Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [177]
As it was, the Borders had a reluctant admiration for St Mary’s, who had meted out tough help and tough justice that winter. Many an independent family, like the Scotts and the Kerrs, were hoping to pursue their own unlawful pleasures unnoticed and gave a guarded reception to the round of cool visits Lymond made that spring. He called, too, on Lord Wharton at Carlisle, and on the English Deputy Wardens who, with their Scottish counterparts, tried to keep order, stop thieving and exchanged miscreants between the nations.
Roads were drying out and Border cattle were fattening on the spring grass. With St Mary’s help, they would calve where they ate. The Armstrongs, the Grahams, the Elliots and all the broken men and freebooters of the Debatable Land might wriggle like eels in an ark to escape the attention of this forbidding new force, but as April began to grow towards May they began one by one to find themselves, to their own disgusted surprise, behind bars at Edinburgh or Carlisle, and with no prospect of a blood feud to recompense them when and if they became free. It looked nastily as if some of the fun was to go out of life, henceforth to be devoted to nothing more lively than raising sons, livestock and barley; and even the Trodds were to be policed.
Under this pleasant arrangement, the owners of stolen cattle were allowed to cross the Border not later than six days after the robbery to find them. If the loser failed, the stolen cattle belonged to the reiver. The hunt was therefore a feverish one: feelings ran high and heads rolled, leaving an uncertain judicial situation on both sides. A party engaged on a Hot Trodd, it was decreed, must notify St Mary’s before departing. And in case it escaped their minds, Lymond had his independent observers from end to end of the Debatable Ground. He might be half a day behind the excited party, but the knowledge that he was behind was likely to cast a little restraint.
He visited, also, the few powerful landowners supporting the Crown in the south-west, and made sure that the Earl of Cassillis, Lord Maxwell and Sir James Drumlanrig knew exactly what he was doing. This meant long hours of riding, a brief call, and a quick return to St Mary’s to control developing affairs, but it was done efficiently and without fuss, usually with no more than two officers and a score of men at his back. It was when Lymond was returning from one of these fast, scattered tours with something like nine hours in the saddle behind him, that he was greeted at St Mary’s with the news that Thompson had been for two days at Dumbarton and must see him before leaving next day.
Thompson, that well-known sea robber, had been recruited, Jerott knew, to instruct in saltwater warfare that summer. It seemed to him, and he found to Gabriel also, that the business could wait. But Lymond, stopping only to change horses and issue brief directions, simply continued his journey to Dumbarton, a matter of eighty-five miles and a full day of hilly travelling.
Tait and Bell had been with him to Carlisle. Lymond left them at St Mary’s and chose Adam Blacklock and Jerott to continue, to Jerott’s disgust. And the tolerant counsel of Gabriel, to whom Brother Blyth had described with contempt Lymond’s conduct at Dumbarton once before, reduced that young knight to impotent silence. All right: how would Sir Graham prise Francis Crawford from