William S. Hart - "Injun and Whitey to the Rescue"

Lewis H. Berens - "The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth"

A.D.L. - "Woman's Endurance"

Various - "The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6"

Books of The Times: The Days of Their Lives: Lesbians Star in Funny Pages
Becky Saletan, publisher of the adult trade division, will leave next week in a sign of further unraveling at the publisher.

Houghton Mifflin Publisher Resigns
Niall Ferguson’s latest book, “The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World,” went to press in May 2008, but it shrewdly anticipates many aspects of the current financial crisis.

Books of The Times: It’s Still Making the World Go ’Round
Michael Wolff has written a supercilious yet star-struck portrait of Rupert Murdoch, the planet’s most notorious press baron.

S. R. Crockett - The Black Douglas

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




Presently, soon after the arrival of the cavalcade, the great
wappenshaw was set in array, and forming up company by company the
long double line extended as far as the eye could reach from north to
south along the side of the broad and sluggish-moving river.

Sholto, who in virtue of his courage and good marksmanship had been
placed over the archer company which waited on the right of the ford,
fell in immediately behind the _cortege_ of the Earl. He was first man
of all to have his equipment examined, and his weapons obtained, as
they deserved, the commendation of his liege lord, and the grim
unwilling approval of Malise, the master armourer, whose unerring eye
could not detect so much as a speck on the shirt of mail, or a grain
of rust on the waist brace of shining steel.

Then the Earl rode down the lines, and Sholto, remembering the
encounter amidst the dust of the roadway, breathed more freely when he
saw his father's back.

And surely that day the heart of the Douglas must have beat proud and
high within him, for there they stood, company behind ordered company,
the men on whom he could count to the death. And truly the lad of
eighteen, who in Scotland was greater than the King, looked upon their
steadfast thousands with a swelling heart.

The Abbot had made particular inquiries where Laurence was stationed,
which was in the archer company of the Laird of Kelton. Most of the
monkish band had been made too happy by the deception practised on
their Abbot concerning "Mary Quean," and were too desirous to have
such a rogue to play his pranks in the dull abbey, to tell any tales
on Laurence MacKim. But one, Berguet, a Belgian priest who had begged
his way to Scotland, and whose nature was that of the spy and
sycophant, approached and volunteered the information to the Abbot
that this lad to whom he was desirous of showing favour, was a ribald
and hypocritical youth.

"Eh, what?" said the Abbot, "a bodle for thy ill-set tongue, false
loon, dost think I did not hear him sing his fair and seemly orisons?
I tell thee, rude out-land jabberer, that I am a Douglas, and have ears
better than those of any Frenchman that ever breathed. For this thou
shalt kneel six nights on the cold stone of the holy chapel house, and
say of paternosters ten thousand and of misereres thou shall sing
three hundred. And this shall chance to teach thee to be scanter with
thy foul breath when thou speakest to the Abbot of the Foundation of
Devorgill concerning better men than thyself."

The Belgian priest gasped and fell back, and none other was found to
say aught against Master Laurence, which, considering the ten thousand
paternosters and the three hundred misereres, was not unnatural.

As the Earl passed along the line he was annoyed by the iterated
requests of his uncle to be informed when they should come to the
company of the Laird of Kelton. And the good Abbot, being like all
deaf men apt to speak a little loud, did not improve matters by
constantly making remarks behind his hand, upon the appearance or
character (as known to him) of the various dependents of the Douglas
House who had come out to show their loyalty and exhibit their
preparedness for battle.

As thus it was. The young Earl would come in his inspection to a
company of Solway-side men--stiff-jointed fishers of salmon nets out
of the parishes of Rerrick or Borgue--or, as it might be, rough colts
from the rock scarps of Colvend, scramblers after wild birds' nests on
perilous heuchs, and poachers on the deer preserves of Cloak Moss, as
often as they had a chance. Then the Earl, having zealously commended
the particular Barnbacle or Munches who led them, all would be peace
and concord, till out of the crowd behind would issue the growling
comment of his uncle, the Abbot of Dulce Cor.

"A close-fisted old thief! The saints pity him not! He will surely fry
in Hell! Last Shrovetide did he not drive off five of our best milch
cows, and hath steadfastly refused to restore them? _Anathema
maranatha_ to his vile body and condemned be his huckstering soul!"

Needless to add, every word of this comment and addition was heard by
the person most concerned.

Or it might be, "Henry A'milligan--his mother's son, God wot. And his
father's, too, doubtless--if only one could know who his father was.
The devil dwell in his fat belly! _Exorciso te_--"

So it went on till the temper of the young lord of Galloway was
strained almost to the breaking point, for he wished not to cause a
disturbance among so great a company and on a day of such renown.

At last they came to the muster of the clean-run limber lads of
Kelton, artificers mostly, and stated retainers of the castle and its
various adjacent bourgs of Carlinwark, Rhonehouse, Gelston, and Mains
of Thrieve.

Some one at this point took the Abbot by the elbow and shouted in his
ear that this was the company he desired to see. Then he rode forward
to the left hand of his nephew, as Malise and he passed slowly down
the line examining the weapons.

"Laurence MacKim, I would see Laurence MacKim!" cried the Abbot,
holding up his hand as if in the chapel of his monastery. The Earl
stopped, and Malise turned right about on his heel in great
astonishment.

"What wants old marrowbones with our Laurie?" he muttered; "surely he
cannot have gotten into mischief with the lasses already. But I
kenna--I kenna. When I was sixteen I can mind--I can mind. And the
loon may well be his father's own son."

And Malise, the man of brawn, watched out of his quiet grey eyes the
face of the Abbot William, wondering what was to come next.

Laurence stood forth at a word of command from the Earl. He saluted,
and then dropped the point of his sword meekly upon the ground. His
white-and-rose cherub's face expressed the utmost goodness and
innocence.

"Dear kinsman," said the Abbot to his nephew, "I have a request to
prefer which I hope you will grant, though it deprive you of one
retainer. This sweet youth is not fit company for rude soldiers and
ill-bred rufflers of the camp. His mind is already on higher things.
He hath good clerkly Latin also, being skilled in the humanities, as I
have heard proven with mine own ears. His grace of language and
deportment is manifest, and he can sing the sweetest and most
spiritual songs in praise of Mary and the saints. I would have him in
our choir at Sweetheart Abbey, where we have much need both of a voice
such as his, and also of a youth whose sanctity and innocence cannot
fail to leaven with the grace of the spirit the neophytes of our
college, and the consideration of whom may even bring repentance into
older and more hardened hearts."

Malise MacKim could not believe his ears as he listened to the Abbot's
rounded periods. But all the same his grey eyes twinkled, his mouth
slowly drew itself together into the shape of an O, from which issued
a long low whistle, perfectly audible to all about him except the
Abbot. "Lord have mercy on the innocence and cloistered quiet of the
neophytes if they get our Laurie for an example!" muttered Malise to
himself as he turned away.

Even the young Earl smiled, perhaps remembering the last time he had
seen the youth beside him, clutching and tearing like a wild cat at
his brother's throat in the smithy of Carlinwark.

"You desire the life of a clerk?" said Lord William pleasantly to
Laurence. He would gladly have purchased his uncle's silence at even
greater price.

"If your lordship pleases," said Laurence, meekly, adding to himself,
"it cannot be such hard work as hammering at the forge, and if I like
it not, why then I can always run away."

"You think you have a call to become a holy clerk?"

"I feel it here," quoth Master Laurence, hypocritically, indicating
correctly, however, the organ whose wants have made clerks of so
many--that is, the stomach.

Earl William smiled yet more broadly, but anxious to be gone he said:
"Mine Uncle, here is the lad's father, Malise MacKim, my master
armourer and right good servant. Ask him concerning his son."

"'Tis all up a rotten tree now," muttered Laurence to himself; "my
father will reveal all."

Malise MacKim smiled grimly, but with a salutation to the dignitary of
the church and near relative of his chief, he said: "Truly, I had
never thought of this my son as worthy to be a holy clerk. But I will
not stand in the way of his advancement nor thwart your favour. Take
him for a year on trial, and if you can make a monk of him, do so and
welcome. I recommend a leathern strap, well hardened in the fire, for
the purpose of encouraging him to make a beginning in the holy life."

"He shall indeed have penance if he need it. For the good of the soul
must the body suffer!" said Abbot William, sententiously.

"Saints' bones and cracklings," muttered Laurence, "this is none so
cheerful! But I can always run away if the strap grows overlimber, and
then let them catch me if they can. Sholto will help me."

"Fall out!" commanded the Earl, sharply, "and join yourself to the
company of the Abbot William. Come, Malise, we lose our time."

Thus was one of our heroes brought into the way of becoming a learned
and holy clerk. But all those who knew him best agreed that he had a
far road to travel.




CHAPTER XI

THE AMBASSADOR OF FRANCE


The Earl had almost arrived at the pavilion erected at the southern
end of the jousting meadow, when a gust of cheering borne along the
lines announced the arrival of a belated company. The young man
glanced northward with intent to discover, by their pennons, who his
visitors might be. But the distance was too great, and identification
was made more difficult by the swarming of the populace round the
newcomers. So, being unable to make the matter out, Earl William
despatched his brother David to bring him word of their quality.

Presently, however, and before David Douglas' return, shouts of
"Avondale, Avondale!" from the men of Lanarkshire informed the young
Earl of the name of one at least of those who had arrived. A frown so
quick and angry darkened his brow that it showed the consideration in
which the Douglas held his granduncle James the Gross, Earl of
Avondale.

"I hope, at least," he said in a low voice to Malise, who stood half a
step behind him, "that my cousins Will and James have come with him.
They are good metal for a tourney, and worth breaking a lance with."

By this time the banners of the visitors were discernible crossing the
fords of Lochar, while high advanced above all private pennons two
standards could be seen, the banner royal of Scotland, and close
beside the rampant lion the white lilies of France.

"Saint Bride!" cried the Earl, "have they brought the King of Scots to
visit me? His Majesty had been better at his horn-book, or playing
ball in the tennis court of Stirling."

Then came David back, riding swiftly on his fine dark chestnut, which,
being free from the mantle wherein the horses of knights were swathed,
and having its mane and tail left long, made a gallant show as the lad
threw it almost on its haunches in his boyish pride of horsemanship.

"William," said David Douglas, "a word in your ear, brother. The whole
tribe are here,--fat Jamie and all his clan."

The brothers conferred a little apart, for in those troubled times men
learned caution early, and though the Douglas was the greatest lord in
Scotland, yet, surrounded by meaner men as he was, it behoved him to
be jealous and careful of his life and honour.

Earl Douglas came out of the sparred enclosure of the tilt-ring in
order to receive his guests.

First, as an escort to the ambassador royal of France and Scotland who
came behind, rode the Earl of Avondale and his five sons, noble young
men, and most unlikely to have sprung from such a stock. James the
Gross rode a broad Clydesdale mare, a short, soft unwieldy man,
sitting squat on the saddle like a toad astride a roof, and glancing
slily sideways out of the pursy recesses of his eyes.

Behind him came his eldest son William, a man of a true Douglas
countenance, quick, high, and stern. Then followed James, whose lithe
body and wonderful dexterity in arms were already winning him repute
as one of the bravest knights in all Christendom in every military and
manly exercise.

Behind the Avondale Douglases rode two men abreast, with a lady on a
palfrey between them.

The first to take the eye, both by his stature and his remarkable
appearance, rode upon a charger covered from head to tail in the
gorgeous red-and-gold diamonded trappings pertaining to a marshal of
France. He was in complete armour, and wore his visor down. A long
blue feather floated from his helmet, falling almost upon the flank of
his horse; a truncheon of gold and black was at his side. A pace
behind him the lilies of France were displayed, floating out languidly
from a black and white banner staff held in the hands of a young
squire.

The knight behind whom the banner royal of Scotland fluttered was a
man of different mould. His spare frame seemed buried in the suit of
armour that he wore somewhat awkwardly. His pale ascetic countenance
looked more in place in a monkish cloister than on a knightly tilting
ground, and he glanced this way and that with the swift and furtive
suspicion of one who, while setting one trap, fears to be taken in
another.

But the lady who rode on a white palfrey between these two took all
men's regard, even in the presence of a marshal of France and a herald
extraordinary of the King of Scots.

The Earl Douglas, having let his eyes once rest upon her, could not
again remove them, being, as it were, fixed by the very greatness of
the wonder which he saw.

It was the lady of the pavilion underneath the pines, the lady of the
evening light and of the midnight storm.

She was no longer clothed in simple white, but arrayed like a king's
daughter. On her head was a high-peaked coiffure, from which there
flowed down a graceful cloud of finest lace. This, even as the Earl
looked at her, she caught at with a bewitching gesture, and brought
down over her shoulder with her gloved hand. A close-fitting robe of
palest blue outlined the perfections of her body. A single
fleur-de-lys in gold was embroidered on the breast of her white
bodice, and the same device appeared again and again on the white
housing of her palfrey.

She sat in the saddle, gently smiling, and looking down with a
sweetness which was either the perfection of finished coquetry or the
expression of the finest natural modesty.

Strangely enough, the first thought which came to the Earl Douglas
after his surprise was one in which triumph was blended with mirth.

"What will the Abbot and Malise think of this?" he said, half aloud.
And he turned him about in order to look upon the face of his master
armourer.

He found Malise MacKim ashen-pale and drawn of countenance, his mouth
open and squared with wonder. His jaw was fallen slack, and his hands
gripped one upon the other like those of a suppliant praying to the
saints.

The Earl smiled, and bidding Malise unlace his helmet in compliment to
his guests, he stood presently bareheaded before them, his head
appearing above the blackness of his armour, bright as a flower with
youth and instinct with all the fiery beauty of his race.

It was James the Gross who came forward to act as herald. "My
well-beloved nephew," he began in somewhat whining tones, "I bring you
two royal embassies, one from the King of France and the other from
the King of Scotland. I have the honour to present to you the Marshal
Gilles de Retz, ambassador of the most Christian King, Charles the
Seventh, who will presently deliver his master's message to you."

The marshal, who till now had kept his visor down, slowly raised it,
and revealed a face which, being once seen, could never afterwards be
banished from the memory.

It was a large grey-white countenance, with high cheek-bones and
colourless lips, which were continually working one upon the other.
Black eyes were set close together under heavy brows, and a long thin
nose curved between them like the beak of an unclean bird.

"Earl William," said the marshal, "I give you greeting in the name of
our common liege lord, Charles, King of France, and also in that of
his son, the Dauphin Louis. I bring you also a further token of their
good-will, in that I hail you heir to the great estates and dignities
of your father and grandfather, sometime Dukes of Touraine and vassals
premier of the King of France."

The young man bowed, but in spite of the interest of his message, the
marshal caught his eyes resting upon the face of the lady who rode
beside him.

"To this I add that which, save for the message of the King, my
master, ought fitly to have come first. I present you to this fair
lady, my sister-in-law, the Damosel Sybilla de Thouars, maid of honour
to your high princess Margaret of Scotland, who of late hath expanded
into a yet fairer flower under the sun of our land of France."

The Earl dismounted and threw the reins of his horse to Malise, whose
face wore an expression of bitterest disappointment and instinctive
hatred. Then he went to the side of the Lady Sybilla, and taking her
hand he bowed his head over it, touching the glove to his lips with
every token of respect. Still bareheaded, he took the reins of her
palfrey and led her to the stand reserved for the Queen of Beauty.

Here the Earl invited her to dismount and occupy the central seat.

"Till your arrival it lacked an occupant, saving my little sister; but
to-day the gods have been good to the house of Douglas, and for the
first time since the death of my father I see it filled."

Smilingly the lady consented, and with a wave of his hand the Earl
William invited the Marshal de Retz to take the place on the other
side of the Lady Sybilla.

Then turning haughtily to the herald of the King of Scots, who had
been standing alone, he said:--

"And now, sir, what would you with the Earl Douglas?"

The ascetic, monkish man found his words with little loss of time,
showing, however, no resentment for Earl William's neglect of any
reverence to the banner under whose protection he came.

"I am Sir James Irving of Drum," he said, "and I stand here on behalf
of Sir Alexander Livingston, tutor and guardian of the King of Scots,
to invite your friendship and aid. The Lord Crichton, sometime
Chancellor of this realm, hath rebelled against the royal authority
and fortified him in Edinburgh Castle. So both Sir Alexander
Livingston and the most noble lady, the Queen Mother, desire the
assistance of the great power of the Earl of Douglas to suppress this
revolt."

Scarcely had these words been uttered when another knight stepped
forward out of the train which had followed the Earl of Avondale.

"I am here on behalf of the Chancellor of Scotland, who is no rebel
against any right authority, but who wishes only to bring this
distracted realm back into some assured peace, and to deliver the
young King out of the hands of flatterers and lechers. I have the
honour, therefore, of requesting on behalf of the Chancellor of
Scotland, Sir William Crichton, the true representative of royal
authority, the aid and alliance of my Lord of Douglas."

A smile of haughty contempt passed over the face of the Earl, and he
dismissed both heralds, uttering in the hearing of all those words
which afterwards became so famous over Scotland:

"Let dog eat dog! Wherefore should the lion care?"




CHAPTER XII

MISTRESS MAUD LINDESAY


The sports of the first day of the great wappenshaw were over. The
Lord James Douglas, second son of the Gross One, had won the single
tourneying by unhorsing all his opponents without even breaking a
lance. For the second time Sholto MacKim wore on his cap the golden
buckle of archery, and took his way happily homeward, much uplifted
that the somewhat fraudulent eyes of Mistress Maud Lindesay had smiled
upon him whilst the French lady was fastening it there.

The knightly part of the great muster had already gone back to their
tents and lodgings. The commonalty were mostly stringing away through
the vales and hill passes to their homes, no longer in ordered
companies, but in bands of two or three. Disputes and misunderstandings
arose here and there between men of different provinces. The Galloway
men called "Annandale thieves" at those border lads who came at the
summons of the hereditary Warden of the Marches. The borderers replied
by loud bleatings, which signified that they held the Galwegians of no
better understanding than their native sheep.

It was a strange and varied company which rode home to Thrieve to
receive the hospitality of the young Earl of Douglas and Duke of
Touraine. The castle itself, being no more than a military fortress,
containing in addition to the soldiers' quarters only the apartments
designed for the family (and scant enough even of those) could not, of
course, accommodate so great a company.

But as was the custom at all great houses, though more in England and
France than in poverty-stricken Scotland, the Earl of Douglas had in
store an abundant supply of tents, some of them woven of arras and
ornamented with cloth of gold, others of humbler but equally
serviceable material.

His mother, the Countess of Douglas, who knew nothing of the
occurrences of the night of the great storm, nor guessed at the
suspicions of witchcraft and diablerie which made a hell of the breast
of Malise, the master armourer, received her son's guests with
distinguished courtesy. Malise himself had gone to find the Abbot, so
soon as ever he set eyes on the companion of the Marshal de Retz, that
they might consult together--only, however, to discover that the
gentle churchman had quitted the field immediately after he had
obtained the consent of his nephew to the possession of the new
chorister, to whom he had taken so sudden and violent a fancy.

The hoofs of the whole cavalcade were erelong sounding hollow and dull
upon the wooden bridge, which the Earl's father had erected from the
left bank to the southernmost corner of the Isle of Thrieve, a bridge
which a single charge of powder, or even a few strokes of a wood-man's
axe, had been sufficient to remove and disable, but which nevertheless
enabled the castle-dwellers to avoid the extreme inconvenience of
passing through the ford at all states of the river.

Sholto MacKim, throwing all the consciousness of a shining success
into the stiffness of the neck which upheld the slight additional
weight of the Earl's gold buckle in his cap, found himself, not wholly
by accident, in the neighbourhood of his heart's beloved, Maud
Lindesay. For, like a valiant seneschal, she had kept her place all
day close beside the Fair Maid of Galloway.

And now the little girl was more than ever eager to keep near to her
friend, for the ambassador of the King of France had bent one look
upon her, so strange and searching that Margaret, though not naturally
timid, had cried aloud involuntarily and clasped her friend's hand
with a grasp which she refused to loosen, till Sholto had promised to
walk by the side of her pony and allow her to net her trembling
fingers into the thick of his clustering curls.

For the armourer's son was, in those simple days, an ancient ally and
playmate of the little noble damsel, and he dreamed, and not without
some excuse, that in an age when every man's strong arm and brave
heart constituted his fortune, the time might come when he might even
himself to Maud Lindesay, baron's daughter though she were. For both
his father and himself were already high in favour with their master
the Earl, who could create knighthoods and dispose lordships as easily
as (and much more effectually and finally than) the King himself.

The emissaries of the Chancellor and Sir Alexander Livingston did not
accompany the others back to the castle after the short and haughty
answer which they had received, but with their followers returned the
way they had come to their several headquarters, giving, as was
natural between foes so bitter, a wide berth to each other on their
northward journeys to Edinburgh and Stirling.

"What think you of this day's doings, Mistress Lindesay?" asked Sholto
as he swung along beside the train with little Margaret Douglas's hand
still clutching the thick curls at the back of his neck.

The maid of honour tossed her shapely head, and, with a little pretty
upward curl of the lip, exclaimed: "'Twas as stupid a tourney as ever
I saw. There was not a single handsome knight nor yet one beautiful
lady on the field this day."

"What of James of Avondale when knights are being judged?" said
Sholto, with a kind of gloomy satisfaction, boyish and characteristic;
"he at least looked often enough in your direction to prove that he
did not agree with you about the lack of the beautiful lady."

At this Maud Lindesay elevated her pretty nostrils yet further into
the air. "James of Avondale, indeed--" she said, "he is not to be
compared either for dignity or strength with the Earl himself, nor yet
with many others whom I know of lesser estate."

Copyright (c) 2007. topmasterworks.com. All rights reserved.