The Candlemass Road. George Fraser MacDonald

game together, content each in company of the other. But it is their way, unless feud should fall between them, which it may as easily for a broken cup as for a broken head, and yet they forgive each other grievous wrongs, too. But deadly feud they pursue to the death, not only of the enemy but of all his kinsfolk. They take joy of their difference from mankind, Scot and English together, for though they are of both realms, they are first and last of the Border.

      But I wander, in my dotage. My Lord Ralph won the Bell, and parted in the evening from his foe-friends, and rode out by the Rickergate with two grooms for company, to fare home to Askerton. They were waiting for him on the Brampton road, men in visors, well-horsed, and they shot him through with calivers, nine balls in his body, and he let die by the roadside. They killed the grooms with their swords, and made away. Who they were was not found out. Some suspected Hutcheon Graham, but he made oath on his father’s stone in St Cuthbert’s churchyard of Carlisle, so he was clean, and I believe it, for in all my time yonder I never knew a word broken, for all their other faults. Sundry were named, Lance Carleton and Black Ogle and Stark Jack Charlton of Tynedale on the English side, and on the Scottish, Will Kang, that was a notable murderer for hire, and the Scotts of Teviotdale, and as for the Liddesdales, why, who you will. The truth was, my lord had more ill-willers than hairs on his head; he was a terrible man, but a good friend to me-ward, and while he lived his folk slept secure, and his cattle grazed untroubled even on the lion’s lip.

      He was buried at Arthuret, before a great company, and my lord Bishop himself came from Carlisle to say his solemns, with staff and mitre and many attendants and a singing choir within. There were many lords there, and I marvelled to see so many notable thieves there also, of both sides. Some said, in scandalous jest, that they came to see him well delved under, but I think otherwise, for I have seen that affinity that grows betwixt enemies, who while they hate lustily in life, yet sorrow when death parts them. They are a strange folk. I heard one say, “Now he is at peace,” and another made answer saying he wished his soul no peace, but great action wheresoever it had gone, for that he had loved above all. My lords Scroop and Willoughby and the Scots Warden Carmichael bore his bier, and among the others that Scott of Harden whom they called Auld Wat, a principal reiver, and the young Buccleuch and John Carey, who were no friends to each other elsewhere.

      In all this I had no part, being what they styled a recusant, but came hooded and cloaked to give no offence, which they overlooked, knowing well what I was. I gave back, thinking I had never seen so much costly stuff and apparel mingled with such a deal of leather and steel by a graveside, and as I stood at the church door I saw that which lessoned me even more what a contrary country is this, for as the Lord Bishop led them in prayers, all standing sodden in the rain, there in the church porch sat Long Tom Hetherington, a great villain that they called “the Merchant”, casting the accounts of blackmail that he and his fellow-robber Richie Graham had wrung from the poor folk thereabouts. Now this blackmail, or black rent, is an extortion much practised by the thieves, who come to a man, or a village, and say, pay us such-and-such and you and your possessions will be safe, for we shall see to it, but if ye pay not, look to it, for sundry reivers will doubtless ride upon you (by which they mean their wicked selves). And the poor folk are wont to pay to be left in peace. It is a protection money and one of the principal curses of the frontier in those days. Because of my old lord’s zeal and care of his people, none on Dacre ground had paid this black rent to any for a half-score years, but this was in Arthuret that lay beyond our bounds. Yet it took me by the throat to see this vile money-changer at his practices in the House of God, and my lord not cold in the ground.

      “Have ye no shame,” I asked him, “that ye count your blood money in the church, and the bell yet tolling for the dead?”

      He looked at me astonied, saying there was none of Dacre’s folk on his books “and where else should I keep them for safety but in the kirk where the clients come to pay, and this the day? Would ye have us run about the country, chapping at gates, for our black rent?”

      I could have struck him, for all he had his sword naked by his books, but it was no place or time and I a priest. “Keep them in your thieves’ den at Brackenhill Tower, with your vile confederate Richie Graham,” I bade him, and he laughed.

      “Thinkst thou I’d trust them within Richie’s reach? Go to, man, y’are wandered! Get thysel’ back to Askerton, confess thy young maids, and I’ll help thee penance them!”

      And sat there taking his extortion, which is crime the world over, but here it was open, and the lords at the grave and the Warden officers and constables marked him not, for that it was but lightly regarded and, as they say, the custom of the country!

      Now I see that the preambulation to my tale has taken longer than I would it had, yet my excuse is that I had need tell you of my poor self and my old lord, and of my being at Askerton, and not only that but to lay open to you the ways of the frontier and the godless folk therein, at some length, with illustration of their manners, that you may understand perfectly all that befell on that Candlemass that I spoke of, which I shall now come to before long, I do assure you.

      It was in the summer time that my lord departed this life, and all through the back end and winter unto the February following we that had served him lived a-tiptoe in Askerton Hall, wondering when the thieves would ride on our goodly land and livestock, now that the Red Bull was no more. For his armed following were all dispersed to seek other employs, having no mind to bide at Askerton without him to lead them, and we were but a household reduced, the bailiff and myself and the servitors, with no security for the tenants and farms. Yet they rode not against us that winter, such was the shadow of his name, and also because in the cold months the herds were away at softer pasturing in the deep vales by the lakes, in which hard time the riding surnames were wont to rest them in their towers and bastels, and the outlaws in the mosses. Yet was there rumour that with the mastiff dead the foxes soon would prowl, and word of Liddesdale spears spying below the Lyne rivers against the coming of spring, when the great thieves would burst forth of their lairs and, in their barbarous phrase, shake loose the border.

      So were we in apprehension, but took comfort from word that had reached us at Christmas, that my Lady Dacre that was grand-daughter to old Lord Ralph as I told you I met her when a little maid, was to come up into the country from London, she being his only kin and heiress to all his great wealth and estates. Whereof we were right glad, for we doubted not that her advisers would take order for the security of the Askerton demesne. Indeed I wondered that she should come in her own person, being but a young woman and long away from that fierce country, when her men of affairs could have been sent, and she continued in her enjoyment of southern pleasantry. But it hath been whispered in mine ear since, that the Queen herself willed it so, for a reason, to wit, that my Lady Margaret having been in waiting on the Queen, had given her offence by her temper, which was as proud, and her stomach as high, as even Her Grace’s, and that was not small, God knows.

      Also there had been talk of my Lady Margaret’s commerce with certain young lords at the Court having given displeasure to Her Grace, for she’ was none of your lily maids, but free and frank in her manner, as I had seen when she was little, and I doubt not she smiled whither she pleased, caring not if it misliked Her Grace or no. This may be scandal of the sort they love to tattle after in London, but the long and short was that the Queen commanded her away. So we had great heave and ho at Askerton against her coming, and myself much perturbed, wondering would she tolerate me, the Portingale priest, as her grandsire had done, he being careless in such matters, as I have shown, but she, coming from the Court, it was not to be doubted that she was strong for the reformed church, and like to turn me away, or worse. And at my time of life I knew not whither to go if she dismissed me.

      Candlemass was the day pricked for her coming in, and though we knew it not, it was to be the day of Archie Noble Waitabout’s coming also. She was looked for by open day, but he that was not looked for came like a thief in the night while the house slept, and none sounder than I.

       Chapter 2

      BEING THEN IN that state of years when the aches of my limbs and back cured not with resting, and the great