Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [190]
‘And you?’ said Blacklock. ‘You will ride and warn Scott?’
‘One of his own men will do that,’ said Lymond, and mounting, gathered the reins. ‘For my bloody sins, I’ve got twelve women, a cripple, two bedridden men and eight children to hide first.’
*
Adam Blacklock had been right. After learning that the stolen herds were in Liddesdale, and that the Scotts were riding to find them, Gabriel delayed quite some time before imparting the news, with his congratulations, to the Kerrs. The two old men, Jerott noted, treated him with reserve. Walter Kerr and John Kerr, with justice, were suspicious of all the right-handed world; which was why they had reached the ripe years they had.
The younger Kerrs Jerott liked. Since joining Gabriel and his friends, the smell of Dumbarton had gone. He had enjoyed riding out among all the fierce, leather-jacketed young of Cessford and Ferniehurst, brash and vigorous and rough-cut as they were, hunting a herd which had been taken up into Heaven, it seemed.
Then, when Gabriel quietly told them the news, the first uneasy shadow appeared. Lymond had not yet arrived. When questioned, Jerott told the exact truth. Lymond had not been ready to leave the inn at Dumbarton, and had claimed to be following them in an hour. Further questioned, he added that Mr Crawford had been drinking, and presumably had other pleasures already engaged for the night. In any case, clearly, he had not followed. Without him, it was decided to defer disclosing the whereabouts of their herd to the Kerrs.
Then, as Lymond did not come, the Kerrs were told. Then and increasingly it became clear that Graham Malett was troubled, both by Lymond’s absence and by his own assumption of command. The lesson of the rationed fuel had sunk, it seemed, bitterly deep. At every stage Jerott found himself, with de Seurre and Hoddim and Plummer and Tait and Guthrie, in round table conference over the next move. At St Mary’s it would have worked. In the field, with several hundred robust Kerrs to be handled, it was uneasily wrong. Everything that Gabriel did or suggested was obviously and precisely right. But he would act on nothing before placing it, as Lymond had so caustically demanded, before his fellows. And always, they were looking for Lymond himself.
By dusk, and the approaches to Liddesdale, he still had not come. Afterwards, Jerott could never say when he realized that something was wrong. Only the air suddenly was cold, and full of whispers. The Kerrs who had been trotting in cheerful ferocity at his side drew off and could be found riding in knots, talking quietly. It was all the odder because a scout of Gabriel’s, sent ahead secretly, came back to report after dark that the Scotts had clearly been to the settlement, recovered their cattle and gone, taking or killing every able-bodied Turnbull there first. He had not found the Kerr beasts at all.
This on the face of it nearly disposed of their obligations, on this trip at least. The Turnbulls had met their doom prematurely, but at least it could not be done twice. The Scotts were out of the way. It only remained to find the animals reived from the Kerrs.
Having reasoned so far, they all looked to Guthrie, who said, ‘There’s only one question that matters. Will the Scotts have taken the Kerr beasts?’
‘No,’ said Gabriel. And ‘No,’ said Jerott equally positively. ‘You can rely on that. If it had been Bucclcuch, perhaps. But Will