MAID MARGARET
OF GALLOWAY
_The Life Story of her whom Four Centuries have called_
“_The Fair Maid of Galloway_”
BY
S. R. CROCKETT
_The memory of her beauty lives_
LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27 PATERNOSTER ROW
1905
[Illustration: AT BIRNAM I HAD LIBERTY TO SIT AT EASE IN THESE SWEET
SOLITUDES, AND WITH PEACEFUL BOOKS TO WHILE AWAY THE HOURS.]
CONTENTS
Chapter I. Bread-and-Water--and Kitchen Thereto!
Chapter II. One Leg Green and One Leg Pink
Chapter III. Cour Cheverney
Chapter IV. A Good Fight
Chapter V. Furry Ears
Chapter VI. William Douglas Speaks
Chapter VII. A Young Maid’s Lovers
Chapter VIII. Margaret of Margarets
Chapter IX. The Garden at Amboise
Chapter X. “La Belle des Belles”
Chapter XI. The Mists of Dee
Chapter XII. What Maud Lindsay taught Me
Chapter XIII. The Last Grains in the Sand-Glass
Chapter XIV. Ave, Amor--Atque Vale!
Chapter XV. The Great Heart of a Man
Chapter XVI. A Married Maid
Chapter XVII. The Cottage by the Three Thorns
Chapter XVIII. The Penance of Jock the Penman
Chapter XIX. The Scent of the White Thorn
Chapter XX. Instruction in Loving
Chapter XXI. Douglas rides Late
Chapter XXII. The Douglas bids Good-bye
Chapter XXIII. The First Stroke of Doom
Chapter XXIV. His Hour
Chapter XXV. James Douglas, Benedict
Chapter XXVI. The One Ewe Lamb
Chapter XXVII. The White Face of Fate
Chapter XXVIII. I see a Star
Chapter XXIX. Dies Iræ I--Gloaming
Chapter XXX. Dies Iræ II--With Garments dyed in Blood
Chapter XXXI. Dies Iræ III--The First Day of the Wrath
Chapter XXXII. Dies Iræ IV--How the Sun went Down
Chapter XXXIII. Arkinholm
Chapter XXXIV. A Maiden left Alone
Chapter XXXV. The Eagles are gathered together
Chapter XXXVI. The Young Man in Black
Chapter XXXVII. Whom God hath Touched
Chapter XXXVIII. A Prince among Hammermen
Chapter XXXIX. Sholto also is a M‘Kim
Chapter XL. Archibald the Grim
Chapter XLI. In the Front of War
Chapter XLII. Sholto stands in the Breach
Chapter XLIII. In the Night Season, one cometh up
Chapter XLIV. The Woods of Birnam
Chapter XLV. The Peace of Zimri
Chapter XLVI. Jack Neville’s Anne
Chapter XLVII. A Rare Salt Fellow
Chapter XLVIII. Canon Law
Chapter XLIX. Malise does his Work
Chapter L. The Worn Path
ADVERTISEMENT
These papers were found among the archives of Philip Herault de
Douglas, erewhile Lord of Cour Cheverney in Touraine, and Montreal,
not far from Nantua in the Bugey. They have, as is evident, been
originally written in the North English or Scots Lallan tongue by
Margaret Douglas herself. But, by misfortune of years or lacune of
transmission, parts of the lady’s narrative have been supplied in the
French of a later period, probably by the hand of the aforesaid Philip
Herault himself--who was sometime Chancellor to King Henry IV. of
France, and claimed consanguinity, if not quite rectilineal descent,
from the Scottish house of the Dukes of Touraine, Douglases of the
Black. The worthy Chancellor has manifested the truth of the
maxim--“like master, like man,” by adding to the simple Scots
narrative many notes, of a nature calculated rather to please Maitre
François of Meudon, or that high dame Marguerite of Navarre, than the
discerning reader of other times, for whom the present transcript is
intended. The editor has only glanced at these upon occasion, but the
parts which have had to be translated over again from the French of
Chancellor Philip (of the Bar Sinister) remain, in spite of all care
of excision and rewriting to the original pattern, perfectly
distinguishable to the critical eye.
CHAPTER I.
BREAD-AND-WATER--AND KITCHEN THERETO!
Oh, I was so tired--so weary. I could hear my jaw crack at the
corners where the strings are, each time I yawned. And not without
reason. For I was nearly eighteen and had been two years in the
nunnery of the holy St. Brigida of Cheverney.
Lord, Lord! how I hated it--I, Margaret Douglas, who had been the
petted of great men and strong men ever since I could remember--ay,
and before! I, who had known Maud Lindsay (called the “Snarer of
Hearts”) in her best time, who had sworn, when no more than thirteen,
that I would outdo her--to end thus, to be despatched like a bale of
goods at sixteen years of age out of Scotland! (Well, _that_ I would
not have minded so greatly. ’Tis a dull sour place, wet above and
boggy below, with much damp mist between!)
But what irked me was that I, who before I could walk had been called
the Fair Maid of Galloway, should be let grow fusty and frowsy as the
Sister of Mercy who goes from door to door, begging for the poor--all
because I had a cousin who wanted to marry me and so keep Galloway and
the Highland estates in the family coffer--bah!
Well, at any rate, I had just to bear it. _Tinkle-tankle!_ Oh yes,
there went the weary bells, like cracked tin mugs which the gipsy-folk
peddle out of their asses’ saddlebags along with coarse cloth for
“jupes,” or sleeved waistcoats, and at the bottom red earth for
marking sheep withal!
At six o’clock in the morning, black roaring winter or gracious
June--out you must turn in this our Convent of the Birch--ay, though
you be thrice a princess in your own right. And they would not let you
have so much as a drop of warm water in a pottery jar for the foot of
your bed (mightily comforting it is to lone women!), nor even suffer
you to sleep in your woollen _gonelle_, which is to say gown, that
hath a hood to it, and, being turned head-and-heels, makes an
admirable nest for cold great-toes a-nights. I have suffered from cold
feet all my days. Indeed, if I had not, perhaps I had been a happier
woman.[1]
Then _tinkle-tankle_ all over again and prayers and reading of the
Scripture at nine. Never a bite or a sup till half-past ten, when,
while you feed in silence, they read to you out of the _Lives of the
Saints_--about how Sister Brigida, afterwards martyred, established
this holy order of nuns and died in the hope of a better life. The
which I judged to be an _espérance_ noways over-sanguine! For the
Good God knows she would have had to travel fast and far, that same
holy Bridget, to find a worse life than that rule conventual she
established, and which, for my sins, had been transported from the
savage land of Ireland (where it belonged) to the sweet and smiling
Touraine that lay outside these weary walls. But since you cannot see
a smile even thirty miles broad through walls four feet thick, I might
just as well have been on the Bog of Allen.
So it went on. _Tinkle-tank_ of bells--whirr of doves’ wings (we had
them three times a week to evening refection--the wings oftener than
the doves, so far as I was concerned). _Coo-roo-coo-roo!_ From high up
in the bell-tower the sound came. Then the buzz of flies and wasps and
angry red-bottomed bees trying to find their way through the painted
window-panes. Yes, oh yes, it was peaceful, and hungrysome and
chastening, and made me wish to be a crow or a sparrow or a midge--I
was not at all particular--at any rate something that could fly away
into the blue beyond the confinement of these sorrowful walls, within
which the Lady Superior for ever snored in her cell and Sister Eulalie
yattered eternally at one’s tail, snivelling out threats of punishment
if you climbed a tree or so much as took a garden ladder to look over
the wall. Not that there was much to see, when you did look over--only
the wide spread of the forest and the green fields--not in patches, as
in Scotland, with heather and whin-bloom everywhere, but all in
cultivated squares, like a painted chess-board. There were poor men,
also, with legs blackened in the sun, half-naked or even with no more
than a clout about them, that ran at a look, or shrieked for the clink
of an iron ring.
Once I threw over the wall to one of these poor wretches my purple
jupe (the colour never became me), which was of warm cloth--also
because the weather, being August, made me to sweat when I wore it.
And for this, as well as for speaking to a man, Sister Eulalie docked
me of all food save bread-and-water for four days. “Yet,” said I,
“Bridget of Kildare, the holy, never had petticoat in her life to
bless herself withal! So where is the harm?”
“You have looked upon a man--a mortal sin!” said she, turning up the
sourish, plum-coloured tip of her nose, which had a drop on it chilly
as winter, even in the summer heats.
“Well, people do not die of it. So did my mother before me!” quoth I,
knowing well all the time that I was not wise, yet being tempted, and
my choler getting the better of me.
“But he looked upon you,” she cried, raising her voice in order to
wake the Superior, “the while you took off”--
“No, no,” I said, willing to appease her if possible before it was too
late, “he was no man really, only a wild savage, black as a Moor of
Barbary. And, besides, I went down the ladder backwards, and let my
jupe fall to the ground betwixt the wall and a gooseberry bush”--
“Silence!” commanded Sister Eulalie, raising her hand, with one finger
pointed to the zenith; “silence, or I will take you indoors forthwith
to Madame the Superior!”
Then, being at the time but a girl, I pouted, and answered back.
“Why, it is nothing,” I said. “Did not the Scripture which was read
from the lectern in the refectory on Wednesday tell of the
never-to-be-sufficiently-reverenced Judith who did more than that?
Yes, much more, or she is sore belied”--
“Take from me, thou wicked one, _six days’ bread-and_”--
But at that very moment the great gate opened, and through it I could
see, with a train of churchmen behind him--shaven, shorn, clad in
white and scarlet and green, with a peaked cap all glittering with
gold upon his head--who but Laurence M‘Kim, my old playmate, who had
helped to save me (though I had forgotten much of the details) from
the terrible Sieur de Retz, at Machecoul. Also, who used to kiss me--I
remember that. Yes, it is true, my memory only shows in patches, but
the patches are mostly bright ones.
Well, who will blame if I broke away from Sister Eulalie, crying
“Larry, Larry!”
Half crying too--or perhaps a little more than half. And so would
anyone--yes, anyone! That is, anyone who had been as long as I in the
convent-prison of St. Brigida of Cheverney.
I flung myself upon him. He was riding a white mule--oh, finer, much
finer than that of the Bishop of Evreaux. And I was so agile from
being fed like a greyhound, and with being so very glad to see him,
that I would have kissed him if I could. Yes, truly, what is the use
of being a princess else! But, as it was, I could only get my arm half
about his waist, before Sister Eulalie was upon me.
He bent down to disengage me gently, murmuring in Scots, “Wait a
little while!” And then he stretched out two fingers over my head and
said in a voice full of the music which first made my uncle take him
to Dulce Cor as a chorister, “_Bless you, my child!_”
As one stricken by palsy, Sister Eulalie fell back, marvelling at the
great ecclesiast and his princely retinue. And (best of all) Larry, my
Larry, gave her his ring to kiss. It was good to see. Also he queried
with his eye if I loved her--if she had been good to me. But I shook
my head and frowned till he understood, and nodded, meaning thereby
that he had come to do some little regulating of accounts.
“I have been to Rome, sister,” he said; “the point of my right shoe
and the four iron shoes of my beast have been blessed by the Holy
Father. If there be sin upon you, bend down and kiss them also.”
And while Sister Eulalie was, for her soul’s good, embracing of the
beast’s near front hoof (and doing it gingerly, too, for the mule had
a spirit of its own), Larry whispered to me, “These behind there do
not matter!” At the same time he waved his hand towards his followers.
They all with one accord turned their heads from us in the direction
of the garden gate.
He then pushed out his foot in the silver stirrup for a mounting step.
“Now!” he whispered.
And in a moment, with the help of his hand, I was up like a bird. And
it is past telling how good it was. For, judge ye, it was two years
since I had been kissed--by a man, that is. And others do not really
count, as I have seen. Well, in a moment I was down again and toying
demurely with my rosary, before the white mule and Sister Eulalie had
agreed about the salutation of the last shoe of blessed iron. Larry
had his people well trained. For nobody laughed. Indeed, what more
natural than that I should embrace one of my own folk after two years.
Yet what the young man’s manners at Rome must have been, to make them
so biddable, it is, as I tell him, better only guessing.
Ah, it was a good world after all--that which God had made; and has a
way of improving suddenly when it is at its black worst.