Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [188]
‘He may have gone to Graham Malett and the main company instead,’ said Blacklock quickly. It was possible. He hoped it was true. Between them, Lymond and Gabriel could keep Dante’s devils under control, never mind the left-handed chosen of Benjamin. It occurred to him that he had not yet seen any Kerr animals, although the scout who had first located the herd had reported that they were Scott and Kerr property mixed. Will Scott had been scrupulous, he had seen, in checking the burns.
They must be further away from the settlement. Satisfied, the Scott owners would have left the outlying valleys alone. Will Scott said now quickly, ‘Well, I’m away. I’ve no itch, I can tell you, to see Francis Crawford, and get dog’s abuse for not warning you all. Tell him he can come another time and hold my wee warm mailed fist.’
‘You tell him,’ said Adam Blacklock, and gave a cursory wave as the big young man, grinning, mounted and left. Randy Bell rode off with him. Adam, with half a dozen Scotts endowed him for safety, had elected to wait for the men of St Mary’s and the Kerrs.
*
By the time Francis Crawford reached St Mary’s from Dumbarton, riding alone, it was the afternoon of the 1st May, and he had been without sleep for the better part of two nights, and had covered something like two hundred and fifty miles since before dawn the previous day. He stopped at his own home for a meal and a flask of the strongest spirits he could find, to keep himself in the saddle and for no other reason, and after taking both, walking about the castle and talking to the few men who remained, set off immediately for Liddesdale.
He was, or had been at the outset, faultlessly hardened for this very purpose. He also knew exactly how much longer he could expect his mind to remain clear and his muscles respond without rest. It was probably long enough to trounce Will Scott for not having reported his loss to St Mary’s, and maybe to view the winding up of the exercise. It seemed unlikely, with the whole company from St Mary’s with the Kerrs, that anything undesirable could happen.
That, however, he knew at the back of his mind, was a rationalization. Had it not been for Joleta, he would have been there now.
As it was, he did not attempt to pick up Gabriel in the darkness, but rode instead straight to the Debatable Land where the Turnbulls had their base. There, instead of Will Scott, he found Adam Blacklock, comfortably installed in an empty shack with six Scotts before a big fire, awaiting the arrival of Gabriel, Jerott Blyth and the Kerrs.
Any constraint Adam might have felt before Lymond vanished when the other man strolled into the hut, hard, slender and hellish inquisitive. Adam talked, and Lymond listened until he came to the bit about the absent Kerr cattle. Then he said, ‘Wait. When old Turnbull shouted, what did he say?’
‘Nothing about Kerrs,’ said Adam positively.
‘What, then? Can you remember even a word?’
If the Kerrs had to ride all round the Border to find their benighted beasts, Adam couldn’t see that it mattered. The Scott animals were away, with their owners, and the theft, God knew, had been fully avenged. He said nevertheless, ‘He was frightened, that’s all. He was trying to promise something, I think. Maybe restitution, of a kind. Whatever it was, we couldn’t save him.’
‘Randy couldn’t save him. You didn’t try. Who are left here?’
‘About a dozen women,’ said Blacklock stiffly. ‘Two bedridden men and a cripple, and a few children. That’s all. The Scotts took their prisoners with them.’
When Lymond spoke this time, it was face to face, and the smell of liquor was quite unmistakable, although his words were explicit enough. ‘Find me a mother and child. For preference, a woman who has only one son.’ And as Adam hesitated, ‘I want to find those cattle, Blacklock. The wives must know where they are.’
‘Do it yourself,’ Adam said.
For a long moment, his eyes bright with cold temper, Lymond stared at the other man; then he turned on his heel and went out.
Adam