S. R. Crockett - The Black Douglas

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"Sholto MacKim," cried the clear piping voice of the little Margaret,
"how in the world am I to keep hold of your hair if you shake and jerk
your head about like that? If you do not keep still I will send for
that pretty boy over there in the scarlet vest, or ask my cousin James
to ride with me. And he will, too, I know--for he likes bravely to be
beside my dear, sweet Maud Lindesay."

After this Sholto held his head erect and forth-looking, as if he had
been under the inspection of the Earl and were doubtful of his weapons
passing muster.

There came a subtle and roguish smile into the eyes of Mistress Maud
Lindesay as she observed the stiffening of Sholto's bearing.

"Who were those others of humbler estate?" he queried, sending his
words straight out of his lips like pellets from a pop-gun, being in
fear lest he should unsettle the hand of the small tyrant upon his
hair.

"Your brother Laurence for one," replied the minx, for no other
purpose than to see the flush of disappointment tinge his brow with
sudden red.

"I wish my brother Laurence were in--" he began. But the girl
interrupted him.

"Hush," she said, holding up her finger, "do not swear, especially at
a son of the holy church. Ha, ha! A fit clerk and a reverend will they
make of Laurence MacKim! I have heard of your ploys and ongoings, both
of you. Think not I am to be taken in by your meekness and pretence of
dutiful service. You go athwart the country making love to poor
maidens, and then, when you have won their hearts, you leave them
lamenting."

And she affected to heave a deep sigh.

"Ah, Maudie," said the little girl, reproachfully, "now you are being
bad. I know it by your voice. Do not be unkind to my Sholto, for his
hair is so pleasant to touch. I wish you could feel it. And, besides,
when you are wicked to him, you make him jerk, and if he does it often
I shall have to send him away."

The Maid of Galloway was indeed entirely correct. For Maud Lindesay,
accustomed all her life to the homage of many men, and having been
brought up in a great castle in an age when chivalrous respect to
women had not yet given place to the licence of the Revival of
Letters, practised irritation like a fine art. She was brimful of the
superfluity of naughtiness, yet withal as innocent and playful as a
kitten.

But Sholto, both from a feeling that he belonged to an inferior rank,
and also being exceedingly conscious of his youth, chose to be
bitterly offended.

"You mistake me greatly, Mistress Lindesay," he said in an uneven
schoolboy's voice, to which he tried in vain to add a touch of worldly
coldness; "I do not make love to every girl I meet, nor yet do I love
them and leave them as you say. You have been most gravely
misinformed."

"Nay," tripped the maid of honour, with arch quickness of reply, "I
said not that you were naturally equipped for such amorous quests. I
meant to designate your brother Laurence. 'Tis pity he is to be a
clerk. Though one day doubtless he will make a very proper and
consolatory father confessor--"

Sholto walked on in silence, his eyes fixed before him, and in such
high dudgeon that he pretended to be unconscious of what the girl had
been saying. Then the little Margaret began to prattle in her pretty
way, and the youth answered "yes" and "no" sulkily and at random, his
thoughts being alternately on the doing of some great deed to make his
mistress repent her cruelty, and on a leap into the castle pool, in
whose unsunned deeps he might find oblivion from all the flouts of
hard-hearted beauty.

Maud kept her eyes upon him, a smile of satisfaction on her lips so
long as he was not looking at her. She liked to play her fish as
satisfactorily as she could before grassing it at her feet.

"Besides, it will do him good," she said to herself. "He hath lately
won the gold badge of archery, and, like all men, is apt to think
overmuch of himself at such times. Moreover, I can always make it up
to him after--if I like, that is."

But as often as Sholto dropped a little behind, keeping pace with Maid
Margaret's slower palfrey so that Maud was sure he looked at her, the
pretty coquette cast down her eyes in affected humility and sorrow.
Whereupon immediately Sholto felt his resentment begin to melt like
snow off a dike top when the sun of April is shining.

But neither of them uttered another word till they reached the
drawbridge which crossed the nether moat and conducted to the noble
gateway of Thrieve. Then, at the foot of the stairway to the hall,
Sholto, having swung the little maid from her pony, after a moment of
sullen hesitation went across to assist Mistress Maud Lindesay out of
her saddle.

As he lifted the girl down his heart thundered tumultuously in his
breast, for he had never so touched her before. Her lashes rested
modestly on her cheek--long, black, and upcurled a little at the ends.
As her foot touched the ground, she raised them a moment, and looked
at him with one swift flash of violet eyes made darker by the
seclusion from which she had released them. Then in another moment she
had dropped them again, detaching them from his with a mighty
affectation of confusion.

"Please, Sholto, I am sorry. I did not mean it." She spoke like a
child that is sorry for a fault and is fearful of being chidden.

And even though knowing full well by bitter experience all her
naughtiness and hypocrisy, Sholto, gulping his heart well down into
his throat, could not do otherwise than forgive a thing so pretty and
so full of the innocent artifices which make mown hay of the hearts of
men.

With a touch of his lips upon the hand of Margaret the Maid in token
of fealty, Sholto MacKim turned on his heel and went away towards the
fords of Thrieve, muttering to himself, "No, she does not mean it, I
do believe. But I have ever heard that of all women she who never
means it is the most dangerous."

And this is a dict which no wise man can gainsay.

CHAPTER XIII

A DAUNTING SUMMONS

Not far before them had ridden the Earl and the Lady Sybilla. Behind
these two came the Marshal de Retz and the fat Lord of Avondale. They
were telling each other tales of the wars of La Pucelle, the latter
laughing and shaking shoulders, but at the end of every side-splitting
legend the Frenchman would glance over his shoulder at Maud Lindesay
and the little maiden Margaret.

As Sholto passed them on his return he stood aside, poised at the
salute, looking meanwhile with awe on the great and notable French
soldier. Yet at the first glimpse of his unvisored face there fell
upon the young man a dislike so fierce and instinctive that he grasped
his bow and fumbled in his quiver for an arrow, in order to send it
through the unlaced joints of the Marshal's gorget, which for ease's
sake his squire had undone when they left the field.

Sholto MacKim was at the fords waiting the chance of crossing and the
pleasure of the surly keeper of the bridge, Elson A'Cormack, who sat
in his wheelhouse, grunting curses on all who passed that way.

"Foul feet, slow bellies, fushionless and slack ye are to run my
lord's errands! But quick enow to return home upon your trampling
clattering ruck of horses, and every rascal of you expecting to ride
over my bridge of good pine planking instead of washing the dirt from
your hoofs in honest Dee water."

The long files of horsemen threaded their way across the green plain
of the isle towards the open space in front of Thrieve Castle, the
points of their spears shining high in the air, and the shafts so
thick underneath that, seen from a distance, they made a network of
slender lines reticulated against the brightness of the sun.

The great island strength of the Douglases was then in its highest
state of perfection as a fortress and of dignity as a residence.
Archibald the Grim, who built the keep, could not have foreseen the
wondrous beauty and strength to which Thrieve would attain under his
successors. This night of the wappenshaw the lofty grey walls were
hung with gaily coloured tapestries draped from the overhanging
gallery of wood which ran round the top of the castle. From the four
corners of the roof flew the banners of four provinces which owned the
sway of the mighty house,--Galloway, Annandale, Lanark, and the
Marches,--while from the centre, on a flagstaff taller than any, flew
their standard royal, for so it might be called, the heart and stars
of the Douglases' more than royal house.

While the outer walls thus blazed with colour, the woods around gave
back the constant reverberation of cannon, as with hand guns and
artillery of weight the garrison greeted the return of the Earl and
his guests. The green castle island from end to end was planted thick
with tents and gay with pavilions of many hues and various design,
their walls covered with intricate devices, and each flying the
colours of its owner, while on poles without dangled shields and
harness of various kinds, ready for the younger squires to clean and
oil for the use of their masters on the remaining days of the
tournament.

Sholto waited at the bridge-head, impatient of the press, and eager to
be left alone with his own thoughts, that he might con over and over
the words and looks of his heart's idol, and suck all the sweet pain
he could out of her very hardheartedness. Suddenly tossed backwards
like a ball from lip to lip, according to the universal and, indeed,
obligatory custom of the time, there reached him the "passing of the
word." He heard his own name repeated over and over in fifty voices
and tones, waxing louder as the "word" neared him.

"Sholto MacKim--Sholto MacKim, son of Malise, the armourer, wanted to
speak with the Earl. Sholto MacKim. Sholto--"

A great nolt of a Moray Highlandman, with a mouth like a gash, shouted
it in his very ear.

Surprised and somewhat anxious at heart, Sholto cast over in his mind
all the deeds, good and evil, which might procure him the honour of an
interview with Earl William Douglas, but could think of nothing except
his having involuntarily played the spy at the young lord's meeting
with the lady in the wood. It was therefore with some natural
trepidation that the young man obeyed the summons.

"At any rate," he meditated with a slight return of complacency, as he
butted and shoved his way castle-wards, "he can scarcely mean to have
my head. For he was all day with my father at his elbow, and at the
worst I shall have another chance of seeing"--he did not call the
beloved by her Christian name even to himself, so he compromised by
adding somewhat lamely--"_her_."

Thus Sholto, putting speed in his heels and swinging along over the
trampled sward with the easy tireless trot of a sleuthhound, threaded
his way among the groups of villein prickers and swearing men-at-arms
who cumbered the main approaches of the castle.

He found the Earl walking swiftly up and down a little raised platform
which extended round three sides of Thrieve, outside the main
defences, but yet within the nether moat, the sluggish water of which
it over-looked on its inner side.

Earl William was manifestly discomposed and excited by the events of
the day, and especially by the fact that the Lady Sybilla seemed
utterly unconscious of ever having set eyes upon him before, appearing
entirely oblivious of having received him in a pavilion of
rose-coloured silk under the shelter of a grove of tall pines. The
young lord instinctively recoiled from any communication with his
master armourer, whose grave and impassive face revealed nothing which
might be passing in his mind. Then the Earl's thoughts turned upon
Sholto, who had been the first to observe his beauteous companion of
the Carlinwark woods.

Earl William was even younger than Sholto, but the cares and dignities
of a great position had rendered him far less boyish in manner and
carriage than the son of Malise MacKim.

His head, now released from his helm, rose out from the richly
ornamented collar of his armour with the grace of a flower and the
strength of a tree rooted among rocks. He had already laid aside his
gorget, and when Sholto was announced, the Earl's ancient retainer,
old Landless Jock of Abernethy, was bringing him a cap of soft velvet
which he threw on the back of his head with an air of supreme
carelessness. Then he rose and walked up and down, carrying his armour
as if it had been a mere feather weight, whereas it was tilting
harness of double plate and designed only for wearing on horseback.

Sholto marked in the young lord a boyish eagerness equal to his own.
Indeed, his impatient manner recalled his late feelings, as he had
stood on the bridge and desired to be left alone with his thoughts of
Maud Lindesay.

Sholto stood still and quiet on the topmost step of the ascent from
the moat-bridge waiting for the Earl to signify his will.

CHAPTER XIV

CAPTAIN OF THE EARL'S GUARD

"Sholto MacKim," said the Earl of Douglas, abruptly, "saw you the lady
who arrived with the foreign ambassador?"

"She is indeed wondrous fair to look on," answered Sholto, the whole
heart in him instantly wary, while outwardly he seemed more innocent
than before.

"Have your eyes ever lighted on that lady before?"

"Nay, my lord, of a surety no. In what manner should they, seeing that
I have never been in France in my life, nor indeed more than a score
of miles from this castle of Thrieve?"

"Thou art a good lad, and also ready of wit, Master Sholto," said the
Earl, looking at the armourer's son musingly. "Clear of eye and true
of hand, so they tell me. Did you not win the arrow prize this day?"

Lord William raised his eyes to where in the bonnet of the youth his
own golden badge of archery glistened.

"And I also won the swording prize at the last wappenshaw on the moot
hill of Urr," said Sholto, taking courage, and being resolved that if
his fortune stood not now on tiptoe, it should not be on account of
any superfluity of modesty on his own part.

"Ah," said the Earl, "I remember. It was two golden hearts joined
together with an arrow and a star in the midst--a fitting Douglas
emblem, by the bones of Saint Bride! Where hast thou left that badge
that thou dost not wear it along with the other?"

Sholto blushed and muttered that he had forgotten it at home. He was
all of a breaking perspiration lest he should have to tell the Earl
that he had given it to Maud Lindesay, as indeed he meant to do
presently, along with the golden buckle of archery,--that is if the
dainty, mischievous-hearted maiden could be persuaded to accept
thereof.

"Ah," said the Earl, smiling, "I comprehend. There is some maid in the
question, and if I advance you to the command of my house-guard and
give you an officer's responsibility, you will of a surety be ever
desiring to go gadding to the greenwood--and around the loch of
Carlinwark are most truly dangerous glades."

"Nay, indeed nay," cried Sholto, eagerly. "If it is my lord's will to
appoint me to his guard, by Saint Bride and all the other saints I
swear never to leave the island, unless it be sometimes of a Sunday
afternoon for an hour or two--just to see my mother."

"Your mother!" quoth the Earl, laughing heartily. "So then my two
golden hearts are in your mother's keeping. Art a good lad, Sholto,
and as for guile it is simply not in thee!"

Sholto looked modestly down upon the earth, as if conscious of his own
exceeding merits, but willing for the nonce to say nothing about them.
But the young Earl came over to him, and dealing him a sound buffet on
the back, cried: "Nay, lad, that lamb-like look I have seen tried on
mine uncle the Abbot of Sweetheart. Thy brother Laurence is in the way
of clerkly advancement on account of that same sweetly innocent
regard, which he hath in even greater perfection. But I am a young
man, remember--and one youth flings not glamour easily into the eyes
of another. Sholto, neither you nor I are any better than we should
be, and if we are not so evil as some others, let us not set up as
overwhelmingly virtuous. For at twenty virtue is mostly but lack of
opportunity."

Sholto blushed so becomingly at this accusation that if the Earl had
not seen the brothers locked in the death grip like crabs in a
fishwife's creel, even he might have been deceived.

"Nevertheless," continued the Earl, "in spite of your claims to
virtue, I am resolved to make you officer of my castle-guard--if not
in name, at least in fact. For old Landless Jock of Abernethy must
keep the name while he lives, and stand first when my steward pays out
the chuckling golden Lions at Whitsun and eke Lady Day. But you shall
have enough and be no longer a charge upon your father. Malise should
be a proud man, having both his sons provided for in one day."

The Earl turned him about with his usual quick imperiousness.
"Malise," he cried, "Malise MacKim!"

And again the "word" ran through the castle, escaped the gate,
circumnavigated the moat, and ran round the circle of the tents till
the shouts of "Malise, Malise," could have been heard almost at the
deserted fords of Lochar, where sundry varlets were watching for a
chance to search the deserted pavilions for anything left behind
therein by the knights and squires.

Presently there was seen ascending to the moat platform the huge form
of the master armourer himself. He stood waiting his master's
pleasure, with a knife which he had been sharpening in his hand. It
was a curious weapon, long, thin, and narrow in the blade, which was
double-edged and ground fine as a razor on both sides.

"Ah, Malise," said the Earl, "you have not taught your son amiss. He
threatens to turn out a most marvellous lad, for not only can he make
weapons, but he can excel the best of my men-at-arms in their use.
Have you any objection that he be attached to my guard?"

The strong man smiled with his usual calm, and kept his humorous grey
eyes fixed shrewdly on the Earl.

"Aye," he said, "it is indeed more fitting that Sholto, my son, should
ride behind my Lord of Douglas than stiff old Malise upon his Flanders
mare."

The Earl blushed a little, for he remembered how the armourer had
offered to ride behind him after he had shod Black Darnaway at the
Carlinwark. He went on somewhat hastily.

"I have resolved to make your son, Sholto, officer of the
castle-guard. It is perhaps over-responsible a post for so young a
man, yet I myself am younger and have heavier burdens to bear. Also
Landless Jock is growing old and stiff, and will not suffer to be
spoken to. For my father's sake I cannot be severe with him. He will
die in his charge if he will, but on Douglasdale and not at Thrieve.
So now I would have your son do my bidding without question, which is
more than his father ever did before him."

"I can answer for Sholto," said Malise MacKim. "He is afraid of
nothing save perhaps the strength of his father's right arm. He is
cool enough in danger. Nothing daunts him except the flutter of a
farthingale. But then my lord knows well that is a fault most
commendable in this castle of Thrieve. Sholto will be an honest
captain of your house-carls, if you see to it that the steward locks
up his loaves of sugar and his most toothsome preserves."

"Faith," cried the Earl, heartily, "I know not but what I would join
Master Sholto in a raid on these dainties myself."

In this fashion was Sholto MacKim placed in command of the house-guard
of the castle of Thrieve.

CHAPTER XV

THE NIGHT ALARM

At parting with his father, the young captain received many wise and
grave instructions, all of which he resolved to remember and profit
by--a resolution which he did not fail to keep for full five minutes.

"Be douce in deportment," said his father, speaking quietly and yet
with a certain sternness of demeanour. "Think three times before you
give an order, but let no man think even once before obeying it. Set
him astraddle the wooden horse with a spear shaft at either foot to
teach him that a soldier's first duty is not to think. Keep your eyes
more on the alert for the approach of an enemy than for the ankles of
the women-folk at the turnings of the turret stairs."

To these and many other maxims out of the incorporate wisdom of the
elders, Sholto promised most faithful attendance, and, for the time
being, he fully intended to keep his word. But no sooner was his
father gone, and he introduced to his new quarters and duties by David
Douglas, the Earl's younger brother, than he began to wonder which was
the window of Maud Lindesay's chamber and speculate on how soon he
would see her thereat.

In the castle of Thrieve that night there was little sleeping room to
spare. The Earl and his brother lay wrapped in their plaids in one of
the round towers of the outer defences. In the castle hall the
retainers of the French ambassador slept side by side, or heads and
tails with the archers of the house-guard. Lights flickered on the
turnpike stair which led to the upper floors. The servitors had
cleared the great hall, and here on a dais, raised above the "marsh"
and sheltered by an arras curtain hastily arranged, James the Gross
slept on a soft French bed, which he had caused to be brought all the
way from his castle of Strathavon on the moors of Lanarkshire.

In the Earl's chamber on the third floor was lodged the Marshal de
Retz. Next him ranged the apartment of the countess. Here also was the
Lady Sybilla at the end of the passage in the guest chamber which
looked to the north, and from the windows of which she could see the
broad river dividing itself about the castle island, and flowing as
calmly on as if the stern feudal pile had been a peaceful monastery
and the waving war banners no more than so many signs of holy cross.

Above, in the low-roofed chambers, which gave upon the wooden balcony,
were the apartments of Maud Lindesay and her charge, little Margaret
Douglas, the Fair Maid of Galloway.

Now the single postern stair of the castle was shut at the foot, where
it opened out upon the hall of the guard by a sparred iron gate, the
key of which was put into Sholto's charge. The night closed early upon
the castle-ful of wearied folk. The marshals of the camps caused the
lights to be put out at nine-of-the-clock in all the tents and
pavilions, but the lamps and candles burned longer in the castle
itself, where the Earl had been giving a banquet to his guests, of
the best that his estates could afford. Nevertheless, it was yet long
before midnight when the cheep of the mouse in the wainscot, the
restless stir or muffled snore of a crowded sleeper in the guardroom,
was the only sound to be heard from dungeon to banner-staff of the
great castle.

Sholto's heart throbbed tumultuous and insurgent within him. And small
is the wonder. Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined such a fate
as this, to be actual captain of the Earl's own body-guard, even
though neither title nor emolument was yet wholly his; better still,
that he should dwell night and day within arm's reach almost of the
desire of his heart, flinty-bosomed and mischievous as she was--these
were heights of good fortune to which his imagination had never
climbed in its most daring ascents.

No longer did he envy his brother's good fortune, as he had been
somewhat inclined to do earlier in the day, when he thought of
returning to wield the forehammer all alone in his father's smithy.

The first night of Captain Sholto's responsibility in the castle of
Thrieve was destined to be a memorable one. To the youth himself it
would have appeared so in any case. Only a panelled door divided him
from the girl who, wayward and scornful as she had ever been to him,
yet kept his heart dangling at her waist-belt as truly as if it had
been the golden key of her armoire.

The ancient Sir John of Abernethy, dubbed Landless Jock, would not be
separated from his masters, and slept with two sergeants of the guard
in the turret adjacent to that in which the brothers of Douglas,
William and David, lay in the first sleep of youth and an easy mind.

Sholto therefore found himself left with the undivided responsibility
for the safety of the castle and all who dwelt within it. He was also
the only man who, by reason of his charge and in virtue of his
master-key, was permitted to circulate freely through all the floors
and passages of the vast feudal pile.

Sholto went out to the barred gate of the castle, where in a little
cubbyhole dark even at noonday, and black as Egypt now, the warder
slept with his hand upon his keys, and his head touching the lever of
the gear wherewith he drew the creaking portcullis up and rolled back
the iron doors which shut the keep off from the world of the wide
outer courtyard and the garrison which manned the turrets.

The porter, Hugh MacCalmont, sat up on his elbow at Sholto's
salutation, only enough to see his visitor by the glint of the little
iron "cruisie" lamp hanging upon the wall. He knew him by the golden
chain of office which the Earl had given Sholto.

"Captain of the guard," he muttered, "Lord, here's advancement indeed.
My lord might have remembered me that have served him faithfully these
thirty years, opening and shutting without mistake. He might have
named me captain of the guard, and not this limber Jack. But the young
love the young, and in truth 'tis natural. But what Landless Jock will
say when he comes to have this sprat set over him, I know not but I
can guess!"

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