The Candlemass Road. George Fraser MacDonald

speer what gentleman’s left his stable-door off the sneck lately,’ says he, ‘and then, goodnight, Archie Waitabout!”’

      To this simpleton it seemed a great jest that a broken man should hang, and indeed it was nothing out of the common, save that this was a broken man with a difference, by his account, if indeed what he prattled was true, which I something doubted. Howbeit, on Master Hodgson’s coming in and sending Wattie, with cuffs and curses, about some errand, I asked him if it was true that this Waitabout should to Carlisle to be hanged on suspicion of a horse, and if so I might do him some good by my office.

      At this he flew into a taking, begging me plague him not about a petty villain that was naught and would soon be less. He had, he vowed, more to think on than a mere sneak-bait, aye, marry, had he! He paced about the hall, snapping his fingers and his great red face a-shake, like one beset with care and doubt that he wills not to speak of, lest it sound worse in the telling and so frights him the more. I asked him what was the matter, and he scratched his head and rolled his eyes, and at last made answer with that which put all thought of Waitabout clean out of my head.

      But an hour since, that very morning, had come to him one George Bell of Triermain, a village at the easter end of my lord’s land, with his head broke and his shirt bloody and a great tale of woe how five stout men of the Nixons, Scotch thieves of Liddesdale, had come to his place in the night and beaten him full sore because, they said, he had not paid his blackmail. They had made free of his house and meat and ale, put all his folk of Triermain in fear, and vowed if they were not paid to come the next night and do worse.

      “Blackmail? How can that be?” I asked him, for as I told you it was a thing unheard of these many years on Dacre land, so perfect had been my lord’s care of his folk. Hodgson answered me with oaths that Bell had confessed to paying the Nixons in years past, but secretly for dread of my lord’s anger “who had he known would ha’ whipped Bell’s arse frae here to Hexham, aye, and run the Nixons ragged too!” Then for a season the Nixons had let him alone, doubtless for fear my lord should get wind of their extortion, but now, my lord being dead, they made bold to revive it, “and when Bell crieth that he hath not money to pay lawful white rent to the Dacres and black rent to Liddesdale – a thing he did privily for years, God kens! – the Nixons rattle his head to learn him better and swear to burn his thatches and carry his beasts and himself into Scotland! And Bell, sheep that he is, comes whining to me for protection!” He stamped and was like to tear his hair in vexation. “Here’s grand news for my lady when she comes in! And who’ll she blame for it? Her poor bailiff, owd Robby Hodgson!”

      I asked him how he had answered Bell, and what was to be done for him.

      “I bade him seek the Land Sergeant at Gilsland. ‘What,’ says he, ‘go to Tom Carleton that’s in the pocket of every reiver of England and Scotland both? I’ll no justice of him!’ I asked him what then, and the lousy sneakbill says he’ll bear plaint to my lady when she comes in, for that she is his landlord now, and bound to keep him safe!” On this he was at a loss to speak further, grinding his teeth, and when I asked how he had answered said he had put his boot to Bell’s backside and sent him packing.

      “And yet,” says he, all chapfallen, “I fear me he will find occasion to clatter at my lady’s ear, and mow and girn for his cracked pate to move her pity – and seest thou, father, it will look ill for me, a tenant oppressed crying Justice! and I can do nowt for him, wanting power at hand, and but the bailiff.” He called Bell an earwig and a bastard and worse, that had not the wit to pay his blackmail as in the past, so all would have been quiet.

      It seemed to me he was more greatly wroth against the victim than the thief, and more sorry for himself than for the harried tenants. Here you see the cancer of the frontier at work, a poor soul put to extortion, and his superior, for peace and appearance, would have him pay the blackmail, for all that it is a crime to pay as to take. This winking at evil, for convenience, is the root of half the mischief of the world, yet men will always wish to be quiet.

      My heart was sore for that poor lady soon to come in to this world of bloody faction and decay, from a Queen’s Court where they played and sang and made their petty intrigues on what young lord smiled on what young lady, and cried Oh! if Her Majesty frowned. That is the worst she knows, thinks I, and how shall she believe that such folk as the Nixons can be?

      Hodgson doubted but she would find out fast enough, and fell to bewailing my lord his death, in whose time the thieves dare not say Bo! to Askerton. “For this attempt of the Nixons is but a pinprick!” cries he and trembled. “Let it go unanswered we shall have such roads ridden upon us, what of Liddesdale, what of Tynedale, what of the broken bands, as we have not seen this ten year. The thieves will bristle up and spur! I know it, I know them!”

      When I said this was for the future, and the Wardens should take order to prevent it, he turned on me nigh weeping.

      “Aye, but who shall answer the Nixons now, this very night, when they ride on Triermain? Not Tommy Carleton, nor his jack-snippet deputy, nor yet Jack Musgrave that’s captain o’ Bewcastle Fort and has lain swine drunk since Martinmass and stirreth not from his bed but for another flask and so back to his strumpet! For truth it is as Bell says that they have policy with the thieves and would not offend them for such a trifle.”

      I rebuked him that the officers named were duty bound to see Bell secure, and he gave a great crack of his thumb in my face for scorn, and brayed that they would make excuse that Askerton was beyond their charge, and since my old lord had made it all his own business, so Askerton must answer Askerton’s foes.

      “So who must guard Triermain? The landlord! What’s he? A slip of a lass, go to! And if the thieves ride in earnest, where will her tenants be and her rents withal?” He fell to damning Bell most grossly that was the cause of it all, to his mind, for not paying his black rent. And finding no remedy in raving turned his wrath on the lout Wattie, crying that the fire was out and my lady expected hourly.

      Myself kept counsel, yet did share his fears that if this attempt of the Nixons in a little matter was not met, other evildoers would take example, and Askerton ridden to ruin. And as I paced about the withery orchard thinking we had been so tranquil, and now all upside down, what of thieves riding and a loose fellow in the cellar and my lady to come in, poor soul, that I was troubled for, in to me comes that same Thomas Carleton, Land Sergeant of Gilsland (which is a potent office, like to a petty Warden), and his deputy Yarrow, that had ridden over from Gilsland to give welcome to my lady, as befitted them. This Carleton was a tall smooth man with a sheep’s face, easy and affable enough but cold in the eye, reckoned an expert borderer that knew the hinder-end of all things and how the world wagged, a stout man at war but a politician foremost, that for all his assurance I would have trusted no farther than I might throw Hermitage Keep. He passed for gentry, being of a known family, and discoursed with the nobility or cracked with the commonalty. His underling Yarrow was a border callant with a noisy laugh and an empty head, yet proper in his gait and a fine figure, with much sense of his little office.

      “God send you find the cares of the Church less than I find those of the state, sir priest,” was the Land Sergeant’s greeting to me, whereon I told him that if my cares were less than his, still mine lasted longer, going beyond the grave, to which he answered pleasantly that if I pursued my duties so far I would have hot work of it. So having stropped his wit, he inquired when my lady was expected. “An occasion,” says he, “for ’tis not every day a Dacre comes home.”

      At which Master Hodgson coming out to us said he minded those that had come home other wise, slung like a peddlar’s pack over a saddle-bow, and stiffer than January washing, aye, and with a hole in them made by the Land Sergeant himself, and winked at me.

      “Unseasonable chat,” says Carleton. “Times change, and if every family that I have touched with a sword were still mine enemies, I’d have few friends to count. In the way of business I let daylight in and blood out of Crookback Leonard Dacre in years past, and the land was the better for it. But that’s by-with. Ralph Dacre was a worthy man, we sorted well, and it befits that I give handsel to his grand-daughter, as officer and friend, offering what service I may.”

      I said this was good hearing,