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S. R. Crockett - The Black Douglas

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




"And who in this place are the peers of the Earl of Douglas?" said the
young man, haughtily.

"I will not bandy words with you, my Lord Douglas. You are
overmastered. Yield yourself, therefore, as indeed you must without
remeed. Deliver your weapons and submit; 'tis our will."

"My brave Chancellor," said the Earl William, still in a voice of
pleasant irony, "you have well chosen your time to shame yourself. We
are your invited guests, and the guests of the King of Scotland. We
are here unarmed, sitting at meat with you in your own house. We have
come hither unattended, trusting to the honour of these noble knights
and gentlemen. Therefore my brother and I have no swords to deliver.
But if, being honourable men, you stand, as is natural, upon a nice
punctilio, I can satisfy you."

He turned again to Sholto MacKim.

"Give me your sword," he said. "'Tis better I should render it than
you."

With great unwillingness the captain of the guard of Thrieve did as he
was bidden. The Earl reversed it in his hand and held it by the point.

"And now, my Lord Chancellor, I deliver you a Douglas sword, depending
upon the word of an honourable man and the invitation of the King of
Scotland."

But even so the chancellor would not advance from behind the cover of
his soldiery, and the Earl looked around for some one to whom to
surrender.

"Will you then appoint one of your knights to whom I may deliver this
weapon? Is there none who will dare to come near even the hilt of a
Douglas sword? Here then, Sholto, break it over your knee and cast it
upon the board as a witness against all treachery."

Sholto did as he was told, breaking his sword and casting the pieces
upon the table in the place where the King of Scots had sat.

"And now, my lords, I am ready," said the Earl, and his brother David
stood up beside him, looking as they faced the unbroken ring of their
foes the two noblest and gallantest youths in Scotland.

At this the King caught Lord William by the hand, and, lifting up his
voice, wept aloud with the sudden breaking lamentation of a child.

"My cousin, my dear cousin Douglas," he cried, "they shall not harm
you, I swear it on my faith as a King."

At last an officer of the Chancellor's guard mustered courage to
approach the Earl of Douglas, and, saluting, he motioned him to
follow. This, with his head erect, and his usual easy grace, he did,
David walking abreast of him. And Sholto, with all his heart filled
with the deadly chill of hopelessness, followed them through the
sullen ranks of the traitors.

And even as he went Earl Douglas looked about him every way that he
might see once more her for whose sake he had adventured within the
portals of death.




CHAPTER XXXIV

BETRAYED WITH A KISS


The earl and his brother were incarcerated in the lower chamber of the
High Keep called David's Tower, which rose next in order eastward from
the banqueting-hall, following the line of the battlements.

Beneath, the rock on which the castle was built fell away towards the
Nor' Loch in a precipice so steep that no descent was to be thought
of--and this indeed was the chief defence of the prison, for the
window of the chamber was large and opened easily according to the
French fashion.

"I pray that you permit my young knight, Sir Sholto MacKim, to
accompany me," said the Earl to the officer who conducted them to
their prison-house.

"I have no orders concerning him," said the man, gruffly, but
nevertheless permitted Sholto to enter after the Earl and his brother.

The chamber was bare save for a _prie-dieu_ in the angle of the wall,
at which the Douglas looked with a strange smile upon his face.

"Right _a propos_," said he; "they have need of religion in this house
of traitors."

David Douglas went to the window-seat of low stone, and bent his head
into his hands. He was but a boy and life was sweet to him, for he had
just begun to taste the apple and to dream of the forbidden fruit. He
held his head down and was silent a space. Then suddenly he sobbed
aloud with a quick, gasping noise, startling enough in that still
place.

"For God's dear sake, David laddie," said his brother, going over to
him, placing his hand upon his shoulder, "be silent. They will think
that we are afraid."

The boy stilled himself instantly at the word, and looked up at his
brother with a pale sort of smile.

"No, William, I am not afraid, and if indeed we must die I will not
disgrace you. Be never feared of that. Yet I thought on our mother's
loneliness. She will miss me sore, for she fleeched and pled with me
not to come, yet I would not listen to her."

Sholto stood by the door, erect as if on duty at Thrieve.

"Come and sit with us," said the Earl William kindly to him, "we are
no more master and servant, earl and esquire. We are but three youths
that are to die together, and the axe's edge levels all. You, Sholto,
are in some good chance to live the longest of the three by some half
score of minutes. I am glad I made you a knight on the field of
honour, Sir Sholto, for then they cannot hang you to a bough, like a
varlet caught stealing the King's venison."

Sholto slowly came over to the window-seat and stood there
respectfully as before, with his arms straight at his side, feeling
more than anything else the lack of his sword-hilt to set his right
hand upon.

"Nay, but do as I bid you," said the Earl, looking up at him; "sit
down, Sholto."

And Sholto sat on the window-seat and looked forth upon the lights
leaping out one after another down among the crowded gables of the
town as this and that burgher lit lamp or lantern at the nearing of
the hour of supper.

Far away over the shore-lands the narrow strip of the Forth showed
amethystine and mysterious, and farther out still the coast of Fife
lay in a sort of opaline haze.

"I wonder," said William Douglas, after a long pause, "what they have
done with our good lads. Had they been taken or perished we had surely
heard more noise, I warrant. Two score lads of Galloway would not give
up their arms without a tulzie for it."

"They might induce them to leave them behind, when they went out to
take their pleasures among the maids of the Lawnmarket," said Sholto.

"Not their swords," said the Earl, "it needed all your lord's commands
to make yours quit your side. I warrant these fellows will give an
excellent account of themselves."

Presently the night fell darker, and a smurr of rain drifted over from
the edges of Pentland, mostly passing high above, but with lower
fringes that dragged, as it were, on the Castle Rock and the Hill of
Calton.

The three young men were still silently looking out when suddenly from
the darkness underneath there came a low voice.

"'Ware window!" it said, "stand back there above."

To Sholto the words sounded curiously familiar, and almost without
thinking what he did, he seized the Earl and his brother and dragged
them away from the wide space of the lattice, which opened into the
summer's night.

"'Ware window!" came again the cautious voice from far below. Sholto
heard the whistle and "spat" of an arrow against the wall without. It
must have fallen again, for the voice 'came a third time--"'Ware
window!"

And on this occasion the archer was successful, guided doubtless by
the illumination of the lantern the guard had hung on a nail, and
whose flicker would outline the lattice faintly against the darkness
of the wall.

An arrow entered with a soft hiss. It struck beyond them with a click,
and its iron point tinkled on the floor, the plaster of the opposite
wall not holding it.

Sholto scrambled about the floor on hands and knees till he found it.
It was a common archer's arrow. A cord was fastened about it, and a
note stuck in the slit along with the feather.

"It is my brother Laurence," whispered Sholto. "I warrant he is
beneath with a rope and a posse of stout fellows. We shall escape them
yet."

But even as he raised the letter to read it by the faint blue flicker
of the lantern, there came a cry of pain from within the castle. It
was a woman's voice that cried, and at the sound of pleading speech in
some chamber above them, William Douglas started to his feet.

The words were clear enough, but in a language not understood by
Sholto MacKim. They seemed intelligible enough, however, to the Earl.

"I knew it," he cried; "the false hounds have imprisoned her also. It
is Sybilla's voice. God in heaven--they are torturing her!"

He ran to the door and shook it vehemently.

"Ho! Without there!" he cried imperiously, as if in his own Castle at
Thrieve.

But no one paid any attention to his shouts, and presently the woman's
voice died down to a slow sobbing which was quite audible in the room
beneath, where the three young men listened.

"What did she say?" asked David, presently, of his brother, who still
stood with his ear to the door.

The Earl first made a gesture commanding silence, and then, hearing
nothing more, he came slowly over to the window. "It is the Lady
Sybilla," he said, in a voice which revealed his deep emotion. "She
said, in the French language, 'You shall not kill him. You shall not!
He trusted me and he shall not die.'"

Meanwhile Sholto, knowing that there was no time to lose, had been
drawing in the cord, which presently thickened into a rope stout
enough to support the weight of a light and active youth such as any
of the three young men imprisoned in David's Tower.

But the sound of the woman's tears had thrown the Earl into an
excitement so extreme that he hammered on the great bolt-studded door
with his bare clenched hands, and cried aloud to the Chancellor and
Livingston, commanding them to open to him. His first calmness seemed
completely broken up.

Meanwhile Sholto, his whole soul bent on the cord which gave the
unseen Douglases a chance of saving the lives of their masters, had
drawn thirty yards of stout rope into the room. He fixed it by a
double knot, first to a ring which was let into the wall, and
afterwards to the massive handle of the door itself.

"Now, my lord," he whispered, as he finished, "be pleased to go
first. Our lads are beneath, and in the shaking of a cow's tail we
shall be safe in the midst of them."

The Earl held up his hand with the quick imperative motion he used to
command silence. The sound of the woman's voice came again from above,
now quick and high, like one who makes an agonised petition, and now
in tones lower that seemed broken with sobs and lamentations.

At first William Douglas did not appear to comprehend the meaning of
Sholto's words, being so bent on his listening. But when the young
captain of the guard again reminded him that the time of their chances
for relief was quickly passing, and that the soldiers of the
Chancellor might come at any moment to lead them to their doom, the
Earl broke out upon him in sudden anger.

"For what crawling thing do you take me, Sholto MacKim?" he cried; "I
will not leave this place till I know what they have done with her.
She trusted me, and shall I prove a recreant? I would have you know
that I am William, Earl of Douglas, and fear not the face of any
Crichton that ever breathed. Ho--there--without!" and again he shook
the door with ineffectual anger.

His only answer was the sound of that beseeching woman's voice, and
the measured tread of the sentry, whose partisan they could see
flashing in the lamplight through the narrow barred wicket, as he
turned in front of their door.

And it was now all in vain that Sholto pled with his master. To every
argument Lord Douglas replied, "I cannot go--it consorts not with
mine honour to leave this castle so long as the Lady Sybilla is in
their hands."

Sholto told him how they could now escape, and in a week would raise
the whole of the south, returning to the siege of the castle and the
destruction of the traitors Crichton and Livingston. But even to this
the Earl had his answer.

"What--flee like a coward and leave this girl, who has loved and
trusted me, defenceless in their hands! You yourself have heard her
weeping. I tell you I cannot go--I will not go. Let David and you
escape! My place is here, and neither snivelling Crichton nor that
backstairs lap-dog Livingston shall say that they took the Earl of
Douglas, and that he fled from them under cloud of night."

David Douglas had been standing by hopefully while Sholto tied the
rope to the rings. At his brother's words he sat down again. William
of Douglas turned about upon him.

"Go, David, I bid you. Escape, and if aught happen to me, fail not to
make the traitors pay dearly for it."

But David Douglas sat still and answered not. Then Sholto, desperate
of success with his master, approached David, and with gentle force
would have compelled him to the window. But, at the first touch of his
hand, the boy thrust him away, striking him fiercely upon the
shoulder.

"Hands off!" he cried, "I also am a Douglas and no craven. I will
abide by my brother to the end."

"No, my David," said the Earl, turning for a moment from the door
where he had been again listening, "you shall not stay! You are the
hope of our house. My mother would fret to death if aught happened to
you. This is not a matter which concerns you. Go, I bid you. On me it
lies, and if I must pay the reckoning, why at least only I drank the
wine."

"I will not;" cried the boy; "I tell you I will bide where my brother
bides and his fate shall be mine."

Then Sholto, well nigh frantic with apprehension and disappointment,
went to the window and leaned out, gripping the sill with his hands.

"They will not leave the castle," he whispered as loud as he dared;
"the Earl will not escape while the Lady Sybilla remains a prisoner
within."

"God in heaven!" cried a stern voice from below which made Sholto
start, "we shall be broken first and last upon that woman. Would to
God I had slain her with my hand! Tell the Earl that if he will not
come to those that wait for him underneath the tower, I, Malise
MacKim, will come and fetch him like a child in my arms, even as I did
from under the pine trees at Loch Roan."

And as he spoke the strain of the rope and its swaying over the
window-sill proclaimed that the mighty form of the master armourer was
even then on the way upwards towards the dungeon of his chief.

"Go back, I command you, Malise MacKim," he said, "go back instantly.
I have made up my mind. I will not escape from the Castle of Edinburgh
this night."

But Malise answered not a word, only pulled more desperately on the
rope, till the sound of his labouring breath and grasping palms could
be heard from side to side of the chamber.

The Earl leaned further out.

"Malise," he said, calm and clear, "you see this knife. I would not
have your blood on my hands. You have been a good and faithful servant
to our house. But, by the oath of a Douglas, if you come one foot
farther, I will cut the rope and you shall be dashed in pieces
beneath."

The master armourer stopped--not with any fear of death upon him, but
lest a stroke of his master's dirk should destroy their well-arranged
mode of escape.

"O Earl William, my dear lord, hear me," he said in a gasping voice,
still hanging perilously between earth and heaven. "If I have indeed
been a faithful servant, I beseech you come with me--for the sake of
the house of Douglas and of your mother, a widow and alone."

"Go down, Malise MacKim," said the Earl, more gently; "I will speak
with you only at the rope's foot."

So very unwillingly Malise went back.

"Now," said the Earl, "hearken--this will I do and no other. I will
remain here and abide that which shall befall me, as is the will of
God. I am bound by a tie that I cannot break. What life is to another,
honour and his word must be to a Douglas. But I send your son Sholto
to you. I bid him ride fast to Galloway and bring all that are
faithful with speed here to Edinburgh. Go also into Douglasdale and
tell my cousin William of Avondale--and if he is too late to save, I
know well he will avenge me."

"O William Douglas, if indeed ye will neither fleech nor drive, I pray
you for the sake of the great house to send your brother David, that
the Douglases of the Black be not cut off root and branch. Remember,
your mother is sore set on the lad."

"I will not go," cried David, as he heard this; "by the saints I will
stand by my brother's shoulder, though I be but a boy! I will not go
so much as a step, and if by force ye stir me I will cry for the
guard!"

By this time the young David was leaning half out of the window, and
almost shouting out his words down to the unseen Douglases beneath.

"Go, Sholto," said the Earl, setting his hand on his squire's
shoulder. "You alone can ride to Galloway without drawing rein. Go
swiftly and bring back every true lad that can whang bow, or gar
sword-iron whistle. The Douglas must drie the Douglas weird. I would
have made you a great man, Sir Sholto, but if you get a new master, he
will surely do that which I had not time to perform."

"Come, Sholto," said his father, "there is a horse at the outer port.
I fear the Crichton's men are warned. As it is we shall have to fight
for it."

Sholto still hesitated, divided between obedience and grief.

"Sholto MacKim," said the Earl, "if indeed you owe me aught of love or
service, go and do that thing which I have laid upon you. Bear a
courteous greeting from me to your sweetheart Maud, and a kiss to our
Maid Margaret. And now haste you and begone!"

Sholto bent a moment on his knee and kissed the hand of his young
master. His voice was choked with sobs. The Earl patted him on the
shoulder. "Dinna greet, laddie," he said, in the kindly country speech
which comes so meltingly to all Galloway folk in times of distress,
gentle and simple alike, "dinna greet. If one Douglas fall in the
breach, there stands ever a better behind him."

"But never one like you, my lord, my lord!" said Sholto.

The Earl raised him gently, led him to the window, and himself
steadied the rope by which his squire was to descend.

"Go!" he said; "honour keeps the Douglas here, and his brother bides
with him--since not otherwise it may be. But the honour of obedience
sends Sholto MacKim to the work that is given him!"

Then, after the captain of his guard had gone out into the dark and
disappeared down the rope, the Earl only waited till the tension
slackened before stooping and cutting the cord at the point of
juncture with the iron ring.

"And now, Davie lad," he said, setting an arm about his brother's
neck, "there are but you and me for it, and I think a bit prayer would
not harm either of us."

So the two young lads, being about to die, kneeled down together
before the cross of Him who was betrayed with a kiss.




CHAPTER XXXV

THE LION AT BAY


The morning had broken broad and clear from the east when the door of
the prison-house was opened, and a seneschal appeared. He saluted the
brothers, and in a shaking voice summoned them to come forth and be
tried for offences of treason and rebellion against the King and his
ministers.

William of Douglas waved a hand to him, but answered nothing to the
summons. He wasted no words upon one who merely did as he was bidden.
All night the brothers had sat looking out on the city humming
sleeplessly beneath them, till the light slowly dawned over the Forth
and away to the eastward Berwick Law stood dwarfed and clear. At first
they had sat apart, but as the hours stole on David came a little
nearer and his hand sought that of his brother, clasped it, and abode
as it had been contented. The elder brother returned the pressure.

"David," he said, "if perish we must, at least you and I will show
them how Douglases can die."

So when they rose to follow the seneschal who summoned them, as they
left the chamber of detention and the clanking guard fell in behind
them, Earl William put his hand affectionately on his young brother's
shoulder and kept it there. In this wise they came into the great
hall wherein yester-even the banquet of treachery had been served. The
dais had been removed to the upper end of the room, and upon it in the
furred robes of judges of the realm, there sat on either side of the
empty throne Crichton the Chancellor and Sir Alexander Livingston.
Behind were crowded groups of knights, pages, men-at-arms, and all the
hangers-on of a court. But of men of dignity and place only the
Marshal de Retz, ambassador of the King of France, was present.

He sat alone on a high seat ranged crosswise upon the dais. The floor
in the centre of the hall was kept clear for the entrance of the
brothers of Douglas.

Crichton and Livingston looked uneasily at each other as the feet of
the guard conducting the prisoners were heard in the corridor without,
and with a quick, apprehensive wave of his hand Crichton motioned the
armed men of his guard closer about him, and gave their leader
directions in a hushed voice behind his palm.

The seneschal who had summoned them strode in first, and then after a
sufficient interval entered the young Lords of Douglas, William and
David his brother. The elder still kept one hand affectionately on the
shoulder of the younger. His other was set as usual in the silken belt
which he wore about his waist, and he walked carelessly, with a high
air and an easy step, like one that goes in expectantly to a pleasant
entertainment.

But as soon as the brothers perceived in whose presence they were, an
air of pride came over their faces and stiffened their figures into
the sterner aspect of warriors who stand on the field of battle.

Some three paces before the steps of the dais on which sat the
self-constituted judges was arranged a barrier of strong wooden posts
tipped with iron, and two soldiers with drawn swords were on guard at
either end.

The Douglases stood silent, haughtily awaiting the first words of
accusation. And the face of young David was to the full as haughty and
contemptuous as that of Earl William himself.

It was the Chancellor who spoke first, in his high rasping creak.

"William, Earl of Douglas, and you David, called the Master of
Douglas," he began, "you are summoned hither by the King's authority
to answer for many crimes of treason against his royal person--for
rebellion also and the arming of forces against his authority--for
high speeches and studied contempt of those who represent his
sovereign Majesty in this realm, for treasonable alliances with rebel
lords, and above all for swearing allegiance to another monarch, even
to the King of France. What have you to say to these charges?"

The Earl of Douglas swept his eyes across the dais from side to side
with a slow contempt which made the Chancellor writhe in his chair.
Then after a long pause he deigned to reply, but rather like a king
who grants a favour than like one accused before judges in whose hands
is the power of life and death.

"I see," said he, "two knights before me on a high seat, one the
King's tutor, the other his purse-bearer. I have yet to learn who
constituted them judges of any cause whatsoever, still less of aught
that concerns William Douglas, Duke of Touraine, Earl of Douglas,
hereditary Lieutenant-Governor of the realm of Scotland."

And he kept his eyes upon them with a straight forth-looking glance,
palpably embarrassing to the traitors on the dais.

"Earl Douglas," said the Chancellor again, "pray remember that you are
not now in Castle Thrieve. Your six thousand horsemen wait not in the
courtyard out there. Learn to be more humble and answer to the things
whereof you are accused. Do you desire that witness should be
brought?"

"Of what need are witnesses? I own no court or jurisdiction. I have
heard no accusations!" said the Earl William.

The Chancellor motioned with his hand, whereupon Master Robert Berry,
a procurator of the city, advanced and read a long parchment which set
forth in phrase and detail of legality twenty accusations against the
Earl,--of treason, rebellion, and manifest oppression.

When he had finished the Chancellor said, "And now, Earl Douglas, what
answer have you to these things?"

"Does it matter at all what I answer?" asked the Earl, succinctly.

"I do not bandy words with you," said the Chancellor; "I order you to
make your pleading, or stand within your danger."

"And yet," said William Douglas, gravely, "words are all that you dare
bandy with me. Even if I honoured you by laying aside my dignities and
consented to break a lance with you, you would refuse to afford me
trial by battle, which is the right of every peer accused."

"'Tis a barbarous custom," said the Chancellor; "we will try your case
upon its merit."

The Earl laughed a little mocking laugh.

"It will be somewhat safer," said he, "but haste you and get the sham
done with. I plead nothing. I do not even tell you that you lie. What
doth one expect of a gutter-dog but that it should void the garbage it
hath devoured? But I do ask you, Marshal de Retz, as a brave soldier
and the representative of an honourable King, what you have done with
the Lady Sybilla?"

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