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S. R. Crockett - The Black Douglas

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




"I thank you, my lord," said his son, "but we will not sit down. We
are no longer of one family. We may be your sons in the eye of the law
and in natural fact. But from this day no one of us will break bread,
speak word, hold intimacy or converse with you. So far as in us lies
we will renounce you as our father. We will not, because of the
commandment, rise in rebellion against you. You are Earl of Douglas,
and while you live must rule your own. But for me and my brothers we
will never be your children to honour, your sons to succour, nor your
liegemen to fight for you. We go to offer our services to our cousin
Margaret, the little Maid of Galloway. We will keep her province with
our swords as the last stronghold of the true Douglases of the Black.
I have spoken. Fare you well, my lord!"

During his son's speech the countenance of the newly made Earl of
Douglas grew white and mottled, tallowy white and dull red in turns
showing upon it, like the flesh of a drained ox. He rose unsteadily to
his feet, moving one hand deprecatingly before him, like a helpless
man unexpectedly stricken. His nether lip quivered, pendulous and
piteous, in the midst of his grey beard, and for a moment he strove in
vain with his utterance.

His eyes fell abashed from the cold sternness of his eldest son's
glance, and he seemed to scan the countenances of the younger four for
any token of milder mood.

"James," he said, "ye hear William. Surely ye do not hold with him?
Remember I am your father, and I was aye particular fond o' you,
Jamie. I mind when ye wad rin to sit astride my shoulder. And ye used
to like that fine!"

There were tears in the eyes of the weak, cunning, treacherous-hearted
man. The lips of James Douglas quivered a little, and his voice failed
him, as he strove to answer his father. What he would have said none
knows, but ere he could voice a word, the eyes of his brother, stern
as the law given to Moses on the mount, were bent upon him. He
straightened himself up, and, with a look carefully averted from the
palsied man before him, he said, in a steady tone, "What my brother
William says, I say."

His father looked at him again, as if still hoping against hope for
some kinder word. Then he turned to his younger sons.

"Archie, Hugh, little Jockie, ye willna take part against your ain
faither?"

"We hold with our brothers!" said the three, speaking at once.

At this moment there came running in at the door of the tent a lad of
ten--Henry, the youngest of the Avondale brothers. He stopped short in
the midst, glancing wonderingly from one to the other. His little
sword with which he had been playing dropped from his hand. James the
Gross looked at him.

"Harry," he said, "thy brothers are a' for leavin' me. Will ye gang
wi' them, or bide wi' your faither?"

"Father," said the boy, "I will go with you, if ye will let me help to
kill Livingston and the Chancellor!"

"Come, laddie," said the Earl, "ye understand not these matters. I
will explain to you when we gang back to the braw things in Edinbra'
toon!"

"No, no," cried the boy, stooping to pick up his sword, "I will bide
with my brothers, and help to kill the murderers of my cousins. What
William says, I say."

Then the five young men went out and called for their horses, their
youngest brother following them. And as the flap of the tent fell, and
he was left alone, James the Gross sank his head between his soft,
moist palms, and sobbed aloud.

For he was a weak, shifty, unstable man, loving approval, and a burden
to himself in soul and body when left to bear the consequences of his
acts.

"Oh, my bairns," he cried over and over, "why was I born? I am not
sufficient for these things!"

And even as he sobbed and mourned, the hoofs of his sons' horses rang
down the wind as they rode through the camp towards Galloway. And
little Henry rode betwixt William and James.




CHAPTER XLI

THE WITHERED GARLAND


Meanwhile Sholto fared onwards down the side of the sullen water of
Dee. The dwellers along the bank were all on the alert, and cried many
questions to him about the death of the Earl, most thinking him a
merchant travelling from Edinburgh to take ship at Kirkcudbright.
Sholto answered shortly but civilly, for the inquirers were mostly
decent folk well on in years, whose lads had gone to the levy, and who
naturally desired to know wherefore their sons had been summoned.

In return he asked everywhere for news of any cavalcade which might
have passed that way, but neither from the country folk, nor yet from
hoof-marks upon the grassy banks, could he glean the least information
pertinent to the purpose of his quest.

Not till he came within a few miles of the town did he meet with man
or woman who could give him any material assistance. It was by the
Fords of Tongland that he first met with one Tib MacLellan, who with
much volubility and some sagacity retailed fresh fish to the burghers
of Kirkcudbright and the whole countryside, giving a day to each
district so long as the supply of her staple did not fail.

"Fair good day to ye, mistress!" said Sholto, taking off his bonnet to
the sonsy upstanding fishwife.

"And to you, bonny lad," replied the complimented dame, dropping a
courtesy, "may the corbie never cry at ye nor ill-faured pie juik at
your left elbow. May candle creesh never fa' on ye, red fire burn ye,
nor water scald ye."

Tib was reeling off her catalogue of blessings when Sholto cut her
short.

"Can you tell me, good lady," he asked, in his most insinuating tones,
"if there has been any vessel cleared from the port during these last
weeks?"

"'Deed, sir, that I should ken, for is no my ain sister marriet on
Jock Wabster, wha's cousin by marriage twice removed is the bailie
officer o' the port? So I can advise ye that there was a boat frae the
Isle o' Man wi' herrin's for the great houses, though never a fin o'
them like the halesome fish I carry here in my creel. Wad ye like to
see them, to buy a dozen for the bonny lass that's waiting for ye?
That were a present to recommend ye, indeed--far mair than your gaudy
flowers, fule ballads, and sic like trash!"

"You cannot remember any other ship of larger size than the Manx
fishing-boat?" continued Sholto.

"Weel, no to ca' cleared frae the port," Tib went on, "but there was a
pair o' uncanny-looking foreign ships that lay oot there by the
Manxman's Lake for eight days, and the nicht afore yestreen they gaed
oot with the tide. They were saying aboot the foreshore that they gaed
west to some other port to tak' on board the French monzie that cam'
to the Thrieve at the great tournaying! But I kenna what wad tak' him
awa' to the Fleet or the Ferry Toon o' Cree, and leave a' the
pleasures o' Kirkcudbright ahint him. Forbye sic herrin's as are
supplied by me, Tib MacLellan, at less than cost price--as I houp
your honour will no forget, when in the course o' natur' and the
providence o' God you and her comes to hae a family atween ye."

Sholto promised that he would not forget when the time alluded to
arrived. Then, turning his jennet off the direct road to Kirkcudbright
town, and betaking him through the Ardendee fords, he made all speed
towards a little port upon the water of Fleet, at the point where that
fair moorland stream winds lazily through the water-meadows for a mile
or two, after its brawling passage down from the hills of heather and
before it commits itself to the mother sea.

But it was not until he had long crossed it and reached the lonely
Cassencary shore that Sholto found his first trace of the lost
maidens. For as he rode along the cliffs his keen eye noted a
well-marked trail through the heather approaching the shore at right
angles to his own line of march. The tracks, still perfectly evident
in the grassy places, showed that as many as twenty horses had passed
that way within the last two or three days. He stood awhile examining
the marks, and then, leading his beast slowly by the bridle, he
continued to follow them westward till they became confused and lost
near a little jetty erected by the lairds of Cree and Cassencary for
convenience of traffic with Cumberland and the Isle of Man. Here on
the very edge of the foreshore, blown by some chance wind behind a
stone and wonderfully preserved there, Sholto found a child's chain of
woodbine entwined with daisies and autumnal pheasant's eye. He took it
up and examined it. Some of the flowers were not yet withered. The
inter-weaving was done after a fashion he had taught the little Maid
of Galloway himself, one happy day when he had walked on air with the
glamour of Maud Lindesay's smiles uplifting his heart. For that
tricksome grace had asked him to teach her also, and he remembered the
lingering touch of her fingers ere she could compass the quaint device
of the pheasant's eye peeping out from the midst of each white
festoon.

Then a deep despair settled down on Sholto's spirit. He knew that Maud
Lindesay and the fair Maid of Galloway had undoubtedly fallen into the
power of the terrible Marshal de Retz, Sieur of Machecoul, ambassador
of the King of France, and also many things else which need not in
this place be put on record.




CHAPTER XLII

ASTARTE THE SHE-WOLF


In a dark wainscoted room overlooking that branch of the Seine which
divides the northern part of Paris from the Isle of the City, Gilles
de Retz, lately Chamberlain of the King of France, sat writing. The
hotel had recently been redecorated after the sojourn of the English.
Wooden pavements had again been placed in the rooms where the
barbarians had strewed their rushes and trampled upon their rotting
fishbones. Noble furniture from the lathes of Poitiers, decorated with
the royal ermines of Brittany, stood about the many alcoves. The table
itself whereon the famous soldier wrote was closed in with drawers and
shelves which descended to the floor and seemed to surround the
occupant like a cell.

Before de Retz stood a curious inkstand, made by some cunning jeweller
out of the upper half of a human skull of small size, cut across at
the eye-holes, inverted, and set in silver with a rim of large rubies.
This was filled with ink of a startling vermilion colour.

The document which Gilles de Retz was busy transcribing upon sheets of
noble vellum in this strange ink was of an equally mysterious
character. The upper part had the appearance of a charter engrossed by
the hand of some deft legal scribe, but the words which followed were
as startling as the vehicle by means of which they were made to stand
out from the vellum.

"Unto Barran-Sathanas; Lord most glorious and puissant in hell
beneath and in the earth above, I, his unworthy servitor Gilles de
Retz, make my vows, hereby forever renouncing God, Christ, and the
Blessed Saints."

To this appalling introduction succeeded many lines of close and
delicate script, interspersed with curious cabalistic signs, in which
that of the cross reversed could frequently be detected. Gilles de
Retz wrote rapidly, rising only at intervals to throw a fresh log of
wood across the vast iron dogs on either side of the wide fireplace,
as the rain from the northwest beat more and more fiercely upon the
small glazed panes of the window and howled among the innumerable
gargoyles and twisted roof-stacks of the Hotel de Pornic.

Within the chamber itself, in the intervals of the storm, a low
continuous growling made itself evident. At first it was disregarded
by the writer, but presently, by its sheer pertinacity, the sound so
irritated him that he rose from his seat, and, striding to a narrow
door covered with a heavy curtain, he threw it wide open to the wall.
Then through the black oblong so made, a huge and shaggy she-wolf
slouched slowly into the room.

The marshal kicked the brute impatiently with his slippered foot as
she entered, and, strange to relate, the wolf slunk past him with the
cowed air of a dog conscious of having deserved punishment.

"Astarte, vilest beast," he cried, "have I not a thousand times warned
you to be silent and wait outside when I am at work within my
chamber?"

The she-wolf eyed her master as he went back towards his table. Then,
seeing him lift his pen, with a sigh of content she dropped down upon
the warm hearthstone, lying with her haunches towards the blazing logs
and her bristling head couched upon her paws. Her yellow shining eyes
blinked sleepily and approvingly at him, while with her tongue she
rasped the soft pads of her feet one by one, biting away the fur from
between the toes with her long and gleaming teeth. Presently Astarte
appeared to doze off. Her eyes were shut, her attitude relaxed. But so
soon as ever her master moved even an inch to consult a marked list of
dates which hung on a hook beside him, or leaned over to dip a quill
in his scarlet ink, the flashing yellow eye and the gleam of white
teeth underneath told that Astarte was awake and intently watching
every movement of the worker.

Through the heavy boom of the storm without, the thresh of the rain
upon the lattice casement, and the irregular whipping gusts which
shook the house, the soft wheeze of the engrossing quill could be
heard, the crackle of the burning logs and the heavy regular breathing
of the couchant she-wolf being the only other sounds audible within
the apartment.

Gilles de Retz wrote on, smiling to himself as he added line after
line to his manuscript. His beard shone with a truculent blue-black
lustre. For the moment the aged look had quite gone out of his face.
His cheek appeared flushed with the hues of youth and reinvigorated
hope, yet withal of a youth without innocence or charm. Rather it
seemed as if fresh blood had been injected into the veins of some aged
demon, moribund and cruel, giving, instead of health or grace, only a
new lease of cruelty and lust.

Presently another door opened, the main entrance of the apartment this
time, not the small private portal through which Astarte the wolf had
been admitted. A girl came in, thrusting aside the curtain, and, for
the space of a moment, holding it outstretched with an arm gowned in
pure white before dropping it with a rustle of heavy silken fabric
upon the ground.

The Marshal de Retz wrote on without appearing to be conscious of any
new presence in his private chamber. The girl stood regarding him,
with eyes that blazed with an intent so deadly and a hate so
all-possessing that the yellow treachery in those of Astarte the
she-wolf appeared kind and affectionate by contrast.

At the girl's entrance that shaggy beast had raised herself upon her
fore paws, and presently she gave vent to a low growl, half of
distrust and half of warning, which at once reached the ears of the
busy worker.

Gilles de Retz looked up quickly, and, catching sight of the Lady
Sybilla, with a sweep of his hand he thrust his manuscript into an
open drawer of the escritoire.

"Ah, Sybilla," he said, leaning back in his chair with an air of easy
familiarity, "you are more sparing of your visits to me than of yore.
To what do I owe the pleasure and honour of this one?"

The girl eyed him long before answering. She stood statue-still by the
curtain at the entrance of the apartment, ignoring the chair which the
marshal had offered her with a bow and a courteous wave of his hand.

"I have come," she made answer at last, in the deep even tones which
she had used before the council of the traitors at Stirling, "to
demand from you, Messire Gilles de Retz, what you mean to do with the
little Margaret Douglas and her companion, whom you wickedly
kidnapped from their own country and have brought with you in your
train to France?"

"I have satisfaction in informing you," replied the marshal, suavely,
"that it is my purpose to dispose of both these agreeable young ladies
entirely according to my own pleasure."

The girl caught at her breast with her hand, as if to stay a sudden
spasm of pain.

"Not at Tiffauges--" she gasped, "not at Champtoce?"

The marshal leaned back, enjoying her terror, as one tastes in slow
sips a rare brand of wine. He found the flavour of her fears
delicious.

"No, Sybilla," he replied at last, "neither at Champtoce nor yet at
Tiffauges--for the present, that is, unless some of your Scottish
friends come over to rescue them out of my hands."

"How, then, do you intend to dispose of them?" she urged.

"I shall send them to your puking sister and her child, hiding their
heads and sewing their samplers at Machecoul. What more can you ask?
Surely the young and fair are safe in such worthy society, even if
they may chance to find it a little dull."

"How can I believe him, or know that for once he will forego his
purposes of hell?" Sybilla murmured, half to herself.

The Marshal de Retz smiled, if indeed the contraction of muscles which
revealed a line of white teeth can be called by that name. In the
sense in which Astarte would have smiled upon a defenceless sheepfold,
so Gilles de Retz might have been said to smile at his visitor.

"You may believe me, sweet Lady Sybilla," said the marshal, "because
there is one vice which it is needless for me to practise in your
presence, that of uncandour. I give you my word that unless your
friends come worrying me from the land of Scots, the maids shall not
die. Perhaps it were better to warn any visitors that even at
Machecoul we are accustomed to deal with such cases. Is it not so,
Astarte?"

At the sound of her name the huge wolf rose slowly, and, walking to
her master's knee, she nosed upon him like a favourite hound.

"And if your intent be not that which causes fear to haunt the
precincts of your palaces like a night-devouring beast, and makes your
name an execration throughout Brittany and the Vendee, why have you
carried the little child and the other pretty fool forth from their
country? Was it not enough that you should slay the brothers?
Wherefore was it necessary utterly to cut off the race of the
Douglases?"

"Sybilla, dear sister of my sainted Catherine," purred the marshal,
"it is your privilege that you should speak freely. When it is
pleasing to me I may even answer you. It pleases me now, listen--you
know of my devotion to science. You are not ignorant at what cost, at
what vast sacrifices, I have in secret pushed my researches beyond the
very confines of knowledge. The powers of the underworlds are
revealing themselves to me, and to me alone. Evil and good alike shall
be mine. I alone will pluck the blossom of fire, and tear from hell
and hell's master their cherished mystery."

He paused as if mentally to recount his triumphs, and then continued.

"But at the moment of success I am crossed by a prejudice. The
ignorant people clamour against my life--_canaille_! I regard them
not. But nevertheless their foolish prejudices reach other ears.
Hearken!"

And like a showman he beckoned Sybilla to the window. A low roar of
human voices, fitful yet sustained, made itself distinctly audible
above the shriller hooting of the tempest.

"Open the window!" he commanded, standing behind the curtain.

The girl unhasped the brazen hook and looked out. Beneath her a little
crowd of poor people had collected about a woman who was beating with
bleeding hands upon the shut door of the Hotel de Pornic.

"Justice! justice!" cried the woman, her hands clasped and her long
black hair streaming down her shoulders, "give me my child, my little
Pierre. Yester-eve he was enticed into the monster's den by his
servant Poitou, and I shall never see him more! Give me my boy,
murderer! Restore me my son!"

And the answering roar of the people's voices rose through the open
window to the ears of the marshal. "Give the woman her son, Gilles de
Retz!"

At that moment the woman caught sight of Sybilla. Instantly she
changed her tone from entreaty to fierce denunciation.

"Behold the witch, friends, let us tear her to pieces. She is kept
young and beautiful by drinking the blood of children. Throw thyself
down, Jezebel, that the dogs may eat thee in the streets."

And a shout went up from the populace as Sybilla shut to the window,
shuddering at the horrors which surrounded her.

The Marshal de Retz had not moved, watching her face without regarding
the noise outside. Now he went back to his chair, and bending his
slender white fingers together, he looked up at her.

Presently he struck a silver bell by his side three times, and the
mellow sound pervaded the house.

Poitou appeared instantly at the inner door through which the she-wolf
had entered.

"How does it go?" asked the marshal, with his usual careless easy
grace.

"Not well," said Poitou, shaking his head; "that is, rightly up to a
point, and then--all wrong!"

For the first time the countenance of the marshal appeared troubled.

"And I was sure of success this time. We must try them younger. It is
all so near, yet, strangely it escapes us. Well, Poitou, I shall come
in a little when I have finished with this lady. Tell De Sille to
expect me."

Poitou bowed respectfully and was withdrawing, too well trained to
smile or even lift his eyes to where Sybilla stood by the window.

His master appeared to recollect himself.

"A moment, Poitou--there are some troublesome people of the city
rabble at the door. Bid the guard turn out, and thrust them away. Tell
them to strike not too gently with the flats of their swords and the
butts of their spears."

Gilles de Retz listened for some time after the disappearance of his
familiar. Presently the low droning note of popular execration
changed into sharper exclamations of hatred, mingled with cries of
pain.

Then the marshal smiled, and rubbed his hands lightly one over the
other.

"That's my good lads," he said; "hear the rattle of the spear-hilts
upon the paving-stones? They are bringing the butts into close
acquaintance with certain very ill-shod feet. Ah, now they are gone!"

The marshal took a long breath and went on, half to himself and half
to Sybilla.

"But I own it is all most inconvenient," he said, thoughtfully. "Here
in Paris, in King Charles's country, it does not so greatly matter.
For the affair in Scotland has set me right with the King and in
especial with the Dauphin. By the death of the Douglases I have given
back the duchy of Touraine to the kings of France after three
generations. I have therefore well earned the right to be allowed to
seek knowledge in mine own way."

"The service of the devil is a poor way to knowledge," said the girl.

"Ah, there it is," said the marshal, raising his hand with gentle
deprecation, "even you, who are so highly privileged, are not wholly
superior to vulgar prejudice. I keep a college of priests for the
service of God and the Virgin. They have done me but little good.
Surely therefore I may be allowed a little service of That Other, who
has afforded me such exquisite pleasure and aided me so much. The
Master of Evil knows all things, and he can help whom he will to the
secrets of wealth, of power, and of eternal youth."

"Have you gained any of these by the aid of that Master whom you
serve?" asked the Lady Sybilla, with great quiet in her voice.

"Nay, not yet," cried the marshal, moved for the first time, "not
yet--perhaps because I have sought too eagerly and hotly. But I am now
at least within sight of the wondrous goal. See," he added, with
genuine excitement labouring in his voice, "see--I am still a young
man, yet though I, Gilles de Retz, was born to the princeliest fortune
in France, and by marriage added another, they have both been spent
well nigh to the last stiver in learning the hidden secrets of the
universe. I am still a young man, I say, but look at my whitening
hair, count the deep wrinkles on my forehead, consider my withered
cheek. Have I not tasted all agonies, renounced all delights, and cast
aside all scruples that I might win back my youth, and with it the
knowledge of good and evil?"

Sybilla went to the door and stood again by the curtain.

"Then you swear by your own God that you will let no evil befall the
Scottish maids?" she said.

"I have told you already--let that suffice!" he replied with sudden
coldness; "you know that, like the Master whom I serve, I can keep my
word. I will not harm them, so long as their Scottish kinsfolk come
not hither meddling with my purposes. I have enough of meddlers in
France without adding outlanders thereto! I cannot keep a new and
permanent danger at grass within my gates."

The Lady Sybilla passed through the portal by which she had entered,
without adieu or leave-taking of any kind. Gilles de Retz rose as soon
as the curtain had fallen, and shook himself with a yawn, like one
who has got through a troublesome necessary duty. Then he walked to
the window and looked out. The woman had come back and was kneeling
before the Hotel de Pornic.

[Illustration: A BRIGHT LIGHT AS OF A FURNACE BURNT UP BEFORE HIM, AND
THE HEAT WAS OVERPOWERING AS IT RUSHED LIKE A RUDDY TIDE-RACE AGAINST
HIS FACE.]

At sight of him she cried with sudden shrillness, "My lord, my great
lord, give me back my child--my little Pierre. He is my heart's heart.
My lord, he never did you any harm in all his innocent life!"

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