The Reavers. George Fraser MacDonald

Grunt, Slackarse, and Wandered Tom, and all are members of the Pringle family except the last, who thinks he’s a Turnbull but can’t be sure because he has lost his birth certificate (he says). Like the Mafia, borderers operated in family groups, with close friends and allies to make up the numbers; the big tribes, like the Armstrongs, Elliots, Johnstones, and Maxwells (of Scotland), and the Fenwicks, Grahams, and Forsters (of England) could sally forth hundreds strong, but the Pringles, although under the protection of the powerful Kerr family, were second division players, and Bangtail’s was a typical small raid.

      It was also a disgruntled one, because they’d had no luck. Bangtail had got them all excited with big talk of descending like a thunderbolt on the Foulbogsyke Women’s Institute during its annual meeting, raping the committee, and making off with their prize entries of crochet and home-made jam, but the ladies had word of his coming and defied the raiders from the W.I. tower, hurling down missiles of potted meat, jellies, raffia-work, and blazing handbags. Foiled, Bangtail had to be content with running off the livestock, which consisted not of cattle and sheep, but of half a dozen hens and a couple of cats. So it is a sorry band of ruffians that we see riding through the murk, herding their clucking plunder before them, while Bangtail rides well ahead, gritting his teeth in frustration at the memory of the plump and roguish Institute treasurer flaunting her curves on the battlements as she blew him jeering kisses and invited him to climb up and show her his muscles.

      Archie Noble came out of his doze at the sound of the reiver’s hoof-beats, starting up from his bed among the bracken. Bangtail saw the bedraggled figure not ten paces away, concluded that here was some lonely wanderer on whom to vent his ill-temper, and with a “Har-har!” of wicked glee clapped in his spurs, couched his lance, and charged, intending to open him up just for laughs. But it wasn’t a good night for Pringles, for the victim leaped smartly aside, whipped a poniard from the back of his waist, and with a tricky underarm throw planted it neatly in Bangtail’s neck, causing him to crash to the turf, his sensibilities outraged and his throat cut. After which there was nothing for Bangtail to do but thrash about a bit, go limp, gasp the word “Rosebud” (which was the name of the plump W.I. treasurer, actually), and expire.

      And that’s Bangtail out of the story, and Archie Noble nicely into it. Moving with cat-like agility he retrieved his poniard, glanced keenly about him in alarm (for even heroes don’t expect to find themselves committing manslaughter before they’re properly awake), congratulated himself on his reflexes – and then his eye fell on the dead face glaring irritably up at the pale moon, and a startled wince caused the clotted debris to fall from his unwashed brow.

      “Black Dod Pringle, alias Bangtail!” he exclaimed. “Dead by my hand, all unintentional! Now, harrow and alas, but here was dire mischance, and as for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, forget it! Nay, he’s past mending, and I in jeopardy o’ my life, for those hoof-beats I hear betoken not th’arrival o’ the Salvation Army, I warrant!”

      It was customary, you see, for Elizabethan performers to speak their thoughts aloud, for the benefit of the groundlings. But having got his dismay off his chest, our hero moved like a well-oiled ferret (belying his nickname of Waitabout, from his habit of philosophic loafing). Trained frontiersman that he was, his senses told him that five riders, driving hens and cats, were just over the hill (Slackarse’s shout of “Keep them bloody poultry away from the moggies, you four, or the boogers’ll stampede!” merely confirmed his deduction), and with Teviotdale’s top gun going into rigor mortis at his feet, and a bloody poniard in his hand, Archie could see awkward questions being asked by the deceased’s buddies if he lingered. On foot he was coffin-bait, for those expert trackers would read his trail like motorway signs, wheresoe’er he turned and doubled. On the other hand, Pringle’s horse was hanging about, looking bored … yet our hero, hard man though he was, hesitated to take away a vehicle without the owner’s consent, and that was now unobtainable. Anyway, broken men got hung for horse-rustling, didn’t they? Decisions, decisions … and then as a frantic cat came rocketing out of the mist, with an enraged chicken in hot pursuit, and Slackarse’s cry of “What did I tell ye – the bastard hen’s run amok!” reached his ears, Archie Waitabout waited no longer. With one bound he was in the saddle, accelerating smoothly from nought to twenty-five in four seconds flat, and by the time the Famous Five had come on their defunct leader and were speculating about suicide, divine retribution, or (Wandered Tom’s theory) whether Bangtail had stopped to shave and ballsed it up, our hero was a mile away and going like the clappers o’er the misty moor, muttering “Land’s End or bust!” as he counted the cost of his fatal encounter.

      Why, what’s to worry, you may wonder – no witnesses, no incriminating broken cuff-links or cigar ash left behind … file the serial number off the poniard, ditch it, and he’s well away, surely? Oh, yeah – what about the horse? In these parts, where everyone knows everyone else, including their livestock, he might as well carry a full confession in Day-glo on his chest. But dammit, you point out, he’s on the moral high ground (self-defence), and no previous record, your honour … But unfortunately, there is: Archie’s past is not entirely unspotted; necessity has driven him to hire out now and then to heavy mobs like the Charltons and the Maxwells; he has lent a hand, and reluctantly committed G.B.H., in those just-lawful pursuits picturesquely called “hot trods”, he has no references or paid-up insurance, and being a broken man and therefore heavily suspicioned of everything, he is ripe to be put in the frame for anything. Like killing, however innocently, the local equivalent of a Chicago capo, whose family have been known to pursue a feud as far as York, and Batley even.

      Our boy, in fact, is now without a future. Either the Pringle hitmen will sign him off, or the Wardens will give him a suspended sentence eight feet up in the air – for while a well-connected reiver may get off with a fine plus interest and a promise to behave, broken men can expect only the gallows, decapitation, or the drowning-pit in which offenders were economically dunked to death.

      Either way, a parlous plight, and Archie’s brow is furrowed with care beneath the grime, and even the horse is shaking its head and shooting him glances of concern as he leads it through the wreathing mist a couple of hours before dawn. They are cold, wet, fed up with tripping over rocks and falling in bogs; Archie’s stomach is starting to rumble – that last clump of grass had definitely been off – and the horse is burping with fatigue; sustenance they must have, and that right speedily. And just as they are starting to eye each other cannibal-wise, the mist thins suddenly, and in the distance a light gleams in the gloom. The mist thins a bit more, and the outline of a large building comes into view, and then with a final ghostly whiffle the mist packs up entirely, and lo! it’s a great fortified mansion, with crenellations and mullions and a massy stone wall all around with a frowning gateway flanked by a sullen sally-port and a mildly annoyed tradesmen’s entrance above which is a battered notice board reading:

       Thrashbatter Tower plc.

       Scots KEEPE OUTTE!

       Forays by appointment onlie.

       Nobilitie, gentrie, Wardens fairlie welcome.

       Broken menne are you kidding?

      The whole place looks as though it’s been built in a bad temper, bats squeak round its dark central tower, bloodhounds growl in its outhouses, and in its cellar the very mice are bickering in their straw.

      Archie is still too far off to hear them, or to read the notice, but even if he could it wouldn’t matter; his eye is fixed on that one small lighted window, which his reiver’s instinct tells him is a pantry containing a half-finished game pie, a mortress of brawn, savoury pasties, toothsome pizzas, sundry kickshaws, and enough booze to raise the Titanic. Slavering slightly, he mounts his steed, murmuring “Hi-yo, Silver!”, and is hurled headlong as the beast rears obediently on its hind legs, whinnying. Picking himself up, and with the William Tell overture whispering gently o’er the moss, he steals forward like a ragged ghost, ears pricked, eyes gleaming like grey fog-lamps, gastric juices fermenting, while the horse takes a dyspeptic glance at the gloomy mansion, obeys its animal instinct, and leans despondently against a convenient tree reflecting that it’s not that hungry …