Chapter 10: Over O'er

      "Easy Betty Baty," I croon to the old mare tossing her head as a bevy of big black birds flies up from a grove of slender birches on the western slope behind the ancient hill-fort, their silvery serrated leaves fluttering upward with the flock.

"Snort," she blows, reluctantly obeying the reigns urging her up into the mist of a low cloud hanging at the ridge top.

     Though Rolland Beattison's white nag didn't want to go that way, it was a good thing she knew the trail. It was midday and might as well have been midnight for the lack of visibility from dark clouds massed over the divide between White and Black Esk waters. The clamour of rooks might have been enough to turn my superstitious ancestors back, but not me. This might be the only chance to see where my paternal line originated in tribal Europe.

     As to who those ancestors were - Britons, Picts, Angles, Gaels, or Norse - it's a good bet they had some of each from the successive waves of immigration from the mainland and subsequent integration of culture and language. What the Bady's weren't was Roman.  The Southern Uplands are north of both Hadrian's and Antonin's walls, and the mountain passes with hill-fort defenses were the last line of resistance to conquest.

     "Steady old girl," I call with a squeeze of my knees as she prances into a sudden gale striking our faces when we reach the crest.

"Neigh," she whinnies with a toss back of the head as we're pelted by rain. 

"Hang on!" I shout over the tumult, jumping off to make a run for cover under a rock outcropping.

"Roar!" she trumpets, tucking her haunches as I lunge for my pack and bolting away back down the hill.