The Border Vixen (50 page)

The clansmen gathered up their kinsmen, returning to the village so the shepherds might be buried properly and mourned. The canines were buried where they had fallen.

Maggie shook her head. “I did not think raiders would strike on Midsummer, and without a bright border moon.”

“They were probably killed at dawn or close to it,” Fin said. “Neither dogs nor men were quite cold yet.”

“Our location has usually kept us safe,” Maggie said sadly.

“We need to get our bairns home,” Fingal Stewart said.

“I dispatched the messenger,” Maggie told her husband. “We go tomorrow.”

They departed before the sun was even up the next day, but the coming day was already bright. They had not yet reached the border when they saw Rafe Kerr riding towards them with a man-at-arms. Each man carried a boy before him on his saddle. The two lads waved and called out to their parents.

“Rafe!” Maggie waved a welcome. “Ah, how good ye are, Cousin. Ye didn’t have to bring the boys. We were happy to come and fetch them.”

“ ’Twas better I brought them, and quickly,” Rafe Kerr told her. “Da was of a mind not to let them go. Aldis took him off to calm him. He grows stranger as each day passes, Maggie. This obsession to control the whole of the Aisir nam Breug is a sickness with him, and it grows stronger. I’ll do my best to keep him under control, but beware.” He held out his hand to Fin. “I’m glad to see ye returned safely.”

“He lost his memory for a time,” Maggie told her cousin. “Imagine forgetting me! I am not certain I can forgive such an oversight.”

Rafe Kerr laughed. “Aye, Cousin, I can’t imagine such a thing.” He winked at Fingal Stewart. “I hope ye’ve chastised him properly for it.” He lifted David Stewart from the front of his saddle and handed him to his father as the man-at-arms passed Andrew to Maggie.

“Ye came home, Da! That poxy Hay said ye were dead, but Mama said nay,” Davy Stewart told his father. “Our mama never lies,” Davy confided to his companions.

“Did ye kill the Hay?” Andrew asked.

“Nay, lads, we sent him back to his brother,” Fin told his boys.

Davy and Andrew looked disappointed.

“Yer da was very brave and captured the keep right out from under the nose of the Hay,” Maggie said. “When we get home, I’ll tell ye all about it,” she promised. She looked to her cousin again. “Thank ye, Rafe.”

He nodded.

“We were raided last night in the far summer meadows,” Fin told Rafe. “Two shepherds and their dogs were killed, and a flock of sheep stolen. There will be more raids back and forth, I’m certain. Keep a watch.”

“The sheep can be replaced,” Rafe said, “but the men and dogs can’t.” He shook his head. “It’s going to get bad. The travelers are falling off, which is always a warning sign of trouble. The gossip I’m garnering says that King Henry will have your little Queen Mary for his son, Prince Edward. He’ll not take no for an answer either.”

“French Mary, I suspect, plans a French marriage for her daughter. The French king’s heir is available. She will hold to the auld alliance, Rafe.”

“God help us all here on both sides of the borders,” Rafe Kerr said.

They parted, Maggie and Fin taking their sons home again. Their daughter had been brought up from the village by her new wet nurse while they had been gone. Annabelle Stewart was now almost three months old, and Fin was enchanted with this petite black-haired replica of his wife. The news Rafe had passed on to them troubled him. As he held the tiny girl in his arms, he felt more strongly than ever the great responsibility that Brae Aisir was. He couldn’t fail his family, his clan folk, or the laird.

The news as the summer progressed grew worse. The peace treaty that had been drawn up between England and Scotland lingered, waiting to be signed. A second treaty that would send little Queen Mary to England as Prince Edward’s bride when she was ten, and he fifteen, also waited for signatures. But Henry Tudor’s arrogance was badly eroding the pro-English faction in Scotland. Any child produced by a marriage between Mary and Edward would inherit Scotland’s throne. The English king was not treating Scotland as an equal, but rather as a vassal state.

Cardinal Beaton, released from confinement, welcomed back from voluntary exile in France the abbot of Paisley, who was the Earl of Arran’s bastard half brother, along with the Earl of Lennox. The pro-French faction grew stronger with the return of these two men. Feeling more secure than she had in months, the Queen Mother removed her infant daughter from Linlithgow to the better-fortified Stirling Castle protected as they traveled by twenty-five hundred horsemen and a thousand men-at-arms on foot.

On the ninth of September 1543, little baby Mary, seated upon her mother’s lap, was officially crowned queen of Scotland.

The year came to a close, and the English parliament had not ratified the peace treaty between the two countries. Nor had they confirmed the marriage agreement that would unite the two countries. It was at this point the Scots, directed by Cardinal Beaton and the Queen Mother, suggested that the queen, now a year old, be wed to the twenty-six-year-old Earl of Lennox, who now stood second in line to the throne behind the Earl of Arran.

At Brae Aisir, other than a few more raids that summer that were beaten off, the countryside was quiet as it waited for Henry Tudor to retaliate. The Earl of Arran, the little queen’s heir, was not pleased at the thought of the Earl of Lennox marrying her. Nothing, however, came of the suggestion. The Borders lay waiting for what would come next in this drama between their rulers.

The autumn and the winter came. Annabelle Stewart was toddling all over the keep after her brothers. Both Davy and Andrew could now ride by themselves. Fin was surprised to one day come upon his wife teaching their sons the rudimentary uses of a sword. The boys had been outfitted with wooden swords just their size. He watched fascinated as they parried and thrust.

Seeing him watching them Maggie called out, “Ye’ll soon have them to teach yerself. I thought it was time they started learning. After all, they don’t live in Edinburgh.” And she grinned at him.

“Tell me when ye think they’re ready for me,” Fin said.

“Watch me, Da!” Davy called, waving his wooden sword.

“Nay, watch me!” Andrew cried.

“I’ll watch ye both,” Fin told them, and he did.

Spring returned again and with it began Henry Tudor’s
rough wooing
of Scotland’s queen. Prince Edward’s uncle, Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford, came into Scotland with sixteen thousand soldiers, landing his men on the beaches of the Firth of Forth. A second English army even larger than Seymour’s crossed over the River Tweed, advancing forward and destroying everything in its path.

Newly planted fields just showing green growth were trampled over. Livestock was wantonly slaughtered or taken to feed the two vast armies. Farms and villages were burned to the ground, their inhabitants—men, women, children, the aged—murdered. The women as usual suffered the worst for the unfettered rape that was permitted by the English commanders.

Nothing in the path of the English invaders was spared, including the church. Along the border were some of Scotland’s greatest abbeys—Kelso, Dryburgh, Melrose, and Jedburgh. All were sacked and then burned to the ground; the monks slaughtered without mercy. Edinburgh’s port of Leith was in ruins. Edinburgh was attacked, and part of the city burned for two days. The castle itself could not be taken, but the English sacked both Holyrood Abbey and its adjoining palace.

Marie de Guise quickly had the little queen moved from Stirling north into Perthshire. They took up residence in Dunkeld Castle. The English who had been advancing on Stirling stopped upon learning their quarry had escaped them. They returned to England, leaving the southeast of Scotland in shock, mourning, and ruins.

Word of this tragedy was slow to reach Brae Aisir, but the lack of traffic both ways through the pass told them that something was very wrong. Fin doubled the watch and kept the cattle and sheep nearer to the keep as the summer progressed. Not until late July when a member of the Kira banking family came from Edinburgh to go south to England did they learn the extent of what had happened.

They were not located on the south side of the city, which had suffered the most damage, he told them. “Thank God for the Aisir nam Breug,” he said, “for I need to get to London to inform our family there of what has happened here. We must remain open for our clients, of course, but it is dangerous now, and likely to become more dangerous.”

“It’s begun, and God help us all now,” Fingal Stewart said. “We may not escape the ravages of the war that is not really a war. I will have to keep the drawbridge up now as the Hay did. It’s becoming too dangerous to leave it down.”

“No one has attacked us,” Maggie said.

“There is war all around us, Maggie mine,” he told her. “We cannot wait for an attack to come, but we must be ready when it does, for it surely will.”

And for the first time in her life Maggie Kerr was afraid. But she was not fearful for herself; she was fearful for her two sons, her daughter, and the new bairn she suspected she was carrying. If Master Kira was to be believed, the English had spared no one, even the littlest of children. The thought of their coming to Brae Aisir sent an icy shiver through her. She went to the keep’s little armory, and taking down her claymore, she began to carefully hone its dulled blade to a fine sharp edge. If the English came to Brae Aisir, Mad Maggie Kerr would be more than ready.

Chapter 19

E
wan Hay had returned home to find the older of his two brothers not particularly welcoming.

“Ye had yer chance,” Lord Hay told him. “ ’Tis over now.”

“Her husband returned,” Ewan whined. “What the hell was I supposed to do?”

“Aye, her husband came back, but ye were outmaneuvered. I’ll wager ye still haven’t figured out how he got into the keep. There was probably some secret entry, but ye made no effort to befriend the Kerrs. Instead, ye walled yerself up with yer own men and gained no allies,” his older brother said. “Yer a fool, but then I always knew it. There’s nothing for ye here at Haydoun.”

“Where am I supposed to go?” Ewan demanded. Curse Mad Maggie Kerr and her husband. They had brought him to this ruin. He’d have his revenge on them somehow.

“Go to England,” Lord Hay advised.

“What?”
Ewan Hay was astounded by his brother’s words. “Why would I go to England?” he demanded to know.

“For the coin they will put in yer purse, of course, ye donkey,” Lord Hay told him. “King Henry is determined to have our queen for his son. There is a strong pro-English faction here in Scotland. They are being paid in hard coin to support this marriage.”

“And how would ye know this, Brother?”

Lord Hay smiled archly. “Ye could become one of what the English call
assured Scots
, Ewan. Seek out the Earl of Hertford, and tell him yer my brother. That I sent ye to him. Ye’ll be welcome, and I’m certain yer firsthand knowledge of the Aisir nam Breug will be a great interest to him.”

“Can I take Bhaltair, and my men?” Ewan asked his brother.

Lord Hay shrugged. “If ye can pay them, they’re yers,” he agreed.

And so Ewan Hay had taken his captain along with their men-at-arms and gone over the border into England where he found he was indeed welcomed by the English. He took part ravaging the Borders in that terrible summer. He did not, however, reveal his knowledge of the Aisir nam Breug right away, gaining a reputation as a ruthless fighter and a reliable ally instead. There would come a time when his information would garner him more than just gold. And he would have his revenge on the Kerrs of Brae Aisir. He was learning to cultivate patience.

And Ewan Hay was in good company. Matthew Stewart, the Earl of Lennox, second in line for Scotland’s throne, defected to England, pledging his allegiance to King Henry. He also turned over Dumbarton Castle and the Isle of Bute for English bases. The king made him his lieutenant for the whole of northern England and for southern Scotland. And then the handsome twenty-seven-year-old earl was married to Henry’s niece, Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of Henry’s late sister, Margaret Tudor, by her second husband, Archibald Douglas, the Earl of Angus.

This betrayal, however, but strengthened the Queen Mother’s position. The common folk praised her desperate defense of Scotland in the name of their little queen.

Her closest adviser, Cardinal Beaton, was blamed for the terrible destruction of the southeast. They threw stones at him when he rode past in the streets. The common folk didn’t know that the cardinal was a great diplomat. They only knew he lived like a king, had several mistresses, and had fathered more than twenty children. Scotland had burned while the cardinal had feasted with his noble whores. And the English kept badgering the Borders, keeping the Scots busy defending themselves while King Henry waged war with France, whose Scots allies were unable to aid them.

An invasion was being considered into the southwest of Scotland. Ewan Hay at last saw the opening he had been awaiting. His reputation allowed him an audience with the Earl of Lennox. Matthew Stewart was a tall, handsome man whose wife had just given birth to their first child, a boy they named Henry in honor of her uncle. He waved Ewan Hay into his presence with an impatient hand from the chair where he was sitting.