Disorderly Knights - Dorothy Dunnett [6]
News of trouble at Selkirk had met the Midculter party halfway on their long journey to the wedding at Melrose. Efficiently, the Crawfords had taken action. Their womenfolk were given shelter in the nearest buildings at Talla. A messenger was sent ahead to Melrose to warn Wat Scott of Buccleuch, and another south-east to the old castle of Buccleuch to summon the hundred German soldiers quartered there by the Government. There was no time to send to Branxholm, Buccleuch’s chief castle, where four hundred others stood idle.
By now, the Buccleuch Germans should be waiting in the next valley at Tushielaw. Sir Wat Scott and his new-married son, with perhaps two hundred Scotts, should have left Melrose and be entering the other end of that valley, where Ettrick Water ran between high, wooded hills from burned-out Selkirk to Tushielaw and onwards west. And here, above the valley of Yarrow, Lord Culter and his brother and twenty men from Midculter in their wedding finery with, thank God, half armour beneath, waited to intercept the English army on its plundering march, with two shepherds, twelve arquebuses, some pikes, some marline twine, a leather pail of powder, shot, matches, some makeshift colours, and eight hundred rusted helmets from the Warden’s storehouse at Talla.
The English were slow in coming; not through any unfamiliarity with the route, but because the thatches were taking a long time to burn. They had taken a good few beasts and as much corn as they could carry, firing the rest. Most of the cottages they passed were empty, the owners either hiding up the glens or fled to one of the keeps. Lord Grey had paused to attack one or two of the latter as well, but with less success: the stone walls were thick, and needed the leisure of a good-going siege.
But Newark fell, which gave him great pleasure. They had attacked this castle in vain once before: it was the Queen’s, garrisoned by Buccleuch. This time they used fire and got in, though four of Buccleuch’s men fought to the end and had to be killed, and an old woman got under someone’s sword. The Murrays at Deuchar held out, and no one troubled unduly with them; but Catslack was a Scott stronghold and they burned that, though the man Andrew Kerr who had stopped to rummage at Tinnis came spluttering up with a parcel of relations to complain that the assault party had made away with a Kerr.
‘My dear friend.’ William Grey, thirteenth Baron of Wilton, had been fighting in Scotland for months and disliked the country, the climate and the natives, particularly those disaffected with whom he had to converse. ‘You are mistaken. Every man in this tower wore Scott livery.’
‘It wasna a man,’ said Andrew Kerr broadly. ‘T’was my aunty. I tellt ye. I’m no risking cauld steel in ma wame for a pittance, unless all that’s mine is well lookit after—’
‘An old lady,’ said Lord Grey with forbearance, ‘in curling papers and a palatial absence of teeth?’
‘My aunt Lizzie!’ said Andrew Kerr.
‘She has just,’ said Lord Grey austerely, ‘seriously injured one of my men.’
‘How?’ The old savage looked interested.
‘From an upper window. The castle was burning, and he was climbing a ladder to offer the lady her freedom. She cracked his head with a chamberpot,’ said Lord Grey distastefully, ‘and retired crying that she would have no need of a jurden in Heaven, as the good Lord had no doubt thought of more convenient methods after the seventh day, when He had had a good rest.’
A curious bark, which Lord Grey had come to recognize as laughter, emerged from the Kerr helmet. ‘Aye. That’s Aunt Lizzie. She’ll be deid then, the auld bitch,’ said her nephew. ‘Aweel, what are we waiting for? There’s the rest of Yarrow tae ding.’
And so, jogging onwards with his mixed English and German light horse and the small, spare-boned party of vengeance-bent Kerrs, Lord Grey passed along Yarrow Water in the half-light towards St Mary’s Loch, doing sums in his head connected with time, speed, and a quick return along Ettrick to Roxburgh