The Reavers. George Fraser MacDonald

one o’ my stately inches; ’tis but sweet proportion. Oh, come on, top me up again, and if it makes me car-sick, what the hell, it’s better than freezing.”

      “Aye, let’s get loaded,” sighed Kylie, dispensing joy-juice. “’Twill make our present plight seem the less woeful, and banish fond regrets that we might ha’ been snug at Greenwich, simpering at Her Grace, dancing corantos, and sizing up the Yeoman Warders … if only someone had had the sense to wear a black wig …”

      Lady Godiva’s lovely eyes glinted like dangerous sapphires. “If you’re trying to wind me up, dear heart,” she purred, “you’re getting perilously warm. Well ye know that I am up to here, repining this unlooked for voyage to my Cumbrian estate – but what could I do, with Her Grace insistent and Grandpops handing in his bucket untimely?” Moodily she plucked seed pearls from her ruff and flicked them at the decanter, her bosom quivering in a sigh that would have had strip-club patrons clambering over the seats. “Aye, me, I suppose someone’s got to mind the store, and who but the old goat’s heiress? ’Tis the penalty of uncountable riches and social status that they bring Care and Duty in their wake. Ah, sweet Kylie, sometimes I wish I had been born a poor beggar maid, with no cares but ducks and manure. Or whatever,” she added vaguely.

      “’Tis hell in the trenches,” sniffed cynical Kylie. “But when her ancestors collar the monosodium glutamate monopoly from Henry the Seventh, what can a girl do but wallow lamenting in the dividends? Heart-breaking, I call it.”

      “It keeps you in tights and Chanel,” flashed Godiva, “so knock it not. Skip off the gravy train an ye list, but remember, baby, it’s cold outside. Aye,” she resumed in pensive mood, “this same wild wind will be sighing its plaintive dirge through the battlements of Thrashbatter Tower, where I was born, ’neath the grim shadow of the lonely fells. We’ll be seeing it shortly, assuming these layabouts get us moving before Easter – a stark and lonely hold, gentle Kylie, fronting the grim border. And yet …” Godiva’s marble beauty seemed to soften in creamy-dreamy reminiscence “… and yet ’twas there I played, as tender little child, by rippling beck and oozing bog, and harkened me to the murmuring of butterflies and badgers in the greenwood, all carpeted with daisies … And what the hell do you want, clodpole?” she concluded as the coach window flew open to admit a rush of freezing air and the empurpled face of Coachman Samkin under a thin sheet of ice.

      “’Tis of no avail, my lady!” he quavered through chattering teeth. “My big end’s gone!”

      A dozen crisp rejoinders jostled for priority on the red lips of quick-witted Kylie, but Lady Godiva ignored the opportunity, so great was her fury.

      “Have ye not tried kick-starting, fool?” she railed.

      “Aye, mistress, but ’tis vain! Boot their buttocks as I may, they stagger like men stoned! The wheels slip, wi’out purchase, and us wi’ no chains nor grit –”

      “Then find something else!” stormed her ladyship. “Where are your wits, looby? Lay two o’ the smaller lackeys ’neath the wheels, so shall ye find purchase enough! Stay, dolt – cover them with blankets lest their liveries be soiled. Jesu, must I think of everything! And close the dam’ window!”

      “Oh, kindly mistress! Oh, sweet consideration!” grovelled Samkin. “’Tis done in a moment, wi’ all despatch! I go, see how I … aaargh!”

      His fawning protestations ended in a sudden yowl as tender Kylie closed the window on his fingers, and while he is bathing them in snow and calling for volunteers to prostrate themselves beneath the wheels, we pan and zoom dramatically to the night skyline far above the road. You know the shot – usually it reveals Comanches or Riffs gazing down on the unsuspecting wagon train or Legion column, but this is something more sinister by far: a dozen steel-capped border riders sitting their hobblers like black phantoms in the swirling snow, motionless save for the play of their cloaks in the wind and the fidgeting of the man on the end whose chilblains are killing him. A fearsome sight, and worse when you get close and see the gaunt profiles of the long horse-like faces – and the riders are nothing to write home about either, grim and bony villains with wolfish expressions and hungry sunken eyes, for these are Charltons and Milburns of Tynedale, the hardest of hard men on the English side. Plagued by a power cut in their valley, they have been raiding their own countrymen (nothing unusual on the frontier, believe us) for firelighters and primus stoves; now, on their homeward road, heavy with plundered matches and kindling and a-reek with paraffin, they have spotted the stranded coach, and are arguing not about the practicality but – would you believe? – the morality of attacking it.

      You see, if we haven’t already mentioned it, the border reivers had eccentric notions of what was fair game. Livestock of any kind, and the contents (what they called the “insight”, a definition probably unknown to C. P. Snow) of farms, crofts, churches, and other people’s peel towers, were legitimate loot, and murder, arson, kidnapping, extortion, and terrorism were simply part of their business – and none of these things did they consider criminal. But there was a line which no respectable reiver would cross, if he could help it: mugging, pocket-picking, fraud, embezzlement, highway robbery, or oath-breaking – these things were out, as the State Papers testify, and if you think the borderers were crazy, well, that was their code. The line got a bit blurred sometimes, admittedly – which was why the Charltons and Milburns were getting all het up as they eyed the great gilded coach with hungry doubt and their extremities froze. They were talking, or rather growling, in Northumbrian, a form of English incomprehensible to outsiders, chiefly because it features a deep guttural noise as of a motor starting up, in place of the consonant “r”. In translation:

      “Ye cannut tooch it, man!” The leading Charlton, a gaunt cadaver known as Wor Jackie, was adamant. “The bloody thing hez wheels, sista! Rob that, an’ yer a flamin’ highwayman!”

      “If it’s got a roof, an’ isn’t moovin’, it’s a hoose!” objected a Milburn, producing his dog-eared Reiver’s Year-book.“Haud up the lantern, Sandie! Aye, theer y’are … ‘Any immobile dwellin’ or sim’lar accommodation may be visited, ploondered, th’inhabitants assaulted, the thatch boorned –’”

      “An’ wheer’s the thatch on that friggin’ thing?” demanded Oor Kid Charlton, who always supported his big brother.

      “Haud on a minnit,” demurred an awkward Robson. “Peel towers hezn’t got thatches, an’ we boorn them.”

      “Peel towers hezn’t got wheels, ye daft git! A coach isna an immobile dwellin’, neether!”

      “It wad be, tho’ if ’twas in a caravan park or trailer camp.” The Milburn shop steward was consulting his index. “Wheer is’t? ‘Pyped watter … refuse disposal … landlord-bashin’ …’ Aye, here it’s! ‘Trailers, albeit wheeled, shall be deemed crofts, cots, or steadings, so they be stationary …’ Weel, that booger’s stationary, so Ah say we’re in business!”

      “Naw, we’s not,” snarled Wor Jackie. “Bastard thing’s moovin’. An Ah doobt if that’s a caravan park.”

      “Aw, coom on, man! Hoo d’ye ken, wid a’ the snaw?”

      “’Ey, we could run-off th’ hosses! They’re livestock, so we’re entitled – an’ then it wadn’t be moovin’! Warraboot that, Wor Jackie?”

      A further moment’s debate followed in which a Milburn was unhorsed and two Charltons received flesh wounds, and then Wor Jackie sheathed his broadsword and gave his casting vote.

      “We tek th’ hosses, awreet – but if them fellas that’s pushin’ the coach can keep it moovin’ … hands off! An’ they’re not to be strucken, nor tripped neether, thou base football players! But the minnit they stop shovin’, an’ it stops, it ceases tae be a ve-hickle, an’ we can git stoock in! Awoy, Tynedale! Up the Magpies!”

      Like a black avalanche the scrupulous freebooters swept down the snow-clad slope, flourishing swords and supporters’ club scarves, lances couched and rattles a-clatter, and before the bewildered grooms knew what had hit