develops between patient and carer, but that isn’t the only possible relationship for Beatie. She is also growing very close to the young parson, John Becker.This is an exceptionally atmospheric novel, written in the first person through the voice of this feisty Elizabethan teenager. The reader is immediately taken on a journey to Elizabethan England – the country, not the city – and the smells and sounds are vividly brought to life. Maggie Prince draws a vivid picture too of the wild landscape of the Border Country and the eternal teenage struggle to break free of childhood and lead an independent life.









Raider’s Tide


MAGGIE PRINCE









Dedication (#ulink_f377e9b5-03b8-5514-ac54-be5f6c46a4df)


For Chris, Deborah, Daniel,and for my mother whoselandscape this is, withlove and thanks.


The northern counties from time to time had to withstand invasion by the organised forces of Scotland, but their chief embarrassment was caused by a system of predatory incursions which rendered life and property insecure.



Victoria County History of Cumberland

They have taken forth of divers families all, the very rackencrocks and pot-hooks. They have driven away all the beasts, sheep and horses…



The Silver Dale, by William Riley

On 14 April… the Scots did come… armed and appointed with gavlockes and crowes of iron, handpeckes, axes and skailinge lathers.



Border Papers, Scottish Records ii 171




Contents


Cover (#u7f7a7a22-5b2e-5a3f-bb6b-9c86f606fd73)

Title Page (#u2e0061f6-2fcd-50d2-9ff6-1a235f362df2)

Dedication (#u5ec80520-afa0-50f4-bf53-e692dfe54ee9)

Epigraph (#u48be11c2-07a1-5152-b123-b1839df73a8a)

Map (#ud38405ee-1c92-5bd0-8ae5-80c97c6059d2)

Author’s Note (#u47d1b8c5-b525-5732-816a-f4fc317c6e63)

Chapter 1 (#u4c522b01-dbf5-54f8-9611-8fd1d41d0ca0)

Chapter 2 (#u0d8c434d-7dad-5577-9243-d2c595c60aa4)

Chapter 3 (#u13f57185-ff0b-5211-85b7-fe2a59b078ab)

Chapter 4 (#u7a8fa353-9f22-5d0c-bd4c-f32c6ca535ff)

Chapter 5 (#u91a7ed63-3731-55a2-939f-6abcf9b52d67)

Chapter 6 (#u8a862786-d065-5380-9c5f-a3cdf007b4cc)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgement (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




Map (#ulink_726e9331-f033-5735-8540-0f1af5f8d605)










(#ulink_56303d4e-bb39-504a-b94f-53d249ec0629)


In transposing Beatrice’s story into modern English,the tone and content of her original narrativehave been preserved throughout,and her exact words wherever possible.

It is the late 1500s. Queen Elizabeth I is on the throne of England …




Chapter 1 (#ulink_097b7c38-45bf-59b4-93f4-03852d86dd34)


I jump up, jolted out of my daydream. I thought I heard voices, muttering secretively. I peer into the dimness of the woods and listen. It’s easy to start imagining things when you’re alone on the last watch of the day. On the other hand, my hearing is sharp – sharper than average – and I often hear what I am not supposed to.

I rest my hand on the haft of my knife, and creep through the swathes of pale cream daffodils to where the rough ground of the Pike slopes down towards the sea. My knife has worn through the bottom of its sheath, and keeps catching on my skirts. I shift it round to the back of me, and move out into the open where the warning beacon stands, a pile of sticks and turf in a stone trough. I can see nothing out of the ordinary, just the sun going down in the west, shining red through the beacon’s propped twigs.

We keep watch because of a very real danger. It is three years since we were last attacked by Scottish raiders, who creep round the bay in their boats or race out of the hills from the border country. Now it is spring again, the invasion season, and a watch must be kept until the first winter frosts.

The sound isn’t repeated. I suppose I’m just jumpy, for I have worse problems than Scots to think of at the moment. Light glints on fast-moving water far below me, and I sit on the edge of the beacon to watch the bore tide coming up the bay. The wind wraps my skirts round my legs and brings fine sand billowing up the slope. I push my hair back under my lace cap, and glance south along the coast to where my cousins’ pele tower stands above the sea on its limestone cliffs. The tower itself cannot be seen from here, but warning smoke from their beacon can, when necessary. Yes, there are worse things than Scots. I was sixteen last birthday, and people have begun murmuring about marriage.

This past six years, since I was no longer a child, I have known that I must marry my Cousin Hugh, as my sister must marry his brother, Gerald, to ensure preservation within the family of our two farmsteads. It had always, until now, seemed a safely distant prospect.

I stand up and make a last patrol round the slopes, kicking my way through the bracken, straining my ears for anything that is not part of the normal life of the Pike. There’s nothing, just rustlings in the undergrowth as small night creatures wake up, and the distant screaming of seagulls above the tide line. I collect my cloak from a bramble bush and set off downhill through the forest, leaving the sea behind.

It is darker here, but I see it almost at once, a rust-coloured rag hanging from the lower branches of a wych elm. I struggle through the brambles to reach it, sick already. It is warm and motionless, surprisingly solid under its soft fur, a snared squirrel, choked by the wire noose it ran through.

Perhaps this tiny tragedy was what I heard earlier. I loosen the wire and lift it down, sad little hunchback. Its red tail drifts like thistledown against my wrist. Barrowbeck villagers hunt the squirrels for their tails, which make pretty if distressing gown edgings. For a moment I do not feel in any way like a grown woman, old enough to marry. Instead I feel childlike and inadequate, not up to dealing with a world which can do this. I settle the squirrel amongst the roots of the tree and am about to cover it with last year’s dead leaves, when it twitches and blinks, then runs up the tree and is gone. It must just have had the breath knocked out of it by the noose. I laugh, relieved, feeling my heart pounding in my throat at the shock, then pick my way back to the steep path. Above me, the squirrel flickers away through the treetops. Below me, my own family’s pele tower stands in the valley on its raised shoulder of land, a foursquare limestone fortress. I make my way down the hill, more unnerved than ever now, avoiding tree roots and white rocks that poke like bones through the soil. Behind me, in the darkening woods, one late blackbird sings wildly.

In the valley I pass the stonewalled midden where Leo, our cowman, is shovelling manure. He calls out, “Evening, Mistress Beatrice!” and grins. I wave back. “’Tis a good evening for Scots,” he calls after me. I sigh, and lift the heavy iron latch of the gatehouse door. Somehow, I’m not in the mood for Leo’s wit tonight.

In the gatehouse I step over the horse rug. I never stand on it. It used to be Peter, my favourite pony. The heat from the candle on the wall-pricket sears my cheek. I leave the door open for a moment to allow fresh air in. This nail-studded door, half the thickness of an oak tree, is the only outer door to our home, and therefore the only entrance to defend when we are attacked, but the result on the lower floors, where there are no windows either, is that the air is often stale and heavy. The only other way out is underground, a passage below the kitchen which leads downhill to the barmkin, the high-walled enclosure where our animals are sometimes kept.

I open the inner door. Greasy smoke hangs in the gloom. I can hear the clank of iron pans beyond the low arch which leads to Kate’s kitchen. There will be bread warming on the hearth, and stew steaming in a pot suspended from the rackencrock over the fire. I’m hungry, and Kate will be angry with me for being late, but I need to breathe. This is too suffocating after the wind on the Pike. I set off up the spiral stone staircase, and meet my younger sister, Verity, coming down.

“Beatie, where were you? I’m trying to sort out next week’s watch rota. Germaine wants to exchange with you on Monday.” She sits down on a step.

Verity at fifteen is taller than me, her hair a darker brown and her eyes a darker blue. The word which older members of the family use to describe her is ‘wilful’. Verity really couldn’t care less what they say. She is one of the people I am closest to in the world. I sit down on the step below her.

“Sorry. I was on the Pike. Dickon has the ague and there was no lookout, so I took over his watch. Where’s Mother?”

“She’s out. She went off in a temper to visit Aunt Juniper.”

We exchange a look. “And Father?” There are only two places where Father might be: lying in wait next to the highway, or drinking himself into a stupor upstairs.

Verity pulls a face and gestures up the stairs. I groan. Faintly I can hear Germaine playing one of the nauseatingly sentimental tunes my father adores, on her three-stringed fiddle. “I wish I’d stayed on the Pike,” I mutter, feeling a twinge of longing for the peace there. Nature might be brutal and complicated, but at least it doesn’t play the fiddle.

We talk a little longer about how to organise the watch, then I continue on up four floors, round and round the circling steps, to the battlements. It’s turning cold. I pull my hooded cloak more closely round me. In the centre of the battlements is the crenellated beacon turret, with its tall wooden pole topped by an iron crossbar and two tar barrels, ready to be ignited should any neighbouring beacon flare up in warning. We keep a ring of fire here on the coast. There are beacons on the Pike, on Beacon Hill behind us, at my cousins’ pele tower along the cliffs and on Gewhorn Head, the promontory across the bay.

Up here on the battlements the air smells of damp earth and new leaves. William, one of my father’s henchmen, is on guard tonight. He is dozing on his feet, but when he hears me he jumps, and starts marching dizzyingly round the battlements, his gaze turning from west to north to east.

“Good evening, William.”

“Good evening, Mistress Beatrice.”

I lean with my elbows on the stone parapet, and after a moment William joins me. Stars are coming out in the east, like maker’s flaws in expensive blue pottery. In the west the last glow, as if from a kiln, shows uneasily. Bats dip and swing below us. Far down in the meadow Leo heads home, and a homesteader calls to her dog.

I love all this, but I do not love my Cousin Hugh, except as a cousin. If the queen refuses to marry, why cannot I? I am perfectly capable of running this farm unaided. Verity and I mostly do already. Why, for heaven’s sake, would I need a husband?

“Lord Allysson’s carriage is coming through tonight,” William says in an offhand manner.

I turn to look at him. “Have you told my father?”

His gaze slides away. “I had to, mistress. I didn’t want another beating like the last one. Mebbe a sprig of valerian in his wine? I reckon he’s got wise to Mistress Verity’s trick with the stone in his horse’s shoe.”

I sigh. “I could try it. Thanks William.” It isn’t easy having a father who’s a part-time highway robber.

Back downstairs in the kitchen Kate, our cook, is standing inside the hearth, stirring something, her hair wrapped in a white cloth and her overskirts tucked into her belt. She lifts her red face from the blaze.

“About time, young woman. This broth is well nigh incinerated. Get your plate.” A cauldron of steaming mutton stew is standing on a trivet at the side of the fire. Kate ladles some on to my plate, and takes half a loaf of black bread from the warming oven in the wall. I sit down at the long table, mutter a quick grace and eat in silence. Verity has vanished now, but elsewhere in the tower Germaine’s music creaks on.

Kate throws more logs on the fire and turns the wheel of the bellows, sending the flames roaring high. I realise now that she is boiling bones for glue. The disgusting smell starts to fill the kitchen. Kate sings while she works, something about a cold-hearted maiden who condemns a young man to die by not loving him enough. I find that my sympathies lie entirely with the maiden. Kate crosses to the chopping block on its tree-trunk legs, lines up the next batch of mutton bones left over from the stew and swings her cleaver high. The firelight throws her giant shadow across the smoky walls. Our kitchen is the only room which is two storeys high, to dissipate heat and allow some light in, since there are no windows on the ground floor. High up, the narrow window slits show the night sky. Owls and bats live up there. There are flutterings as Kate’s shadow flies through the darkness and crashes down. I shiver. There is a strange feeling in the air tonight.



Later, in my room three floors up, I peer out of the window. We had glass put into some of our windows last year – not into the arrow slits of course – and so it is more difficult to see out now, through these tiny, greenish panes. I thought I heard a horse outside, and my father’s nervous cough. I do wonder quite how all this expensive glass came to be paid for.

A heated stone lies in my bed, under my sheepskin bedcover. My cat, Caesar, grudgingly relinquishes his place on it as I climb between the sheets. I leave my faded blue bed-curtains open. I don’t want to be cut off from the world tonight. When I kick the warmingstone out, scents of lavender and thyme billow up from the rushes on the floor. Caesar sidles on to the stone, jumps back, creeps up on it again. Finally he decides to burn, and his purring is like the sea on the pebbles over the hill as we both settle down for the night.

I dream of Scots. They are in the lower section of the spiral staircase where it opens into the gatehouse and the kitchen archway. I run up the stairs away from them, but it is worse there, because the stairs are enclosed and narrow between curving walls, and I cannot see how close they are behind me.

I wake with a jump, hot and trembling. In the darkness the dream is still too real. I stare in the direction of my door. I am afraid to reach out for my tinderbox and candle, but eventually I do. The shadows swoop and dance as I light the candle. I need company to drive the nightmare away, so I wrap a shawl round my shoulders and go up on to the battlements, throwing glances behind me down the stairs. Martinus is on watch. He smiles and greets me, and talks comfortably of ordinary things, food, horses, the pattern of the stars, and we stand for a long time leaning against the beacon turret, under the stare of the wall-eyed moon.




Chapter 2 (#ulink_9519c915-cf7d-5668-b8bd-4f93ee5ceb78)


In the morning I find that my mother has still not returned, so I decide to walk over the hill to Aunt Juniper’s to meet her, and perhaps have another half-hearted go at seeing Hugh in a husbandly light. Before this, however, there are the morning’s tasks. We are not rich. We do not have many servants, so Verity and I do much of the work involved in running the household and farm. This morning I set some of the men to pounding seaweed into our outer door, to make it fireproof for the summer. We are late doing it this year. Then I walk down the hill to open the barmkin and release the flock of sheep belonging to our neighbour, James Sorrell. The sunshine drives away the last of my nightmares. I have vague recollections of dreaming about Hugh dressed in a suit of armour, which in view of my misgivings was probably wishful thinking.

This is a good time to be alive. Queen Elizabeth is on the throne and stability reigns throughout the land. We hear of distant battles fought and won by our English army and navy on land and sea, the news sometimes brought to us a year or more after they happened by fancy-talking travellers from the south. Our only real problem is the Scots, who raid the border counties of Westmorland, Cumberland and Northumberland from March to September every year, though I daresay they feel that we are their problem too, since our men also cross the border from time to time.

There’s a lot to do now that spring is here. Our lower rooms and cellars, which have been used as food stores through the winter, must now be cleared, so that cattle, goats and horses can be herded in there fast in the event of a raid. There are times when I wish that one or both of my parents took more interest in the daily running of Barrowbeck Tower.

My father appears to be limping this morning, and I wonder if last night’s robbery on the highway did not go according to plan. “Hurt your leg, Father?” Verity asks unsympathetically as she sorts stones to repair the barmkin wall. Father is tottering down the slope towards the dairy in search of fresh milk for his morning dish of bread and milk. Despite their mutual insults it is always obvious how fond Verity and Father are of each other. I think they recognise themselves in each other. I am more like Mother, full of dreams and secrets.

“You can give back yon good pair of shoes if you don’t like what bought ’em, Daughter,” he shouts at her. Verity takes off her shoes and throws them at his retreating back, but he ignores them. I hold the barmkin gate open for him, and he shambles in, pushing his way among the sheep who are shambling out.

James’s sheep have been kept overnight in our barmkin instead of on their normal grazing on the saltmarsh foreshore, because it was full moon last night, and they would have been caught by the high tide, as has happened to many a human soul. I watch the sheep go strolling off down the hill on each other’s heels like, well, sheep, and I head back up to the tower. We all have to come and go to and from the barmkin the long way round. From outside it appears a separate thing from the tower. It is a high-walled, semi-circular enclosure lower down the hill, attached at each end to the sheer rockface from which our impregnable outer wall rises. The Scots have breached the barmkin many times, but they have never found the secret stone archway hidden under the floor of the dairy, which itself is built straight into the rock wall, like a cave. Deep in the hill an underground passage leads to our storage cellars and the curving slope up to the kitchen. Even if they did ever find it, they would then be confronted by an iron-bound oak door and a spiked wolf-pit. We scarcely ever come and go this way, for fear of leaving marks of passage, though the temptation is often great on a rainy day.

By midday Mother still has not returned, so I set off to walk up through Barrow Wood and over Beacon Hill to meet her. I want to talk to her alone. Nothing is inevitable. No official betrothal has taken place between Hugh and me. Not even the preliminary de futuro contract has been signed. I need to catch her in a good mood and make my case. She and my father are a glowing example of why matrimony should be avoided. She has often told the story of how, as a bride of sixteen, she travelled the Old Corpse Road on the back of a donkey to marry my father. “It would have been better had I married the donkey,” she once said in an unguarded moment.

Saint Hilda, my horse, is cropping thistles at the edge of the trees as I enter Barrow Wood. I stroke her nose and decide to leave her behind today. Walking will allow me more time for thought. I have a good nuncheon of cheese and bread in my sheepskin bag. I do not intend to hurry back.

I follow the direct but strenuous route over the top of the hill, where flat, fissured limestone slabs alternate with patches of bracken. Herb Robert grows in crevices, and lady’s-slipper orchids tremble in the shade. I take off my boots. The stones are warm and smooth through my black linen stockings. I sit down on a rock to eat, looking out over the bay.

This is not my best batch of bread ever. It emerged from the oven dark and bitter-tasting. I fear there was a mould in last year’s wheat, caused by the damp spring. Sometimes these moulds cause outbreaks of madness right across the north of England. We’ve tried all ways to keep the bitterness out of the bread, such as not letting the leaven stand too long, a week instead of a fortnight. Unfortunately, the resulting bread is then so hard that you could brain Scots with it.

The mould tends to be worse in the barley and rye bread which the homesteaders make. I wonder sometimes how far the death-hunts and burnings which sometimes plague us round here are a result of these outbreaks of collective madness.

The beacon is behind me, a raised stone hearth piled with wood and turf. I lean my back against it. A tinderbox lies in a covered cavity beneath it, with dried moss and tar-soaked rotten sticks for kindling. I gaze round me, sleepy in the warmth and stillness. The crown of the hill is like a monk’s skull, a white summit fringed by trees. There are still monks over the water at Cartmel, despite the old king’s wisdom in tearing down their dens of iniquity. Sometimes I wonder about the iniquity. Despite being impoverished themselves, the Cartmel monks give to the poor, and are also said to shelter fugitives.

I look out across the distant curve of the bay to Gewhorn Head, where wolves still roam occasionally, and beyond, to the lakeland hills hidden in a smudge of mist. This is when James Sorrell appears. I don’t know which of us receives the bigger fright when his face materialises above the rock wall.

“Beatie, whatever are you doing here?”

“I’m on my way to meet my mother, James. For heaven’s sake, how do you manage to be so quiet? You frightened the life out of me. What are you doing here?”

“It’s my turn on watch.” He sits down beside me, and looks at me in silence. James does not communicate well. His manners are often rough, and surprisingly for a landed farmer in our prosperous region of the north, he has never learned to read or write. I feel it is something to do with the fact that his father used to beat him half senseless when he was a child. We all knew it. I can remember my mother flying into a rage with the old man, and being shown briskly off the premises of Low Back Farm. Because James cannot read or write, Verity keeps his farm’s financial books for him, and as a result he has fallen in love with her.

He takes off his leather jerkin. He smells of sweat and cattle. “I haven’t seen Verity lately,” he says. For some reason, perhaps because he knows I like him, James lives in the forlorn hope that I will help him obtain my fifteen-year-old sister’s hand in marriage. Nothing could be further from my mind.

“She’s busy, James,” I answer, and pass him some bread and cheese to cheer him up. We sit in silence for a while. The world is very beautiful today. Below the rocky plateau on which we sit, on a level with our feet, young hazel leaves are curling out of their buds. High above us a hawk hovers. Trouble for someone. A hint of the strange feeling I had yesterday returns. I say, “You know, James, I feel as if we’re being watched.”

“Aye?” He looks sceptical. “It’ll be the Green Man, I daresay.”

I laugh. Now he is making me nervous. “No, nothing like that. I expect it’s just a deer watching us from the woods.”

He smiles. “Well it’ll be the Green Man now. Speak and ye’ll see.”

“Oh stop it, James.” I lean back, knowing he finds it amusing to frighten people, and wishing I had not started this conversation and given him the opportunity. There’s nothing on this sunlit hill to harm us. Except – a flicker of light westwards across the bay. I straighten and stare. James has seen it too. He sits forward. The flicker vanishes and is replaced by a thin line of smoke rising from the watchtower across the water. It is the warning beacon. The Scots are coming.




Chapter 3 (#ulink_f198557d-304c-519f-9f5d-da6082b5cdc6)


I have a moment of simply not believing it. I think, this doesn’t happen. Three years without a raid have made me complacent.

It makes me slow, slow to react, slow to get on my feet and grapple the tinderbox from its dry place under the beacon. James is faster. He is flinging dried moss and tarry sticks on to the pyre, poking them under the wood, pinching out little tendrils for me to light. I strike a shower of sparks into the moss. All of them go out. I strike again. A few sparks wriggle along the dry filaments and then they go out too. I strike again. The moss takes, bursts into flame. I light one of the tarry sticks from it, twisting it, giving it air, and then thrust it into the centre. A fragile line of smoke trails upwards. James picks up his jerkin and sways it back and forth to create a draught, not too hard, not too gently. He is good with fires. With a sigh, a rotten branch catches and sends up a puff of flame.

“Best run now,” says James.

I pull on my boots and ram the tinderbox back into its hole, then follow James across the clearing. We pick up speed when we leave the summit with its ankle-twisting fissures, and start a slithering rush downhill, leaving the path and taking the most direct route. Bracken and tiny treelets whip our ankles. We blunder between ash, hazel and juniper. Behind us the fire burns noisily. I stop and look back, and see the pointed flame flashing high then dipping low, surrounded by a black stream of smoke, shocking against the spring sky.

All I can think is, where are the Scots? Are they coming across the bay at this moment? Are they here already, between me and the safety of the tower? They have been known to hide in the woods for days in some remoter parts, while villagers have gone about their business unawares. James and I both need to round up our livestock. We cannot take losses on the scale of three years ago, particularly as at the tower we have less gold and silver stored in the root cellar for buying new animals this year.

In a good year, Verity goes to market in Lancaster in May with a bag of gold to buy cattle, and to Kendal in August with a bag of silver to buy sheep. I swear the other farmers and auctioneers are more afraid of her than they are of many a grown man. She controls our finances as well as James’s. She pays the men, oversees the weighing of the harvest, and, once, the thrashing of a farmhand who stole a bushel of wheat. Only once, because afterwards, as they untied the lad from the elder tree by the barmkin gate, she came into my room, sat down and headed a page in her accounts book Thefts. After that she let them steal, and the page in her book headed Thefts soon filled up with her pointed black script. Our father is a different matter, however, and our increasing success in keeping him off the highways has meant there’s less saved than in previous years.

At last James and I emerge into the clearing. It is an overwhelming relief to see the tower still safe, a haven. “You’d better blow the horn, James,” I gasp as we make a dash across the open ground. He holds on to the hawthorn tree by the gatehouse, bent double, getting his breath back. I open the door and grab the battered ram’s-horn from its niche in the wall. James seizes it from me, and blows.

The sound freezes in the air. It is like doom. Gooseflesh rises on my arms and legs. James keeps blowing, getting into his rhythm now, twice outside the main door towards the valley, then up the spiral stairway, once at each slit window. The effect is immediate. Kate’s screams echo up from the cellars. Thudding feet start running on the upper floors. Leo’s voice shouts in the valley, and the cows, under the thwack of his hazel tine, start bellowing. Whatever is the watchman doing? He must be asleep, not to have seen the warning smoke on the hill and over the water.

He was. As James and I emerge on to the battlements he is rubbing his eyes and staggering about, his hair ruffled, and a smell of ale rising from him that could have ignited the beacon unaided. For a moment I feel mad with fury.

“Henry!” I slap him hard across the face with the back of my hand, the one which wears Grandmother’s turquoise ring. It leaves a broad weal and breaks his skin. Tiny wells of blood rise along the mark. It also wakes him up.

“Mis… Mistress Beatrice,” he splutters. “You’d no call to do that.”

“The Scots are coming, you great boggart!” I hit him again for good measure with the tar torch, before I go to light it at the living-hall fire, one floor down. I can hear the combined braying of James’s horn and Kate’s screaming as I run down the steps and up again, carrying the roaring torch. By then my father, Verity, Kate and two henchmen, William and Martinus, have arrived on the battlements, and have begun stacking stones and arrows by the parapet. Kate’s screaming has dropped to a whimper now. She is terrified of the Scots, and of many things. Her nerves have never been the same since the day years ago when this tiny woman, with her wonderful singing voice, wild grey hair like a dandelion seed-head and a serious limp caused by stampeding cattle during a childhood Scottish raid, was accused of witchcraft. It was because she told fortunes, inaccurately it has to be said. She was also frequently accompanied by a black cat, mother of my cat Caesar. It was enough, for those looking for someone to blame for their own misfortunes. It was the old parson who accused her, from the pulpit one Sunday. Before the matter could get out of hand, as these things so often do, Mother stood up and faced him in the nave of the church and outquoted him text by text from the Bible, suggesting that he who was without sin should cast the first stone. Or better still, eat it and choke for shame. I was astonished at my mother’s knowing, scornful voice, and at the sniggers that ran among the rows of people standing tense and motionless in the packed church. I didn’t understand what it all meant then, but heard tales later, when I was older, of this priest having a bastard in every village.

The old parson, perhaps realising that if he had Kate hanged he would have no one to sing so beautifully at his weddings and funerals, not to mention the annual two-village barn dance at which the sight of him performing a Cumberland square reel with his cassock tucked into his hose was not unknown, marched out of church that day, and afterwards said no more of the matter.

Witches hang and heretics burn, but there are fewer hangings and burnings under this queen than under the last one. Old people still speak fearfully of Queen Mary’s days. Bloody Mary, they call her. With the change of queen from Mary to Elizabeth the tide has turned from burning Protestants to burning Catholics. Burning those who disagree with you is a hard habit to shake off. We heard news recently of the burnings of some Catholics just a few hours’ ride south of us in Lancaster, but up here no one cares much what faith you follow so long as you are discreet. Witchcraft, of course, is another matter.

Now the old priest is dead, replaced by a younger man who declares that witchcraft does not exist, heresy scarcely matters and that we had all better damn well love each other or he’ll know the reason why. He took over Verity’s and my lessons from the old parson. Sadly, these have stopped now that I am sixteen.

I light my second beacon of the day. The tar barrels ignite at once with a huff of sound, and snarl like animals as they burn. I step down hurriedly as the heat hits me. Verity is handing out swords, bows and clubs, as more henchmen and Germaine appear at the top of the stairway. A grim air of calm hangs over us.

Germaine refuses the bow which Verity offers her, and goes to fetch her own. Germaine is our only other female servant besides Kate. She is tall and dark and very beautiful, and plays a variety of musical instruments with a variety of lack of talent. She is supposed to teach music and needlework to Verity and myself, and do the mending. Instead she spends most of her time entertaining Father.

I go downstairs with William and Henry to watch them lug our heavy old hagbut out of its cupboard on the east stairs and across the passage into the men’s common room. At Barrowbeck we cannot afford many firearms in the way that some of the bigger fortresses can. Our hagbut is inaccurate, slow to load and terrifyingly loud. Its eccentric angle of fire is such that it is more effective aimed from the common room, half way down the tower. When he was a young man, my father used to carry it into battle on his shoulder.

The men latch the weapon on to its stand and tip it awkwardly backwards, like a cannon, for me to load. I uncap a horn of gunpowder and ram shot and gunpowder down the barrel, wadding it into place. “Better oil the hinges,” I suggest, extracting the ramrod and propping it by the wall for next time. I filter some fine gunpowder into the priming pan. “I’ll get you some lard from the kitchen. You need it to swing up more easily than that for reloading.” The acrid smell of gunpowder is in my nose and on my hands as I hurry downstairs.

Now I am beginning to worry about Mother. Where is she? Is she still safely with Aunt Juniper, or is she in the woods on her way home? If the latter, then surely she will have heard the horn and seen the beacon, and will either hurry home or find somewhere to hide. Back on the battlements I work my way through the crowd to where Germaine is flexing her longbow. Most of us just have ordinary bows, but Germaine insists on using this six-foot monstrosity with its silk and flaxen string. I have to say, though, that she does tend to hit things with it.

“Germaine?” I take care to be polite. “Would you please take charge of closing all the shutters, and later when we’re all in, wind down the grille on the door and open the wolf-pit? Can I just leave all those things to you? Oh, and please don’t forget to call ‘Wolf-pit open’. We don’t want a repeat of what happened to poor old Edmund.”

She carries on flexing her bow, and replies, “You have an excessive amount of responsibility for one so young, Beatrice, and it has had a most unfortunate effect on you.”

I turn away in irritation. Henry, who has re-emerged on to the battlements, overhears, and suppresses a grin. His face is still bleeding in a row of gleaming droplets. I am regretting my outburst of temper. I should like to apologise, but the words won’t quite come.

“Henry.” I approach him. He looks minded to ignore me, but I stand in front of him. “Come with me, Henry. Let’s go and help Leo round up the cattle and bring the pigs up the hill.” I look round the full sweep of horizon. Smoke now rises from the Pike, and distantly from the direction of my cousins’ pele tower at Mere Point, as well as behind us on Beacon Hill, but of the raiders there is no sign.




Chapter 4 (#ulink_d63d0d89-f5f5-5e82-84ae-e60d8cc9a8fb)


It is very quiet in the woods. The birds are silent and the squirrels and deer are nowhere to be seen. It is as if everyone and everything were waiting for the marauders to arrive. Yet by now, mid-afternoon of the following day, it seems almost certain that the beacon fire across the bay was a false alarm, a bush fire perhaps. It would not be the first time.

In previous raids we have scarcely had time to get our cattle into the tower, let alone the sheep up into the woods. Surrounding homesteaders have not stood a chance, and their houses have been ripped bare of everything, then burned to the ground. Many of them have lost their lives defending their homes. At Barrowbeck Tower we are in a stronger position. Our thick walls protect us and we are excellent shots. We do not fight hand-to-hand, but shoot down arrows on the invaders, gavlockes with forked metal heads, or shafts with flaming tar-soaked rags bound to their tips.

This time it has been possible to gather all the homesteaders, with their cattle, ponies, pigs and goats, into the lower rooms. The crush is terrible. The smell is worse. The silence of these woods is a relief after the dreadful racket of the animals. All I can hear now are my own footsteps, and the tinkle of the belwether as sheep wander in dense woodland.

Our beacon is dying down, though it still throws out a ferocious heat in the afternoon sun. I am on my way to damp down and make safe the fire on Beacon Hill. I also have some slight hope of meeting Mother. Mother looks after our dairy, and by now will be fretting about curds left to stand too long, and cream on the turn before it can be churned into butter, despite the coolness of its rock cave.

I am too hot in my grey woollen gown. My byggen cap is sticking to my forehead. I rest for a moment, and from habit gather a few dry sticks to replenish the kindling on Beacon Hill. I have taken the less known path because it seems safer. Off to my left is an old hermit’s cottage in the hazel thicket. It is half overgrown with brambles since the hermit died of a quinsy last winter. I tell myself I could hide there, if the Scots came now.

This way up Beacon Hill is hard going, overgrown through little use. When I reach the top the smoky air makes me cough. I rest a moment, then pile stones round the collapsed ashes of the fire, and shovel damp soil into the middle. We will prepare it ready for next time once the embers have cooled. A false twilight has spread across the valley and the bay, from the smoking fires, but the wind will soon clear it. On my way back down through the woods I feel a surge of cheerfulness. A distant brush-fire has taken a day from our lives, but no matter. Tonight all the beacons will die down, and tomorrow Mother will come home.

As I emerge from the trees I do not notice, at first, the thin, dark line streaming down the far side of the valley. I am out into the open before I see them, careering between the windblown trees on the Pike, racing down the distant, pebble-strewn screes.

It had seemed an impossible slope, almost vertical. They have never come that way before. I realise, all in a flash, that they must have been hiding up there on the Pike, waiting for us to relax, knowing they would not be expected from that direction because we thought the sheer screes protected us. How long have they been watching? Days, perhaps. The speed the steepness gives them is terrifying.

I am out in the open, but they have not seen me yet. I start to run towards the tower. The Scots are spreading out in an arc. Now I can hear them shouting. I can see their saffron coats, goatskin jerkins and brown and green draperies flapping about their knees. They have bows over their shoulders; a few, horrifyingly, have crossbows. At their waists are axes, dorks and cutlasses. Some carry muskets, and others, most ominously of all, scaling ladders. They are coming faster than I am. It is like running into the gates of Hell. For a moment I consider hiding in the woods, but it is too late. The outer edges of their line are spreading into a circle that will join arms behind me. There is no way back. Suddenly they see me. A great shout goes up. Individual Scots break free of the line and run straight at me. The ground is shaking under their feet as I reach the tower door. Their hands stretch out for me. Their sweat suffocates me.

I had been afraid that no one would hear me or let me in, but the grille goes up fast, the door opens and Verity and Martinus pull me into the gatehouse. I stagger back against the wall, but something is wrong. The door will not shut behind me. Verity and Martinus throw their weight at it but the Scots are pushing from the other side, and slowly the door is opening again. I try to wind down the grille, but it will not move. I give up, realising they have jammed it, and instead add my strength to those trying to push the door shut. Laughter from outside mocks us. A cutlass pokes through the widening gap.

“They’re making it easy for us this time, laddies,” calls a voice next to the hinge, a hand’s breadth from my ear.

“Father! Send down more men!” Verity shouts through the inner door. Footsteps come running from above, but they are going to be too late. The door is opening now and there is nothing we can do to stop it. Those coming down the stairs behind us ought to bar the inner door against us, and safeguard the rest of the tower, but I know they will not. None of us here dares let go to seize weapons. Martinus gestures desperately to Verity and me to get behind the inner door and barricade ourselves in. Verity mutters, “And give you the pleasure of finishing off the bastards on your own?” except she does not describe them so genteelly.

The hairy hand and arm holding the cutlass pushes further through the gap. There is an explosion – our hagbut. Gunshots thud against the walls. In a brief, quiet moment I hear the hiss and whistle of arrows. Now James is here. He does not add his weight to pushing at the door, but instead seizes the horn from its niche and brings it up hard against the elbow that is pushing through the gap. The hand springs convulsively open and the cutlass clatters down, but the arm does not withdraw. Instead, with a jolt from outside, the door opens faster. Then a hand comes from behind me, a hand holding a sword. With a swift up and downward chop, it slashes at the arm. It is Kate. If her angle had been better she might have severed the limb. An inhuman scream spirals out of audible pitch. Blood spurts, and the arm is pulled back. I know I shall never again watch with equanimity while Kate carves the meat.

We all hurl ourselves at the door then, and at last it slams shut. Father is here now, and he crashes the six bolts and three heavy iron bars into their slots, fumbling with drunken haste. I steady his hand as he feeds metal into metal. Martinus drags at the handle which lowers the iron grille outside, and as he puts his full weight behind it there is a cracking noise, and it finally turns. Somebody outside yells as the descending grille hits them. James picks up the horn and restores it to its place.



The battle is long and terrible. It is the worst I remember. Father stands at the window of the living hall with his antiquated longbow, pumping arrows into the enemy. We don’t bother with crossbows here at Barrowbeck. At this height and range they have no particular virtue, and are too slow to reload, though the Scots put them to terrifying use from below. The extra power sends their arrows high over our battlements where our henchmen crouch, firing back. Behind them some of the young men and women from the valley kneel in the shelter of the beacon turret, binding arrow points in linen, dipping them in hot tar and setting them alight before passing them forward for firing. We all have short swords and knives at our belts, in case hand-to-hand combat should become necessary. Verity and James operate the catapult. James hefts the stones and Verity pulls back the lever. Occasionally James just throws a particularly heavy stone over the battlements. Downstairs Leo stands watch on the outer door, ready to bar the inner door if needs be. In the kitchen Kate boils lard for pouring on the enemy, and Germaine carries it up the stairs in wooden pails, cursing under her breath as homesteaders get in her way and the stairs grow greasy underfoot.

Many of the valley homesteaders who herded their animals into the tower are now huddled in the lower rooms with them. There are so many this time that in places it is difficult to move. We have put James’s black cattle in the kitchen with Kate. All the animals are going mad with terror. Their lowing and whinnying and squealing fill our ears, and the stink of them rises up the stairs in great waves.

My job is to go round checking that all possible entry points are defended. I have not forgotten the rope scaling ladders which I saw earlier. As I reach the gatehouse on one of my patrols, I find Leo looking very grim.

“They’re trying to fire the door, lady.”

I look down, and see a curl of smoke feathering out of a narrow crack at the base of the door.

“It will never burn, Leo. Thank the Lord we treated it in time.”

“Mebbe best get Mistress Kate to soak some leather for under it.”

“I’ll do that.” I move towards the kitchen, then stop. “Did you hear that?”

We both listen. Leo’s mouth tightens. “Grappling irons. They’re trying to get up the walls.”

“They must have hooked into one of the windows. Quick, Leo. If you start looking I’ll get some of the others to go round too.” As I speak, a homesteader comes rushing down from the battlements to tell us the Scots are scaling the walls. There is a flurry of commotion from above. Leo and I quickly bar the inner door and I hurry through the arch to the kitchen. Here people from the valley are tearing up linen for arrows and bandages, feeding and tending their animals, soothing their babies. At the far end of the kitchen James’s black cows are imprisoned by the long table, knee deep in straw and dung, lowing and stamping and rolling their eyes. Over the fire another cauldron of fat is heating, suspended from the greasy, dripping rackencrock. Shiny white gobs of lard slide from the sides of the cauldron, sink in the melted oil, then surface again, smaller. I ask some of the homesteaders to soak strips of leather for under the door, and others to spread out through the tower and check the windows for grappling irons. In the end, though, I am the one who finds the first ugly metal hook.

I go into the men’s common room and find Henry dead on the floor, our hagbut toppled from its stand, gunpowder drizzling out of its barrel. Henry has a great wound to his head where the grappling iron hit him, before it lodged tightly under the stone sill of the window. Now it rattles and shakes as someone climbs the rope ladder beneath.

There is no time. A face appears at the window. It all happens too fast. The bright hazel eyes are wide and wild, the beardless mouth young and reckless. He would have hauled himself in, but in the shock of seeing me, his defences are down, and he is too slow.

I take his face in my hands and push. With an arching cry he somersaults away backwards, out of sight.

I send his hook spinning after him, but I cannot watch him, or it, hit the ground. Instead, I race from room to room searching for more hooks. Between us the homesteaders and I find three more. We dislodge them with pokers and shovels, sending them and their human burdens hurtling to earth.

Whether it is the hurling down of these foolhardy climbers that finally makes the Scots lose heart, I do not know, but by the time I reach the battlements again, they are in retreat. Father’s henchmen send a score of flaming arrows after them for good measure, but the fleeing Scots are quickly out of range, heading down the valley towards the sea, carrying their wounded, and leaving behind them twelve or fifteen ghastly, staring corpses on the bloody, ashen, pig-greasy turf.




Chapter 5 (#ulink_9d641412-feca-585e-9dd0-0ea693936669)


None of us emerges until the following day. Double watch is kept all night. By next morning the whole area smells like a slaughterhouse, and a thick crust of black flies has formed on the outside of the tower. They creep in through the window slits and buzz in our faces, grotesquely unable to differentiate between the living and the dead. Outside, they swarm on the bodies. On the grass they move in patterns, forming and re-forming like fishermen’s nets on the sea.

My father, sober and out of bed for once, leads prayers of thanksgiving for our deliverance, as we all stand crushed together in the men’s common room. On our side only Henry is dead, though several more of the henchmen are wounded. Henry lies now in our tiny chapel over the gatehouse. Father prays for his soul. He even, in what seems to me like a fit of remarkable generosity, offers up a brief prayer for the souls of the fallen Scots.

“He’d best not let the parson hear him praying for folks’ souls,” Germaine whispers to me. “That’s Popish stuff.”

I look at her. Is she loyal to no one, not even my father? Not that there seems much point in his prayers. I cannot believe that God listens to my father. He might as well pray to the elder tree in the thicket, the way some people round here still do.

“Amen,” chorus the homesteaders. I look across their bowed heads. In a few minutes they will have to walk out past those bloating corpses and down the valley to see which of their stick and mud homes are still standing. Their children, tired from two nights on the common rooms’ floors, are mardy and whimpering. The stench from the livestock is overwhelming even up here now, and it blends with the smell of carnage below to create a foul miasma which clogs our noses. Several times I pass people being sick out of windows.

Later, most of us go down to help redistribute the livestock. Buckets of milk stand all along the downstairs passageways. The floors of the lower rooms are thick with dung. Most of the cattle are in distress because the crowded conditions have not made for adequate milking. They skip and kick as they are released down the curving slope to the cellars, then shoulder each other along the underground passage, through the stone arch under the dairy, up the slope at the other end where part of the flagstone floor has been removed, and out into the barmkin, pursued by Leo shouting, “Git on, yer great lummocks.”

Two pigs, herded by their owner out of the barmkin, rush towards where the bodies lie. Children watch in fascination to see if the pigs are to be allowed to eat the bodies, and Kate mutters, “Reet pigs an’ all,” and ushers the children away, while the swineherd hurries his charges up the hill.

Father yells, “Bury the dead!” I see that his hands are shaking from lack of drink. I put my arm round him and embrace him, then join the homesteaders and help them sort out their animals.

Later I go up to the chapel to see Henry’s body. Bright sunlight pours in through the high window and shimmers on the embroidered altar cloth and the linen sheet covering him. Four candles burn, two at his head and two at his feet. The four spiked silver candle prickets represent Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The old priest said they were Popish folly, but the new priest says they are beautiful. I lift one of the candles, spilling hot wax on my hand, and hold it close to see Henry better. I can feel my burnt skin puckering under the cooling wax. Henry’s cheeks are smooth and white, his chin dark with stubble. The wound from the grappling iron stands out in shades of black and purple, and below it, the graze from my ring is raised and red. I touch it with the hand I used to slap him, then turn away and bring my hand down on the spike. I am not brave. It is a gash, no more. The blood runs over my fingers, through the turquoise ring, and I walk unsteadily back downstairs.

Mother has arrived home, and with her are Hugh and Gerald. Verity and I stand outside the tower amongst the piled dungheaps which Kate and Leo are still shovelling out, and hold her tightly and cry.

“Are you all right?” she demands. “I was dreadfully worried about you.”

“Yes. Are you all right, Mother?” I see that her cheeks are very red and healthy-looking, and despite her stated anxiety she has the appearance of someone rather pleased with herself. Hugh and Gerald grin at us, and take themselves off upstairs to have a tankard of ale in the common room with the men. All of them are now back from burying the bodies of the Scots in a clearing on the hill behind Barrow Wood. Henry’s body will travel the Old Corpse Road to Wraithwaite tomorrow, for burial in the churchyard. Now the men have been given a quart of ale each to help them forget the dreadful sights they have seen and the dreadful textures they have touched.

Mother, Verity and I go up to Verity’s room and sit on the cushioned stone benches along the walls, leaning back against the pictorial tapestries which Verity weaves. We are all very tired. Kate, unasked, brings hot, mulled wine.

“Did they attack Mere Point?” I ask. Mother shakes her head.

“No, but we’d just let the cattle out again, and they took those. They’re getting too darned clever by half, hiding and waiting like that. I was frantic when I heard they were attacking Barrowbeck. A lad said they’d got into the tower, but Aunt Juniper wouldn’t let me come back until now. Even then she insisted on sending Hugh and Gerald with me. Not that they needed much persuading.” She says this with more hope than conviction.

We talk until Kate rings the bell for supper, then we go up to eat in the living hall. Lately Germaine has been eating here with us, instead of in the kitchen with Kate and the henchmen. As usual, our food is half cold by the time Kate has slogged up the east stairs with it. She bangs down the pewter dishes in front of us. I believe she thinks we should pay for our privileges.

“Wouldn’t you prefer to eat in the kitchen, Germaine?” Verity asks gently. When she speaks gently, we all know to watch out. “You’d get your food hot from the hearth then. In fact, I think I might start eating in the kitchen myself.”

“A good idea, mistress. Perhaps we all should.” Germaine helps herself to more of the congealing mutton in its puddle of yellow grease.

Father throws Verity a look and says, “That’s quite enough of that, Daughter.”

For much of the rest of the meal, talk is of the tower’s defences. It annoys me that Father booms on to Hugh and Gerald about improving the defences of the two towers, when he does so little about it in practice. Hugh takes my hand under the table and gives it a squeeze. I stare at him, quite startled. He asks my father, “Are you riding tonight, Uncle?” A shocked silence falls. It is an unspoken rule that we never discuss my father’s regrettable tendency to rob travellers on the queen’s highway.

My father smiles at his nephew. “Likely as not. You wish to come?”

Hugh smiles respectfully back. “Nay. Thanks Uncle. I’m as tall as I care to be.”

After the meal, Verity and our two cousins and I walk up towards Barrow Wood in the dampness of early evening. Hugh says, “It was time someone said something. You are all too careful of him. Being squire of Barrowbeck won’t save him from having his neck stretched, if they catch him.”

“Oh…” I sigh. “I know, but you don’t have to live with him. You had a more kindly response from him than any of us would have.”

It is exhilarating to be free of the constrictions and smell of the tower. Hugh takes my hand again, and I see Verity’s eyes widen.

“Well, Cousin.” Hugh speaks quietly to me, excluding the others. “How are you truly, after your ordeal?”

“Well enough, thank you Cousin.” I feel far too unnerved to make any pretence of proper conversation. I see, mildly alarmed, that we have now lost sight of the other two amongst the trees. I decide that frankness is my best defence. I lift our clasped hands.

“What am I supposed to make of this, Hugh?”

He flushes. Hugh is very fair-skinned, with pale, straight hair, fairer than his brother. I know that he is considered handsome, and I can see that one could think him so, but to me he is still so much my childhood companion that his comeliness or otherwise is irrelevant. We face each other in the darkening forest. “How do you feel about our families’ plans for us?” he asks me.

“Hugh… I’m not ready to consider them yet…” I clear my throat and try again. “Of course, I love you as a cousin…” I feel desperately disturbed by his closeness. Never, even in our most frightening games as children, has Hugh seemed threatening, but he seems threatening now. “It’s too soon,” I falter. “I hadn’t thought it would come so soon.”

“Your father and mine have indicated their wishes, Beatie, but it doesn’t have to be soon.” He lets go of my hand. “I should have liked it to be soon… it’s not just our fathers’ wish… but you’re two years younger. I can wait. Could we… perhaps… try to see each other differently? I have to confess that your friendly, jesting attitude towards me makes you rather unapproachable on these matters.”

There is a pause. The light is fading. Hugh seems like a stranger. We walk in the direction of the old hermit’s cottage, no longer holding hands, no longer speaking. Green light filters through the leaves, down to the forest floor. When we reach a corner of the crumbling boundary wall we sit down on it, side by side in the moss-coloured dimness. I turn to Hugh. “We know each other too well, Hugh. I cannot think of you in the way you wish.”

He puts his arm round my shoulders briefly, then releases me. “I won’t ask you again until the winter, Cousin.” After a moment he adds, “I would do anything for you, Beatrice. I would walk through the quicksands across the bay for you.”

I stand up. “Now you’re getting carried away, Hugh.” I feel uneasy and uncomfortable, and I think at first that Hugh’s words are the cause. Then I realise that there was a noise. I turn slowly. Surely the hermit’s cottage is still uninhabited? The noise is repeated, a crackling, shifting sound.

“Hugh, I heard something. Did you hear it?”

He stands up and looks around. “What did you hear?”

“I don’t know. A twig. A movement.”

The awareness of someone, a presence, is suddenly very powerful. It was the feeling I had on the Pike, and on Beacon Hill, but now a hundred, a thousand times stronger.

“The old man’s dead, isn’t he?” Hugh asks.

“Yes. Perhaps someone else has taken over the cottage,” I suggest, before we can start talking about ghosts and goblins. Hugh begins to creep round the low wattle hut. A branch snaps under his foot. I lift my skirts and step over the broken wall, then move cautiously along the front of the dwelling. A narrow window slot gives on to a dark interior, from which a foul, ancient odour seeps. The hermit was not known for his cleanliness. I move to the door and push it open and peer in. From what I can see of them, the matted rushes on the floor look as if they have been there since Queen Mary’s day. It is impossible to see anything else.

Suddenly, a buffeting wind shakes the woods. The patchy cloud cover overhead shifts, and tightly woven tree branches rattle apart. A bright hem of light swirls through the forest, and briefly illuminates the inside of the cottage. I can see more clearly the rushes on the floor, rank and mouldy, a battered iron skillet lying upended, a heap of droppings left by the hermit’s goat. There is something else too, a bundle of brown and green cloth lying in a corner where broken reeds hang down from the roof. The bundle moves. It is a man. I can see his face, bruised and swollen. It is a face I recognise.




Chapter 6 (#ulink_de188f60-2788-5537-b1a2-bbf19306811c)


Hugh looks pleased when I take his hand and lead him back through the woods to the point where the paths diverge. My throat is dry and my head pounding. It amounts to treason, to conceal the presence of a Scot, and the penalty is to be burnt at the stake. The virtual certainty that it is the young man whose face I pushed from the tower window is the only excuse I can give myself. I can still feel his soft skin where my fingers pressed, and the horrific ease of pushing him away into unsupporting air.

“I’ll walk with you back to the tower,” Hugh says, but I tell him I want to be alone for a while, and I watch his vanishing back as he takes the path towards Mere Point. When I reach the meadow in front of the tower, I can see that Verity is already home, standing on the battlements watching the sun go down beyond the bay. Owls are hooting close by, and in the far distance a faint howl comes from the woods across the water. I know it is only foxes, though in a bad winter the wolves of the Scottish borders have been known to round the bay as far as Milnthorpe.

I sit on a tree stump and think about the extraordinary course of action which I have taken. The Scot is obviously injured, possibly badly injured, otherwise he would have fled with his fellow raiders. He must have crawled away from the battle scene after I pushed him from the window, and been unable to rejoin his comrades in time when they fled. He is my enemy, but it is my fault he is injured. On the other hand, he attacked us first. I should have told Hugh, and now it is my duty to tell my father, who will send at once to Milnthorpe for a magistrate, and the Scot will be hanged. Instead, I am going home to collect food and water for him.

I stand up and walk quickly towards the tower. The sheep stop their soft chomping as I hurry by, and scatter as if my urgency threatened them. I let myself in quietly. The kitchen is empty, the fire sunk low in the hearth. I move round as silently as I can, collecting bread, cheese and milk. I put them in a basket, then creep down to the root cellar and stand a leather bottle under the spigot of the copper water cistern to fill. While I wait, I look round the shifting, candlelit gloom. No animals were allowed in the root cellar, but the passage to it became heavily soiled with their waste, and even in here it still stinks. The remains of the winter carrots and turnips seem contaminated.

When the flagon is full I hammer in a wooden bung with my fist, and creep back up the passage to the kitchen. It is still empty. Outside, shadows have stretched across the clearing in my absence. Over the bay a line of purple light still shows, but around me it is almost dark. I walk towards the trees, the basket and flagon concealed under my cloak.

Among the trees it is very dark indeed. I stumble several times over tree roots, even though I know the path so well. I dare not look behind me, nor to the sides. The stillness of twilight is gone, and there are sounds in the undergrowth. When I branch off from the main path I can scarcely see at all. I try to force my mind to more mundane matters than wolves and witches.

Suddenly I have reached the boundary of the hovel. I almost fall over it in the dark. In places the wall is completely covered with brambles. They fill the clearing and even climb up the wattle and daub of the cottage walls. Stones have fallen from the boundary wall into the gateway, and I have to pick my way carefully over them. One stone rocks beneath my feet and almost pitches me head-first into the thorns. It also, with its clatter, announces my arrival.

What if I was mistaken and he is not injured? What if, even at this moment, he is waiting behind a tree? I put down the basket and flagon by the worm-eaten doorway, and flee. Only two candles are burning in the kitchen. Verity has coaxed the fire back to life and is sitting with her feet up on Kate’s oak settle, watching the pot over the fire start to steam. She points to the bark box where she keeps dried camomile flowers.





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