The Reavers. George Fraser MacDonald
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A shocking place, the border, and for those unfamiliar with the works of Sir Walter Scott a brief word of explanation may be in order. As any schoolboy and football supporter knows, England and Scotland beat the bejeezus out of each other during the Middle Ages (Bannockburn, Flodden, and all that), and those unfortunates caught in the middle (i.e., the borderers) were ravaged, savaged, and put upon to such an extent that, when peace finally broke out around the 1550s, they found it uncongenial, and continued to practise the techniques they had learned over three centuries (murder, armed robbery, cattle rustling, extortion, rape, ravagery, savagery, etc.). Well, it was the only trade they knew, and better fun than farming, and if in consequence the border country made our modern inner cities look like eighteenth-century drawing-rooms, the borderers didn’t mind, because anarchy was what they were used to.
The English and Scottish governments, of course, denounced this state of affairs as “totallie unacceptable” – which meant, as it still does, that they accepted it wholesale, and made only a few futile gestures, like confirming (under a sort of Anglo-Scottische Agreement) a special code of laws for the area, which didn’t work, and setting up international commissions which drank deep and stuffed their guts at a safe distance in places like Kendal and Peebles Hydro, surfacing occasionally to issue joint communiqués and assure broadsheet conferences that “thaire wolde bee noe surrender to terrorisme”.
Now and then the March Wardens, sorely tried and underpaid officials with inadequate forces, got exasperated and visited the worst offenders with fyre and the sworde, but since the borderers had forgotten more about both than Genghiz Khan ever knew, and were expert at fading into the hills or defying the Wardens from rather impregnable stone peel towers, Authority could only burn a few villages, pose for pictures by the smoking ruins while the reporters took notes for Ballads and Laments (later collected by W. Scott in “Border Minstrelsie”), and withdraw, followed by raspberries and even coarser noises from the peels. Of course they rounded up the usual suspects, whose convictions were invariably held to be unsound because of sloppy forensic evidence – after all, if your worst enemy turns blue and explodes at your dinner table, the traces of ratsbane on your hands may have come from chessmen used by warlocks at the Necromancers’ Social Club which you visited a couple of months back. One result of this was that the Wardens’ officers took to hanging suspects on the spot (known as “Jeddart justice”, from the town of Jedburgh where the authorities were unusually liverish), but only if they weren’t important people with dangerous friends.
All this was water off a duck’s back to the borderers, who carried on killing and robbing each other as before, and since they never bothered anyone more than fifty miles from the frontier (except on the notable occasion when some of them raided Edinburgh and surprised a Very Important Person in the lavatory, much to his embarrassment*) the two governments were inclined to take a why-the-hell-should-we-care-it’s-a-long-way-off-thank-God attitude, and recommend another Publicke Inquirie.
So that’s the border for you, and we apologise for the brief history lesson. Actually, we haven’t told you the half of it – for example, that in addition to the reivers and robbers, the place was crawling with agents, spies, messengers, plotters, double-0 triggermen, moles and other assorted Smyllii Personae, as they were called, intriguing away like anything between London and Edinburgh. Secret diplomacy was in a fair old state, the question being: would James collect the royal English franchise when Elizabeth fell off her twig, as might happen any day? Rumours abounded that His Majesty was already being fitted out with tropical kit, Scottish courtiers were practising drawls and trying to stop saying “whilk” and “umquhile”, the Scottish National Party were preparing banners reading “Home Rule in England” and “It’s Scotland’s Cheddar!”, London merchants were taking options on supplies of Japanese haggis, and Home Counties landowners were preparing to turn their estates into golf courses. But alle was uncertayne, and remayned to be seene.
Like our story, which is coming up at last, honestly, without further discursions; any more need-to-know history will be sprinkled in lightly as we pursue our headlong tale of adventure, romance, knavery, ambush, disguise, escape, abduction, seduction, and Kindred Mischiefs, deploying an all-star cast of steely-eyed heroes, noble ladies, unspeakable villains, gorgeous wantons, corrupt creeps, maniacs, freebooters, freeloaders, and hordes of colourful extras, in a variety of Great Locations, including lonely fortresses, mysterious mansions, hide-outs, dungeons, boudoirs, bawdy houses, wizard’s caves, dens, kens, and the occasional shed and hovel – for while there will be ample cut-and-thrust, passion tender and blazing, splendid costumes, Technicolored set decoration, and four-page menus, we’ll not neglect the squalid social material for those in search of a Ph.D.
But now we cry “Quiet, everybody, let’s try to get it right first time, action! camera! QUIET!!” – for Scene One, a desperate encounter between one of our Principals and a Supporting Heavy, is opening up with a long shot of that desolate waste which we mentioned several pages ago. Since then the storm has blown itself out, farther south the last witch has taxied thankfully to a standstill (“Talk about fog and filthy air – never been so glad to get off a bloody broom in my life!”), and we pan slowly across dripping bushes wreathed in clinging mist with icy patches which should clear towards dawn, pale moonlight gleams cold on the gullies and moss-hags, and no sound is heard save the plaintive wail of a sodden rabbit and the muffled crackling and swearing of someone trying to get to sleep in a patch of wet bracken, and making nothing of it.
Peering through the fronds we can see that he is a scarecrow figure, ragged and besmirched, hair unkempt, boots leaking, shirt and breeches sadly out of crease, and hasn’t shaved for a fortnight. A pathetic sight, as he writhes vainly to snuggle down on his couch of wet heather, rocks, and mud, but make the most of him, for this bedraggled bum is one of our heroes – yes, he is. Never, you exclaim, not in those trousers! Relax, peer more closely, and note that while he is one who has clearly fallen on evil days (and a couple of dunghills en passant), yet is he modelled on the lines of Gary Cooper crossed with Steve McQueen, six feet two of lean, muscular modesty; the matted stubble cannot conceal the resolute manliness of firm chin and interesting nostrils, nor the caked muck the steady brilliance of grey eyes ready to dance with gentle mirth or harden in stern resolve, whichever is appropriate. Quiet humour sits relaxed on his mobile lips, integrity keeps his ears at a proper angle, humanity will shine in every strand of his fair hair once it’s been blow-waved, and wit, intelligence, and responsibility are evenly distributed over the rest of his active frame. All right?
But at the moment he looks awful, having been pinched for vagrancy in Northumberland two weeks ago, set in the stocks, and then confined in Haddock’s Hole, the most verminous chokey in all the wide border. Paroled a couple of days since, flea-ridden and friendless, he has nowhere to go but up. He is English, goes by the name of Archie Noble, and is a broken man – which doesn’t mean he is a spent force, but is the local term for one who has no chief or protector to vouch for him or sign his passport application, no allegiance, no home, no visible means of support. A wanderer on the Marches, a denizen of Cardboard Hamlet, of no account, but don’t worry, he’s literate and normally quite couth, well-spoken when he wants to be, and once he’s had a bath and a shave and his rags pressed, you won’t know him.
For the nonce he wriggles in damp discomfort, munching a tuft of grass to allay his hunger, and trying to sing himself to sleep with one of those lovely, sentimental old border ballads which were to cast their spell over Wordsworth and the Grasmere Gang two centuries later:
We hangit twa cows on the gallows tree,
We hangit them high, wi’ screech and shudder,
They twisted and turned in the wild, wild wind,
And ye couldnae tell one frae the udder
quite unaware that in the neighbouring gully Destiny is approaching …
… in the unlikely and repulsive shape of Black Dod Pringle, a fell Scotch thief of Teviotdale, returning with his thuggish associates from a raid into Cumberland; he is a squat, ugly, villainous figure clad all in steel and leather, has bad breath, bites his nails, and is commonly called Bangtail – all reivers had weird nicknames, usually based on appearance