Border Storm Read Free

black. But he had seen little more than those dark eyes and the small, pale, heart-shaped face framed in a halo of dark, damp curls.
    It was the face, he thought, of a child. Doubtless, her eyes had seemed enormous because of her terror.
    As he followed Martin Loder, Scrope’s chief land sergeant, Sir Hugh was not certain why he did not mention seeing her. He knew as well as anyone—perhaps better than most—that a female could be as dangerous as any man. For all he knew, the girl in the tree held a pistol cocked and ready to shoot.
    A nerve between his shoulder blades twitched.
    The girl had seemed young, though, and more terrified than terrifying. At all events, despite the nervous twitch, every fiber of him rebelled at the thought of telling Loder about her.
    Martin Loder was a villainous creature, envious of his betters and overeager to prove himself to Scrope. Moreover, given a choice in the matter, Hugh did not make war on women or children. What he had seen that day had already been enough to turn his stomach, though his reputation was that of a hardened soldier.
    The last straw was seeing armed men forcing women and children to remove their clothing, then leashing them in pairs like dogs and driving them naked through the dale. That sight had stirred his impulse to follow Loder into Tarras Wood.
    Loder’s courage—or foolhardiness—had surprised him, for the man was not aware until Sir Hugh had shouted that he was following him. Sir Hugh considered himself a brave man, but he would not have ridden alone into that infamous bog-ridden area.
    He understood Scrope better than he understood Loder. Scrope was determined to teach Liddesdale a lesson, and Hugh understood his fury, for Liddesdale was a notorious reivers’ nest. The whole, wide valley was a grim, forbidding place dotted with robber towers. Shut in by bleak fells, it consisted largely of quaking morass and vast primeval forest. Reivers flourished in every march, but in Liddesdale, every able-bodied man was one.
    Just months before, a small army of Liddesdale men and other ruffians—doubtless under the direction of their powerful leader, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleuch—had raided Carlisle Castle to free one of their own. Carlisle was Scrope’s stronghold.
    Having made the English warden look foolish, they had to pay. Sir Hugh had understood that from the outset. He had supported Scrope when, immediately after the Carlisle raid, determined to punish the raiders, Scrope had organized several forays against them with the official blessing of the Queen and her Privy Council.
    Those forays accomplished little of note, however. Buccleuch had retaliated each time, with the result that livestock moved back and forth across the line so frequently that men said the poor beasts were losing weight as fast as they gained it. As a result, many would likely be too weak to survive the winter.
    Elizabeth of England was as offended as her warden over the high-handed way the Scots had freed his prisoner and royally indignant at Buccleuch’s continued forays into her realm. She had written angrily to King James of Scotland, demanding the Borderer’s immediate surrender to her authority.
    So far, the King had refused to comply with that demand, and Hugh was certain that if James enjoyed the same freedom that some of his predecessors had, he would have continued to repel all her demands. But James hoped to succeed to the English throne on Elizabeth’s death. Knowing that she could squash those hopes with a word, he feared her anger and thus bowed to the inevitable.
    James did not prostrate himself, however. He merely ordered Buccleuch into ward at Blackness Castle, which overlooked the Firth of Forth a few miles outside Edinburgh. If he had hoped to placate Elizabeth with the compromise, however, he had failed.
    The English Queen, like nearly everyone else in England and Scotland, soon began to hear tales of Blackness luxury and of James and his favorite out hunting