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S >> S. R. Crockett >> The Black Douglas




The marshal moved a politic hand as if asking silence till he had
finished his explanation.

"Pardon," he said; "permit me yet a moment, most High Chancellor--but
have you heard so little of the skill and craft of Louis, our most
notable Dauphin, that you know not how he ever embraces men with the
left arm whilst he pierces them with the dagger in his right?"

The Chancellor nodded appreciation. It was a detail of statecraft well
known to him, and much practised by his house in all periods of their
history.

"Now, my lords," the ambassador continued, "you are here all
three--the men who need most to end this tyranny--you, my Lord of
Avondale, will you deign to deliver your mind upon this matter?"

The fat Earl hemmed and hawed, clearing his throat to gain time, and
knitting and unknitting his fingers over his stomach.

"Being a near kinsman," he said at last, "it is not seemly that I
should say aught against the Earl of Douglas; but this I do
know--there will be no peace in Scotland till that young man and his
brother are both cut off."

The Chancellor and de Retz exchanged glances. The anxiety of the
next-of-kin to the title of Earl of Douglas for the peace and
prosperity of the realm seemed to strike them both as exceedingly
natural in the circumstances.

"And now, Sir Alexander, what say you?" asked the Sieur de Retz,
turning to the King's guardian, who had been caressing the curls of
his beard with his white and signeted hand.

"I agree," he replied in a courtly tone, "that in the interests of the
King and of the noble lady whose care for her child hath led her to
such sacrifices, we ought to put a limit to the pride and insolence of
this youth!"

The Chancellor bent over a parchment to hide a smile at the sacrifices
which the Queen Mother had made for her son.

"It is indeed, doubtless," said Sir William Crichton, "a sacrifice
that the King and his mother should dwell so long within this Castle
of Stirling, exposed to every rude blast from off these barren
Grampians. Let her bring him to the mild and equable climate of
Edinburgh, which, as I am sure your Excellency must have observed, is
peculiarly suited to the rearing of such tender plants."

He appealed to the Sieur de Retz.

The marshal bowed and answered immediately, "Indeed, it reminds me of
the sunniest and most favoured parts of my native France."

The tutor of the King looked somewhat uncomfortable at the suggestion
and shook his head. He had no idea of putting the King of Scots
within the power of his arch enemy in the strong fortress of
Edinburgh.

But the Frenchman broke in before the ill effects of the Chancellor's
speech had time to turn the mind of the King's guardian from the
present project against the Earl of Douglas.

"But surely, gentlemen, it should not be difficult for two such
honourable men to unite in destroying this curse of the
commonweal--and afterwards to settle any differences which may in the
past have arisen between themselves."

"Good," said the Chancellor, "you speak well. But how are we to bring
the Earl within our danger? Already I have sent him offers of
alliance, and so, I doubt not, hath my honourable friend the tutor of
the King. You know well what answer the proud chief of Douglas
returned."

The lips of Sir Alexander Livingston moved. He seemed to be taking
some bitter and nauseous drug of the apothecary.

"Yes, Sir Alexander, I see you have not forgot. The words,'If dog eat
dog, what should the lion care?' made us every caitiff's scoff
throughout broad Scotland."

"For that he shall yet suffer, if God give me speed," said the tutor,
for the answer had been repeated to the Queen, who, being English,
laughed at the wit of the reply.

"I would that my boy should grow up such another as that Earl
Douglas," she had said.

The tutor stroked his beard faster than ever, and there was in his
eyes the bitter look of a handsome man whose vanity is wounded in its
weakest place.

"But, after all, who is to cage the lion?" said the Chancellor,
pertinently.

The marshal of France raised his hand from the table as if commanding
silence. His suave and courtier-like demeanour had changed into
something more natural to the man. There came the gaunt forward thrust
of a wolf on the trail into the set of his head. His long teeth
gleamed, and his eyelids closed down upon his eyes till these became
mere twinkling points.

"I have that at hand which hath already tamed the lion," he said, "and
is able to lead him into the cage with cords of silk."

He rose from the table, and, going to a curtain that concealed the
narrow door of an antechamber, he drew it aside, and there came forth,
clothed in a garment of gold and green, close-fitting and fine,
clasped about the waist with a twining belt of jewelled snakes, the
Lady Sybilla.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE LION TAMER


On this summer afternoon the girl's beauty seemed more wondrous and
magical than ever. Her eyes were purple-black, like the berries of the
deadly nightshade seen in the twilight. Her face was pale, and the
scarlet of her lips lay like twin geranium petals on new-fallen snow.

Gilles de Retz followed her with a certain grim and ghastly pride, as
he marked the sensation caused by her entrance.

"This," he said, "is my lion tamer!"

But the girl never looked at him, nor in any way responded to his
glances.

"Sybilla," said de Retz, holding her with his eyes, "these gentlemen
are with us. They also are of the enemies of the house of
Douglas--speak freely that which is in your heart!"

"My lords," said the Lady Sybilla, speaking in a level voice, and with
her eyes fixed on the leaf-shadowed square of grass, which alone could
be seen through the open window, "you have, I doubt not, each declared
your grievance against William, Earl of Douglas. I alone have none. He
is a gallant gentleman. France I have travelled, Spain also, and
Portugal, and have explored the utmost East,--wherever, indeed, my
Lord of Retz hath voyaged thither I have gone. But no braver or more
chivalrous youth than William Douglas have I found in any land. I have
no grievance against him, as I say, yet for that which hath been will
I deliver him into your hands."

One of the men before her grew manifestly uneasy.

"We did not come hither to listen to the praises of the Earl of
Douglas, even from lips so fair as yours!" sneered Crichton the
Chancellor, lifting his eyes one moment from the parchment before him
to the girl's face.

"He is our enemy," said the tutor of the King, Alexander Livingston,
more generously, "but I will never deny that he is a gallant youth;
also of his person proper to look upon."

And very complacently he smoothed down the lace ruffles which fell
from the neck of his silken doublet midway down its front.

"The young man is a Douglas," said James the Gross, curtly; "if he
were of coward breed, we had not needed to come hither secretly!"

"It needeth not four butchers to kill a sheep!" said de Retz.
"Concerning that, we agree. Proceed, my Lady Sybilla."

The girl was now breathing more quickly, her bosom rising and falling
visibly beneath her light silken gown.

"Yet because of those that have been of the house of Douglas before
him, shall I have no pity upon William, sixth Earl thereof! And
because of two dead Dukes of Touraine, will I deliver to you the third
Duke, into whose mouth hath hardly yet come the proper gust of living.
This is the tale I have heard a thousand times. There was in France,
it skills not where, a vale quiet as a summer Sabbath day. The vines
hung ripe-clustered in wide and pleasant vineyards. The olives rustled
grey on the slopes. The bell swung in the monastery tower. The cottage
in the dell was safe as the chateau on the hill. Then came the foreign
leader of a foreign army, and lo! in a day, there were a hundred dead
men in the valley, all honourable men slain in defence of their own
doors. The smoky flicker of flames broke through the roof in the
daylight. There was heard the crying of many women. And the man who
wrought this was an Earl of Douglas."

The girl paused, and in a low whisper, intense as the breathing of the
sea, she said:

_"And for this will I deliver into your hands his grandson, William of
Douglas!"_

Then her voice came again to the ears of the four listeners, in a note
low and monotonous like the wind that goes about the house on autumn
evenings.

"There was also one who, being but a child, had escaped from that
tumult and had found shelter in a white convent with the sisters
thereof, who taught her to pray, and be happy in the peace of the hour
that is exactly like the one before it. The shadow of the dial finger
upon the stone was not more peaceful than the holy round of her life.

"Then came one who met her by the convent wall, met her under the
shade of the orchard trees, met her under cloud of night, till his
soul had power over hers. She followed him by camp and city, fearing
no man's scorn, feeling no woman's reproach, for love's sake and his.
Yet at the last he cast her away, like an empty husk, and sailed over
the seas to his own land. She lived to wed the Sieur de Thouars and to
become my mother."

_"And for this will I reckon with his son William, Duke of Touraine."_

She ceased, and de Retz began to speak.

"By me this girl has been taught the deepest wisdom of the ancients. I
have delved deep in the lore of the ages that this maiden might be
fitted for her task. For I also, that am a marshal of France and of
kin to my Lord Duke of Brittany, have a score to settle with William,
Earl of Douglas, as hath also my master, Louis the Dauphin!"

"It is enough," interjected Crichton the Chancellor, who had listened
to the recital of the Lady Sybilla with manifest impatience, "it is
the old story--the sins of the fathers are upon the children. And this
young man must suffer for those that went before him. They drank of
the full cup, and so he hath come now to the drains. It skills not why
we each desire to make an end of him. We are agreed on the fact. The
question is _how_."

It was again the voice of de Retz which replied, the deep silence of
afternoon resting like a weight upon all about them.

"If we write him a letter inviting him to the Castle of Edinburgh, he
will assuredly not come; but if we first entertain him with open
courtesy at one of your castles on the way, where you, most wise
Chancellor, must put yourself wholly in his hands, he will suspect
nothing. There, when all his suspicions are lulled, he will again meet
the Lady Sybilla; it will rest with her to bring him to Edinburgh."

The Chancellor had been busily writing on the parchment before him
whilst de Retz was speaking. Presently he held up his hand and read
aloud that which he had written.

"To the most noble William, Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine,
greeting! In the name of King James the Second, whom God preserve, and
in order that the realm may have peace, Sir William Crichton,
Chancellor of Scotland, and Sir Alexander Livingston, Governor of the
King's person, do invite and humbly intreat the Earl of Douglas to
come to the City of Edinburgh, with such following as shall seem good
to him, in order that he may be duly invested with the office of
Lieutenant-General of the Kingdom, which office was his father's
before him. So shall the realm abide in peace and evil-doers be put
down, the peaceable prevented with power, and the Earl of Douglas
stand openly in the honourable place of his forebears."

The Chancellor finished his reading and looked around for approbation.
James of Avondale was nodding gravely. de Retz, with a ghastly smile
on his face, seemed to be weighing the phrases. Livingston was
admiring, with a self-satisfied smile, the pinkish lights upon his
finger-nails, and the girl was gazing as before out of the window into
the green close wherein the leaves stirred and the shadows had begun
to swim lazily on the grass with the coming of the wind from off the
sea.

"To this I would add as followeth," continued Crichton. "The
Chancellor of Scotland to William, Earl of Douglas, greeting and
homage! Sir William Crichton ventures to hope that the Earl of Douglas
will do him the great honour to come to his new Castle of Crichton,
there to be entertained as beseemeth his dignity, to the healing of
all ancient enmities, and also that they both may do honour to the
ambassador of the King of France ere he set sail again for his own
land."

"It is indeed a worthy epistle," said James the Gross, who, being
sleepy, wished for an end to be made.

"There is at least in it no lack of 'Chancellor of Scotland!'" sneered
Livingston, covertly.

"Gently, gently, great sirs," interposed de Retz, as the Chancellor
looked up with anger in his eye; "have out your quarrels as you
will--after the snapping of the trap. Remember that this which we do
is a matter of life or death for all of us."

"But the Douglases will wash us off the face of Scotland if we so much
as lay hand on the Earl," objected Livingston. "It might even affect
the safety of his Majesty's person!"

James the Gross laughed a low laugh and looked at Crichton.

"Perhaps," he said; "but what if the gallant boy David go with his
brother? Whoever after that shall be next Earl of Douglas can easily
prevent that. Also Angus is for us, and my Lord Maxwell will move no
hand. There remains, therefore, only Galloway, and my son William will
answer for that. I myself am old and fat, and love not fighting, but
to tame the Douglases shall be my part, and assuredly not the least."

All this while the Lady Sybilla had been standing motionless gazing
out of the window. de Retz now motioned her away with an almost
imperceptible signal of his hand, whereat Sir Alexander Livingston,
seeing the girl about to leave the chamber of council, courteously
rose to usher her out. And with the very slightest acknowledgment of
his profound obeisance, Sybilla de Thouars went forth and left the
four men to their cabal of treachery and death.




CHAPTER XXVII

THE YOUNG LORDS RIDE AWAY


This was the letter which, along with the Chancellor's invitations,
came to the hand of the Earl William as he rode forth to the
deer-hunting one morning from his Castle of Thrieve:

"My lord, if it be not that you have wholly forgotten me and your
promise, this comes to inform you that my uncle and I purpose to abide
at the Castle of Crichton for ten days before finally departing forth
of this land. It is known to me that the Chancellor, moved thereto by
One who desires much to see you, hath invited the Earl of Douglas to
come thither with what retinue is best beseeming so great a lord.

"But 'tis beyond hope that we should meet in this manner. My lord
hath, doubtless, ere this forgot all that was between us, and hath
already seen others fairer and more worthy of his courteous regard
than the Lady Sybilla. This is as well beseems a mighty lord, who
taketh up a cup full and setteth it down empty. But a woman hath
naught to do, save only to remember the things that have been, and to
think upon them. Grace be to you, my dear lord. And so for this time
and it may be for ever, fare you well!"

When the Earl had read this letter from the Lady Sybilla, he turned
himself in his saddle without delay and said to his hunt-master:

"Take back the hounds, we will not hunt the stag this day."

The messenger stood respectfully before him waiting to take back an
answer.

"Come you from the town of Edinburgh?" asked the Earl, quickly.

"Nay," said the youth, "let it please your greatness, I am a servant
of my Lord of Crichton, and come from his new castle in the Lothians."

"Doth the Chancellor abide there at this present?" asked the Earl.

"He came two noons ago with but one attendant, and bade us make ready
for a great company who were to arrive there this very day. Then he
gave me these two letters and set my head on the safe delivery of
them."

"Sholto," cried the young lord, "summon the guard and men-at-arms.
Take all that can be spared from the defence of the castle and make
ready to follow me. I ride immediately to visit the Chancellor of
Scotland at his castle in the Lothians."

It was Sholto's duty to obey, but his heart sank within him, both at
the thought of the Earl thus venturing among his enemies, and also
because he must needs leave behind him Maud Lindesay, on whose wilful
and wayward beauty his heart was set.

"My lord," he stammered, "permit me one word. Were it not better to
wait till a following of knights and gentlemen beseeming the Earl of
Douglas should be brought together to accompany you on so perilous a
journey?"

"Do as I bid you, Sir Captain," was the Earl's short rejoinder; "you
have my orders."

"O that the Abbot were here--" thought Sholto, as he moved heavily to
do his master's will; "he might reason with the Earl with some hope of
success."

On his way to summon the guard Sholto met Maud Lindesay going out to
twine gowans with the Maid on the meadows about the Mains of Kelton.
For, as Margaret Douglas complained, "All ours on the isle were
trodden down by the men who came to the tourney, and they have not
grown up again."

"Whither away so gloomy, Sir Knight?" cried Maud, all her winsome face
alight with pleasure in the bright day, and because of the excellent
joy of living.

"On a most gloomy errand, indeed," said Sholto. "My lord rides with a
small company into the very stronghold of his enemy, and will hear no
word from any!"

"And do you go with him?" cried Maud, her bright colour leaving her
face.

"Not only I, but all that can be spared of the men-at-arms and of the
archer guard," answered Sholto.

Maud Lindesay turned about and took the little girl's hand.

"Margaret," she said, "let us go to my lady. Perhaps she will be able
to keep my Lord William at home."

So they went back to the chamber of my Lady of Douglas. Now the
Countess had never been of great influence with her son, even during
her husband's lifetime, and had certainly none with him since. Still
it was possible that William Douglas might, for a time at least,
listen to advice and delay his setting out till a suitable retinue
could be brought together to protect him. Maud and Margaret found the
Lady of Douglas busily embroidering a vestment of silk and gold for
the Abbot of Sweetheart. She laid aside her work and listened with
gentle patience to the hasty tale told by Maud Lindesay.

"I will speak with William," she answered, with a certain hopelessness
in her voice, "but I know well he will go his own gait for aught that
his mother can say. He is his father's son, and the men of the house
of Douglas, they come and they go, recking no will but their own. And
even so will my son William."

"But he is taking David with him also!" cried Margaret. "I met him
even now on the stair, wild in haste to put on his shirt of mail and
the sword with the golden hilt which the ambassador of France gave
him."

A quick flush coloured the pale countenance of the Lady Countess.

"Nay, but one is surely enough to meet the Chancellor. David shall not
go. He is but a lad and knows nothing of these things."

For this boy was ever his mother's favourite, far more than either her
elder son or her little daughter, whom indeed she left entirely to the
care and companionship of Maud Lindesay.

My Lady of Douglas went slowly downstairs. The Earl, with Sholto by
his side, was ordering the accoutrement of the mounted men-at-arms in
the courtyard.

"William," she called, in a soft voice which would not have reached
him, busied as he was with his work, but that little Margaret raised
her childish treble and called out: "William, our mother desires to
speak with you. Do you not hear her?"

The Earl turned about, and, seeing his mother, came quickly to her and
stood bareheaded before her.

"You are not going to run into danger, William?" she said, still
softly.

"Nay, mother mine," he answered, smiling, "do not fear, I do but ride
to visit the Chancellor Crichton in his castle, and also to bid
farewell to the French ambassador, who abode here as our guest."

A sudden light shone in upon the mind of Maud Lindesay.

"'Tis all that French minx!" she whispered in Sholto's ear, "she hath
bewitched him. No one need try to stop him now."

His mother went on, with an added anxiety in her voice.

"But you will not take my little David with you? You will leave me one
son here to comfort me in my loneliness and old age?"

The Earl seemed about to yield, being, indeed, careless whether David
went with him or no.

"Mother," cried David, coming running forth from the castle, "you must
not persuade William to make me stay at home. I shall never be a man
if I am kept among women. There is Sholto MacKim, he is little older
than I, and already he hath won the archery prize and the sword-play,
and hath fought in a tourney and been knighted--while I have done
nothing except pull gowans with Maud Lindesay and play chuckie stones
with Margaret there."

And at that moment Sholto wished that this fate had been his, and the
honours David's. He told himself that he would willingly have given up
his very knighthood that he might abide near that dainty form and
witching face. He tortured himself with the thought that Maud would
listen to others as she had listened to him; that she would practise
on others that heart-breaking slow droop and quick uplift of the
eyelashes which he knew so well. Who might not be at hand to aid her
to blow out her lamp when the guards were set of new in the corridors
of Thrieve?

"Mother," the Earl answered, "David speaks good sense. He will never
make a man or a Douglas if he is to bide here within this warded isle.
He must venture forth into the world of men and women, and taste a
man's pleasures and chance a man's dangers like the rest."

"But are you certain that you will bring him safe back again to me?"
said his mother, wistfully. "Remember, he is so young and eke so
reckless."

"Nay," cried David, eagerly, "I am no younger than my cousin James was
when he fought the strongest man in Scotland, and I warrant I could
ride a course as well as Hughie Douglas of Avondale, though William
chose him for the tourney and left me to bite my thumbs at home."

The lady sighed and looked at her sons, one of them but a youth and
the other no more than a boy.

"Was there ever a Douglas yet who would take any advice but from his
own desire?" she said, looking down at them like a douce barn-door fowl
who by chance has reared a pair of eaglets. "Lads, ye are over strong
for your mother. But I will not sleep nor eat aright till I have my
David back again, and can see him riding his horse homeward through
the ford."




CHAPTER XXVIII

ON THE CASTLE ROOF


Maud Lindesay parted from Sholto upon the roof of the keep. She had
gone up thither to watch the cavalcade ride off where none could spy
upon her, and Sholto, noting the flutter of white by the battlements,
ran up thither also, pretending that he had forgotten something,
though he was indeed fully armed and ready to mount and ride.

Maud Lindesay was leaning over the battlements of the castle, and,
hearing a step behind her, she looked about with a start of apparent
surprise.

The after dew of recent tears still glorified her eyes.

"Oh, Sholto," she cried, "I thought you were gone; I was watching for
you to ride away. I thought--"

But Sholto, seeing her disorder, and having little time to waste, came
quickly forward and took her in his arms without apology or prelude,
as is (they say) wisest in such cases.

"Maud," he said, his utterance quick and hoarse, "we go into the house
of our enemies. Thirty knights and no more accompany my lord, who
might have ridden out with three thousand in his train."

"'Tis all that witch woman," cried the girl; "can you not advise him?"

"The Earl of Douglas did not ask my advice," said Sholto, a little
dryly, being eager to turn the conversation upon his own matters and
to his own advantage. "And, moreover, if he rides into danger for the
sake of love--why, I for one think the more of him for it."

"But for such a creature," objected Maud Lindesay. "For any true maid
it were most right and proper! Where is there a noble lady in Scotland
who would not have been proud to listen to him? But he must needs run
after this mongrel French woman!"

"Even Mistress Maud Lindesay would accept him, would she?" said
Sholto, somewhat bitterly, releasing her a little.

"Maud Lindesay is no great lady, only the daughter of a poor baron of
the North, and much bound to my Lord Douglas by gratitude for that
which he hath done for her family. As you right well know, Maud
Lindesay is little better than a tiremaiden in the house of my lord."

"Nay," said Sholto, "I crave your pardon. I meant it not. I am hasty
of words, and the time is short. Will you pardon me and bid me
farewell, for the horses are being led from stall, and I cannot keep
my lord waiting?"

"You are glad to go," she said reproachfully; "you will forget us whom
you leave behind you here. Indeed, you care not even now, so that you
are free to wander over the world and taste new pleasures. That is to
be a man, indeed. Would that I had been born one!"

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