I wrote this for Elysium Theatre's playwriting competition Reivers: voices from the borders, which in turn was inspired by the Reiver Trilogy by Steve Byron. Those stories were set around the half-forgotten era of the Border Reivers, where the area surrounding the English and Scottish borders was lawless and Reiver families. One moment they might be at war with each other, the next moment they were best mates. But the thing that got my interest was what finally brought the Reivers down. When James VI of Scotland also became James I of England, suddenly there was no reason for a no-man's-land between the two. But their Reivers wouldn't go quietly, culminating in the notorious events of "ill week".