THE COTTAGE BY THE THREE THORNS
It was with some anticipation, but still more, I think, with that
exultation which comes from swift movement in the open air, that Maud
and I started to ride the half-league which separated us from the
cottage of the Three Thorns.
It was mid-August--that is to say, high summer in Scotland, for the
beauties of this our dour land develop late. But there were now crops
along the river bank, other than the daisies pied and winking gowans
which had greeted me on my return from France, corn still green in the
hollows, but thinning out and yellowing on the brae-faces, besides a
hundred flowers all along the way we went. I had quite forgot the
country names of most of them, though I could have given the most part
of them in the French tongue readily enough.
There was a scent of delightful warmth, rare in Scotland, over
everything. The morning mist, which heat draws from the ground in the
moist south-west, had not yet wholly lifted. Except to children and
lovers, the way through the marshes was always a little tedious,
because of the need of searching out the best path across the peaty
flowes, and of keeping to those bare patches of soil on which only
tufts of heather and bent grew.
Then we mounted the hill, from which we could see the three famous
thorn trees of Carlinwark, beside which Malise M‘Kim had dwelt all his
life. He had, it is true, a much finer house at Mollance, a league and
a half up the valley; but nothing contented the old man truly but the
armourer’s house by the waterside, with the Isle of Firs in front of
the door, immediately under the blue barn roof of Screel, and the
sound of the water crisping and whispering on the pebbles along the
shores of Carlinwark.
Malise M‘Kim, chief armourer-smith to the Douglases, met us by the
door, his vast leathern apron about his middle. He showed himself a
gnarled and knotted trunk of a man, with a face, in a general way,
soberish, but upon occasion gravely mirthful as well, and even in
repose showing a capacity for humour essentially Scottish.
He tossed his bonnet on the ground and stood before us bareheaded.
“That is where I should be too, if I had not grown so thick-about, my
lady countess,” he cried. “Bide ye still where ye are, Sholto’s Maud!
First I bode to rax doon my bonny! Sit your fit there!”
He thrust out a hand towards me, a hand broad as an oaken trencher
from the servants’ hall. I put one foot into it, and with a touch of
my hand, as it were on a mountain side, upon the shoulder of the
giant, I found myself on the ground.
He laughed a low, satisfied, grumbling laugh.
“Ay,” he chuckled, “the Wee Yin hasna forgot the airt o’t! She has
minded auld Malise, that stood afar aff and saw her married to his
maister yester morn. But, wae’s me! They tell me the Earl William rade
awa’ that verra nicht to Douglas Castle and left ye bird-alane! It
canna be true!”
“Hush, father,” said Maud hastily, “come and help me down. There were
tidings of great danger in the Upper Wards--that Crichton and
Livingston were even then besetting Douglas Castle with a great army!
You speak of things concerning which you have no knowledge!”
For so it was ever Maud Lindsay’s way to manage and mistress everyone.
As many as possible she caused to do her will by simple ordinance, as
she did with Sholto, or by alternate _manège_ and the curb rein, as
she had been wont to do with her lovers of old--now, however, mostly
by wheedling and cajolery, or if no better might be, by the argument
of tears, or that soft inveiglement and the attractive forces of those
little kindnesses which touch and win a woman most from one of her own
sex.
Old Malise lifted his daughter down, lightly and easily as he had done
for me--though Maud had begun to pay the penalty of comfort and a
home, with maternity and the happy care of children. In brief, she was
no longer willow slender or quite feather-weight.
Now to me it was greatly pleasant to see again this grizzled giant,
whom I but dimly remembered, his arms knotted and massy as the
branches of an oak, smiling upon us--ready at once to give us of his
best, or to lay down his life for either of us if need were.
“But why,” said I, “have we not to seek you at your new abode? Is not
the Mollance a pleasant place to dwell in? If not, then we must e’en
seek you another. Do you not know that the Douglas will be beholden to
none, not even to an old friend?”
“Pleesant to the e’e, and heartsome--ay,” said the old armourer, “but
the Mollance will never be hame to me. Some o’ thae daftlike young
folk o’ mine will doubtless set up their canopied bedposts there. But
there shall be nae hame for the auld smith but aneath the Three Thorns
where he was born. There shall he leeve and there (God sainin’ him)
will he dee; and when they carry him awa’, feet foremost, he will be
buried oot yonder on the Kelton brae-face, wi’ the glint o’ rain and
sunshine comin’ and gangin’, as if the Head Smith o’ a’ were hard at
it, blawin’ the bellows o’ the wunds athort the lowin’ coals o’ the
cloods o’ even. Hoots--there I am at it again, bletherin’ fule words
aboot the cloods.”
He turned and, with a perfect whirlwind of voice, cried aloud,
“_Guidwife, are ye there?_”
“Here I am, Laird M‘Kim,” replied another voice of almost equal volume
from behind the peat-stack, “but I wad hae ye ken that golderin’ like
a Bull o’ Bashan is in no way to caa’ for the leddy o’ the Mollance.
Do ye think that I, Dame Barbara o’ that ilk, am but a tinkler’s wife
for a’ the warld to scraich at?”
“And ’deed what better are ye?” said her husband, subduing his voice
to shorter range, “ye are just puir auld Babby Kim, the smith’s wife
at the Three Thorns! And,” suddenly sending his voice outward in a
gust of sound, “_gin ye dinna come oot frae ahint that peat-stack this
minute--faith, I’se come an’ fetch ye like a clockin’ hen!_”
“The poo’er is no’ gien ye by the Almichty, Laird M‘Kim,” said the
voice, “‘Brawny’ though they caa’ ye! Ye mind what happened to that
black scoondrel Ham for makkin’ a shame an’ a lauchin’-stock o’ his
faither, and faith, it wad be waur for you to do the like to your
douce marriet wife! Gang your ways intil the hoose an’ bid Magdalen
bring me my paduasoy goon and my white mutch. For I am juist no’ fit
to be seen, as weel ye ken, me bein’ a laird’s wife, an’ forbye, the
mither o’ a beltit knicht an’ an abbot o’ Sweetheart Abbey. A
bonny-like thing for a graund body like me to be catchit in an auld
slip-body and clogs, feedin’ the pigs! Gang your ways and find
Magdalen--hear ye me, Malise M‘Kim?”
“But, guidwife,” said Malise, with something like a wink across at us,
“I’m some feared that Magdalen is gane to the far park yont the hill,
to gather the white rose and the reid! Ye wull hae to come out as ye
are, guidwife, I’m thinkin’!”
“Deil o’ that I’ll do, Laird M‘Kim!” cried the lady, while we waited
smiling. I had signalled to Maud to be still, for, indeed, the words,
and the very lilting strain of the voice when in pretended anger,
recalled old things to me. For this same Dame Barbara had been my
foster-nurse, even as she had been that of my two dead brothers, whom
the Crichton slew so cruelly at Edinburgh. “Deil o’ that,” she
repeated; “gang yoursel’, my man, to the armoire, an’ tak’ oot the
paduasoy and the white mutch that hangs on the peg, a’ goffered an’
daintied! And mind ye that your hands are well washen, ye great
muckle, hulkin’ blackamoor that ye are! For gin ye fyle a single
kep-string or bowed puff, I’se”--
“Mother,” said Maud Lindsay suddenly, “let me go if you need suchlike,
but do not forget that you are keeping the Countess of Douglas
waiting!”
“The Coontess o’ Dooglas? Wha’s she?” (There was a sudden change in
the voice.) “No’ my wee Margaret, her that lay at my breests, that was
unto me as my ain--ay, an’ maybes mair--the last left o’ the bonny
three that were bane o’ my bane an flesh o’ my flesh, as say the
Scriptures!”
“Even so, Dame Barbara!” I cried. “If you will not come to see your
foster-bairn, faith, blithely will I kilt my coats, and help you to
feed the pigs--as I have done before, dear mother of mine, many and
many a time!”
There reached us a sound of feet heavily plashing, excited breathings
that came short and fast, then finally from behind the peat-stacks
Dame Barbara appeared with her sonsy arms outspread to enfold me. A
blue linen gown was broadly belted about that part of her body which
it was a misuse of words to call her waist. A kilted skirt of rough
frieze descended a little, a very little, below her knees, showing
rig-and-furrow stockings of blue wool, and sturdy feet thrust into the
huge wooden shoes, called “clogs”--a sort of left-handed cousin, I
take it, of the _sabot_ of Touraine.
“Oh, my ain wee bairnie,” she cried, “I wad hae kenned ye afar aff.
There’s nane like ye! But I canna touch ye the noo. I declare I am a
fair disgrace to be seen--me that micht hae been sittin’ in the bonny
hoose o’ Mollance”--
“Ay,” said her husband, “twiddlin’ your thumbs roond yin anither like
a mill-wheel in a spate an’ wishin’ that ye had the Carlinwark pigs to
feed!”
“Ye needna think, muckle sumph that ye are,” retorted Dame Barbara,
“that because ye canna pit by a day withoot the smell o’ apron
leather, an’ the foost o’ het pleuch-irons fizzlin’ in the cauldron,
that me, who is ain sister to a Provost o’ Dumfries, has nae mair
respectable thochts in my heid!”
But having once felt my arms about her, the good Dame of Mollance
easily forgat the imperfections of her attire, and alternately wept
and laughed over me, now holding me at arm’s length to admire, and
anon reflecting with some breadth upon the supposed ill-conduct of my
husband in leaving me alone so soon after our marriage.
“Body an’ breath o’ haly Patrick,” she cried, “it wasna dune that gate
in my young time--by gentle nor yet by simple. But wae’s me, wae’s me,
the times are sair changed--and wi’ them the folk. There’s even oor
wee bit Magdalen, and--Guid forgi’e me, nae sweeter or bonnier maid
doffs kirtle at bedtime atween here and John-o’-Groats--though I say
it that shouldna--but even she will gang aff by her lane instead o’
dancin’ on the green wi’ them that are o’ her age. Ye will find her
ower yonder i’ the wild wood or up amang the heather, far far yont,
sittin’ on a hassock o’ bent and listenin’ to the laverocks i’ the
lift, as if she had never heard them afore in a’ her life. Ay, ay,
puir lassie, an’ sae your groom’s gane an’ left ye, wae’s me, wae’s
me!”
This was the beginning of our daily pilgrimages to see Malise M‘Kim
and his wife, and (but that came later) Magdalen, their daughter, and
their other five sons, Corra, Dun, Herries, Roger, and Malise the
Younger. All these, however, were older than their
[Illustration: HER FATHER, WHO MELTED TO NONE ELSE, FOLLOWED HER WITH
HIS EYES AS SHE WENT ABOUT THE HOUSE.]
sole sister Magdalen, who, as her mother said, “had arrivit untimely,
the child o’ oor auld age--the ithers being a’ as close on yin
anither’s tails as a string o’ deuks gaun to the mill-pond.” So, as
was natural, this one little daughter, the pearl of price, now in her
fifteenth year, had drawn to her great store of the love of her
parents, and found herself petted and worshipped as a divinity even by
her brothers.
Nothing she could do was wrong. So Magdalen M‘Kim grew up encircled by
love, and, what is more and other, by the unfailing expression of
love. Her father, who melted to none else, followed her with his eyes
as she went about the house. One day (so he said to himself) Magdalen
would marry a laird’s son and be the lady of Mollance. For, as for the
others, man and boy, they could fend for themselves as their father
and mother had done.
But on this first occasion of our going we saw nothing of the maid,
the fame of whose beauty, however, had already carried far across the
countryside.
Yet I held it strange that as Maud and I overtopped the little ridge
behind the Three Thorns, which is called the Hill of Carlinwark, I
seemed to see all suddenly against the sunset the shape of a knight in
armour mounted on a noble horse. He was stooping from his saddle to
kiss a maiden’s hand, which she had rendered to him as if against her
will. Both stood out black against the redness of the west, and in a
moment they were gone, or at least hidden by a little rising of the
ground as we rode on. The sight took my breath away. I must have
dreamed it, I thought, for indeed at the time my head was full of
visions and hopes and fears. So I said nothing to my companion.
And Maud, full of her babes, paid no attention, or at least she spoke
never a word of the event if she saw aught. But to me it seemed that
the knight with the black plume and the great square shoulders was of
the build, make, and carriage of James Douglas.
Only in my heart I said, “Tush, Margaret, you get your mind too full
of James Douglas these days. This must be ended, and suddenly! I will
no more on’t!”
All the same, I thought on the vision afterwards, when I ought to have
been asleep in my naked bed.