S. R. Crockett - The Black Douglas

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Earl William bowed ironically to his uncle, and his eye glittered as
it fell upon Malise MacKim.

"I thank you, Uncle," he said. "I am deeply indebted for your so great
interest in me. I thank you too, Malise, for bringing about this
timely interference. I will pay my debts one day. In the meantime your
duty is done. Depart, both of you, I command you!"

Outside the thunder began to growl in the distance. An extraordinary
feeling of oppression had slowly filled the air. The lamps, swinging
on the pavilion roof tree, flickered and flared, alternately rising
and sinking like the life in the eyes of a dying man.

All the while the lady sat still on the couch, with an expression of
amused contempt on her face. But now she rose to her feet.

"And I also ask, in the name of the King of France, by what right do
you intrude within the precincts of a lady's bower. I bid you to leave
me!"

She pointed imperiously with her white finger to the black, oblong
doorway, from which Malise's rude hand had dragged the covering flap
to the ground.

But the churchman and his guide stood their ground.

Suddenly the Abbot reached a hand and took the sword on which the
master armourer leaned. With its point he drew a wide circle upon the
rich carpets which formed the floor of the pavilion.

"William Douglas," he said, "I command you to come within this circle,
whilst in the right of my holy office I exorcise that demon there who
hath so nearly beguiled you to your ruin."

The lady laughed a rich ringing laugh.

"These are indeed high heroics for so plain and poor an occasion. I
need not to utter a word of explanation. I am a lady travelling
peaceably under escort of an ambassador of France, through a Christian
country. By chance, I met the Earl Douglas, and invited him to sup
with me. What concern, spiritual or temporal, may that be of yours,
most reverend Abbot? Who made you my lord Earl's keeper?"

"Woman or demon from the pit!" said the Abbot, sternly, "think not to
deceive William Douglas, the aged, as you have cast the glamour over
William Douglas, the boy. The lust of the flesh abideth no more for
ever in this frail tabernacle. I bid thee, let the lad go, for he is
dear to me as mine own soul. Let him go, I say, ere I curse thee with
the curse of God the Almighty!"

The lady continued to smile, standing meantime slender and fair before
them, her bosom heaving a little with emotion, and her hair rippling
in red gold confusion down her back.

"Certainly, my lord Earl came not upon compulsion. He is free to
return with you, if he yet be under tutors and governors, or afraid of
the master's stripes. Go, Earl William, I made a mistake; I thought
you had been a man. But since I was wrong I bid you get back to the
monk's chapter house, to clerkly copies and childish toys."

Then black and sullen anger glared from the eyes of the Douglas.

"Get hence," he cried. "Hence, both of you--you, Uncle William, ere I
forget your holy office and your kinsmanship; you, Malise, that I may
settle with to-morrow ere the sun sets. I swear it by my word as a
Douglas. I will never forgive either of you for this night's work!"

The fair white hand was laid upon his wrist.

"Nay," said the lady, "do not quarrel with those you love for my poor
sake. I am indeed little worth the trouble. Go back with them in
peace, and forget her who but sat by your side an hour neither doing
you harm nor thinking it."

"Nay," he cried, "that will I not. I will show them that I am old
enough to choose my company for myself. Who is my uncle that he
should dictate to me that am an earl of Douglas and a peer of France,
or my servant that he should come forth to spy upon his master?"

"Then," she whispered, smiling, "you will indeed abide with me?"

He gave her his hand.

"I will abide with you till death! Body and soul, I am yours alone!"

"By the holy cross of our Lord, that shall you not!" cried Malise;
"not though you hang me high as Haman for this ere the morrow's morn!"

And with these words he sprang forward and caught his master by the
wrist. With one strong pull of his mighty arm he dragged him within
the circle which the Abbot had marked out with the sword's point.

The lady seemed to change colour. For at that moment a gust of wind
caused the lamps to flicker, and the outlines of her white-robed
figure appeared to waver like an image cast in water.

"I adjure and command you, in the name of God the One and Omnipotent,
to depart to your own place, spirit or devil or whatever you may be!"

The voice of the Abbot rose high above the roaring of the bursting
storm without. The lady seemed to reach an arm across the circle as if
even yet to take hold of the young man. The Abbot thrust forward his
crucifix.

And then the bolt of God fell. The whole pavilion was illuminated with
a flash of light so intense and white that it appeared to blind and
burn up all about. The lady was seen no more. The silken covering
blazed up. Malise plunged outward into the darkness of the storm,
carrying his young master lightly as a child in his arms, while the
Abbot kept his feet behind him like a boat in a ship's wake. The
thunder roared overhead like the sea bellowing in a cave's mouth, and
the great pines bent their heads away from the mighty wind, straining
and creaking and lashing each other in their blind fury.

Malise and the Abbot seemed to hear about them the plunging of
riderless horses as they stumbled downwards through the night, their
path lit by lightning flashes, green and lilac and keenest blue, and
bearing between them the senseless form of William Earl of Douglas.

CHAPTER VI

THE PRISONING OF MALISE THE SMITH

[Now these things, material to the life and history of William, sixth
Earl of Douglas, are not written from hearsay, but were chronicled
within his lifetime by one who saw them and had part therein, though
the part was but a boy's one. His manuscript has come down to us and
lies before the transcriber. Sholto MacKim, the son of Malise the
Smith, testifies to these things in his own clerkly script. He adds
particularly that his brother Laurence, being at the time but a boy,
had little knowledge of many of the actual facts, and is not to be
believed if at any time he should controvert anything which he
(Sholto) has written. So far, however, as the present collector and
editor can find out, Laurence MacKim appears to have been entirely
silent on the subject, at least with his pen, so that his brother's
caveat was superfluous.]

* * * * *

The instant Lord William entered his own castle of Thrieve over the
drawbridge, and without even returning the salutations of his guard,
he turned about to the two men who had so masterfully compelled his
return.

"Ho, guard, there!" he cried, "seize me this instant the Abbot of the
New Abbey and Malise MacKim."

And so much surprised but wholly obedient, twenty archers of the
Earl's guard, commanded by old John of Abernethy, called Landless
Jock, fell in at back and front.

Malise, the master armourer, stood silent, taking the matter with his
usual phlegm, but the Abbot was voluble.

"William," he said, holding out his hands with an appealing gesture,
"I have laboured with you, striven with, prayed for you. To-night I
came forth through the storm, though an old man, to deliver you from
the manifest snares of the devil--"

But the Earl interrupted his recital without compunction.

"Set Malise MacKim in the inner dungeon," he cried. "Thrust his feet
into the great stocks, and let my lord Abbot be warded safely in the
castle chapel. He is little likely to be disturbed there at his
devotions."

"Aye, my lord, it shall be done!" said Landless Jock, shaking his
head, however, with gloomy foreboding, as the haughty young Earl in
his wet and torn disarray flashed past him without further notice of
the two men whom the might of his bare word had committed to prison.
The Earl sprang up the narrow turret stairs, passing as he did so
through the vaulted hall of the men-at-arms, where more than a hundred
stout archers and spearmen sat carousing and singing, even at that
advanced hour of the night, while as many more lay about the corridors
or on the wooden shelves which they used for sleeping upon, and which
folded back against the wall during the day. At the first glimpse of
their young master, every man left awake among them struggled to his
feet, and stood stiffly propped, drunk or sober according to his
condition, with his eyes turned towards the door which gave upon the
turnpike stair. But with a slight wave of his hand the Earl passed on
to his own apartment.

Here he found his faithful body-servant, Rene le Blesois, stretched
across the threshold. The staunch Frenchman rose mechanically at the
noise of his master's footsteps, and, though still soundly asleep,
stood with the latch of the door in his hand, and the other held
stiffly to his brow in salutation.

Left to his own devices, Lord William Douglas would doubtless have
cast himself, wet as he was, upon his bed had not Le Blesois,
observing his lord's plight even in his own sleep-dulled condition,
entered the chamber after his master and, without question or speech,
silently begun to relieve him of his wet hunting dress. A loose
chamber gown of rich red cloth, lined with silk and furred with
"cristy" grey, hung over the back of an oaken chair, and into this the
young Earl flung himself in black and sullen anger.

Le Blesois, still without a word spoken, left the room with the wet
clothes over his arm. As he did so a small object rolled from some
fold or crevice of the doublet, where it had been safely lodged till
displaced by the loosening of the belt, or the removing of the
banderole of his master's hunting horn.

Le Blesois turned at the tinkling sound, and would have stopped to
lift it up after the manner of a careful servitor. But the eye of his
lord was upon the fallen object, and with an abrupt wave of his hand
towards the door, and the single word "Go!" the Earl dismissed his
body-servant from the room.

Then rising hastily from his chair, he took the trinket in his hand
and carried it to the well-trimmed lamp which stood in a niche that
held a golden crucifix.

The Lord Douglas saw lying in his palm a ring of singular design. The
main portion was formed of the twisting bodies of a pair of snakes,
the jewel work being very cunningly interlaced and perfectly finished.
Their eyes were set with rubies, and between their open mouths they
carried an opal, shaped like a heart. The stone was translucent and
faintly luminous like a moonstone, but held in its heart one fleck of
ruby red, in appearance like a drop of blood. By some curious trick of
light, in whatever position the ring was held, this drop still
appeared to be on the point of detaching itself and falling to the
ground.

Earl William examined it in the flicker of the lamp. He turned it
every way, narrowly searching inside the golden band for a posy, but
not a word of any language could he find engraved upon it.

"I saw the ring upon her hand--I am certain I saw it on her hand!" He
said these words over and over to himself. "It is then no dream that I
have dreamed."

There came a low knocking at the door, a rustling and a whispering
without. Instantly the Earl thrust the ring upon his own finger with
the opal turned inward, and, with the dark anger mark of his race
strongly dinted upon his fair young brow, he faced the unseen
intruder.

"Who is there?" he cried loudly and imperiously.

The door opened with a rasping of the iron latch, and a little girlish
figure clothed from head to foot in a white night veil danced in. She
clapped her hands at sight of him.

"You are come back," she cried; "and you have so fine a gown on too.
But Maud Lindesay says it is very wrong to be out of doors so late,
even if you are Earl of Douglas, and a great man now. Will you never
play at 'Catch-as-catch-can' with David and me any more?"

"Margaret," said the young Earl, "what do you away from your chamber
at all? Our mother will miss you, and I do not want her here to-night.
Go back at once!"

But the little wilful maiden, catching her skirts in her hands at
either side and raising them a little way from the ground, began to
dance a dainty _pas seul_, ending with a flashing whirl and a low bow
in the direction of her audience.

At this William Douglas could not choose but smile, and soon threw
himself down on the bed, setting his clasped hands behind his head,
and contenting himself with looking at his little sister.

Though at this time but eight years of age, Margaret of Douglas was
possessed of such extraordinary vitality and character that she seemed
more like eleven. She had the clear-cut, handsome Douglas face, the
pale olive skin, the flashing dark eyes, and the crisp, blue-black
hair of her brother. A lithe grace and quickness, like those of a
beautiful wild animal, were characteristic of every movement.

"Our mother hath been anxious about you, brother mine," said the
little girl, tiring suddenly of her dance, and leaping upon the other
end of the couch on which her brother was reclining. Establishing
herself opposite him, she pulled the coverlet up about her so that
presently only her face could be seen peeping out from under the
silken folds.

"Oh, I was so cold, but I am warmer now," she cried. "And if Maid
Betsy A'hannay comes to take me away, I want you to stretch out your
hand like this, and say: 'Seneschal, remove that besom to the deep
dungeon beneath the castle moat,' as we used to do in our plays before
you became a great man. Then I could stay very long and talk to you
all through the night, for Maud Lindesay sleeps so sound that nothing
can awake her."

Gradually the anger passed out of the face of William Douglas as he
listened to his sister's prattle, like the vapours from the surface of
a hill tarn when the sun rises in his strength. He even thought with
some self-reproach of his treatment of Malise and of his uncle the
Abbot. But a glance at the ring on his finger, and the thought of what
might have been his good fortune at that moment but for their
interference, again hardened his resolution to adamant within his
breast.

His sister's voice, clear and high in its childish treble, recalled
him to himself.

"Oh, William, and there is such news; I forgot, because I have been so
overbusied with arranging my new puppet's house that Malise made for
me. But scarcely were you gone away on Black Darnaway ere a messenger
came from our granduncle James at Avondale that he and my cousins Will
and James arrive to-morrow at the Thrieve with a company to attend the
wappenshaw."

The young man sprang to his feet, and dashed one hand into the palm of
the other.

"This is ill tidings indeed!" he cried. "What does the Fat Flatterer
at Castle Thrieve? If he comes to pay homage, it will be but a
mockery. Neither he nor Angus had ever any good-will to my father, and
they have none to me."

"Ah, do not be angry, William," cried the little maid. "It will be
beautiful. They will come at a fitting time. For to-morrow is the
great levy of the weapon-showing, and our cousins will see you in your
pride. And they will see me, too, in my best green sarcenet, riding on
a white palfrey at your side as you promised."

"A weapon-showing is not a place for little girls," said the Earl,
mollified in spite of himself, casting himself down again on the
couch, and playing with the serpent ring on his finger.

"Ah, now," cried his sister, her quick eyes dancing everywhere at
once, "you are not attending to a single word I say. I know by your
voice that you are not. That is a pretty ring you have. Did a lady
give it to you? Was it our Maudie? I think it must have been our Maud.
She has many beautiful things, but mostly it is the young men who wish
to give her such things. She never sends any of them back, but keeps
them in a box, and says that it is good to spoil the Egyptians. And
sometimes when I am tired she will tell me the history of each, and
whether he was dark or fair. Or make it all up just as good when she
forgets. But, oh, William, if I were a lady I should fall in love with
nobody but you. For you are so handsome--yes, nearly as handsome as I
am myself--(she passed her hands lightly through her curls as she
spoke). And you know I shall marry no one but a Douglas--only you must
not ask me to wed my cousin William of Avondale, for he is so stern
and solemn; besides, he has always a book in his pocket, and wishes me
to learn somewhat out of it as if I were a monk. A Douglas should not
be a monk, he should be a soldier."

So she lay snugly on the bed and prattled on to her brother, who,
buried in his thoughts and occupied with his ring, let the hours slip
on till at the open door of the Earl's chamber there appeared the most
bewitching face in the world, as many in that castle and elsewhere
were ready to prove at the sword's point. The little girl caught sight
of it with a shrill cry of pleasure, instantly checked and hushed,
however, at the thought of her mother.

"O Maudie," she cried, "come hither into William's room. He has such a
beautiful ring that a lady gave him. I am sure a lady gave it him. Was
it you, Maud Lindesay? You are a sly puss not to tell me if it was.
William, it is wicked and provoking of you not to tell me who gave you
that ring. If it had been some one you were not ashamed of, you would
be proud of the gift and confess. Whisper to me who it was. I will not
tell any one, not even Maudie."

Her brother had risen to his feet with a quick movement, girding his
red gown about him as he rose.

"Mistress Maud," he said respectfully, "I fear I have given you
anxiety by detaining your charge so late. But she is a wilful madam,
as you have doubtless good cause to know, and ill to advise."

"She is a Douglas," smiled the fair girl, who stood at the chamber
door refusing his invitation to enter, with a flash of the eye and a
quick shake of the head which betokened no small share of the same
qualities; "is not that enough to excuse her for being wayward and
headstrong?"

Earl William wasted no more words of entreaty upon his sister, but
seized her in his arms, and pulling the coverlet in which she had
huddled herself up with her pert chin on her knees, more closely about
her, he strode along the passage with her in his arms till he stopped
at an open door leading into a large chamber which looked to the
south.

"There," he said, smiling at the girl who had followed behind him, "I
will lock her in with you and take the key, that I may make sure of
two such uncertain charges."

But the girl had deftly extracted the key even as she passed in after
him, and as the bolts shot from within she cried: "I thank you right
courteously, Lord William, but mine apothecary, fearing that the air
of this isle of Thrieve might not agree with me, bade me ever to sleep
with the key of the door under my pillow. Against fevers and quinsies,
cold iron is a sovereign specific."

And for all his wounded heart, Earl William smiled at the girl's
sauciness as he went slowly back to his chamber, taking, in spite of
his earldom, pains to pass his mother's door on tiptoe.

CHAPTER VII

THE DOUGLAS MUSTER

The day of the great weapon-showing broke fair and clear after the
storm of the night. The windows of heaven had had all their panes
cleaned, and even after it was daylight the brighter stars
appeared--only, however, to wink out again when the sun arose and
shone on the wet fields, coming forth rejoicing like a bridegroom from
his chamber.

And equally bright and strong came forth the young Earl, every trace
of the anger and disappointment of the night having been removed from
his face, if not from his mind, by the recreative and potent sleep of
youth and health.

In the hall he called for Sir John of Abernethy, nicknamed Landless
Jock.

"Conduct my uncle the Abbot from the chapel where he has been all
night at his devotions, to his chamber, and furnish him with what he
may require, and bring up Malise the Smith from the dungeon. Let him
come into my presence in the upper hall."

William Douglas went into a large oak-ceiled chamber, wide and high,
running across the castle from side to side, and with windows that
looked every way over the broad and fertile strath of Dee.

Presently, with a trampling of mailed feet and the double rattle which
denoted the grounding of a pair of steel-hilted partisans, Malise was
brought to the door by two soldiers of the Earl's outer guard.

The huge bulk of Brawny Kim filled up the doorway almost completely,
and he stood watching the Douglas with an unmoved gravity which, in
the dry wrinkles about his eyes, almost amounted to humorous
appreciation of the situation.

Yet it was Malise who spoke first. For at his appearance the Earl had
turned his back upon his retainer, and now stood at the window that
looks towards the north, from which he could see, over the broad and
placid stretches of the river, the men putting up the pavilions and
striking spears into the ground to mark out the spaces for the tourney
of the next day.

"A fair good morrow to you, my lord," said the smith. "Grievous as my
sin has been, and just as is your resentment, give me leave to say
that I have suffered more than my deserts from the ill-made chains and
uncouth manacles wherewith they confined me in the black dungeon down
there. I trow they must have been the workmanship of Ninian Lamont the
Highlandman, who dares to call himself house-smith of Thrieve. I am
ready to die if it be your will, my lord; but if you are well advised
you will hang Ninian beside me with a bracelet of his own rascal
handiwork about his neck. Then shall justice be satisfied, and Malise
MacKim will die happy."

The Earl turned and looked at his ancient friend. The wrinkles about
the brow were deeply ironical now, and the grey eyes of the master
armourer twinkled with appreciation of his jest.

"Malise," cried his master, warningly, "do not play at cat's cradle
with the Douglas. You might tempt me to that I should afterwards be
sorry for. A man once dead comes not to life again, whatever monks
prate. But tell me, how knew you whither I had gone yester-even? For,
indeed, I knew not myself when I set out. And in any event, was it a
thing well done for my foster father to spy upon me the son who was
also his lord?"

The anger was mostly gone now out of the frank young face of the Earl,
and only humiliation and resentment, with a touch of boyish curiosity,
remained.

"Indeed," answered the smith, "I watched you not save under my hand as
you rode away upon Black Darnaway, and then I turned me to the seat by
the wall to listen to the cavillings of Dame Barbara, the humming of
the bees, and the other comfortable and composing sounds of nature."

"How then did you come to follow me in the undesirable company of my
uncle the Abbot?"

"For that you are in the debt of my son Sholto, who, seeing a lady
wait for you in the greenwood, climbed a tree, and there from amongst
the branches he was witness of your encounter."

"So--" said the Douglas, grimly, "it is to Master Sholto that I am
indebted somewhat."

"Aye," said his father, "do not forget him. For he is a good lad and a
bold, as indeed he proved to the hilt yestreen."

"In what consisted his boldness?" asked the Earl.

"In that he dared come home to me with a cock-and-bull story of a
witch lady, who appeared suddenly where none had been a moment before,
and who had immediately enchanted my lord Earl. Well nigh did I twist
his neck, but he stuck to it. Then came riding by my lord Abbot on his
way to Thrieve, and I judged that the matter, as one of witchcraft,
was more his affair than mine."

"Now hearken," cried the Earl, in quick, high tones of anger, "let
there be no more of such folly, or on your life be it. The lady whom
you insulted was travelling with her company through Galloway from
France. She invited me to sup with her, and dared me to adventure to
Edinburgh in her company. Answer me, wherein was the witchcraft of
that, saving the witchery natural to all fair women?"

"Did she not prophesy to you that to-day you would be Duke of
Touraine, and receive the ambassadors of the King of France?"

"Well," said the Earl, "where is your wit that you give ear to such
babblings? Did she not come from that country, as I tell you, and who
should hear the latest news more readily than she?"

The smith looked a little nonplussed, but stuck to it stoutly that
none but a witch woman would ride alone at nightfall upon a Galloway
moor, or unless by enchantment set up a pavilion of silk and strange
devices under the pines of Loch Roan.

"Well," said Earl William, feeling his advantage and making the most
of it, "I see that in all my little love affairs I must needs take my
master armourer with me to decide whether or no the lady be a witch.
He shall resolve for me all spiritual questions with his forehammer.
Malise MacKim a witch pricker! Ha--this is a change indeed. Malise the
Smith will make the censor of his lord's love affairs, after what
certain comrades of his have told me of his own ancient love-makings.
Will he deign to come to the weapon-showing to-day, and instead of
examining the swords and halberts, the French arbalasts and German
fusils, demit that part of his office to Ninian the Highlandman, and
go peering into ladies' eyes for sorceries and scanning their lips for
such signs of the devil as lurk in the dimples of their chins? In this
he will find much employment and that of a congenial sort."

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