S. R. Crockett - The Black Douglas

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Immediately behind this group, in the shadow of a buttress, Laurence
saw a tall man, masked, clad in a black suit, and with a drawn sword
in his hand.

The marshal looked out over the lad's shoulder.

"The day you are missed from the Castle of Machecoul, or the day that
the rest of your company arrives here, that sword shall fall, but in a
more terrible fashion than I can tell you! That sentinel can neither
hear nor speak, but he has his orders and will obey them. I bid you
good night. Go to your singing in the choir. It is time for the
chanting of vespers in the chapel of the Holy Innocents."

CHAPTER LII

THE JESTING OF LA MEFFRAYE

It was in the White Tower of Machecoul that the Scottish maidens were
held at the mercy of the Lord of Retz. At their first arrival in the
country they had been taken to the quiet Chateau of Pouzauges, the
birthplace of Poitou, the marshal's most cruel and remorseless
confidant. Here, as the marshal had very truly informed the Lady
Sybilla, they had been under the care of--or, rather, fellow-prisoners
with--the neglected wife of Gilles de Retz, and at Pouzauges they had
spent some days of comparative peace and security in the society of
her daughter.

But at the first breath of the coming of the three strangers to the
district they had been seized and securely conveyed to Machecoul
itself--there to be interned behind the vast walls and triple bastions
of that fortress prison.

"I wonder, Maudie," said Margaret Douglas, as they sat on the flat
roof of the White Tower of Machecoul and looked over the battlements
upon the green pine glades and wide seaward Landes, "I wonder whether
we shall ever again see the water of Dee and our mother--and Sholto
MacKim."

It is to be feared that the last part of the problem exceeded in
interest all others in the eyes of Maud Lindesay.

"It seems as if we never could again behold any one we loved or wished
to see--here in this horrible place," sighed Maud Lindesay. "If ever I
get back to the dear land and see Solway side, I will be a different
girl."

"But, Maud," said the little maid, reproachfully, "you were always
good and kind. It is not well done of you to speak against yourself in
that fashion."

Maud Lindesay shook her pretty head mournfully.

"Ah, Margaret, you will know some day," she said. "I have been
wicked,--not in things one has to confess to Father Gawain,
but,--well, in making people like me, and give me things, and come to
see me, and then afterwards flouting them for it and sending them
away."

It was not a lucid description, but it sufficed.

"Ah, but," said Margaret Douglas, "I think not these things to be
wicked. I hope that some day I shall do just the same, though, of
course, I shall not be as beautiful as you, Maudie; no, never! I asked
Sholto MacKim if I would, and he said, 'Of course not!' in a deep
voice. It was not pretty of him, was it, Maud?"

"I think it was very prettily said of him," answered Maud Lindesay,
with the first flicker of a smile on her face. Her conscience was
quite at ease about Sholto. He was different. Whatever pain she had
caused him, she meant to make up to him with usury thereto. The others
she had exercised no more for her own amusement than for their own
souls' good.

"My brother William must indeed be very angry with us, that he hath
never sent to find us and bring us home," went on the little girl. "It
is three months since we met that horrible old woman in the woods
above Thrieve Island, and believed her when she told us that the Earl
had instant need of us--and that Sholto MacKim was with him."

"None saw us taken away. Margaret," said the elder, "and perhaps, who
knows, they may never have found any of the pieces of flower garlands
I threw down before they put us in the boats from the beach of
Cassencary."

But the eyes of the little Maid of Galloway were now fixed upon
something in the green courtyard below.

"Maud, Maud, come hither quickly!" she whispered; "if yonder be not
Laurence MacKim talking to the singing lads and dressed like
them--why, then, I do not know Laurie MacKim!"

Maud came quickly now. Her face and neck blushed suddenly crimson with
the springing of hope in her heart.

She looked down, and there, far below them indeed, but yet distinct
enough, they saw Laurence daring Blaise Renouf to single combat and
vaunting his Irish prowess, as we have already seen him do. Maud
Lindesay caught her companion's hand as she looked.

"They have found us," she whispered; "at least, they are seeking for
us. If Laurence is here, I warrant Sholto cannot be very far away. Oh,
Margaret, am I looking very ill? Will he think I am as--(she paused
for a word)--as comely as he thought me before in Scotland? Or have I
grown old and ugly with being shut up so long?"

But the Maid of Galloway heard her not. She was pondering on the
meaning of Laurence's presence in the Castle of Machecoul.

"Perhaps William hath sent Laurence to spy us out, and is even now
coming from his French duchy with an army. He is a far greater man
than the marshal, and will make him give us up as soon as he finds out
where we are. Shall I call down to Laurie to let him know that we are
here?"

Maud put her hand hastily over her companion's mouth.

"Hush!" she said, "we must not appear to know him, or they will surely
kill him--and perhaps the others, too. If Laurence is here, I wot well
that help is not far away. Let us be patient and abide. Come back from
the wall and sit by me as if nothing, had happened."

But all the same she kept her own place in a spot where she could
command the pleasaunce below, and looked longingly yet fearfully to
see Sholto follow his brother across the green sward.

* * * * *

"Sweet and fair is the air of the evening," purred behind them a low
voice--that of the woman who was called La Meffraye. "It brings the
colour to the cheeks of the young. But I am old and wise, and I would
advise that two maids so fair should not look down on the sports of
the youths, lest they hear and see more than is fitting for such
innocent eyes."

The girls turned away without looking at their custodian, who stood
leaning upon her little hand crutch and smiling upon them her terrible
soft smile.

"Ah," she said, "proud, are you? 'Tis an ill place to bring pride to,
this Castle of Machecoul. You will not deign to speak a word to a poor
old woman now. But the day is not far distant when I shall have my
pretty spitfire clinging about these old trembling knees, and
beseeching me whom you despise, as a woman either to save you or kill
you--you will not care which. _As a woman!_ Ha! ha! How long is it
since La Meffraye was a woman? Was she ever rocked in a cradle? Did
she play about any cottage door and fashion daisy chains, as I have
seen you do, my pretties, long ere you came to Machecoul or even heard
of the Sieur de Retz? Hath La Meffraye ever lain in any man's
bosom--save as the tigress crouches upon her prey?"

She paused and smiled still more bitterly and malevolently than before
upon the two maidens.

"Did you chance to be awake yester-even?" she went on. "Aye, I know
well that you were awake. La Meffraye saw right carefully to that. And
you heard the crying that rang out of yonder high window, from which
the light streamed all through the night. Wait, wait, my pretties,
till it is your turn to be sent for up thither, when the shining knife
is sharpened and the red fire kindled. You will not despise La
Meffraye when that day comes. You will grovel and weep, and then will
La Meffraye spurn you with her foot, till the noise of your crying be
borne out over the forest, and for very gladness the wolves howl in
the darkness."

The little Maid of Galloway was moved to answer, and her lips
quivered. But Maud Lindesay sat pale and motionless, looking towards
the north, from which she hoped for help to come.

"Our brother, the Earl of Douglas, will bring an army from his dukedom
of Touraine, and sweep you and your castle from the face of the earth,
if your master dares to lay so much as a finger upon us."

La Meffraye laughed a low, cackling laugh, and in the act showed the
four long eye-teeth which were the sole remaining dental equipment of
her mouth.

"Oh, Great Barran--" she chuckled, "listen to the pretty fool! Our
brother will do this--our brother will do that. _Our_ brother will
lick the country of Retz as clean as a dog licks a platter. Know you
not, silly fool, that both your brothers are long since dead and under
sod in the castle of your city of Edinburgh. I tell you my master set
his little finger upon them and crushed them like flies on a summer
chamber wall!"

Maud Lindesay rose to her feet as La Meffraye spoke these words.

"It is not true," she cried; "you lie to us as you have done from the
first. The Earl of Douglas is not dead!"

It was now little Margaret who showed the spirit of her race, and put
out her hand to clasp that of her elder comrade.

"Do not let her even know that she has power to hurt us with her
words," she whispered low to Maud Lindesay. Then she spoke aloud:

"If that which you say be true and my brothers are dead--there are yet
Douglases. Our cousins will deliver us."

"Your cousins have entered into your possessions," jeered the hag; "it
is indeed a likely thing that they will desire your return to Scotland
in order to rob them of that which is their own."

"We are not afraid," said the little maid, stoutly; "there are many in
the land of the Scots who would gladly die to help us."

"Aye, that is it. They shall die--all die. Three of them died
yester-even, torn to pieces by my lord's wolves. Fine, swift,
four-footed guardians of the Castle of Machecoul--La Meffraye's
friends! And one young cock below there of the same gang hath gone
even now to my lord's chamber. He hath mounted the stairs he will
never descend."

"Well," said the Maid of Galloway, "even so--we are not afraid. We can
die, as died our friends."

"Die--die!" cried the hag, sharply, angered at the child's
persistence. "'Tis easy to talk. To snuff a candle out is to die.
Poof, 'tis done! But the young and beautiful like you, my dearies, do
not so die at Machecoul. No; rather as a dying candle flickers
out--falls low, and rises again, so they die. As wine oozes drop by
drop from the needle-punctured wine-skin--so shall you die, weeping,
beseeching, drained to the white like a dripping calf in the shambles,
yet at the same time reddened and shamed with the shame deadly and
unnameable. Then La Meffraye, whom now you disdain to answer with a
look, will wash her hands in your life's blood and laugh as your tears
fall slowly upon the latchet of her shoon!"

But a new voice broke in upon the railing of the hideous woman fiend.

"_Out, foul hag! Get you to your own place!_" it said, with an accent
strong and commanding.

And the affrighted and heart-sick girls turned them about to see the
Lady Sybilla stand fair and pale at the head of the turret stair which
opened out upon the roof of the White Tower.

At this interruption the eyes of La Meffraye seemed to burn with a
fresher fury, and the green light in them shone as shines an emerald
stone held up to the sun.

The hag cowered, however, before the outstretched index finger of
Sybilla de Thouars.

"Ah, fair lady," she whimpered, "be not angry--and tell not my lord, I
beseech you. I did but jest."

"_Hence!_" the finger was still outstretched, and, in obedience to the
threatening gesture, the hag shrank away. But as she passed through
the portal down the steps of the turret, she flung back certain words
with a defiant fleer.

"Ah, you are young, my lady, and for the present--for the present your
power is greater than mine. But wait! Your beauty will wither and grow
old. Your power will depart from you. But La Meffraye can never grow
older, and when once the secret is discovered, and my lord is young
again, La Meffraye is the one who with him shall bloom with immortal
youth, while you, proud lady, lie cold in the belly of the worm."

* * * * *

"It is true--all too true," said Sybilla de Thouars, sadly, "they are
dead. The young, the noble were--and are no more. I who speak saw them
die. And that so greatly, that even in death their lives cease not.
Their glory shall flow on so that the young brook shall become a
river, and the river become a sea."

Then in few words and quiet, she told them all the heavy tale.

But when the maids made as though they would cleave to her for the
sympathy that was in her words and because of her tears, she set the
palms of her hands against their breasts and cried, "Come not near one
whom not all the fires of purgatory can purify--one who, like
Iscariot, hath contracted herself outside the mercy of God and of our
Lord Christ!"

But all the more they clave to her, overpassing her protestations and
clasping her, so that, being deeply moved, she sat down on the steps
of a corner turret which rose from the greater, and wept there, with
the weeping wherewith women are wont to ease the heart.

Then went Maud Lindesay to her and set her hand about her neck, and
kissed her, saying: "Do not be sorry any more. Confess to the minister
of God. I also have sinned and been sorry. Yet after came forgiveness
and the unbound heart."

Then the Lady Sybilla ceased quickly and looked up, as it had been,
smiling. Yet she was not smiling as maidens are wont to smile.

"Pretty innocent," she said, "you mean well, but you know not what the
word 'sin' means to such as I. Confess--absolve! Not even the Holy One
and the Just could give me that. I tell you I have eaten of the apple
of the knowledge of good and evil--yes, the very core I have eaten. I
have the taste of innocent blood upon my lips. I have seen the axe
fall, the axe which I put into the headsman's hands. I am condemned,
and that justly. But one of you shall live to taste sweet love, and
the crown of life, and to feel the innocent lips of children at her
breasts. And the other--but enough. Farewell. Fear not. God, who has
been cruel in all else, has given your lives to Sybilla de Thouars,
ere in His own time He strike that guilty one with His thunderbolt."

And as she went within, the eyes of the maids followed her; but the
masked man with the naked sword never so much as turned his head,
gazing straight forward over the battlements of the White Tower into
the lilac mist which hung above the Atlantic.

CHAPTER LIII

SYBILLA'S VENGEANCE

There stands a solitary rock at the base of which is a cave, on the
seashore of La Vendee. Behind stretch the marshes, and the place is
shut in and desolate. Birds cry there. The bittern booms in the
thickets of grey willow and wet-shot alder. The herons nest upon the
pine trees near by, till the stale scent of them comes down the wind
from far. Ospreys fish in the waters of the shallow lake behind, and
the scales of their prey flash in the sun of morning as they rise
dripping from the dive.

In this place Sholto, Malise, and the Lord James Douglas were
presently abiding.

It was but a tiny cell, originally formed by two portions of marly
rock fallen together in some ancient convulsion or dropped upon each
other from a floating iceberg. In some former age the cleft had been a
lair of wild beasts, or the couch of some hairy savage hammering flint
arrowheads for the chase, and drawing with a sharp point upon polished
bone the yet hairier mammoth he hunted. But this solitary lodging in
the wilderness had been enlarged in more recent times, till now the
interior was about eight feet square and of the height of a man of
stature when he stands erect.

The hearts of the three present cave-dwellers were sick and sad, and
of them all the bitterest was the heart of Sholto MacKim. It seemed
to his eager lover's spirit, as he climbed to the top of the sand
dunes and gazed towards the massive towers of Machecoul rising above
the green woodlands, that hitherto they had but wandered and done
nothing. The sorcerer had prevented them about with his evil. They had
lost Laurence utterly, and for the rest they had not even touched the
outer defences of their arch enemy.

Thrice they had tried to enter the castle. The first time they had
taken by force two waggons of fuel from certain men who went towards
Machecoul, leaving the woodmen behind in the forest, bound and
helpless. But at the first gate of the outer hall the marshal's guard
had stopped them, and demanded that they should wait till the cars
were unloaded and brought back to them. So, having received the money,
the Scots returned as they went to the men whom they had left in the
forest.

After this repulse they had gone round and round the vast walls of
Machecoul seeking a place vulnerable, but finding none. The ramparts
rose as it had been to heaven, and the flanking towers were crowded
night and day with men on the watch. Round the walls for the space of
a bow-shot every way there ran a green space fair and open to the
view, but in reality full of pitfalls and secret engines. From the
battlements began the arrow hail, so soon as any attempted to approach
the castle along any other way than the thrice-defended road to the
main gate.

The wolves howled in the forests by night, and more than once came so
near that one of the three men had to take it in turns to keep watch
in the cave's mouth. But for a reason not clear to them at the time
they were not again attacked by the marshal's wild allies of the
wood.

The third time they had tried to enter the castle in their pilgrim's
garb, and the outer picket courteously received them. But when they
were come to the inner curtain, one Robin Romulart, the officer of the
guard, a stout fellow, suddenly called to his men to bind and gag
them--in which enterprise, but for the great strength of Malise, they
might have succeeded. For the outer gates had been shut with a clang,
and they could hear the soldiers of the garrison hasting from all
sides in answer to Robin's summons.

But Malise snatched up the bar wherewith the winding cogs of the gate
were turned, and, having broken more than one man's head with it, he
forced the massive doors apart by main force, so that they were able
all unharmed to withdraw themselves into the shelter of the woods. So
near capture had they been, however, that over and over again they
heard the shouting of the parties who scoured the woods in search of
them.

It was the worst feature of their situation that the Marshal de Retz
certainly knew of their presence in his territories, and that he would
be easily able to guess their errand and take measures to prevent it
succeeding.

Their last and most fatal failure had happened several days before,
and the first eager burst of the search for them had passed. But the
Scots knew that the enemy was thoroughly alarmed, and that it behoved
them to abide very closely within their hiding-place.

The Lord James took worst of all with the uncertainty and confinement.
Any restraint was unsuited to his jovial temper and open-air life. But
for the present, at least, and till they could gain some further
information as to the whereabouts of the maidens, it was obvious that
they could do no better than remain in their seaside shelter.

Their latest plan was to abide in the cave till the marshal set out
again upon one of his frequent journeys. Then it would be
comparatively easy to ascertain by an ambush whether he was taking the
captives with him, or if he had left them behind. If the maids were of
his travelling company, the three rescuers would be guided by
circumstances and the strength of the escort, as to whether or not
they should venture to make an attack.

But if by any unhoped-for chance Margaret and Maud were left behind at
Machecoul, it would at least be a more feasible enterprise to attack
the fortress during the absence of its master and his men.

Alone among the three Scots Malise faced their predicament with some
philosophy. Sholto ate his heart out with uncertainty as to the fate
of his sweetheart. The Lord James chafed at the compulsory confinement
and at the consistent ill success which had pursued them. But Malise,
unwearied of limb and ironic of mood as ever, fished upon the tidal
flats for brown-spotted flounders and at the rocky points for white
fish, often remaining at his task till far into the night. He
constructed snares with a mechanical ingenuity in advance of his age.
And what was worth more to the company than any material help, he kept
up the spirits of Sholto and of Lord James Douglas both by his brave
heart and merry speech, and still more by constantly finding them
something to do.

At the hour of even, one day after they had been a fortnight in the
country of Retz, the three Scots were sitting moodily on a little
hillock which concealed the entrance to their cave. The forest lay
behind them, an impenetrable wall of dense undergrowth crowned along
the distant horizon by the solemn domes of green stone pines. It
circumvented them on all sides, save only in front, where, through
several beaker-shaped breaks in the high sand dunes they could catch a
glimpse of the sea. The Atlantic appeared to fill these clefts half
full, like Venice goblets out of which the purple wine has been
partially drained. To right and left the pines grew scantier, so that
the rays of the sunset shone red as molten metal upon their stems and
made a network of alternate gold and black behind them.

The three sat thus a long time without speech, only looking up from
their tasks to let their eyes rest wistfully for a moment upon the
deep and changeful amethyst of the sea, and then with a light sigh
going back to the cleaning of their armoury or the shaping of a long
bow.

It chanced that for several minutes no sound was heard except those
connected with their labour, the low whistle with which the Lord James
accompanied his polishing, the _wisp-wisp_ of Malise's arms as he
sewed the double thread back and forth through a rent in his leathern
jack, and the rasp of Sholto's file as he carved out the finials of
the bow, the notched grooves wherein the string was to lie so easily
and yet so firmly.

Thus they continued to work, absorbed, each of them in the sadness of
his own thought, till suddenly a shadow seemed to strike between them
and the red light of the western sky. They looked up, and before them,
as it were ascending out of the very glow of sunset, they saw a woman
on a white palfrey approaching them by the way of the sea.

So suddenly did she appear that the Lord James uttered a low cry of
wonder, while Malise the practical reached for his sword. But Sholto
had seen this vision twice already, and knew their visitor for the
Lady Sybilla.

"Hold there!" he said in an undertone. "Remember it is as I said. This
woman, though we have no cause to love her, is now our only hope. Her
words brought us here. They were true words, and I believe that she
comes as a friend. I will stake my life on it."

"Or if she comes as an enemy we are no worse off," grumbled sceptical
Malise. "We can at least encourage the woman and then hold her as an
hostage."

The three Scots were standing to receive their guest when the Lady
Sybilla rode up. Her face had lost none of the pale sadness which
marked it when Sholto last saw her, and though the look of utter agony
had passed away, the despair of a soul in pain had only become more
deeply printed upon it.

The girl having acknowledged their salutations with a stately and
well-accustomed motion of the head, reached a hand for Sholto to lift
her from her palfrey.

Then, still without spoken word, she silently seated herself on the
grey-lichened rock rudely shaped into the semblance of a chair, on
which Malise had been sitting at his mending. The strange maiden
looked long at the blue sea deepening in the notches of the sand dunes
beneath them. The three men stood before her waiting for her to speak.
Each of them knew that lives, dearer and more precious than their own,
hung upon what she might have to say.

At last she spoke, in a voice low as the wind when it blows its
lightest among the trees:

"You have small cause to trust me or to count me your friend," she
said; "but we have that which binds closer than friendship--a common
enemy and a common cause of hatred. It were better, therefore, that we
should understand one another. I have never lost sight of you since
you came to this fatal land of Retz. I have been near you when you
knew it not. To accomplish this I have deceived the man who is my
taskmaster, swearing to him that in the witch crystal I have seen you
depart. And I shall yet deceive him in more deadly fashion."

Sholto could restrain himself no longer.

"Enough," he said roughly; "tell us whether the maidens are alive, and
if they are abiding in this Castle of Machecoul."

The Lady Sybilla did not remove her eyes from the red west.

"Thus far they are safe," she said, in the same calm monotone. "This
very hour I have come from the White Tower, in which they are
confined. But he whom I serve swears by an oath that if you or other
rescuers are heard of again in this country, he will destroy them
both."

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