Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2] (20 page)

Suppressing shock, Wat said, “You’re a good lad for coming to me instead. But we must hurry, because when they find there is no food for them—”

“There’d be trouble, aye,” Sym said. “Me lady thought o’ that, ’cause she said, ‘Tell Master Wat,
our cook
.’ I thought she were daft, but she looked at me so”—he locked his gaze with Wat’s—“so I didna say nowt, only that I’d do as she’d bid.”

“That was the right thing,” Buccleuch said encouragingly. But Wat was just hoping once again that Meg would survive long enough to let him wring her neck.

“It was, aye,” Sym said. “But I kept thinking, sithee. They’d been hunting, and I kent fine they’d be a wee while if they had game to tote. So I stopped at the Hall and told a lad there to go warn Jed Crosier whilst I looked for you. I told him, too, that the mistress had called the cook Master Wat, so Jed should ken that, too. By the look o’ the chief villain, he’d be doing summat to be sure o’ that name.”

Wat stared at the boy, wondering if he would have had the wit himself at such a tender age to understand so much with so little to aid him. Doing rapid calculations in his head, he turned to Buccleuch.

“Sym says there are twenty-four of them. She had six armed men—”

Buccleuch said, “She ought to have had twice as many!”

“That was my first thought, too. But I’ve got my own lads here with me or out preparing men to join Douglas. So I left too few at the tower for her to take more without leaving the place unguarded. Moreover, she ought not to have needed more to go such a short distance. How many are still at the Hall?”

Buccleuch grimaced. “I’ve done the same, so fewer than thirty. Between us we’ve another thirty here.”

“Then I mean to take these with me and ride on ahead if you will stop at the Hall and organize as many of those others as possible to follow.”

Sym said, “I told ’em at the Hall that ye’d need more men, laird. But they mayn’t be ready to ride,” he added with a frown. “I’m just a bairn, sithee, so nobbut one lad would carry me message. Likely, them others will ha’ done nowt.”

Buccleuch ruffled the lad’s hair. “If that is so, I shall have something to say to them that they won’t enjoy hearing. You did well, my lad.”

“I did, aye, ’cause I found ye,” Sym agreed. “But we must ride like Auld Clootie now to aid me lady, ’cause that villain had a demon’s eye to ’im.”

“You will ride with me, lad,” Buccleuch said. “Moreover, when we get to the Hall, you will stay there, out of danger.”

Sym looked beseechingly at Wat.

“With respect, sir,” Wat said to his father, “I think he has earned the right to ride with me. But,” he added, turning a stern eye on the boy, now beaming and fairly bouncing on his nervous pony, “you will do exactly as I bid you, Sym.”

“Aye, sure,” Sym said, wheeling his mount. “But hurry!”

Wat glanced at Buccleuch, who grinned. So, with Sym flying ahead on the rough, narrow track and Buccleuch’s men behind them, they raced homeward.

Wat and Sym left Buccleuch at the track up to the Hall, and rode on. The nearer they got, the more Wat’s fears increased. It had all taken too long.

The likelihood was that Meg, Amalie, and every man he’d left at the tower were now prisoners. But, thanks to the discussion at Hermitage, he could see a larger picture, too. Since such raids were occurring all over, with the raiders insisting they had Douglas’s permission to take what they wanted, it could well mean that someone was trying to turn those other powerful Border landowners against him, and thus weaken the Douglas’s own vast power—just as Douglas himself had suggested.

The light in the cleuch had grown dusky, making it more difficult to see the track they followed. But they all knew it well, and the tower came into view at last.

Drawing rein, Wat motioned Gibbie and Tam closer, saying, “We’ll ride up together, the three of us, and see if anyone challenges us.”

“They may only be waitin’ for us to get inside the gates,” Tam cautioned.

“Aye, but if the men on the gate are ours, we’ll recognize them all. And I’m thinking we’ll know at once if aught’s amiss with them.”

“Even if them villains be threatening the mistress?” Gib asked.

“Even so,” Wat said. He looked at Sym. “We’ll disarm them a bit first. Think you that you could slip away at the wall if I let you ride up to it with us, Sym?”

“Aye,” the boy said, quivering with eagerness. “Just tell me what I’m to do.”

“Watch me. When we’re close to the gate, if all looks well, we’ll all go inside. But if I lower my hand to my hip, so, you turn your pony and ride along the wall. If they shout, just ride back to the others and tell them we’ve got trouble.”

“Aye, I can do that.”

“Don’t be making decisions on your own, though. Just tell the others.”

“Aye, I will.”

But when they reached the gate, their concern dissipated, for it opened at once, and Dod Elliot stood beside it, smiling. “Welcome home, Master Wat.”

Wat frowned at him. “Sym said there was trouble. Was he wrong?”

“As to that, I canna say for sure, sir. The mistress came home wi’ a lot o’ scaff and raff she met with in the Forest. By the piles o’ wood and such in them carts yonder, I’d say they’d been poaching. But she did tell our lads to see to them, and she ordered supper for them all. They’re in the hall now, the whole lot o’ them.”

“Have we men in the hall, too?” Wat asked.

“Aye, except for those on the wall or at other duties who will eat later.”

Unsure whether he was relieved or more concerned, but certain that Dod would not lie to him, Wat gestured to the men below to follow. Then, with Tam, Gibbie, and Sym, he rode up to the tower entrance and dismounted.

Striding through the pend with Tam and Gibbie behind him, Wat started up the stairway, treading quietly until he heard the music. Sure then that his steps would go unheard, he set caution aside and took the rest of the steps two at a time.

From the landing, he stared through the open doorway into the hall. Men ate and talked, while others who had finished were singing. At the high table, his wife sat between her sister and a scruffy-looking man that Wat had never seen before.

Another rascal sat beside him. Both looked more apt to be sitting at one of the trestle tables, but the scene was peaceful. Although Wat could count more strangers than Scotts, there were not so many that the strangers posed an overwhelming threat.

To Gibbie, he said, “Fetch the other lads. But have someone ride back and tell my father we have things under control here. Then make sure Dod bars the gate. I’ll wait for you and the other lads here unless I cannot, so don’t dawdle.”

Gib was gone on the last word, and Wat’s quick hearing caught the sounds of his steps fading into the distance. Most of the occupants of the hall were watching the chief singer, now entertaining them with a love ballad.

Meg looked as if she were enjoying it. More than that, she looked self-assured and calm, as if her guests were friends invited to enjoy supper and a fine minstrel she had hired for the occasion. In troth, the lad was not nearly as gifted a musician and singer as the chap who had entertained them at Hermitage.

The golden light of the candles and firelight touched Meg’s face. Her hands rested on the table before her, primly folded. She looked stately and serene, exhibiting a beauty he had not seen before. She wore the simple, lace-edged veil he liked, and her forest-green riding dress looked well on her. His cock stirred.

A voice deep inside called him instantly to order. At such a time, the voice said, it was disgraceful to think about her soft, smooth skin or her enticingly small waist and flaring hips. To allow such thoughts to divert more than that moment’s attention from his duty would be more so.

The lass had dangerously overstepped, if not by leaving the tower, where his men could keep her safe, then by riding too far into the Forest, which he had no doubt she had done. That even Sym knew she had been unwise had been plain to see.

If the lad knew as much, then so did Margaret.

Husbandly duty required that he teach her more wisdom, and the lesson would have to be harsh, since he’d soon be leaving again. He dared not let her think that what she’d done today, she could do again without consequence.

The man beside her said something, and as she turned to face him, Wat caught a flickering look that made him tense. When she showed only polite interest in the rascal, he relaxed. Faith, he asked himself, had it been jealousy stirring? Because, at her husband’s table, she sat by a man who was not her husband?

As she looked back at the singer, he caught the flicker again and read it easily this time. She had seen him and was trying not to reveal his presence.

A tug at his sleeve diverted his attention to Sym, standing beside him, looking concerned. He had not noticed the lad following him. But before he could tell him to go back downstairs, Sym gestured toward something in the hall.

Wat heard a burst of laughter as he turned to see what had caught Sym’s eye.

Two of the strangers sat together on the rearmost bench, and one held a wriggling pouch. A kitten’s orange head popped out of the sack just as the man holding it turned and held it out toward one of two hounds lying nearby.

The dog’s ears came up sharply as it sniffed the air.

“I’ll kill ’im,” Sym said, taking a step forward. “That’s me Pawky!”

Wat grabbed him. “You stay here,” he said. “And keep out of the way.”

Sym apparently judged it wise to obey without speaking, which was just as well, because Wat’s anger, no longer beclouded by lust, now had a prime target.

Drawing his sword, only half aware of Tam’s steps behind him, he crossed the threshold, moved up behind the witless scruff with the kitten, and set the point of his sword just hard enough to the nape of the man’s neck to make him freeze.

In a voice of ice, Wat said, “Move that sack gently away from the dog and hand it to me. No, friend, do not move,” he said to the man beside his target. “If you want to get out of this place alive, either of you, do exactly as I tell you.”

The man with the squirming pouch passed it back without turning, and Wat took it from him with his left hand, holding the sword steadily where it was.

He watched the man rather than the pouch as he grabbed it, and managed to catch it by its side. Pawky, clearly having had enough of it, squirmed out, latched her claws into Wat’s jerkin sleeve, and scrambled up his arm to his shoulder, where she bumped his ear in a friendly greeting, then sat and began to purr.

Ignoring her, Wat kept his eyes on the two men, realizing as he stepped back from the one who’d been tormenting the kitten that the music had stopped.

Meg had come to her feet. Into the sudden silence, she said, “Welcome home, sir. As you see, we have guests. Their leader wants to talk with you, and I have promised him that he shall.”

Several of the raiders had likewise come to their feet.

Tam said quietly, “Our lads be at the door. I dinna ken how many.”

Wat lowered his sword and replied to Meg, “We are home, aye, madam, and glad to be so. Have you supper enough for fifty more?”

“We have,” she said. “Shall I send lads to fetch it now?”

“Shortly,” he said. “Our guests are gey welcome, but I would ken whence came the carts full of wood and game that sit inside my barmkin. The Laird of Buccleuch is even now riding in behind us, sithee. As Ranger of the Forest, he will want an answer to that question. What am I to tell him?”

No one answered. But as he had hoped, the men who had stood sat down, and his own men were watching now for a sign that he wanted action from them.

He did not know if Buccleuch had turned back, but neither was he sure he had not. As it was, he still had fewer men in the hall than the raiders did.

He would pit his against them with near certainty that his would prevail, but he could not risk a fight, not with two of the raiders so near the women on the dais.

Most of the men at the lower tables were watching him, but several of the raiders glanced nervously at the chimney breast, where Meg had hung the weapons and shields. Even those watching him seemed nervous, making him hope he might persuade them that whatever their cause had been, they had lost.

“Your lady wife said ye’d help us, sir,” their leader said evenly.

“I did,” Meg agreed. “These men told me they had permission from the Douglas to take fuel and game from the Forest, because their families need food and the means to cook it. ’Tis all they sought, they say. They have done us no harm, sir.”

Wat shifted his gaze to the man beside her. “Who are you?”

Glancing at Meg, the man got to his feet before he said, “Men call me Daft Nebby Duffin, Sir Walter, but I’m no daft. Me own lads call me Neb.”

“You say you had permission from the Douglas to take what you needed from the Forest, Neb. We both know that when you met Buccleuch there some days ago, you were able to show him no such permit. How do you explain that?”

“I canna explain it, ’cause I dinna ken why the Douglas’s man didna give me nowt to show. But he did say— Sakes, he told all o’ us! We can take what we need from the Forest until the Douglas himself says otherwise.”

With a frown, Wat said, “Why did you not simply return to this agent of the Douglas and request such a permit?”

Neb Duffin shrugged. “He did come to us, sir. We didna go to him. We dinna ken where to find him.”

“Then why not apply directly to the Douglas? All ken where to find him these days—at Hermitage Castle in Liddesdale.”

Neb was silent.

“With respect, sir,” Meg said. “Not all folks feel so easy about approaching a man as powerful as the Douglas to make such a request.”

The man standing beside her nodded.

Thinking swiftly, Wat said, “Here is what I can do for you tonight. If you will agree to leave here peacefully, I’ll see that you take enough food with you to feed your families. But I cannot let you keep what you have taken from the Forest—not without his lordship’s permission. However,” he added as men at the lower tables began to stir irritably, “I’ll approach the Douglas myself if I learn that your situation is as you say it is.”