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S. R. Crockett - The Black Douglas

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




In the centre of the golden glade, and with all their faces mistily
glorified by the evening light, he saw a group of little girls,
singing and dancing as they performed some quaint and graceful
pageant of childhood.

Their young voices came up to him with a wistful, dying fall, and the
slow, graceful movement of the rhythmic dance seemed to affect the
young man strangely. Involuntarily he lifted his close-fitting
feathered cap from his head, and allowed the cool airs to blow against
his brow.

_"See the robbers passing by, passing by, passing by,
See the robbers passing by,
My fair lady!"_

The ancient words came up clearly and distinctly to him, and softened
his heart with the indefinable and exquisite pathos of the refrain
whenever it is sung by the sweet voices of children.

"These are surely but cottars' bairns," he said, smiling a little at
his own intensity of feeling, "but they sing like little angels. I
daresay my sweetheart Magdalen is amongst them."

And he sat still listening, patting Black Darnaway meanwhile on the
neck.

_"What did the robbers do to you, do to you, do to you,
What did the robbers do to you,
My fair lady?"_

The first two lines rang out bold and clear. Then again the
wistfulness of the refrain played upon his heart as if it had been an
instrument of strings, till the tears came into his eyes at the
wondrous sorrow and yearning with which one voice, the sweetest and
purest of all, replied, singing quite alone:

_"They broke my lock and stole my gold, stole my gold, stole my gold,
Broke my lock and stole my gold,
My fair lady!"_

The tears brimmed over in the eyes of William Douglas, and a deep
foreboding of the mysteries of fate fell upon his heart and abode
there heavy as doom.

He turned his head as though he felt a presence near him, and lo!
sudden and silent as the appearing of a phantom, another horse was
alongside of Black Darnaway, and upon a white palfrey a maiden dressed
also in white sat, smiling upon the young man, fair to look upon as an
angel from heaven.

Earl William's lips parted, but he was too surprised to speak.
Nevertheless, he moved his hand to his head in instinctive salutation;
but, finding his bonnet already off, he could only stare at the vision
which had so suddenly sprung out of the ground.

The lady slowly waved her hand in the direction of the children, whose
young voices still rang clear as cloister bells tolling out the
Angelus, and whose white dresses waved in the light wind as they
danced back and forth with a slow and graceful motion.

"You hear, Earl William," she said, in a low, thrilling voice,
speaking with a foreign accent, "you hear? You are a good Christian,
doubtless, and you have heard from your uncle, the Abbot, how praise
is made perfect 'out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.' Hark to
them; they sing of their own destinies--and it may be also of yours
and mine."

And so fascinated and moved at heart at once by her beauty and by her
strange words, the Douglas listened.

_"What did the robbers do to you, do to you, do to you,
What did the robbers do to you,
My fair lady?"_

The lady on the delicately pacing palfrey turned the darkness of her
eyes from the white-robed choristers to the face of the young man.
Then, with an impetuous motion of her hand, she urged him to listen
for the next words, which swept over Earl William's heart with a
cadence of unutterable pain and inexplicable melancholy.

_"They broke my lock and stole my gold, stole my gold, stole my gold,
Broke my lock and stole my gold,
My fair lady!"_

He turned upon his companion with a quick energy, as if he were afraid
of losing himself again.

"Who are you, lady, and what do you here?"

The girl (for in years she was little more) smiled and reined her
steed a little back from him with an air at once prettily petulant and
teasing.

"Is that spoken as William Douglas or as the Justicer of Galloway--a
country where, as I understand, there is no trial by jury?"

The light of a radiant smile passed from her lips into his soul.

"It is spoken as a man speaks to a woman beautiful and queenly," he
said, not removing his eyes from her face.

"I fear I may have startled you," she said, without continuing the
subject. "Even as I came I saw you were wrapped in meditation, and my
palfrey going lightly made no sound on the grass and leaves."

Her voice was so sweet and low that William Douglas, listening to it,
wished that she would speak on for ever.

"The hour grows late," he said, remembering himself. "You must have
far to ride. Let me be your escort homewards if you have none worthier
than I."

"Alas," she answered, smiling yet more subtly, "I have no home near
by. My home is very far and over many turbulent seas. I have but a
maiden's pavilion in which to rest my head. Yet since I and my company
must needs travel through your domains, Earl William, I trust you will
not be so cruel as to forbid us?"

"Yes,"--he was smiling now in turn, and catching somewhat of the gay
spirit of the lady,--"as overlord of all this province I do forbid you
to pass through these lands of Galloway without first visiting me in
my house of Thrieve!"

The lady clapped her hands and laughed, letting her palfrey pace
onwards through the woodland glades bridle free, while Black Darnaway,
compelled by his master's hand, followed, tossing his head indignantly
because it had been turned from the direction of his nightly stable on
the Castle Isle.




CHAPTER III

TWO RIDING TOGETHER


"Joyous," she cried, as they went, "Oh, most joyous would it be to see
the noble castle and to have all the famous two thousand knights to
make love to me at once! To capture two thousand hearts at one sweep
of the net! What would Margaret of France herself say to that?"

"Is there no single heart sufficient to satisfy you, fair maid?" said
the young man, in a low voice; "none loyal enough nor large enough for
you that you desire so many?"

"And what would I do with one if it were in my hands," she said
wistfully; "that is, if it were a worthy heart and one worth the
taking. Ever since I was a child I have always broken my toys when I
tired of them."

The voices of the singing children on the green came more faintly to
their ears, but the words were still clear to be understood.

_"Off to prison you must go, you must go, you must go,
Off to prison you must go,
My fair lady!"_

"You hear? It is my fate!" she said.

"Nay," answered the Earl, passionately, still looking in her eyes.
"Mine, mine--not yours! Gladly I would go to prison or to death for
the love of one so fair!"

"My lord, my lord," she laughed, with a tolerant protest in her voice,
"you keep up the credit of your house right nobly. How goes the
distich? My mother taught it me upon the bridge of Avignon, where also
as here in Scotland the children dance and sing."

"First in the love of Woman,
First in the field of fight,
First in the death that men must die,
Such is the Douglas' right!"

"Here and now," he said, still looking at her, "'tis only the first I
crave."

"Earl William, positively you must come to Court!" she shrilled into
sudden tinkling laughter; "there be ladies there more worthy of your
ardour than a poor errant maiden such as I."

"A Court," cried Earl William, scornfully, "to the Seneschal's court!
Nay, truly. Could a Stewart ever keep his faith or pay his debts?
Never, since the first of them licked his way into a lady's favour."

"Oh," she answered lightly, "I meant not the Court of Stirling nor yet
the Chancellor's Castle of Edinburgh. I meant the only great
Court--the Court of France, the Court of Charles the Seventh, the
Court which already owns the sway of its rarest ornament, your own
Scottish Princess Margaret."

"Thither I cannot go unless the King of France grants me my father's
rights and estates!" he said, with a certain sternness in his tone.

"Let me look at your hand," she answered, with a gentle inclination
of her fair head, from which the lace that had shrouded it now
streamed back in the cool wind of evening.

Stopping Darnaway, the young Earl gave the girl his hand, and the
white palfrey came to rest close beneath the shoulder of the black war
charger.

"To-morrow," she said, looking at his palm, "to-morrow you will be
Duke of Touraine. I promise it to you by my power of divination. Does
that satisfy you?"

"I fear you are a witch, or else a being compound of rarer elements
than mere flesh and blood," said the Earl.

"Is that a spirit's hand," she said, laughing lightly and giving her
own rosy fingers into his, "or could even the Justicer of Galloway
find it in his heart to burn these as part of the body of a witch?"

She shuddered and pretended to gaze piteously up at him from under the
long lashes which hardly raised themselves from her cheek.

"Spirit-slender, spirit-white they are," he replied, "and as for being
the fingers of a witch--doubtless you are a witch indeed. But I will
not burn so fair things as these, save as it might be with the
fervours of my lips."

And he stooped and pressed kiss after kiss upon her hand.

Gently she withdrew her fingers from his grasp and rode further apart,
yet not without one backward glance of perfectest witchery.

"I doubt you have been overmuch at Court already," she said. "I did
not well to ask you to go thither."

"Why must I not go thither?" he asked.

"Because I shall be there," she replied softly, courting him yet again
with her eyes.

As they rode on together through the rich twilight dusk, the young man
observed her narrowly as often as he could.

Her skin was fair with a dazzling clearness, which even the gathering
gloom only caused to shine with a more perfect brilliance, as if a
halo of light dwelt permanently beneath its surface. Faint responsive
roses bloomed on either cheek and, as it seemed, cast a shadow of
their colour down her graceful neck. Dark eyes shone above, fresh and
dewy with love and youth, and smiled out with all ancientest
witcheries and allurements in their depths. Her lithe, slender body
was simply clad in a fair white cloth of some foreign fabric, and her
waist, of perfectest symmetry, was cinctured by a broad ring of solid
silver, which, to the young man, looked so slender that he could have
clasped it about with both his hands.

So they rode on, through the woods mostly, until they reached a region
which to the Earl appeared unfamiliar. The glades were greener and
denser. The trees seemed more primeval, the foliage thicker overhead,
the interspaces of the golden evening sky darker and less frequent.

"In what place may your company be assembled?" he asked. "Strange it
is that I know not this spot. Yet I should recognise each tree by
conning it, and of every rivulet in Galloway I should be able to tell
the name. Yet with shame do I confess that I know not where I am."

"Ah," said the girl, her face growing luminous through the gloom, "you
called me a witch, and now you shall see. I wave my hands, so--and you
are no more in Galloway. You are in the land of faery. I blow you a
kiss, so--and lo! you are no more William, sixth Earl of Douglas and
proximate Duke of Touraine, but you are even as True Thomas, the
Beloved of the Queen of the Fairies, and the slave of her spell!"

"I am indeed well content to be Thomas Rhymer," he answered,
submitting himself to the wooing glamour of her eyes, "so be that you
are the Lady of the milk-white hind!"

"A courtier indeed," she laughed; "you need not to seek your answer.
You make a poor girl afraid. But see, yonder are the lights of my
pavilion. Will it please you to alight and enter? The supper will be
spread, and though you must not expect any to entertain you, save only
this your poor Queen Mab" (here she made him a little bow), "yet I
think you will not be ill content. They do not say that Thomas of
Ercildoune had any cause for complaint. Do you know," she continued, a
fresh gaiety striking into her voice, "it was in this very wood that
he was lost."

But William Douglas sat silent with the wonder of what he saw. Their
horses had all at once come out on a hilltop. The sequestered boskage
of the trees had gradually thinned, finally dwarfing into a green
drift of fern and birchen foliage which rose no higher than Black
Darnaway's chest, and through which his rider's laced boots brushed
till the Spanish leather of their gold-embossed frontlets was all
jetted with gouts of dew.

Before him swept horizonwards a great upward drift of solemn pine
trees, the like of which for size he had never seen in all his domain.
Or so, at least, it seemed in that hour of mystery and glamour. For
behind them the evening sky had dulled to a deep and solemn wash of
blood red, across which lay one lonely bar of black cloud, solid as
spilled ink on a monkish page. But under the trees themselves, blazing
with lamps and breathing odours of all grace and daintiness, stood a
lighted pavilion of rose-coloured silk, anchored to the ground with
ropes of sendal of the richest crimson hue.

"Let your horse go free, or tether him to a pine; in either case he
will not wander far," said the girl. "I fear my fellows have gone off
to lay in provisions. We have taken a day or two more on the way than
we had counted on, so that to-night's feast makes an end of our store.
But still there is enough for two. I bid you welcome, Earl William, to
a wanderer's tent. There is much that I would say to you."




CHAPTER IV

THE ROSE-RED PAVILION


As the young Earl paused a moment without to tether Black Darnaway to
a fallen trunk of a pine, a chill and melancholy wind seemed to rise
suddenly and toss the branches dark against the sky. Then it flew off
moaning like a lost spirit, till he could hear the sound of its
passage far down the valley. An owl hooted and a swart raven
disengaged himself from the coppice about the door of the pavilion,
and fluttered away with a croak of disdainful anger. Black Darnaway
turned his head and whinnied anxiously after his master.

But William Douglas, though little more than a boy if men's ages are
to be counted by years, was yet a true child of Archibald the Grim,
and he passed through the mysterious encampment to the door of the
lighted pavilion with a carriage at once firm and assured. He could
faintly discern other tents and pavilions set further off, with
pennons and bannerets, which the passing gust had blown flapping from
the poles, but which now hung slackly about their staves.

"I would give a hundred golden St. Andrews," he muttered, "if I could
make out the scutcheon. It looks most like a black dragon couchant on
a red field, which is not a Scottish bearing. The lady is French,
doubtless, and passes through from Ireland to visit the Chancellor's
Court at Edinburgh."

The Black Douglas paused a moment at the tent-flap, which, being of
silken fabric lined with heavier material, hung straight and heavy to
the ground.

"Come in, my lord," cried the low and thrilling voice of his companion
from within. "With both hands I bid you welcome to my poor abode. A
traveller must not be particular, and I have only those condiments
with me which my men have brought from shipboard, knowing how poor was
the provision of your land. See, do you not already repent your
promise to sup with me?"

She pointed to the table on which sparkled cut glass of Venice and
rich wreathed ware of goldsmiths' work. On these were set out oranges
and rare fruits of the Orient, such as the young man had never seen in
his own bleak and barren land.

But the Douglas did no more than glance at the luxury of the
providing. A vision fairer and more beautiful claimed his eyes. For
even as he paused in amazement, the lady herself stood before him,
transformed and, as it seemed, glorified. In the interval she had
taken off the cloak which, while on horseback, she had worn falling
from her shoulders. A thin robe of white silk broidered with gold at
once clothed and revealed her graceful and gracious figure, even as a
glove covers but does not conceal the hand upon which it is drawn.
Whether by intent or accident, the collar had been permitted to fall
aside at the neck and showed the dazzling whiteness of the skin
beneath, but at the bosom it was secured by a button set with black
pearls which constituted the lady's only ornament.

Her arms also were bare, and showed in the lamplight whiter than milk.
She had removed the silver belt, and was tying a red silken scarf
about her waist in a manner which revealed a swift grace and lithe
sinuosity of movement, making her beauty appear yet more wonderful and
more desirable to the young man's eyes.

On either side the pavilion were placed folding couches of rosy silk,
and in the corner, draped with rich blue hangings, glimmered the
lady's bed, its fair white linen half revealed. Two embroidered
pillows were at the foot, and on a little table beside it a crystal
ball on a black platter.

No crucifix or _prie-dieu_, such as in those days was in every lady's
bower, could be discerned anywhere about the pavilion.

So soon as the tent-flap had fallen with a soft rustle behind him, the
Earl William abandoned himself to the strange enchantment of his
surroundings. He did not stop to ask himself how it was possible that
such dainty providings had been brought into the midst of his wide,
wild realm of Galloway. Nor yet why this errant damsel should in the
darksome night-time find herself alone on this hilltop with the tents
of her retinue standing empty and silent about. The present sufficed
him. The soft radiance of dark eyes fell upon him, and all the
quick-running, inconsiderate Douglas blood rushed and sang in his
veins, responsive to that subtle shining.

He was with a fair woman, and she not unwilling to be kind. That was
ever enough for all the race of the Black Douglas. What the Red
Douglas loved is another matter. Their ambitions were more reputable,
but greatly less generous.

"My lord," said the lady, giving him her hand, "will you lead me to
the table? I cannot offer you the refreshment of any elaborate
toilet, but here, at least, is wheaten bread to eat and wine of a good
vintage to drink."

"You yourself scarce need such earthly sustenance," he answered
gallantly, "for your eyes have stolen the radiance of the stars, and
'tis evident that the night dews visit your cheek only as they do the
roses--to render them more fresh and fair."

"My lord flatters well for one so young;" she smiled as she seated
herself and motioned him to sit close beside her. "How comes it that
in this wild place you have learned to speak so chivalrously?"

"When one answers beauty the words are somehow given," he said, "and,
moreover, I have not dwelt in grey Galloway all my days."

"You speak French?" she queried in that tongue.

"Ah," she said when he answered, "the divine language. I knew you were
perfect." And so for a long while the young man sat spellbound,
watching the smiles coming and going upon her red and flower-like
lips, and listening to the fast-running ripple of her foreign talk. It
was pleasure enough to hearken without reply.

It seemed no common food of mortal men that was set before William
Douglas, served with the sweep of white arms and the bend of delicate
fingers upon the chalice stem. He did not care to eat, but again and
again he set the wine cup down empty, for the vintage was new to him,
and brought with it a haunting aroma, instinct with strange hopes and
vivid with unknown joys.

The pavilion, with its cords of sendal and its silver hanging lamps,
spun round about him. The fair woman herself seemed to dissolve and
reunite before his eyes. She had let down the full-fed river of her
hair, and it flowed in the Venetian fashion over her white shoulders,
sparkling with an inner fire--each fine silken thread, as it glittered
separate from its fellows, twining like a golden snake.

And the ripple of her laughter played upon the young man's heart
carelessly as a lute is touched by the hands of its mistress.
Something of the primitive glamour of the night and the stars clung to
this woman. It seemed a thing impossible that she should be less pure
than the air and the waters, than the dewy grass beneath and the sky
cool overhead. He knew not that the devil sat from the first day of
creation on Eden wall, that human sin is all but as eternal as human
good, and that passion rises out of its own ashes like the phoenix
bird of fable and stands again all beautiful before us, a creature of
fire and dew.

Presently the lady rose to her feet, and gave the Earl her hand to
lead her to a couch.

"Set a footstool by me," she bade him, "I desire to talk to you."

"You know not my name," she said, after a pause that was like a
caress, "though I know yours. But then the sun in mid-heaven cannot be
hidden, though nameless bide the thousand stars. Shall I tell you
mine? It is a secret; nevertheless, I will tell you if such be your
desire."

"I care not whether you tell me or no," he answered, looking up into
her face from the low seat at her feet. "Birth cannot add to your
beauty, nor sparse quarterings detract from your charm. I have enough
of both, good lack! And little good they are like to do me."

"Shall I tell you now," she went on, "or will you wait till you convoy
me to Edinburgh?"

"To Edinburgh!" cried the young man, greatly astonished. "I have no
purpose of journeying to that town of mine enemies. I have been
counselled oft by those who love me to remain in mine own country. My
horoscope bids me refrain. Not for a thousand commands of King or
Chancellor will I go to that dark and bloody town, wherein they say
lies waiting the curse of my house."

"But you will go to please a woman?" she said, and leaned nearer to
him, looking deep into his eyes.

For a moment William Douglas wavered. For a moment he resisted. But
the dark, steadfast orbs thrilled him to the soul, and his own heart
rose insurgent against his reason.

"I will come if you ask me," he said. "You are more beautiful than I
had dreamed any woman could be."

"I do ask you!" she continued, without removing her eyes from his
face.

"Then I will surely come!" he replied.

She set her hand beneath his chin and bent smilingly and lightly to
kiss him, but with an imprisoned passionate cry the young man suddenly
clasped her in his arms. Yet even as he did so, his eyes fell upon two
figures, which, silent and motionless, stood by the open door of the
pavilion.




CHAPTER V

THE WITCH WOMAN


One of these was Malise the Smith, towering like a giant. His hands
rested on the hilt of a mighty sword, whose blade sparkled in the
lamplight as if the master armourer had drawn it that moment from the
midst of his charcoal fire.

A little in front of Malise there stood another figure, less imposing
in physical proportions, but infinitely more striking in dignity and
apparel. This second was a man of tall and spare frame, of a
countenance grave and severe, yet with a certain kindly power latent
in him also. He was dressed in the white robe of a Cistercian, with
the black scapulary of the order. On his head was the mitre, and in
his hand the staff of the abbot of a great establishment which he
wears when he goes visiting his subsidiary houses. More remarkable
than all was the monk's likeness to the young man who now stood before
him with an expression of indignant surprise on his face, which slowly
merged into anger as he understood why these two men were there.

He recognised his uncle the Abbot William Douglas, the head of the
great Abbey of Dulce Cor upon Solway side.

This was he who, being the son and heir of the brother of the first
Duke of Touraine, had in the flower of his age suddenly renounced his
domains of Nithsdale that he might take holy orders, and who had ever
since been renowned throughout all Scotland for high sanctity and a
multitude of good works.

The pair stood looking towards the lady and William Douglas without
speech, a kind of grim patience upon their faces.

It was the Earl who was the first to speak.

"What seek you here so late, my lord Abbot?" he said, with all the
haughtiness of the unquestioned head of his mighty house.

"Nay, what seeks the Earl William here alone so late?" answered the
Abbot, with equal directness.

The two men stood fronting each other. Malise leaned upon his
two-handed sword and gazed upon the ground.

"I have come," the Abbot went on, after vainly waiting for the young
Earl to offer an explanation, "as your kinsman, tutor, and councillor,
to warn you against this foreign witch woman. What seeks she here in
this land of Galloway but to do you hurt? Have we not heard her with
our own ears persuade you to accompany her to Edinburgh, which is a
city filled with the power and deadly intent of your enemies?"

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