‘Will Jock raid us, do you think?’

‘Why should he?’ demanded Dodd. ‘It wasn’t me that killed his son.’

Janet looked dubious. ‘What about lying to him at the ford?’

Christ, how did she hear so much? ‘He’ll know it was because I was not inclined to a fight. And where are you off to?’

‘To see my lover,’ said Janet with a naughty look. Dodd growled. She slid from the horse and began leading the animal, holding her skirts high above the mud.

‘How’s the wheat?’ Henry asked, walking beside her and enjoying the view.

Janet began to suck her bottom lip through a gap in her teeth and her brow knitted.

‘Sick,’ she said. ‘We might get by with the oats and the barley if there’s no more rain. I’ll leave that field fallow next year.’

‘But it’s infield,’ protested Dodd.

‘Give it time to clean itself. I might run some pigs on it. The beans are doing poorly too.’

‘What will you do to replace Mildred?’

‘I’ve heard tell there’s one for sale.’

‘Not reived?’

Janet shrugged. ‘Not branded, any road. That’s why I want to buy him.’

‘Buy,’ said Dodd and shook his head.

Janet giggled. ‘Will you want to come with me or would it go against your credit to be seen giving money for a beast?’

Dodd considered. Janet was almost as good a judge of horseflesh as he was himself, and knew most of the horses from round about and wasn’t likely to be sold a stolen animal, at least not unknowingly. But she was only a woman. If it had been a cow...

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said.

They turned down a small wynd leading to one of the many ruined churches of Carlisle: this one had a churchman in it, a book-a-bosom man who spent most of his time travelling about the country catching up with the weddings and christenings.

‘Good afternoon, Reverend Turnbull,’ said Janet politely, ‘we’ve come about the horse.’

Now Dodd was no different from any other man. He may have had a longer and more ill-tempered face than most, but he could fall in love. He fell in love immediately, with the elegant long-legged creature that was tethered inside the porch of the church. The colour was unusual, a piebald black, the neck high and arched, the legs strong and firm, hooves as healthy as you could wish and best of all, he still had his stones.

Janet’s face was bland. ‘Where was he stolen?’

The Reverend Turnbull looked offended. ‘Mrs Dodd, I would never try to sell you or the Sergeant a... stolen animal. I swear to you on my honour as a man of the cloth, that he was honestly bought. Besides, do you think an animal like that could be reived and the Sergeant not know about it?’

Dodd turned away so the churchman wouldn’t see his face which he knew would be full of ardour. With a horse like that he could win the victor’s bell at any race he chose to enter, he thought, and the fees he could charge at stud...

‘Well?’ said Janet.

‘Eh?’ Dodd had his hands on the horse’s rump, running them down the beautiful muscles, feeling the tail which needed grooming to rid it of burrs.

‘Have you heard of a horse like that being reived recently?’

‘Reived... no, no, I’d have heard for sure. There now, there, I’ve no apples, I’m sorry...’

‘Dodd,’ growled Janet. Henry paid no attention.

‘He’s an English beast, surely,’ he said. ‘Never Scots, not looking like that, unless he’s out of the King’s stable.’

‘Is he?’

‘Is he what?’

‘Is he out of the King’s stable, Reverend?’

The churchman laughed fondly. ‘No, no, he’s an English horse, from Berwick, I know that from the man that sold him to me.’

Dodd took the reins and swung himself up onto the horse’s back, rode in a tight circle before the church. He had a lovely gait, a mettlesome manner though he might have been short of horsefeed recently, and a mouth as soft as a lady’s glove.

‘Who was that?’ asked Janet.

‘Oh, a pedlar I know. He told me he came from further south than that, but he bought him in Berwick. I think he may have had some notion of crossing the border with him to sell to the Scots, but I convinced him he should not break the law and I bought him to sell on.’

Dodd slid from the horse’s back again and patted his proud neck.

‘Hm,’ said Janet, took Henry Dodd’s arm and moved him out of earshot. ‘Henry Dodd, wake up. Yon animal must be stolen.’

‘Not from here,’ said Dodd, ‘I’d know.’

‘From Northumberland then.’

Dodd shook his head and smiled. ‘Get a bill of sale on him and he’s ours legally.’

‘Oh, you...’

‘Janet, he’s beautiful, he’ll run like the wind and his foals will be...’

‘I know you in this state with a horse, you’d blather like a man possessed and pay three times the right price. If you promise me he isn’t stolen from this March, I’ll buy him, but you get away from here or the Reverend will see you’ve lost your heart.’

Henry smiled lopsidedly. ‘I can’t promise he’s not reived, but I’m sure as I can be.’

‘We may have trouble keeping hold of him, you know, once the Grahams and the Elliots know we’ve got him.’

Dodd shrugged. ‘I’m not mad, Janet. I’ll have him cover as many mares as I can in the time, then I’ll enter him at the next race and sell him after to the Keeper of Hermitage or Lord Maxwell.’

Janet laughed. ‘Against the law.’

Dodd had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Or the Captain of Bewcastle or the new Deputy or someone strong enough to hold him.’