The Tweedie Passion (11 page)

When I was not hoping for Hugh to come to me, I wished only to be left alone with my thoughts, my unfair anger and my sense of impending loss. As I alternated between hatred and love, I did not want to see Hugh leave me, and leave me he must for with the feud between our surnames, he would be in grave danger the instant he rode into the Lethan Valley.

'Horsemen ahead.' They were the first words that Hugh had spoken for hours. They jerked me out of my reverie and into the reality of our physical situation. I looked around and recognised where we were. The surrounding hills were only a dozen miles from the Lethan, with familiar shapes and friendly outlines. There was a late-season laverock trilling above, perhaps even that same bird I had heard as we harvested the crops only a few days and a lifetime ago. I could not see any horsemen.

'A round score,' Hugh continued, 'moving slowly.'

I wondered whether I wished to talk to him yet. 'Where?' I could spare a single word. It did not mean that I liked him, only that I had decided it was necessary to recognise his existence: nothing more.

'They are in front and on the hills on either side.' Hugh was more loquacious. 'Four are on the road and the others are supporting. I can hear the rattle of equipment so they are armed.'

'All men are armed on the road!' I injected a sneer into my words, still aiming to hurt him and feeling the stab of pain in my own heart.

I heard Hugh unsheathe his sword. 'Keep close My Lady Jeannie,' he said quietly. 'They may not be our friends.'

I nearly turned to face him. Instead I reined in, just slightly, just enough to obey his advice but not enough, certainly not enough, to allow him to think that he mattered to me.

The horsemen appeared on the crest of the hill to my right, and then to my left. They rode in line abreast, each man with his lance and sword, each one with the steel helmet firm on his head, each one with the high morning sun on his face. Eight on each side and four on the road, exactly as Hugh had said, and I knew each man by name and reputation, by family and history.

'Father!' I nearly screamed the word as I saw Father at the head, with his homely bearded face set, and then, 'Robert!' For Robert rode at his side, sturdy, freckled Robert Ferguson, my own, my very own Robert riding south to rescue me.

Without a thought I shouted his name and put spurs to my horse, waving my hand in delight. And so I bade farewell to Hugh Veitch and rode to Robert. And my destiny. I hardly looked back, thinking that Hugh would be behind me.

'Father!' I galloped to him as he spurred to meet me, shouting my name. The others, the vanguard of the armed might of the Tweedies of the Lethan Valley rode down from the hills to see me. We met in a maelstrom of shouts and a confusion of embraces and laughter, with Robert all a-grin and the boys of the Lethan asking a hundred questions.

'Where did you get that horse from?' Robert asked. 'She's a beauty.'

It was such a typical Robert response that I had to laugh and my father embraced me in his great bear-like arms as his grizzled beard tickled my face and his nose pressed against mine.

'You are well?'

'I am well,' I said excitedly, smiling into his wise, worried old eyes.

'We were coming for you,' Father indicated the men who rode at his side.

'We were going to rescue you!' Robert seemed excited at the prospect. 'We found out that you were down in Liddesdale.'

'I was there,' I said. 'Wild Will Armstrong held us prisoner. Hugh and I escaped…' I looked around for Hugh. The excitement at meeting Father and Robert had quite driven my anger away and I was prepared to forgive him. I expected him to fall in with my moods, you see; I was a very thoughtless young woman in these days. 'Where is Hugh?'

'Hugh?' Father raised grizzled eyebrows. 'Who is Hugh?' The sun caught the ring on his pinkie as he reached for his sword.

'He is the man I escaped with.' I looked around, expecting to see his face among the familiar men of the Lethan. He was not there so I cast my gaze further back lest he was lurking at the fringes, waiting to be invited. That was the sort of thing a gentleman would do, I reckoned. 'I cannot see him.'

'You were alone,' Robert said. 'There was no man with you. You were alone on the road when we saw you.'

'No,' I shook my head so vehemently that my hair netted across my face and I had to claw it free. 'I was with Hugh. You must have seen him.'

'There was nobody with you,' Father said.

I eased out of the press and looked back; the road was as empty as the hills. There was no sign of Hugh anywhere. I had a sudden feeling of dread, as if I was wrong and Hugh had been somebody I dreamed up, or perhaps, horribly the spirit of the Tweed. We had made love once, when my Robert had been absent and we were in an ancient, sacred place, filled with the power of those stones.

No. I shook those silly thoughts away. Hugh had been real; he had been as solid and real as any of the men in whose company I now stood. I had not imagined him or dredged him from some recess of my imagination. Or, God forbid, he had not emerged from the haunted Tweed to enchant me with his love and leave me with a sprit-child.

Oh dear God in heaven! That was a possibility that I was with child!

I tried to calm my fears as I forced a smile. 'He must have gone another way,' I said. 'It is not important.'

'Who was this Hugh?' Robert asked. As always he was like the cow's tail, always at the back. Even so it was good to see his face.

'He was just a man I escaped with and who travelled the road with me,' I tried to sound as casual as possible. 'As I said, he was not important,' I dismissed Hugh and his love with as little apparent concern as if he had been a mouse I had passed, or a bird of the sky.

'We will get you back home,' Father decided, 'and we will hear of your adventures.' He stepped back, holding my shoulders in both hands. 'You are looking well for somebody who was held by the Armstrongs.'

'I was not held long,' I said, still searching hopefully for Hugh. 'They only had me for a day or so after the Yorling grabbed me.'

I saw my father's face alter and knew there was something he was not telling me. This was not the time to ask. I wanted to go home. I also wanted Hugh. I knew I could not have both.

Father looked me up and down, shaking his head. 'Did they force you to wear men's clothing?'

I had forgotten that I was dressed like a man. 'No' I said. 'We put these on so we could ride through Liddesdale in safety.'

'Tell me when we get home,' Father said again, as Robert asked me about Kailzie.

LETHAN VALLEY
OCTOBER 1585

Can you remember the parable about the prodigal son and how his father killed the fatted calf when he returned home? Well that did not happen at my homecoming. Instead Mother looked me up and down, said: 'aye; you're home then,' and got on with her spinning. That was my welcome back to Cardrona Tower. No fanfares, no beating of drums or sounding of trumpets. A few words and a look, yet I was still glad to be home, in familiar surroundings and surrounded by friendly faces.

Yet although everything was the same, everything seemed different. It was not of course: the Lethan was the same; it was me that had changed. I had been outside the confines of the Lethan Valley, I had experienced violence and theft, I had met a great many very unpleasant men and I had my first visitation of the Tweedie Passion. In short, I was a woman now while before I had been a girl.

However other things had also changed in my enforced absence, as I discovered the morning after my return. I lay in my own bed, staring at the groined ceiling, thinking how glad I was to be back home and wondering about Hugh when Mother walked in.

Expecting her to start shouting that I should be up and about and working, I sat up and swung my legs over the edge of the bed.

'Don't get up,' Mother held up her hand to stop me. She sat on the bed at my side. 'Now that you've decided to come back,' Mother spoke as if I had chosen to be abducted and carried away by half the outlaws of the Borders, 'your Father will want to talk to you.'

I nodded. 'I have already told him what happened.' Or some of it, anyway. I missed out some minor details, such as what Hugh and I had got up to, and the fact that he had been a Veitch.

'So I believe,' Mother said. 'It is what you have not said that I find most interesting. We will discuss that later.' She looked deep into my eyes. 'You have much to tell me, I believe.'

I said nothing to that.

'If I were you,' Mother said. 'I would get up and dressed soon. And get a decent breakfast. You will need all the strength today.'

I shoved back the tangled mess of my hair and scratched my head. Honestly, if men saw us first thing in the morning they would not be attracted at all. Mind you, Hugh had first seen in in a dungeon, filthy and… I concentrated on what Mother had said. 'Why?' I asked. I had rather hoped that I could recover after all my recent excitements.

'You'll see.' Mother patted my thigh. 'It's up to your father to explain, not me.' She lowered her voice. 'All I will say is: don't think too hardly of him, Jeannie. Talk to me later, when you know.'

'When I know what?' I scratched my head again, furiously, and again pushed back my shocking hair. I hated all this secrecy. Why could people not be straightforward and open? 'Why should I think hardly of Father?'

Mother patted my thigh again. 'We are having a visitor in the forenoon,' she said. 'Some things will be explained then.' She looked at me, sighed, and shook her head. 'I will send up a maid with a basin of water to help wash your hair, Jeannie. I can see you brought half of Liddesdale back with you. If I did not know better I would say that you had been rolling around on the ground.'

You will have to do better than that, Mother, I thought. 'It would feel cleaner after a wash.'

'And wear something at last half-decent,' Mother said, 'don't go around near naked.' She stood up, shaking her head. 'It's no wonder most of the men in the Borders want to bed you.'

I was better than half-decent when I sat at the ingle-neuk in the great hall. I had taken pains with both my clothes and my appearance, which drew some ribald comments from the boys of the valley when they began to filter in. The maid had done herself proud in washing my hair with water in which birch-bark had been soaked so it both shone and had a sweet aroma. That caused Robert to give a loud laugh.

'Is that the latest fashion in Liddesdale?'

I did not fully appreciate the joke and told him so with hot words and narrowed eyes that did their work well.

'It was meant to be funny,' Robert said.

About to say that it would have been funnier if he had come to rescue me, I bit back the words. I had no desire to humiliate him further. Indeed, I knew he was going to save me at some time in the future so I had to be gentle with him. I swallowed my anger.

'Do you know what this is all about?' I asked.

'Not yet,' Robert said, smiling past me to Crooked Sim of the Mains.

'Does anybody know?' I looked around the hall as more men entered. All the leading men of the valley seemed to be there, from our tenants at Lethanhead away up in the hills to the riverside men of Lethanfoot who owed their allegiance to Ferguson of Whitecleuch.

'What?' Robert glanced at me. 'Oh, no I don't think so, Jeannie. Not until your father tells us.'

'It's good to be back.' I reached out for him.

When Robert continued to ignore me and talk to Crooked Sim, I nudged him in the ribs. 'I said it's good to be back!' I nodded to my hand. Honestly, that man was hard work. 'You may take my hand if you wish.'

'Go on Rab, take her hand when you're told,' Crooked Sim jeered. 'Jeannie got herself all dressed up for you! She even washed the lice from her hair.'

I tapped my hand on the table we sat around. 'Robert?'

He laughed and looked away. 'Not in front of my friends, Jeannie,' he said so softly that only I could hear him.

I withdrew my hand and stood up. 'I will leave you with your friends,' I said.

There was a better view from the top table and anyway, it was where I belonged. I should never have joined the Whitecleuch boys, despite Robert being there. I sat at the top table with a vacant seat on either side, fuming as more men crammed into the hall and my Robert sat in the midst of his cronies, cracking poor jokes and boasting to each other of their prowess.

Only after the last of my father's chief tenants found a space did Father himself arrived, with Mother at his side. Father entered with a flourish and with his sword at his side, which was unusual inside the tower.

As the men either stood in respect or hammered hard hands on the table in spontaneous applause, Father and Mother stepped to the head table, with Willie Telfer standing by the closed door. I moved aside as they took their places.

'Enough!' Father roared and the row gradually subsided. 'You will be wondering why I have gathered you all together today.' That was a statement rather than a question. 'Well if you sit still and listen you will learn.'

There was a general laugh at that, with a few ribald comments from the more crude of the men. Why do some men think it amusing to be rude about everything?

'For as long as we all can remember,' Father said, 'we have been at feud with the Veitches.'

The men growled at that, waving their fists in the air to prove their martial valour and dislike of the old enemy. I sat silent, thinking of Hugh as I watched Robert and his group of friends outshout all the others; young callants eager to be heard. For one bitter moment I wondered how they would fare against Wild Will and his band of veteran outlaws, shook the thought away as disloyal and listened to Father.

'We have bickered for decades. They have raided us and we have raided them; we have reived a few cattle and they have reived a few cattle; we have burned a couple of their cottages and they have burned a couple of our cottages. There have been some killings.'

Father paused then to allow the men of the Lethan remember the men and women they had lost to the vicious Veitches and savour the triumph of victory as the brave Tweedies had exacted revenge by catching and killing a handful of the enemy over the decades.

'It is time to end this once and for all,' Father declared.

I was the only person who clapped in the ensuing hush. The feud with the Veitches had been a fact for so long that people could not think of an alternative. Now I believed that Father was proposing an end to the feud, so we could live in peace.

Father raised his hands high. 'It is time that we finally quelled the Veitches and turned their lands into a smoking waste; put their men to the sword, burned their crops, reived their livestock and razed their towers to the ground!'

I stopped clapping, appalled that Father intended the very opposite of what I had hoped. 'No!' I said. Now my small voice was lost in the roar of approval from the assembled might of the Lethan Valley. The Tweedies and their tenants were on their feet shouting their delight at the thought of turning a smouldering feud into a full scale war.

'Father!' I shouted, 'you can't!' I remembered Liddesdale where men carried weapons every day, where the churches and chapels had been destroyed, where the only law was the blade and the hangman's rope. I did not wish my green Lethan Valley turned into a place like that.

'You hear my daughter!' Father calmed his people down. 'She has immediately realised the reason we have not done this before is that we lacked the numbers.'

'No, Father,' I protested, 'that is not what I meant.' About to explain, I found Mother's hands on me as she ushered me back to my seat.

'Hush Jeannie; this is Father's day. He has a lot to explain.' Mother's eyes were deep with warning.

I sat down and clamped shut my mouth. I knew I spoke too much. I also knew that I did not wish to see Father, brave though he was, pitted against active, proven fighters such as Hugh Veitch. I certainly did not wish to see Robert outmatched again.

'We have not done this before,' Father continued, 'because we have lacked the manpower. We have two hundred riders in the Lethan; the Veitches have three hundred. If we faced them in open battle they would outnumber us.'

The assembly was silent again. They knew these facts of course, but hearing them was always sobering.

'I was as aware of the numbers as you are,' Father spoke more quietly now, 'so I cast a wide net to look for allies and distant kinsmen.'

That got my interest. The old Border worked on the kin system. Family was second only to business. Men and women felt strong attachment to family and blood and loyalty could be fierce, unless cattle was involved. I had thought the Tweedies were a close-knit family; I was not aware that we had kin outside the Lethan Valley.

'Let me introduce you to one of them.' Father nodded to Willie Telfer at the door. 'Right Willie; bring him in.'

When Willie opened the door and a man stepped in, a buzz ran around the great hall. I watched in astonishment as the Yorling, resplendent in his bright yellow jack and with his spurs rattling, stepped across the stone flags.

I stood up, reaching for some sort of weapon, as a score of men did the same. I searched for Robert's gaze, hoping to reassure him that I believed in him despite his discomfiture at the hands of this lithe young man.

There was a smile on the face of the Yorling as he joined us at the top table. He gave a small bow to Mother, and a deeper bow to me.

'I am glad to see you alive and well, my Lady Jean,' he said quietly as the assembly broke into a hundred questions.

I responded with stiff formality. 'Sir,' I said, with the briefest of curtseys.

Father banged his fist on the table for silence, causing great dents in the pine for which Mother would undoubtedly later take him to task.

'Most of you have heard of the Yorling,' Father had to raise his voice and repeat himself until the hubbub died down. 'Well; I have a small admission to make.'

As the Yorling stood beside Father, I drew in my breath sharply. I had always been aware that I felt a bond to the Yorling; despite his actions I had known that I was never in any real danger from him. Now I guessed why.

I looked toward Mother and felt her hand slide around mine. 'Mother…' I said.

'Yes, Jeannie,' she whispered. 'I already know.'

I squeezed my mother's hand in sympathy and support.

'Some of you may have guessed the truth,' Father said. 'In my youth, before I met my lady wife, I was a roving blade.'

Most of the men laughed at that, digging each other in the ribs and guffawing their masculine approval. Oh our Tweedie men loved to think of themselves as men's men, reiving and raiding for women as well as cattle, although in slightly different ways. I hoped.

'In these old days, I roved around the Debateable Land and had a name and reputation. I wore a yellow jack most remarkably like this one and men knew me as the Yorling.'

That name caused a hush to fall on the gathering. Everybody had heard of the Yorling as the leader of an outlaw band decades before. Now they knew that my Father, Tweedie of the Lethan, had been that man. I am sure their opinion of him multiplied. I am not sure that I shared their adulation.

'This bold young callant took on my mantle.' Father tapped the Yorling's shoulder. 'This is George, now known as George Graham from his mother's side, or the Yorling. He is my son; born out of wedlock so not able to inherit my lands, but Tweedie by blood.'

I had guessed that truth and now I looked on the face of the half- brother I had not known that I possessed. He looked at me along the length of the table.

'Will you forgive me, my sister?' His smile was as wide as ever although there was genuine concern in his smokey eyes. 'You were never in danger.'

'I always knew that,' I said truthfully, 'but why did you do it?'

As he opened his mouth to talk, Father started again. 'Now you see why the time is right to rid us of the plague of the Veitches. George – the Yorling- will add his band of twenty riders to our strength and our combined force with sweep the Veitches from their land of Faladale!'

The gathering were on their feet, clapping hands and stamping feet, hammering the tables with fists, tankards and the pommels of daggers as they agreed full-heartedly with Father's ideas.

Oh, Father was clever. He had used is youthful faults as a tool to give the valley exactly what they wanted. Now nobody could accuse him of anything except being a vibrant youth, a man with the Tweedie Passion, which all knew about and nobody would gainsay.

'Mother…' I leaned closer to her, embarrassed that her husband's philandering should be so publically revealed.