“Oh, madam!” I said, “what the boy told you is true! The man who served you, Noble the Waitabout, is in peril of his life!”
“Save us, is that your news?” says she. “When was he not, from what I’ve seen of him?”
I cried that this was instant peril, and came of what he had done at Triermain, “and for this the Land Sergeant will have him slain, oh, not by law, but out of hand, as it were murdering him, and this to satisfy the robbers of Liddesdale, lest they take revenge!”
I looked to see her change countenance at this, but she frowned only and said how should this be, “for did not the fellow Waitabout tell me they would dare nothing against us here?”
I said Master Carleton feared that for spite they would foray elsewhere than here, making excuse to ride on England for what was done on English ground, “but, oh, my lady, whatever of that, the Land Sergeant has set on the watch riders to take him in the waste, which they will surely do, and the Deputy Yarrow will send up his head for a token into Scotland!”
Still she changed not her countenance, but taking her cup again from the maid, sipped at it, and then looking to Lightfoot, who stood by scratching his beard in dismay, asked if it was so. He said it was, and watched her shrewdly beneath his brows, but said no more.
“So Master Carleton will throw him to the wolves,” says she. “A pretty country!” And asked Susan did this draught come from the small cask they had brought or the great one.
Now at this I cried out aloud, not willing to believe what I saw and heard, that she could stand unmoved and talk lightly of wine, she that had looked with such knowing on the man but three hours since, and vowed her honour to uphold him, and vowed him more than that in her heart. Hearing me cry out she asked what ailed me. In such agony of spirit as I was, I stammered would she not save him?
“What would you have me do?” she asked me, with a pretty little perplexity of her brows, but for her face it was as tranquil as though she were on sleep.
I begged her if she would but write a line and send it after Yarrow, bidding him stay his hand and deliver to her the Waitabout, who was her bound man for any offence done, he would not dare deny her, “and oh, my lady, there is time, if ye but haste, for your boy Peterkin will ride light, and they are in harness, and the smoke on Black Rigg a certain guide! In God’s name, my lady!” And seeing her still unmoved I fell on my knees before her.
Master Lightfoot would have spoke, but she checked him, and asked where was this Black Rigg? He knew not, but Hodgson being come in again told her it lay three leagues and more to the south.
“Then he is beyond my charge,” said she. “Sit in your chair, Father Lewis, you are not well.”
But I must cry on in my despair, entreating her for sweet compassion’s sake to do it, as she herself would hope for intercession, “for it is no matter of charges, here or there, or law or any other thing, but only that he took your hand and served you, and you swore to maintain him, and in all conscience, lady, this is the time, God knoweth, and his life hangs on it!”
Hodgson helped me to the chair again, whispering that I should give over a God’s name, and when I lifted up my head he was gone and the lawyer withdrawn to the window, but my lady still before the fire who ran her finger about the rim of her cup, then looking on me spake softly out of that fair young face cold as stone.
“I told you yesterday ye should not preach at me, nor shall you read me my conscience neither, for that was done this day by one that knows his world better than you. He served me, aye, and more than he guessed in instruction, and God knows I would have served him, but he willed it not. Mark that, priest, he willed it not! So let him look to himself, for he is not in my charge.”
It was like a knell in mine ears, yet I implored her for her own sake not forsake him, lest she repent it most bitterly thereafter. She answered, not one whit, and drank her wine.
Now at such cruel neglect my wrath rose to see those white fingers toy with a cup that would not stir one to save him, and recking nothing I denounced her that hardened her heart out of pride. Then for a moment was she moved indeed, but to anger, for I saw her ill smile come and go fleeting ere she answered softly cold as before.
“Nay, little priest, ye do me wrong, great wrong, yet I mark it not. I do but follow the custom of the country, of which so many have been busy to instruct me, aye, and wisely too, for sure this is not Hampshire but the Scottish frontier, where we must all shift as best we can, and each mind what is within his own charge. Yours, when you are mended, I think should be at Triermain, where you may comfort such silly souls as be of your persuasion. Name them not to me, but shrive ’em heartily as befits your own conscience, and be content with that.”
Now I might not speak for a while for grief and bitterness, but she biding by the fire and stirring a fallen log with her foot what time she drained her cup, I said presently that I had no stomach to go again to Triermain that was of evil memory, nor to other of the places about where I had been wont to go, but when my hurts were healed would by her good leave take me away out of that country where I was too soul sick to stay longer.
She gave a light lift of her shoulder and said it should be as I chose, but whither would I go, and when I said I knew not, but would fare as I had told her before wheresoever it pleased God to guide me, said on her dry note that for my soul such faring might be well enough “but for your body ’twere best ye had some good lordship, and though ye make somewhat free to rummage in my conscience and have a nose to more than should concern you, yet God knows ye deserve well of me, that have served me, aye, without bond or bargain, to your own grievous hurt of flesh and, I think, of spirit.”
I said, in all humility and gratitude, that she was no ways obliged to me, and was bidden hold my tongue, “for if it is my pleasure to do you good, you shall take it. For whatever is in your mind, I am not one that forgets my friends or those that serve me, so they have a kindness for me. For good or ill, I pay my scores.”
She said she would consider further, but having in her gifts many livings, “among them should be some nook or almshouse where you may bide, so you Pope it not proudly but keep your old heresy in your pocket.”
In my weakness I made no remonstrance but thanked her for her goodness to me, yet despising myself that was too weary of spirit to do other. And do still, but live in her almshouse here in the pleasant south, for as she said, and smiled on me as she said it, “Truly I think you were best away, for your own comfort, since this rough country likes you not. For myself I am like to stay awhile, for I am bred of this border.” And that, as God sees me, was as true a word as ever she spake.
She now called to her Master Lightfoot, saying she had taken thought and he should send word to my Lord Scroop at Carlisle, bidding him, if it pleased him and his affairs were not too heavy, to dine with her tomorrow, “when we shall have Master Carleton with us and yourself, and we shall look to them for particulars how the world waggeth hereabouts, and take advice as sitting at their feet to be informed, such as where shall I find me a brisk captain to raise a company of horse for protection, and other things. Something o’ the Yarrow mould, yet not he who is but a rude callant, but a seasoned fellow, aye, and if he is a reiver it is no matter, so he is not one that hath been to school.”
Master Lightfoot inquired should he bid also Lady Scroop, but at this she put out her lip and said no, “for I mind her at court, a light silly woman, Philadelphia, a great gamester, I’ll none of her till I must. Oh, in time you shall list me all the chief gentlemen and their ladies, and from the Scotch side too, and I doubt not we shall give them entertainment enough and be merry, but this while I am for business, and bid no ladies till I know my way among the men.”
When he was gone about this business she stood awhile, but looked not on me, and I saw that her thoughts were otherwhere, and to her liking, for she smiled. Then called Susan to take away her cup, and went where the boy Wattie lay on his couch, as he had lain this quarter hour great-eyed and fearful for what he had heard.
And indeed I think was in terror to be noticed by her again, and would have risen but she stayed him, asking how he did. He said, well, but for fear of her said no more. She told him pleasantly that it was in her mind there was a little stream not far away, where she had played for minnows when she was a child, and how was it called. He told her, the Ghyll Beck, and she laughed and said she remembered to have fallen in, and he had brought her home all wet and forlorn and that was the time of the sugar plums and dandelion drink.
The clown licked his lips but durst not look on her, saying it was so indeed, and she smiling said that when his wound was healed he should show it her again, “but we’ll let the baggies alone, for I’ve no mind to a ducking these days.”
Then left us, he on his couch and myself by the fire, and I heard her sing hey-derry-derry and call for her maid as she ran up the stair.
Historical postscript
THE WEST BORDER IN THE 1590S.
HISTORICAL POSTSCRIPT
Their [the Grahams’] friends first spoiled 4 of Mistris Dacres tenants, fired 2 of her towns and 2 of Her Majesty’s, carried off 400 nolte in a day foray, and lye quiet never a night.
THOMAS, LORD SCOPE,
English West March Warden, to Lord Burghley,
Secretary of State, July 15, 1596
Nicksouns, and other Scots, 30 in all, ran a day foray in Gilsland, took 40 kie and oxen, and spoiled the houses of the Bells my cosen Dacre’s tenants.
Scrope to Burghley, April 2, 1597
THESE TWO BRIEF EXTRACTS from Scrope’s correspondence started the train of thought which took me along The Candlemass Road. The raids they describe were commonplace enough affairs by border standards – for once, no one was killed, the “towns” would be no more than villages, the 400 stolen cattle would certainly not be an underestimate — and it is clear from the contexts that the harassed Warden regarded them as incidents of no special importance; he merely mentions them in passing before returning to weightier matters. They caught my attention — or rather, my fancy — only because the victims were both members of the once-great Dacre family, and one of them was evidently a woman of some consequence.
To put the two raids in perspective, and to give some idea of the chaotic state of the Anglo-Scottish frontier at that time, I should explain that the first extract occurs in the middle of one of Scrope’s impassioned tirades about the wickedness of the Grahams. Burghley probably sighed when he read it, for he knew the obsession, amounting almost to mania, which Scrope had developed about that incorrigible tribe of Border rustlers. They were really no worse than any of the other robber families whose feuds and forays kept the border in continual bloody turmoil, but they were especially odious to Scrope because, unlike the Scottish reivers against whom he waged an endless and futile campaign, they were fellow-Englishmen; not only that, they were Englishmen who had brought the business of aiding and abetting Scottish raids to a fine art. Only lately they had assisted in the dramatic rescue of the notorious Kinmont Willie Armstrong from Carlisle Castle, Scrope’s own headquarters, an exploit equivalent to modern terrorists snatching a prisoner from a maximum security jail. It had been the great scandal of 1596, causing an international furore, driving Queen Elizabeth into a storm of oaths and correspondence, encouraging the border thieves to more mischief than ever, and making the unlucky Warden the laughing-stock of the frontier.
The poor man’s only relief was to pour out his troubles to Burghley, which he did at length for several months, pleading to be relieved of his office, damning Scott of Buccleuch who had led the rescue (and he a law officer, too, as Scrope never tired of pointing out), complaining of the “awfulness” of the Grahams and the “soft usage” they were receiving, despite Scrope’s protests, from the London government, and despairing of ever doing anything with them – his July 15 letter noted moodily that he had “hanged fyve or six” of them, but it would probably only make the rest of the family worse.
As a specimen of the reports that Wardens wrote to their governments in that grim decade when the frontier was sinking to new depths of lawlessness and barbarism, it is fairly typical, although Scrope had a richer vocabulary of indignation than most, and a fine line in self-pity. We should feel sorry for him; he was a brave and busy law officer trying to do an impossible job with three strikes against him from the start: he was of that devious nature which mistrusts everyone, he was the son and successor of one of the most respected Wardens in border history whose boots he was not competent to fill, and he seems to have been constitutionally unlucky, not only in his work. Like his wife, Philadelphia, he was a compulsive gambler and consequently in debt (he once tried to touch Burghley’s son, Robert Cecil, for £300, apparently without success).
One unusual feature of his July 15 letter is that for once he does not punctuate his vilification of the Grahams with abuse of his other great bête noire — Thomas Carleton, his former deputy and Constable of the Castle, now demoted by Scrope and employing his talents for intrigue and general mischief in the minor office of Land Sergeant of Gilsland. Carleton, the Warden suspected (with reason), was now deliberately encouraging Scottish inroads, using his position to pay off old scores, conspiring with the Grahams to spite Scrope, and had been a prime mover in the Kinmont affair, along with his insolent and reckless younger brother, Lance — a nice example of border officers hand-in-glove with their country’s enemies, to the discomfiture of their superior. Normally the Carletons’ iniquities, real or imagined, were good for several toothgrinding passages in Scrope’s letters, but this time Burghley was spared.
That is the background to his July 15 blast against the Grahams, which would not have awoken my interest (like Burghley, I had heard it all before) but for its passing reference to the recent raid and fire-raising on “Mistris Dacres” land. It is the kind of thing that Wardens frequently dropped into their reports, not as any special outrage, but just to remind London of what they were up against. And if Scrope singled this one out from all the murders, forays, burnings, and extortions that took place daily and nightly in his march, we may be sure it was for no better reason than that the despoilers were “friends” of the Grahams; here was another stick, if not a very stout one, to beat them with, and had he not been able to drag them in, it is unlikely that we would ever have heard of the unfortunate lady and her burned-out tenants. Scrope makes no definite reference to her in his later correspondence, and I have found no bill “fouled”7 against reivers who can be positively identified as the raiders, or any suggestion that she ever received redress under the erratic border law.
Which is not necessarily a reproach to Scrope. Like every Warden, he was in the position of today’s inner city police, struggling to keep the peace against the odds, and lucky if he could cope with one outrage in ten. He simply had too much to do, what with his prime duty of negotiating and temporising with his opposite numbers on the Scotch side (who included such mavericks as Buccleuch and Robert “Fyrebrande” Kerr, who were lawmen or lawbreakers as they felt inclined), dealing with the “knaveries and accustomed devilish devises” of the Grahams and those “spoylers and outlaws” the Carletons, vainly trying to stir London into action, and running Warden forays (official reprisal raids) against the likes of Kinmont Willie. For all the time he gave to his voluminous correspondence with Burghley, “the keen Lord Scroop”8 probably spent more hours in the saddle than at his desk.
So it is not surprising that the Dacre raid received only brief notice in passing, and perhaps nothing illustrates more starkly the deplorable condition of the marches than that almost casual reference, in the middle of a bitter general harangue by a tired and despondent official, to four settlements burned, tenants harried, and 400 cattle stolen – it is something by the way, a piece of the small change of border life. As I said at the beginning, a commonplace which caught my eye only because the victim was a woman of some importance.
Women do not figure largely in the annals of border reiving, and when they do they tend to be either aristocrats or form
idable — like the kidnapped Countess of Northumberland, or old Lady Forster shooting the bolt in the nick of time as assassins stormed up the stairs to her husband’s bedchamber, or the goodwife who bargained for her husband’s life in a frontier skirmish, or the anonymous Amazon in the old ballad “The Fray of Suport”, rallying her riders to hot trod after she had been raided (“Fie, lads, my gear’s a’ gane!”) She came to mind when my eye fell on “Mistris Dacre” because their plights seemed to be identical, and I found myself wondering what, if anything, the latter had done to answer the burning of her “towns” and the spoiling of her people, since the law apparently could do nothing.
That was the germ of The Candlemass Road; the second quoted extract confirmed that the leading character should be a raided Dacre, and supplied identities for the spoilers and the immediate victims. It comes from a letter written by Scrope nine months later, when conditions should have been more settled: a commission was meeting to consider border affairs, the King of Scotland was at Dumfries, and the mercurial Buccleuch was peacefully engaged in organising “a special horse race” in Liddesdale to be attended by “nobilitie, officers, and subjects” — none of which soothed the Warden’s paranoia. He knew what race meetings could lead to; like football matches they were all too often convenient covers for conspiracy, and he reminded Burghley on a rising note that the last race meeting Buccleuch had attended had been the assembly point for the Kinmont raiders. Now, as then, the Grahams were being “familiar” with Buccleuch, and “I praye God, Buclughe doth not with this rase as he did this tyme twelve monethes” — Scrope’s spelling, erratic even by Elizabethan standards, deteriorated with agitation. He was taking no chances, he told Burghley; his riders were on an hour’s warning, for to add to his anxieties Liddesdale raiders had been plundering in England even while the commission was sitting – and at this point in the letter comes the quoted reference to the Nixons’ foray against “the Bells my cosen Dacre’s tenants”. Again, as in the case of the raid mentioned in his earlier letter, Scrope plainly considers this foray a minor affair; he refers to it only to give the lie to his enemy Lance Carleton, who had been putting it about that the English Bells were in league with the Liddesdale reivers.