He climbed one tread at a time, gasping through his teeth, with the sweat making a marsh of his shirt. Halfway up, Jock came to and started to struggle and swear: they swayed dangerously and the ladder creaked.

‘STAY STILL!’ roared Carey. ‘Or I’ll dump you on your head.’

Jock threshed once more, then saw how far they were from the floor and stayed still. Carey went the rest of the way up the ladder, heaved Jock onto the roof.

He kicked Jock in the stomach again to slow him down, turned, pulled up the ladder with his abused arm muscles shrieking at him, heaved the trapdoor into its hole and bolted it, then sat with his back against the parapet and waited until he had stopped crowing for breath and the spots had gone from his vision.

Jock glared at him, sprawled like a trussed chicken on the roof flags, bleeding from his nose and a nasty lump on his head.

‘That’s better,’ said Carey and coughed. He didn’t think he’d ruptured anything, which was a miracle. His heartbeat seemed to be slowing at last. ‘Now we can talk, Jock.’

FRIDAY 23RD JUNE, LATE MORNING

It so happened that Will the Tod Armstrong was out in the horse paddock of his tower with a young horse that he was breaking on the lungeing rein. His youngest grandson was watching admiringly from the gate. Dodd came at a fast jog trot to the fence, ducked under it and walked up close to his father-in-law, who took one look at his battered sweaty face and became serious.

‘Is Janet all right?’ he asked at once. ‘Where’s the raid?’

Never mind Janet, Dodd thought, what about me, I’m half dead of thirst.

‘Sit down, rest yourself. What happened to your horse? Did ye come on foot from Carlisle, ay well, ye’re young. Little Will, run down to the house and bring back some beer for your uncle. No, you may not ride the horse, use your legs.’

Both Dodd’s calves chose that moment to start cramping. He swore and tried rubbing them.

‘Walk about a bit,’ advised Will the Tod, ‘I mind I ran twenty miles to fetch Kinmont’s father once when I was a lad, and if ye stop too suddenly, ye cramp.’

Twenty miles, was it? thought Dodd bitterly, ay it would be. Nine and a half miles over rough country and mostly uphill in much less than two hours, and Will the Tod will have done twice that in half the time in his youth.

‘Well, what’s the news?’

Dodd told him. Will the Tod found the whole thing hilariously funny. His broad red face under its grey-streaked bush of red hair shone with the joke, he slapped his knee, he slapped Dodd’s back, he slapped the fence.

‘Ye ran from Carlisle to save the Deputy Warden?’ hooted Will the Tod. ‘Jesus save me. Why didn’t ye run to fetch his dad? There’s a man that has a quick way with a tower.’

‘He never burnt yours,’ Dodd pointed out. There were still bitter memories on the border of Lord Hunsdon’s reprisals after the Rising of the Northern Earls.

‘Only because I paid him.’

‘He could have taken the money and still burnt you out.’

‘Ay well, that’s true. So his boy’s in trouble, eh?’

Dodd explained, as patiently as he could, that he was.

‘What do ye expect me to do about it?’

Dodd suggested, still patiently, that if he could really put sixty men in the saddle at an hour’s notice as he’d boasted the last time they met, then he might give the Deputy Warden cause to be grateful to him. Not to mention pleasing his daughter Janet, who was in such a taking about the blasted man, it might have worried a husband less trusting than himself.

‘Oh ay, call out my men for the Deputy Warden.’ Will the Tod found that funny too. Dodd, who had blisters on both his feet and his shoulders, not to mention the damage he’d taken struggling through the secret passage, failed to see the joke. He waited for the bellowing stupid laugh to stop and then said, ‘Well, sir, if ye’ve come over to loving Richard Lowther in your old age, I’ll be on my way to the Dodds at Gilsland.’

Will the Tod’s laugh stopped in mid-chuckle. He glowered at his son-in-law.

‘Lowther’s the man the old lord Warden would have made Deputy Warden. Carey’s the young Lord Scrope’s friend,’ explained Dodd through his teeth. ‘Carey may be a fool of a courtier who’s too big for his boots, but he’s not Lowther. According to Janet he snuck into Netherby to try and steal back our reived horses because he knew a proper hot trod would be cut to pieces. Now Lowther’s let out some raiders Carey took that can identify him to Bothwell, who’ll likely string him up.’

At least Will the Tod was listening. He nodded and Dodd continued.

‘Lowther doesna want to lose his hold over the West March and Carey’s bent on taking the power from him. If he can get Carey killed it’ll clear the way for him and we’ll have him back in the saddle, taking blackrent off us, favouring his kin and bringing in the Grahams and the Johnstones and the Elliots every time any one of us dares to make a squeak about it. There’ll be nae chance of justice in this March with Carey gone, believe me. But as it seems ye’ve made your peace with the Lowthers...’

Will the Tod’s face darkened. ‘Make peace with the Lowthers? Never!’ he growled. ‘You’re saying, if I bring out my men and save Carey’s skin as you ask, we’ll stop Richard Lowther from becoming Deputy Warden under the new lord?’

‘Ay sir,’ said Dodd, ‘that’s what I’ve been saying. For the moment, anyway, seeing how well Lowther’s dug in.’

Will the Tod clapped Dodd on his back. ‘I like you, Henry,’ he said expansively, ‘ye think well.’

‘It’s your daughter’s plan,’ Dodd muttered.

‘Of course it is, but you’ve the sense to see the sense in it.’

And I did all the bloody running and crawling through shit pipes, Dodd thought, but didn’t say. Will the Tod stared into space for a moment, and then rubbed his hands together.

‘Off ye go, Dodd,’ he said, ‘up to the tower and ring the bell. I’ll have a horse saddled up for you when ye come back.’

Run up there, thought Dodd, despairingly.

‘Get on, lad, we havenae got all day. Ye dinna want to get to Netherby and find your man swinging in the breeze.’

It was hard going up to the tower now he’d lost the rhythm, but he wasn’t going to give Will the Tod any opportunity to tell him more tales of notable runs by Will the Tod in his youth. It half killed him but he gasped his way up the bank, almost fell through the door, found the rope to the bell and started ringing it.

Perhaps he rang it for longer than he need have done, but when he came back down the hill to the house where Will the Tod normally lived, he saw the sight that still lifted his heart no matter how often it happened: the men were coming in at the run from the fields, the women were rushing from their work to the horse paddock to round up the horses—thank God Will the Tod had not been raided by the Grahams, even if he wasn’t respectable enough to lend horses to Scrope—and some of the boys were already coming out of the stables with the saddles and bridles, the jacks and helmets.

Will the Tod was standing on a high mounting stone, his thumbs in his broad belt, yelling orders as his family ran purposefully past him in all directions. His second wife, the pretty, nervous little creature whose name Dodd could never remember, came running up with a large ugly gelding snorting behind her and then Will the Tod was in the saddle, closely followed by his five sons, two of his sons-in-law, four nearly grown grandsons, and fifteen assorted cousins already riding in with their families from their own farms nearby.

Henry was brought a large Roman-nosed mare he remembered as having an evil temper at odds with her name, which was Rosy, and he mounted up with relief. If God had meant men to run around the countryside he wouldn’t have provided them with horses.

‘Off you go then, Henry,’ shouted Will the Tod, waving his lance. ‘Rouse out the Dodds.’

Dodd brought Rosy up alongside Will the Tod, who was letting his mount sidestep and paw the air and roaring with laughter at his surname crowding up around him, all asking where was the raid and whose cows were gone, and how big was it, to be out in daylight? Rosy tried to nip Will the Tod’s leg.

‘Wait,’ Dodd said, hauling on the reins, ‘we’ve got Netherby to crack. Where will we meet?’

‘Longtownmoor meeting stone,’ said Will the Tod, ‘where we always meet when we’re hitting Liddesdale, ye know that Henry. Shall I send to Kinmont?’

‘Send to anybody ye can think of that would like to see Lowther’s nose rubbed in the shite.’

‘Och God, there’d be no room for them all. I’ll just send to the ones that werena burnt out of house and home by your young Deputy’s father in ’69, eh?’

Dodd nodded impatiently, set his heels to the horse’s flank, and headed on up the road for Gilsland after a sharp tussle with Rosy’s contrariness, which he won. Behind him Will the Tod stood up in his stirrups and addressed his immediate surname in a bellow. Dodd knew when he explained the Deputy Warden’s problem because the laughter rolled after him over the hill like the breaker of a sea.

It occurred to him that perhaps Carey would have preferred to hang rather than be rescued from Bothwell’s clutches in quite this way.