And the legacy of John Knox had narrowed the Borderer’s wild soul into a primmer mold where business and righteousness walked hand in hand: The Sabbath was holy, women knew their place, and the Kirk was a stronger influence in daily affairs than Edinburgh, much less far-off London.

Legends had grown up around raids and raiders. Ballads and tales celebrated reivers named Sim the Laird, Jock of the Side, and Kinmont Willie. After all, this was land where the shifting sands of policy, war, feuds, and alliances had often redrawn the border to suit the times. What was mine today might be yours tomorrow, and taking it back again became a popular sport.

Rutledge drove into Jedburgh through another shower and found the turning that led to Duncarrick. It was a small town in the green, rolling country between Air Water and the Tweed. A tall hedge of houses, shops, and one hotel formed an irregularly shaped nineteenth-century square with a worn monument at the top, commemorating the burning of the town three times in thirty years during the early 1500s. The pillar stood at the high end of the square, a lonely sentinel of the past surrounded by the town’s newer image. Other houses, some much older, straggled west beyond the square, and there was a modest inn among them. The wooden sign over the door read THE REIVERS. Barely a dozen streets bracketed the heart of Duncarrick and gave it an isolated feeling, as if it had been stranded in the middle of nowhere, an agricultural community untouched by the woolen tweed industry that had crowded its neighbors.

“It’s no’ a Highland town,” Hamish reflected, “but it’s no’ Sassenach either.” Not English. And he was right, there was indeed a different air here from the small English border towns no more than a hard ride away.

Where Jedburgh had once boasted walls, towers, a castle, and an abbey, Duncarrick had been burned to the ground so often that little of its past remained. A pele tower, the tall half-house–half-defensive-fortress of the raiding years, stood in a field about a mile past the last dwelling. It was little more than a tall rubble of stone and shadow now, with perhaps two floors still intact and the door slanted ajar. He passed it and then turned around in the next farm lane.

Rutledge got out to stretch his legs, leaving the motorcar parked on the grassy verge some one hundred yards from the pele tower and going the rest of the way on foot.