The Reavers. George Fraser MacDonald

      THE REAVERS

       by George MacDonald Fraser

       Dedication

      In remembrance of the law officers

      “expert borderers” John Forster, Lance and Thomas Carleton, Robin and John Carey, Eure, the Scroops, Buccleuch, Carmichael, Hunsdon and their equally expert adversaries Ill-Drowned Geordie, Nebless Clem, Curst Eckie, Fingerless Will, Evilwillit Sandie, Crackspear, Buggerback, Bangtail, Sweetmilk, Gib Alangsyde, Auld Wat, Cleave-the-Crune, Sore John, Wynkyng Will, Dand the Man, Hob the King, Unhappy Anthone, David-no-gude-priest, Wantoun Sym, Dog-pyntle, Out-with-the-Sword, Willie Kang Irvine, Jock of the Side, Black Ormiston, Ower-the-Moss, Gav-yt-hem, Jock of the Peartree, Skinabake, Mouse, Bull, Lamb, Shag, Richie Graham, Thomas the Merchant, Sandie’s Bairns, Red Rowan, and many others, because it would be a shame to forget them

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

       Dedication

       Forword

       Chapter 1

       Chapter 2

       Chapter 3

       Chapter 4

       Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Epilogue

       Other Works

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

       Foreword

      This book is nonsense. It’s meant to be. If I were a “serious” writer, which I’m not (I have the word of an eminent critic for this, and I know he meant it as a compliment, because he put the word in quotes) I might describe it as an octogenarian’s rebuke to a generation which seems to have forgotten fun and become obsessed with misery, disaster, illness, operations, violence, climate change, guilt, obesity, cookery, football, racism, politics, and a general sense of doom. But not being serious as the literary world understands the term, I can offer no such pretentious excuse. The Reavers is simply G.M.F. taking off on what a learned judge would call a frolic of his own.

      It began with a novel I wrote fourteen years ago, The Candlemass Road, an Elizabethan swashbuckler set on the Anglo-Scottish border. That in turn had its origin in a play written much earlier; it was never produced, so I used its plot for Candlemass, which was kindly received by readers and critics, being full of bloodshed, brutality, treachery, and betrayal. By one of those ironies of the writing business, I was then able to turn it back into a play, for BBC Radio.

      So much for Candlemass, a plain enough tale, but since I can never resist comic experiment, and the wilder the better, I found myself considering a different approach, first imagining and then inevitably writing The Reavers as a fantasy in the style of another book of mine, The Pyrates. Both are eccentric, as advertised by the fanciful archaic spelling of their titles; both are completely over the top, written for the fun of it. In that spirit I offer The Reavers, with gratitude to the happy band of Pyrates-lovers and any others of like mind, now that sufficient time has elapsed for the original Candlemass Road to slip quietly into the shadows of bygone fiction.

      G.M.F.

       Chapter 1

      It was a dark and stormy night in Elizabethan England, a night of driving rain and howling wind, God save the mark! when even the stately oaks bowed their great heads and giant ash trees clawed with spidery fingers at the tempest, duck ponds and horse-troughs were lashed into foam, chimbley pots toppled on the heads of honest citizens, staring owls clung to their perches with difficulty, and broom-riding witches circled crazily over blasted heaths, stacked and waiting in vain for clearance to land, Steeple Bumpstead was whirled away leaving a gaping hole in the middle of Essex, cows and domestic animals were overturned, slates and washing flew every which way, and stout constables, their lanthorns awash, kept out of the way of sturdy beggars and thanked God they were rid of a knave, leaded casements rattled in stately Tudor homes, causing the noble inhabitants to give thanks for roaring fires and bumpers of mulled posset what time they brooded darkly about sunspots, global warming, and the false forecasts of Master Michael Fishe, he o’ the isobars, who had predicted only light airs gentle as zephyrs blowing below the violets, would you believe it, while out yonder, in lonely hamlet and disintegrating hovel, the peasantry scratched their fleas and gnawed lumps of turnip and blamed it on the Almighty (poor churls, what did they know of warm fronts and depressions o’er Iceland?) or on the hag next door, her wi’ the Evil Eye and black familiar Grimalkin and devilish spells, curse her, and wagged their unkempt heads as haystacks and livestock crashed through their thatches, and asked each other in fearful whispers whether such raging fury of the elements portended the end of the world, or the Second Coming, or another bloody wet week, and agreed that it was alle happenynge, gossip, and where would it end?

      Well, that takes care of the weather, and before meteorologists start hunting through their almanacks for the date of this monumental tempest, we shall tell them that it befell on a certain February 2 – but make no mention of the year, save that it was sometime between the foundation of Kiev University and the discovery of Spitzbergen, and they can make what they will of that, my masters. Why such reticence? Because the moment a romantic story-teller starts committing himself to actual years, and similar pretensions to strict historical fact, his character is gone, being at the mercy of nit-picking critics who will take gloating delight in pointing out (for example) that Attila the Hun couldn’t