Return of the Border Warrior

Not one who would recognise him.

He removed his polished helmet to show friendly features, glad of cool air on his face again. ‘It’s John Brunson. Sir John now, knighted by the king.’ He had waited years and miles to say so. ‘Tell Geordie the Red his youngest son is home.’

Tell him I’ll not be here long.

The man leaned back on his pike. ‘There’ll be no telling of anything to Red Geordie Brunson. He lies dead in his bed.’

And John, silent, couldn’t summon up even the pretence of sorrow.

John or Sir John, there was no convincing the man to let him in. Despite the fact that people were gathering for the wake, they made him wait until they fetched his brother, Rob, to verify his identity. He could not blame them. That was the way of the Borders.

In truth, he’d found little more trust in the men surrounding the king. They were just less obvious about their suspicions.

Rob, bearded now and taller and broader than John remembered, stood on the wall walk, arms folded in doubt, letting John sweat beneath his full harness of armour. It was as much for his moods as his dark hair that they’d called him Black Rob. Now, new lines scored his brow and John wondered how many of them had deepened since he woke to find himself head man of the riding clan.

‘You claim to be my brother?’ Even Rob could not recognise him with a glance. John had been twelve, only half-grown when he left.

‘Aye. You’re looking at the son of Geordie the Red.’

‘A Storwick could say the same.’ His sceptical disdain was everything John had remembered. And hated. ‘What brings you here?’

He did not ask what brings you home, as if he would not call Brunson Tower John’s home, either.

But everything was different now. Instead of begging Rob’s permission and asking his help, now John would tell his brother what must be. ‘I’m sent of King James, fifth of that name.’

His brother snorted. ‘That’s no talisman of entry.’

Ruled by his advisers for the last fifteen years, the young king’s name struck no terror on the Borders. But John knew the king well enough to know that it would. And soon.

‘Look at my eyes and you’ll know me.’ Johnnie Blunkit they had called him. The only Brunson with blue eyes.

‘If you’re a Brunson, then what’s your father’s father’s father’s father’s name?’

He searched his memory, blank, then tried to summon the ballad of the Brunsons. Only the opening lines sang in his head.

Silent as moonrise, sure as the stars, Strong as the wind that sweeps Carter’s Bar.

There was little else he remembered of his people. And less that he wanted to.

‘I may not be able to name my great-great-grandfather, but I remember well enough, Black Rob, how you tried to teach me the sword. Your own blade slipped and I’ve still a mark on my rib to show for it.’

Some of the ladies at court had found the scar quite appealing.

Rob’s frown did not ease, but he jerked his head to the guards. The gate opened, creaking.

John rode in, searching for something he might recognise. Was that the corner where he and Rob had practised with dagger and sword? This the spot where he and his sister had buried their toys? It felt no more familiar than any of the succession of castles he and the king had slept in over the years.

And no more welcoming.

A slender young woman with flowing red hair stepped into the courtyard. ‘Johnnie?’

Bessie.

His sister, at least, knew him. When he’d left, she had been eight and they had been the youngest together, united against the world.

Now, she was a woman grown.

He swung off the horse and hugged her, letting her squeeze him back, holding the embrace longer than he would have because it gave him something to do. Time to think. And a moment’s illusion that he still belonged here.

‘Ah, Johnnie, I always told them you would come home.’

He held her away so he could see her eyes. Brown, like all the Brunsons except his, but today, red with tears.

He shook his head. ‘Not for long, Bessie.’ Never again. ‘I’m Sir John now. I ride beside the king.’

Rob, down from the wall, clasped his arm, without warmth.

‘I must talk to you,’ John began. ‘The king wants—’

‘Whatever the king wants, I’ll not hear of it now. It will wait until we’ve sent Red Geordie to rest with our forefolk.’

It was always thus. All work, all life would stop for the ‘dead days’ before burial.

Well, that might be the way of the Borders, but the king had no time to wait.

Still, John held his tongue and followed Bessie into the tower. His heavy armour clanked in protest as they climbed the stairs to the central gathering room.

‘I found him in his bed,’ Bessie said, as if she thought John would care, ‘when he didn’t come to break fast. Died in his sleep he did, with no one to receive his last words.’ She whispered, as if to speak aloud would make her cry. ‘Snatched away without a moment to say farewell.’ Her voice shook. ‘Yet peaceful he looked, like he was still asleep.’

‘No death for a fighting man,’ Rob muttered behind him.

At the door to the gathering hall, Bessie paused. ‘I must make his body ready.’ She gave John another brief hug, then climbed the stairs to the floor beyond, where his father lay dead, hovering above him like an evil angel.

She, at least, mourned Geordie Brunson.

They entered a crowded hall, the yawning hearth half filling the outer wall. But instead of sorrowful mourners, he first faced a table surrounded by half a dozen warriors.

‘This is my brother, John,’ Rob announced, with no acknowledgement of his knighthood and no hint that he might have come for any other reason than to mourn his father.

One by one, the men rose to greet him. Toughened by war and hard living, wearing vests of quilted wool and boots of well-worn leather, each man took his hand, took him in, and gave him trust because he was a Brunson. No other reason given and none needed.

The last one, slender shouldered, sitting with his back turned, rose last. And John saw, astonished, that he faced a woman.

Her brown eyes did not meet his with the warmth of the others.

‘This is Cate,’ Rob said. ‘These men are hers.’ He said the words as if it were no more remarkable than blooming heather.

She was tall and spare and blonde as the brown-eyed Viking who, legend said, was the father of all Brunsons. Nose sharp, chin square, cheeks hollow with more than hunger, neither face nor body showed a woman’s softness.