Raider’s Tide. Maggie Prince
Читать онлайн.| Название | Raider’s Tide |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Maggie Prince |
| Жанр | Книги для детей: прочее |
| Серия | |
| Издательство | Книги для детей: прочее |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9780007393183 |
Raider’s Tide
MAGGIE PRINCE
For Chris, Deborah, Daniel,and for my mother whoselandscape this is, withlove and thanks.
The northern counties from time to time had to withstand invasion by the organised forces of Scotland, but their chief embarrassment was caused by a system of predatory incursions which rendered life and property insecure.
Victoria County History of Cumberland
They have taken forth of divers families all, the very rackencrocks and pot-hooks. They have driven away all the beasts, sheep and horses…
The Silver Dale, by William Riley
On 14 April… the Scots did come… armed and appointed with gavlockes and crowes of iron, handpeckes, axes and skailinge lathers.
Border Papers, Scottish Records ii 171
Contents
In transposing Beatrice’s story into modern English,the tone and content of her original narrativehave been preserved throughout,and her exact words wherever possible.
It is the late 1500s. Queen Elizabeth I is on the throne of England …
I jump up, jolted out of my daydream. I thought I heard voices, muttering secretively. I peer into the dimness of the woods and listen. It’s easy to start imagining things when you’re alone on the last watch of the day. On the other hand, my hearing is sharp – sharper than average – and I often hear what I am not supposed to.
I rest my hand on the haft of my knife, and creep through the swathes of pale cream daffodils to where the rough ground of the Pike slopes down towards the sea. My knife has worn through the bottom of its sheath, and keeps catching on my skirts. I shift it round to the back of me, and move out into the open where the warning beacon stands, a pile of sticks and turf in a stone trough. I can see nothing out of the ordinary, just the sun going down in the west, shining red through the beacon’s propped twigs.
We keep watch because of a very real danger. It is three years since we were last attacked by Scottish raiders, who creep round the bay in their boats or race out of the hills from the border country. Now it is spring again, the invasion season, and a watch must be kept until the first winter frosts.
The sound isn’t repeated. I suppose I’m just jumpy, for I have worse problems than Scots to think of at the moment. Light glints on fast-moving water far below me, and I sit on the edge of the beacon to watch the bore tide coming up the bay. The wind wraps my skirts round my legs and brings fine sand billowing up the slope. I push my hair back under my lace cap, and glance south along the coast to where my cousins’ pele tower stands above the sea on its limestone cliffs. The tower itself cannot be seen from here,