The Heather Moon by Susan King Page A

Henry's secret matter after all."
    "Aye. He wants that list."
    "Och, now, I didna say he wouldna have a list."
    William frowned. "What do you have planned, Archie?"
    "If Musgrave doesna have to tell his scheme, then I willna tell mine." Archie grinned.
    "You're an auld scoundrel." William smiled reluctantly. "And your daughter is a troublesome lass. I had best find her, I think."
    "'Twould be wise," Archie said.
    William sighed. He had few enough threads to follow in unraveling the English plan. The Armstrongs, father and daughter, were his best link just now to the whole truth of the scheme. But now Archie and Tamsin had gone in unexpected directions, the girl quite literally.
    He knew now that Musgrave meant to organize an English effort to steal the Scottish queen. But he did not yet know how, or when. More details were necessary if the attempt was to be thwarted, and the girl and her father could lead him to those details.
    His obligations were coming together like paths in a crossing, he thought, looking down at the road. In addition to the promise he had given Musgrave to remain involved in the scheme—and he would, he thought bitterly—he had also promised Archie to watch over the girl.
    "Go on to Half Merton," he told Archie. "I must go home to Rookhope first. But then I intend to ride out in search of your daughter."
    "Good. I'll send word to ye if she's at Merton. Otherwise, you can ask any farmer or Borderman in this area if the gypsies have passed through here, and so find them fast enough. But be warned, the gypsies can be a naughty lot if a man tries to take away one o' their women."
    "Then I'll have to convince her to come with me willingly."
    Archie studied him for a moment. "I will give ye one caution, Will Scott, from a father," he said. "Treat my lass wi' courtesy. Or ye'll find me as stout an enemy as a friend."
    "You have my word on it." He paused. "I too am a father. I have a daughter but eight months in age."
    "I thought ye had nae wife!"
    He looked away. "Katharine's mother died at her birth."
    "Ah. Then I will wager," Archie said softly, "that ye would give up yer life for that wee bit lassie o' yers."
    "I would," William said.
    Archie nodded as if satisfied with something. He gathered his reins and turned his horse toward Merton Rigg. "Luck be wi' ye," he called over his shoulder. "I dinna envy ye the task o' bringing back Tamsin if she doesna want to come wi' ye. But if any man can convince her, Will Scott"—he grinned—"I think ye are that man."
    As William watched him ride away, he had the disquieting sense that Archie had spoken of far more than finding and keeping a gypsy lass for a fortnight.

 
     
     
    Chapter 6

     
    "What news, what news, bonny boy?
    What news hes thou to me?"
    "No news, no news," said bonny boy,
    But a letter unto thee."
    —"Bonnie Annie Livieston"
    For several miles, William followed a drover's track along a ridge that skimmed the hills like a raised spine. The track provided a fast northeast route between the disputed area on the edge of the Border, called the Debatable Land, where Merton Rigg was located, and the territory of Liddesdale, which contained Rookhope lands.
    The Debatable Land was an area along the western part of the border line, disputed by England and Scotland alike. The territory was a lawless land where outlaws and scoundrels hid from authority, and free and honest men scarcely dared to leave their animals pastured. Merton Rigg lay on the easternmost tip of the debated area.
    Liddesdale, whose boundaries began a few miles farther north, was scarcely more lawful, filled with scores of Scottish Bordermen who made a sound living on the basis of borrowing good livestock and gear in the dark of the night. Generations of burning and looting at English hands had brought parts of the Scottish Borders to a wild, ungoverned state. Constant complaints from the crowns of both England and Scotland, and continual efforts to establish order there, had been by