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thigh-piece, Sir Ralph Bullmer on his horse flew across the gentle valley of Teviot like a well-plenished tinker’s curse, and did not know until he pulled up, dismounted, and his breeches fell down, that there was no one behind him by then.
    Soon after that, a half-naked gentleman in breech hose knocked at a door in Upper Nisbet, requisitioned a jerkin and a pony with great charm, and went whistling on his way to Jedburgh, where by arrangement a second cousin of Will Scott’s was to look after the homeless Hough Isa and shelter the ambushing marksmen, if need be, on the first stage of their journey back home.
    Not long after Bullmer with his survivors had got back to the English fortress at Roxburgh, Will Scott and his men arrived at the tall wooden house of his cousin, peeled off their kirtles and bonnets and crowded into the kitchen where already Hough Isa and her twogenuine friends were at the cooking pots. Then, having settled his men, Sir William dressed in his own clothes and took his two unlooked-for observers, Thomas Master of Erskine and Nicholas Durand de Villegagnon, upstairs to the small room to talk.
    They spoke in French. It was not that the Chevalier’s English was lacking, but simply that he mistrusted, that day, what he heard. That a Roxburgh deserter had warned Will Scott of the impending English raid on the ladies—that he understood. That this might be made an excuse to ambush the garrison—this again was clear. Wise also to have the five cannon dragged from Jedburgh—instant annihilation of superior numbers was thus made quite possible. And certainly, the sight of the ladies had brought the Englishmen half up the hill and within easy range, while the falcons were hidden by skirts. But, the Chevalier de Villegagnon had pointed out, they had been unable to ride pursuing the English, had not even tried to conceal mounted men behind that small hill, who could sweep over and kill …?
    ‘Aye,’ had said Will Scott on the battlefield, as they loaded the English wounded in carts and searched the dead for their money and weapons. ‘Well, ye see, I got orders from the old Queen not to meddle. If I lost a man through defending a whore, she said she’d see me in jail for a year. So I made sure when the English came on,’ said Will Scott simply, ‘that my lads’d be after better sport than killing.’
    ‘And what will the Queen Dowager say,’ said Tom Erskine drily, ‘if Crawford of Lymond is lost?’
    ‘He’ll be back at Jedburgh to meet us, you’ll see,’ said Scott a little quickly. And the Chevalier de Villegagnon, shrewdly observing, chose that moment to say, ‘Will it please you to speak French?’ and added rapidly, ‘I understood on joining you that M. of Lymond had left the ambush altogether?’
    Tom Erskine answered. ‘He was in front with the ladies. He gave the signal to fire.’
    ‘But he has not returned? Which was he?’
    ‘The one in green that rode off with Ralph Bullmer,’ said Will Scott; and without waiting for Tom’s smooth translation added, ‘And if Ralph Bullmer’s still alive to tell of it, I’ll wager he’d rather he wasn’t.’
    They were at their soup when Lymond arrived. A voice cut through the uproar below and Will Scott missed his mouth and got to his feet dripping; then sat down and wiped off his chin. Then the door opened on the tenuous girl in the green dress, now in staid brown hose under a tunic, the blond hair visibly short.
    He was carrying a bowl of soup. As he kicked shut the door to the stairs, Scott spoke with reverberating gusto. ‘Francis! What in God’s name have you done with Sir Ralph?’
    ‘Bullmer?’ The voice was pleasant, the air one of mild surprise.‘I undressed him, I believe. Cousin Oily had a grin like a viaduct.’ Francis Crawford laid down his soup and, without sitting, said to de Villegagnon, ‘What would you have done, sir?’
    M. de Villegagnon, Knight of the Order of St John, answered in French, one meaty shoulder