Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [213]
Jerott glanced behind him at the still ranks of his own men. He lifted his eyes to the pale, airy void above him, and then across to the sunlit, classical profile of Gabriel, sitting still on his horse. At the same moment, Graham Malett looked round, and smiled.
Jerott’s white teeth shone in an answering grin. Come what may, this was life.
*
A day of March dealt with crimes of the Border, too trivial to be referred to head Government. All thefts, robberies, depredations, homicides and fire-raisings and similar cruel, dreadful and iniquitous crimes committed by the inhabitants of these parts upon her Majesty’s faithful subjects were in time referred to the Governor-General and Justiciar of Liddesdale, old Buccleuch. For as Warden of the Middle Marches he could both capture criminals and hold assizes to punish them, with all the clerks, sergeants and judges he needed.
In its day, a Wardenship had been a prize worth a small fortune, and handed out only to favourites. Even now, some thought went into the choice. In their hands lay negotiations that would daunt a first-class ambassador. One slip could cause, and had in the past caused, a war.
They punished criminals according to the law of the country in which the crime was committed. They had to hand over refugees if required, always bearing in mind the possible riposte from head Government for doing so with too great an alacrity. They had to arrange for reparation, and to crush trans-Border feuds.
It worked, in a perilous way. Before each advertised meeting, injured parties sent in bills of complaint to their Warden, who passed them to his opposite number across the Border. He in turn either arrested the accused men or summoned them to the next March meeting where each appeared with his two witnesses and his following and was tried, judged and sentenced or allowed to go free. In time of war, the Wardens took their own heralds, formally to demand and concede truce until sunset next day. In time of peace, as today, Chester Herald in his red and blue and cloth of gold merely had a formal exchange, followed by a good gossip in private with Bute Herald, while suits were being called and the rest of the formal fencing procedure got through by which the Warden’s meeting was legally constituted. As the suitors filed in and took their places on the two long benches reserved for the victims, Scottish and English, of theft, bloodwite, spulzies, ejection and wrangeous intromission, as reeled off complacently in lawyer’s Scots by Fergie Hoddim in an undertone, the two Wardens now settled side by side under the awning looked with careful indifference at the raw material of the day’s work.
There were a great many women among them. Lord Wharton, the English deputy Warden, turning to big Tommy Palmer at his side, said in an undertone, ‘Have you Ogle’s list of pursuers there? Are these women related?’
Sir James Douglas of Drumlanrig, on his side, was also scanning the papers bequeathed him by Buccleuch, standing arms akimbo among his Scotts to the right. A certain irregularity in Sir Wat’s beard led him to believe that Lord Wharton’s question had not gone unremarked. He leaned over discreetly. ‘Well? Are they related, Wat?’
‘Only in misfortune, Jamie. Only in misfortune,’ said that untrustworthy old knight, in deepest sorrow. Sir James Douglas sighed.
*
The morning passed, however, innocuously enough. There were one or two moderate cases of poaching, a theft of peats and oat straw from the stackyard, some off-season salmon fishing, and the ceremonial return of two loud-swearing rebels at the horn, caught in Kelso and handed back, with pleasure, by the Scottish Warden to their fate. The heavy guns, the horse and cattle stealing, the household robberies and thatch burnings and all varieties of slaughter, unpremeditated, chaudmelle or forethocht felony, were for the afternoon, when concentration