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S. R. Crockett - The Black Douglas

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




The minor note, the dying fall of the innocent voices, tugged at his
heartstrings. He could hear little Magdalen leading the chorus:

_"Margaret Douglas, fresh and fair,
A bunch of roses she shall wear,
Gold and silver by her side,
I know who's her bride."_

It was at "Fair Maid" they were playing, the mystic dance of Southland
maidenhood, at whose vestal rites no male of any age was ever
permitted to be present. The words broke in upon the gloom which
oppressed Sholto's heart. Momentarily he forgot his master and saw
Maud Lindesay with the little Margaret Douglas of whom the children
sang, once again gathering the gowans on the brae sides of Thrieve or
perilously reaching out for purple irises athwart the ditches of the
Isle.

_"Take her by the lily-white hand,
Lead her o'er the water;
Give her kisses, one, two, three,
For she's a lady's daughter."_

As Sholto MacKim listened to the quaint and moving lullaby, suddenly
there came into the field of his vision that which stiffened him into
a statue of breathing marble.

For without clatter of accoutrement or tramp of hoof, without
companion or attendant, a white palfrey had appeared through the green
arches of the woodlands. A girl was seated upon the saddle, swaying
with gentle movement to the motion of her steed. At the sight of her
figure as she came nearer a low cry of horror and amazement broke from
Sholto's lips.

It was the Lady Sybilla.

Yet he knew that he had left her behind him in Edinburgh, the siren
temptress of Earl Douglas, the woman who had led his master into the
power of the enemy, she for whose sake he had refused the certainty
of freedom and life. Anger against this smiling enchantress suddenly
surged up in Sholto's heart.

"Halt there--on your life!" he cried, and urged his wearied steed
forward. Like dry leaves before a winter wind, the children were
dispersed every way by the gust of his angry shout. But the maiden on
the palfrey either heeded not or did not hear.

Whereupon Sholto rode furiously crosswise to intercept her. He would
learn what had befallen his master. At least he would avenge him upon
one--the chiefest and subtlest of his enemies. But not till he had
come within ten paces did the Lady Sybilla turn upon him the fulness
of her regard. Then he saw her face. It broke upon him sudden as the
sight of imminent hell to one sure of salvation. He had expected to
find there gratified ambition, sated lust, exultant pride, cruelest
vengeance. He saw instead as it had been the face of an angel cast out
of heaven, or perhaps, rather, of a martyr who has passed through the
torture chamber on her way to the place of burning.

The sight stopped Sholto stricken and wavering. His anger fell from
him like a cloak shed when the sun shines in his strength.

The Lady Sybilla's face showed of no earthly paleness. Marble white it
was, the eyes heavy with weeping, purple rings beneath accentuating
the horror that dwelt eternally in them. The lips that had been as the
bow of Apollo were parted as though they had been singing the dirge of
one beloved, and ever as she rode the tears ran down her cheeks and
fell on her white robe, and lower upon her palfrey's mane.

She looked at Sholto when he came near, but not as one who sees or
recognises. Rather, as it were, dumb, drunken, besotted with grief,
looked forth the soul of the Lady Sybilla upon the captain of the
Douglas guard. She heeded not his angry shout, for another voice rang
in her ears, speaking the knightliest words ever uttered by a man
about to die. Sholto's sword was raised threateningly in his hand, but
Sybilla saw another blade gleam bright in the morning sun ere it fell
to rise again dimmed and red. Therefore she checked not her steed, nor
turned aside, till Sholto laid his fingers upon her bridle-rein and
leaped quickly to the ground, sword in hand, leaving his own beast to
wander where it would.

"What do you here?" he cried. "Where is my master? What have they done
to him? I bid you tell me on your life!"

Sholto's voice had no chivalrous courtesy in it now. The time for that
had gone by. He lowered his sword point and there was tense iron in
the muscles of his arm. He was ready to kill the temptress as he would
a beautiful viper.

The Lady Sybilla looked upon him, but in a dazed fashion, like one who
rests between the turns of the rack. In a little while she appeared to
recognise him. She noted the sword in his hand, the death in his
eye--and for the first time since the scene in the courtyard of
Edinburgh Castle, she smiled.

Then the fury in Sholto's heart broke suddenly forth.

"Woman," he cried, "show me cause why I should not slay you. For, by
God, I will, if aught of harm hath overtaken my master. Speak, I bid
you, speak quickly, if you have any wish to live."

But the Lady Sybilla continued to smile--the same dreadful, mocking
smile--and somehow Sholto, with his weapon bare and his arm nerved to
the thrust, felt himself grow weak and helpless under the stillness
and utter pitifulness of her look.

"You would kill me--kill _me_, you say--" the words came low and
thrilling forth from lips which were as those of the dead whose chin
has not yet been bound about with a napkin, "ah, would that you could!
But you cannot. Steel will not slay, poison will not destroy, nor
water drown Sybilla de Thouars till her work be done!"

Sholto escaped from the power of her eye.

"My master--" he gasped, "my master--is he well? I pray you tell me."

Was it a laugh he heard in answer? Rather a sound, not of human mirth
but as of a condemned spirit laughing deep underground. Then again the
low even voice replied out of the expressionless face.

"Aye, your master is well."

"Ah, thank God," burst forth Sholto, "he is alive."

The Lady Sybilla moved her hand this way and that with the gesture of
a blind man groping.

"Hush," she said, "I only said that he was well. And he is well. As I
am already in the place of torment, I know that there is a heaven for
those who die as William Douglas died."

Sholto's cry rang sudden, loud, despairing.

"Dead--dead--Earl William dead--my master dead!"

He dropped the palfrey's rein, which till now he had held. His sword
fell unheeded on the turf, and he flung himself down in an agony of
boyish grief. But from her white palfrey, sitting still where she was,
the maiden watched the paroxysms of his sorrow. She was dry eyed now,
and her face was like a mask cut in snow.

Then as suddenly recalling himself, Sholto leaped from the ground,
snatched up his sword, and again passionately advanced upon the Lady
Sybilla.

"You it was who betrayed him," he cried, pointing the blade at her
breast; "answer if it were not so!"

"It is true I betrayed him," she answered calmly.

"You whom he loved--God knows how unworthily--"

"God knows," she said simply and calmly.

"You betrayed him to his death. Why then should not I kill you?"

Again she smiled upon him that disarming, hopeless, dreadful smile.

"Because you cannot kill me. Because it were too crowning a mercy to
kill me. Because, for three inches of that blade in my heart, I would
bless you through the eternities. Because I must do the work that
remains--"

"And that work is--?"

"Vengeance!!"

Sholto was silent, trying to piece things together. He found it hard
to think. He was but a boy, and experience so strange as that of the
Lady Sybilla was outside him. Yet vaguely he felt that her emotion was
real, more real perhaps than his own instinct of crude slaying--the
desire of the wasp whose nest has been harried to sting the first
comer. This woman's hatred was something deadlier, surer, more
persistent.

"Vengeance--" he said at last, scarce knowing what he said, "why
should you, who betrayed him, speak of avenging him?"

"Because," said the Lady Sybilla, "I loved him as I never thought to
love man born of woman. Because when the fiends of the pit tie me limb
to limb, lip to lip, with Judas who sold his master with a kiss, when
they burn me in the seventh hell, I shall remember and rejoice that to
the last he loved me, believed in me, gloried in his love for me. And
God who has been cruel to me in all else, will yet do this thing for
me. He will not let William Douglas know that I deceived him or that
he trusted me in vain."

"But the Vengeance that you spoke of--what of that?" said Sholto,
dwelling upon that which was uppermost in his own thought.

"Aye," said the Lady Sybilla, "that alone can be compassed by me. For
I am bound by a chain, the snapping of which is my death. To him who,
in a far land, devised all these things, to the man who plotted the
fall of the Douglas house--to Gilles de Retz, Marshal of France, I am
bound. But--I shall not die--even you cannot kill me, till I have
brought that head that is so high to the hempen cord, and delivered
the foul fiend's body to the fires of both earth and hell."

"And the Chancellor Crichton--the tutor Livingston--what of them?"
urged Sholto, like a Scot thinking of his native traitors.

The Lady Sybilla waved a contemptuous hand.

"These are but lesser rascals--they had been nothing without their
master and mine. You of the Douglas house must settle with them."

"And why have you returned to this country of Galloway?" said Sholto.
"And why are you thus alone?"

"I am here," said the Lady Sybilla, "because none can harm me with my
work undone. I travel alone because it suits my mood to be alone,
because my master bade me join him at your town of Kirkcudbright,
whence, this very night, he takes ship for his own country of
Brittany."

"And why do you, if as you say you hate him so, continue to follow
him?"

"Ah, you are simple," she said; "I follow him because it is my fate,
and who can escape his doom? Also, because, as I have said, my work is
not yet done."

She relapsed into her former listless, forth-looking, unconscious
regard, gazing through him as if the young man had no existence. He
dropped the rein and the point of his sword with one movement. The
white palfrey started forward with the reins loose on its neck. And as
she went the eyes of the Lady Sybilla were fixed on the distant hills
which hid the sea.

So, leaving Sholto standing by the lakeside with bowed head and abased
sword, the strange woman went her way to work out her appointed task.

But ere the Lady Sybilla disappeared among the trees, she turned and
spoke once more.

"I have but one counsel, Sir Knight. Think no more of your master. Let
the dead bury their dead. Ride to Thrieve and never once lose sight of
her whom you call your sweetheart, nor yet of her charge, Margaret
Douglas, the Maid of Galloway, till the snow falls and winter comes
upon the land."




CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE MACKIMS COME TO THRIEVE


Sholto MacKim stood watching awhile as the white palfrey disappeared
with its rider into the purple twilight of the woods which barred the
way to the Solway. Then with a violent effort of will he recalled
himself and looked about for his horse. The tired beast was gently
cropping the lush dewy herbage on the green slope which led downwards
to his native cottage. Sholto took the grey by the bridle and walked
towards his mother's door, pondering on the last words of the Lady
Sybilla. A voice at once strenuous and familiar broke upon his ear.

"Shoo wi' you, impident randies that ye are, shoo! Saw I ever the like
aboot ony decent hoose? Thae hens will drive me oot o' my mind!
Sholto, lad, what's wrang? Is't your faither? Dinna tell me it's your
faither."

"It is more bitter than that, mither mine."

"No the Earl--surely no the Earl himsel'--the laddie that I hae
nursed--the laddie that was to Barbara Halliburton as her ain dear
son!"

"Mother, it is the Earl and young David too. They are dead, betrayed
into the hands of their enemies, cruelly and treacherously slain!"

Then the keening cry smote the air as Barbara MacKim sank on her knees
and lifted up her hands to heaven.

"Oh, the bonny laddies--the twa bonny, bonny laddies! Mair than my ain
bairns I loved them. When their ain mother wasna able for mortal
weakness to rear him, William Douglas drew his life frae me. What for,
Sholto, are ye standin' there to tell the tale? What for couldna ye
have died wi' him? Ae mither's milk slockened ye baith. The same arms
cradled ye. I bade ye keep your lord safe wi' your body and your soul.
And there ye daur to stand, skin-hale and bane unbroken, before your
mither. Get hence--ye are nae son o' Barbara MacKim. Let me never look
on your face again, gin ye bringna back the pride o' the warld, the
gladness o' the auld withered heart o' her ye ca' your mither!"

"Mother," said Sholto, "my lord was not dead when I left him--he sent
me to raise the country to his rescue."

"And what for then are ye standin' there clavering, and your lord in
danger among his foes?" cried his mother, angrily.

"Dear mother, I have something more to tell ye--"

"Aye, I ken, ye needna break the news. It is that Malise, my man, is
dead--that Laurence, wha ran frae the Abbey to gang wi' him to the
wars, is nae mair. Aweel they are worthily spent, since they died for
their chief! Ye say that ye were sent to raise the clan--then what
seek ye at the Carlinwark? To Thrieve, man, to Thrieve; as hard as ye
can ride! To Castle Thrieve!"

"Mother," said Sholto, still more gently, "hearken but a moment.
Thirty thousand men are on their way to Edinburgh. Three days and
nights have I ridden without sleep. Douglasdale is awake. The Upper
Ward is already at the gates of the city. To a man, Galloway is on
the march. The border is aflame. But it is all too late already, I
have had news of the end. Before ever a man could reach within miles,
the fatal axe had fallen, and my lords, for whom each one of us would
gladly have died with smiles upon our faces, lay headless in the
courtyard of Edinburgh Castle."

"And if the laddies were alive when ye rode awa', wha brocht the news
faster than my Sholto could ride--tell me that?"

"I came not directly to Galloway, mother. First I raised the west from
Strathaven to Ayr. Thence I carried the news to Dumfries and along the
border side. But to-day I have seen the Lady Sybilla on her way to
take ship for France. From her I heard the news that all I had done
was too late."

"That foreigneerin' randy! Wad ye believe the like o' her? Yon woman
that they named 'Queen o' Beauty' at the tournay by the Fords o'
Lochar!--Certes, I wadna believe her on oath, no if she swore on the
blessed banes o' Saint Andro himsel'. To the castle, man, or I'll kilt
my coats and be there afore you to shame ye!"

"I go, mother," said Sholto, trying vainly to stem the torrent of
denunciation which poured upon him; "I came only to see that all was
well with you."

"And what for should a' be weel wi' me? What can be ill wi' me, if it
be not to gang on leevin' when the noblest young men in the warld--the
lad that was suckled at my bosom, lies cauld in the clay. Awa wi' ye,
Sholto MacKim, and come na back till ye hae rowed every traitor in the
same bloody windin' sheet!"

The foster mother of the Douglases sank on the ground in the dusk,
leaning against the wall of her house. She held her face in her hands
and sobbed aloud, "O Willie, Willie Douglas, mair than ony o' my ain I
loed ye. Bonny were ye as a bairn. Bonny were ye as a laddie. Bonny
abune a' as a noble young man and the desire o' maidens' e'en. But
nane o' them a' loed ye like poor auld Barbara, that wad hae gien her
life to pleasure ye. And noo she canna even steek thae black, black
e'en, nor wind the corpse-claith aboot yon comely limbs--sae straight
and bonny as they were--I hae straiked and kissed sae oft and oft. O
wae's me--wae's me! What will I do withoot my bonny laddies!"

It was with the sound of his mother's lament still in his ears that
Sholto rode sadly over the hill to Thrieve. The way is short and easy,
and it was not long before the captain of the guard looked down upon
the lights of the castle gleaming through the gathering gloom. But
instead of being, as was its wont, lighted from highest battlement to
flanking tower, only one or two lamps could be discerned shining out
of that vast cliff of masonry.

But, on the other hand, lights were to be seen wandering this way and
that over the long Isle of Thrieve, following the outlines of its
winding shores, shining from the sterns of boats upon the pools of the
Dee water, weaving intricately among the broomy braes on either side
of the ford, and even streaming out across the water meadows of
Balmaghie.

Sholto was so full of his own sorrow and the certain truth of the
terrible news he must bring home to the Lady of Douglas and those two
whom he loved, Maud Lindesay and her fair maid, that he paid little
heed to these wandering lanterns and distant flaring torches.

He was pausing at the bridge head to wait the lowering of the
draw-chains, when out of the covert above him there dashed a desperate
horseman, who stayed neither for bridge nor ford, but rode straight at
the eastern castle pool where it was deepest. To the stirrup clung
another figure strange and terrible, seen in the uncertain light from
the gate-house and in the pale beams of the rising moon.

The drawbridge clattered down, and sending his spurs home into the
flanks of his tired steed, in a moment more Sholto was hard on the
track of the first headlong horseman. Scarce a length separated them
as they reached the outer guard of the castle. Abreast they reined
their horses in the quadrangle, and in a moment Sholto had recognised
in the rider his brother Laurence, pale as death, and the figure that
had clung to the stirrup as the horse took the water, was his father,
Malise MacKim.

Thus in one moment came the three MacKims to the door-step of Thrieve.

The clatter and cry of their arrival brought a pour of torches from
every side of the isle and from within the castle keep.

"Have you found them--where are they?" came from every side. But
Laurence seemed neither to hear nor see.

"Where is my lady?" he cried in a hoarse man's voice; and again,
"Instantly I must see my lady."

Sholto stood aside, for he knew that these two brought later tidings
than he. Presently he went over to his father, who was leaning panting
upon a stone post, and asked him what were the news. But Malise thrust
him back apparently without recognising him.

"My lady," he gasped, "I would see my lady!"

Then through the torches clustered about the steps of the castle came
the tall, erect figure of the Earl's mother, the Countess of Douglas.
She stood with her head erect, looking down upon the MacKims and upon
the dropped heads and heaving shoulders of their horses. Above and
around the torches flared, and their reek blew thwartwise across the
strange scene.

"I am here," she said, speaking clearly and naturally; "what would ye
with the Lady of Douglas?"

Thrice Laurence essayed to speak, but his ready tongue availed him not
now. He caught at his horse's bridle to steady him and turned weakly
to his father.

"Do you speak to my lady--I cannot!" he gasped.

A terrible figure was Malise MacKim, the strong man of Galloway, as he
came forward. Stained with the black peat of the morasses, his armour
cast off piecemeal that he might run the easier, his under-apparel
torn almost from his great body, his hair matted with the blood which
still oozed from an unwashed wound above his brow.

"My lady," he said hoarsely, his words whistling in his throat, "I
have strange things to tell. Can you bear to hear them?"

"If you have found my daughter dead or dying, speak and fear not!"

"I have things more terrible than the death of many daughters to tell
you!"

"Speak and fear not--an it touch the lives of my sons, speak freely.
The mother of the Douglases has learned the Douglas lesson."

"Then," said Malise, sinking his head upon his breast, "God help you,
lady, your two sons are dead!"

"Is David dead also?" said the Lady of Douglas.

"He is dead," replied Malise.

The lady tottered a little as she stood on the topmost step of the
ascent to Thrieve. One or two of the torch-bearers ran to support her.
But she commanded herself and waved them aside.

"God--He is the God," she said, looking upwards into the black night.
"In one day He has made me a woman solitary and without children. Sons
and daughter He has taken from me. But He shall not break my heart.
No, not even He. Stand up, Malise MacKim, and tell me how these things
came to pass."

And there in the blown reek of torches and the hush of the courtyard
of Thrieve Malise told all the tale of the Black Dinner and the fatal
morning, of the short shrift and the matchless death, while around him
strong men sobbed and lifted up right hands to swear the eternal
vengeance.

But alone and erect as a banner staff stood the mother of the dead.
Her eyes were dry, her lips compressed, her nostrils a little
distended like those of a war-horse that sniffs the battle from afar.
Outside the castle wall the news spread swiftly, and somewhere in the
darkness a voice set up the Celtic keen.

"Bid that woman hold her peace. I will hear the news and then we will
cry the slogan. Say on, Malise!"

Then the smith told how his horse had broken down time and again, how
he had pressed on, running and resting, stripped almost naked that he
might keep up with his son, because that no ordinary charger could
long carry his great weight.

Then when he had finished the Lady of Thrieve turned to Sholto--"And
you, captain of the guard, what have you done, and wherefore left you
your master in his hour of need?"

Then succinctly and to the point Sholto spoke, his father and Laurence
assenting and confirming as he told of the Earl's commission and of
how he had accomplished those things that were laid upon him.

"It is well," said the lady, calmly, "and now I also will tell you
something that you do not know. My little daughter, whom ye call the
Fair Maid of Galloway, with her companion, Mistress Maud Lindesay,
went out more than twelve hours agone to the holt by the ford to
gather hazelnuts, and no eye of man or woman hath seen them since."

And, even as she spoke, there passed a quick strange pang through the
heart of Sholto. He remembered the warning of the Lady Sybilla. Had he
once more come too late?




CHAPTER XXXIX

THE GIFT OF THE COUNTESS


It was the Countess of Douglas who commanded that night in the Castle
of Thrieve. Sholto wished to start at once upon the search for the
lost maidens. But the lady forbade him.

"There are a thousand searchers who during the night will do all that
you could do--and better. To-morrow we shall surely want you. You have
been three nights without sleep. Take your rest. I order you in your
master's name."

And on the bare stone, outside Maud Lindesay's empty room, Sholto
threw himself down and slept as sleep the dead.

But that night, save about the chamber where abode the mother of the
Douglases, the hum of life never ceased in the great Castle of
Thrieve. Whether my lady slept or not, God knows. At any rate the door
was closed and there was silence within.

Sholto awoke smiling in the early dawn. He had been dreaming that he
and Maud Lindesay were walking on the shore together. It was a lonely
beach with great driftwood logs whereon they sat and rested ere they
took hands again and walked forth on their way. In his dream Maud was
kind, her teasing, disdainful mood quite gone. So Sholto awoke
smiling, but in a moment he wished that he had slept on.

He lay a space, becoming conscious of a pain in his heart--the
overnight pain of a great disaster not yet realised. For a little he
knew not what it was. Then he saw himself lying at Maud's open door,
and he remembered--first the death of his masters, then the loss of
the little maid, and lastly that of Maud, his own winsome sweetheart
Maud. In another moment he had leaped to his feet, buckled his
sword-belt tighter, slung his cloak into a corner, and run downstairs.

The house guard which had ridden to Crichton and Edinburgh had been
replaced from the younger yeomen of the Kelton and Balmaghie levies,
even as the Earl had arranged before his departure. But of these only
a score remained on duty. All who could be spared had gone to join the
march on Edinburgh, for Galloway was set on having vengeance on the
Chancellor and had sworn to lay the capital itself in ashes in revenge
for the Black Dinner of the castle banqueting-hall.

The rest of the guard was out searching for the bonny maids of
Thrieve, as through all the countryside Margaret Douglas and Maud
Lindesay were named.

Eager as Sholto was to accompany the searchers, and though he knew
well that no foe was south of the Forth to assault such a strong place
as Thrieve, he did not leave the castle till he had set all in order
so far as he could. He appointed Andro the Penman and his brother John
officers of the garrison during his absence.

Then, having seen to his accoutrement and providing, for he did not
mean to return till he had found the maids, he went lastly to the
chamber door of the Lady of Douglas to ask her leave to depart.

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