DOUGLAS RIDES LATE
The days went by at Thrieve--some few, like my Arab, galloping; most
like a funeral train, as is the wont of days all over the world. Some
the pigeons in the court would shorten, flying down in windy,
whistling crowds to peck the grain, with which, in spite of Sholto’s
teeth, Magdalen and I persisted in feeding them. With Maud at our back
we could do much.
Larry came from Sweetheart, but not for a long season, and, indeed,
not till I had sent for him a full score of times. There was something
most unmonkishly manful about Laurence, and now, when Will came no
more to Thrieve, and I was shut off from James, my heart desired to
see the lad. For, though I could not help caring for James when he was
with me (being so great and strong, and, as it were, encompassing),
and though I wished to be a good wife to my husband, yet, it is no
shame to confess it, as a friend and comrade Laurence was more to my
mind than either of them.
I am not even now sure that Laurence would have come to Thrieve even
for a day, in spite of all our entreaties, had it not been that his
father sent him ill news of Magdalen. It was not that the child was
stricken by any disease, but she languished, and failed to win back
the strength she had lost.
It was then, for the first time, that I saw her father appear
perturbed; for the armourer was bound up in the maid, as, indeed, were
all her brothers. But Laurence, I think, she loved best of all, and he
her.
At all events, swift upon that summons Laurence came, first to the
Three Thorns, and afterwards to Thrieve. I found him paler than of
old, and more quiet, while his face lacked its bold, fresh boyishness.
I could also clearly see that he was passing anxious about his sister.
“There is something I cannot understand!” he said, and then forthwith
was silent.
“We cannot even get her to come to Thrieve, can we, Maud?” I said.
“Perhaps she will accompany you.”
But Magdalen, though she would visit us with Larry for a day, would
not remain. She loved (she said) to take long solitary walks among the
pine forests which lie betwixt the Mollance and Crossmichael. There
was, as William Douglas had said truly, none to do her wrong. For not
only did the fear of the earl lie heavy upon the land, but still more
mediately the fear of Brawny Kim, that strong smith of Carlinwark, and
his seven sons, who would follow an ill-doer to the gallows or the
stake--as indeed they had done with the Marshal de Retz in the country
of Brittany.
So Laurence came and went amongst us once more--sweet, loving, and
gracious always. But somehow, it was not now as it had been in the
days of Cour Cheverney. My wedding, which was no marriage, separated
us. He had, as I guessed, some inkling of how James had come between
William Douglas and his full heritage.
At all events, there was no more making of boats to sail on the broad
peat-brown Dee Water. No little mills were set birling in the burns of
Glentochar and Boreland. But it was “Yes, my lady countess!” and “No,
my Lady of Douglas,” instead, as of old, “My princess” and (at least
once) “Margaret of Margarets!” But of all that no trace.
Yet, knowing that Laurence was right, I liked the lad none the worse
because of his carefulness for me.
Still these were good days at Thrieve, set in between, as it
were--when we would wean Magdalen from her lonely haunts and Maud from
her Martha-housewifery, and set off all together to cull the flower or
pull the nut. Any excuse or none served us--so that we could win away
for a long day on the hills of Balmaghie or in the woods of Kelton.
Yet I loved the hills best, and chiefly, I think, because I could stay
a little apart from the others, and look away to the north where lay
Edinburgh and Stirling. James Douglas and William Douglas were there,
and lo! I was shut off from them by the blue hills of Carsphairn and
the dun muirs of the Windy Standard.
Now Magdalen had wandered so far and constantly that she knew every
haunt of the sweet rough-rinded hazel-nuts, the dark purple
blackberries (which in their season the birds ate so freely that every
grey rock and boulder was spotted as though a whole army of scriveners
had jerked their pens this way and that). She found also with ease the
creeping cranberry, the whortleberry, and the rare, pale, deep-hidden
strawberry.
Not only so, but when fruits were lacking, Magdalen could discern the
Grass of Parnassus long ere the rest of us had sighted it. She knew
where to find the St. John’s wort, the Great Bluebell and the
Herb-Paris. Yet there was nothing enthusiastic about her search. With
all her wondrous beauty, Magdalen moved rather like one in a dream,
going to the flower she sought directly, like a scent-dog when the
coneys crouch among the heather.
Then, when we came back tired from the hills, Magdalen would make
straight for the Three Thorns, moving easily and swiftly over the
knolls like a young deer, while, all gravely and sedately, Laurence
would return by my side.
Thus went the months, Laurence going back all too soon to his abbacy,
till it was another spring and another fruit-time--then another and
yet another, so that it seemed as if nothing would ever change. The
world must stay for ever thus. And then I could have cried out for the
castle to crash in upon our heads, or Michael’s trump to break up the
grey firmament of clouds into the flaming fires which shall consume
the world--anything, if only all things would not be so eternally the
same.
And I think I prayed, though indeed at this time I confess I troubled
the saints not much--the convent and the Bald Cat, together with
Sister Eulalie, having put me out of kilter with a too frequent
clicking of beads--which, indeed, I judged to be chiefly work for
priests and such-like, who had but little to do. And so thought
Laurence also, at least for many years.
But as it happens mostly, in such cases, the days were not far off
when I was to long for one short day of the peace of Thrieve, the kine
flicking their tails on the verges of the water meadows, the swaying
pull of the laden hazel branches as Laurence held them down on the
Airieland braes--even the skirl of the whaup or the flap of the heron
seeking their nests out on the moorland or down among the reed-beds of
the Dee. Yes, I longed for them all--all that world of peace--and had
it not.
But of that anon.
* * * * * * *
It was Malise who first put into my heart the fear which ever after
sat heavily upon me.
“Little lady,” the armourer of Thrieve began one day, as he stood
examining the bolts of the great door of Thrieve, “have you never
given to your husband that advice of the wise king of auld time, the
which Laurence read me out of his learned books in the Latin
tongue--or the Greek, I mind not which.”
“And what might that be, Malise?”
“To switch aff the heads o’ the mucklest poppies!” he answered
gravely, “an’ that richt early. For if he winna, of a surety there
shall fall a head so high that it touches the stars!”
“You mean my Lord the Earl William’s,” I answered. “Fear not for him,
Malise. He holds them all in the hollow of his hand!”
“That may be sae,” persisted the smith, “I doot it not. But, mind ye,
I have seen ere this a hundred yelpin’ curs pu’ doon a
stag-o’-ten-tines!”
And the advice was good. For at this period William Douglas was like
to none in all the land, and when he went forth the Crichtons were as
nothing before him, hiding away in holes and corners. Even Livingston
the Tutor had made friends with him, or at least seemed to do so. The
worst of the ancient abuses were stubbed down, digged up, or rooted
out of the land. And all was done without cruelty or the least
hardship to any, save only to those who did evil to their neighbours
or to the poor at their gates. On such William Douglas had no pity.
Yet for all, so simple was he, he never guessed that when the king
delivered to him all authority, and pretending to make much of him,
sent him off on great embassies to London, to Paris, to Rome itself,
it was always that he himself might escape from control and return to
his favourites as a dog to his vomit. But, in spite of kings and
favourites, William Douglas waxed ever greater and greater in the
land--for a time.
Then came a time of cooling in the ardour of the king’s good-will. But
of this also William took no heed, continuing to make treaties with
England and France for the country’s advantage in trade and
well-being. Also he banded the more sober parts of the north into one
league with himself, so that even the barbarous and pagan isles
(called of Skye and the Long Island) were made to obey and pay dues as
regularly as the Lowdens and Fife. It was well said afterwards that
the land made a greater advancement during these short years of
William Douglas’s vice-regality than it had done since the Battle of
the Standard.
But much of this came to us in our island-prison only in over-words
and snatches. Save that which concerned itself, little gossip reached
Thrieve. Packmen and carriers from Lanerick and Dumfries brought us
most of our news. On important occasions a messenger for Sholto would
come in with his beast all of a lather, or if it were night or winter,
in a perfect breathing mist of steamy vapour.
One night in particular I remember. It was in the deep middle of
winter--that is to say, in February. For mostly winter begins in
Scotland with the inbringing of the Yule log. Sholto was at Douglas
Castle on some business of the earl’s. Andro the Penman was in command
at Thrieve, and, with his stick and hard words, scarce managed to
secure that discipline which Sholto enforced with the mere glint of an
eye or the indrawing of a resolute lip. But then Sholto was a knight
and in full authority, and Andro the Penman only one of the guard--as
it were, first among his peers.
It was a night of snow. The afternoon had fallen upon the face of the
country greenish grey and dour, with a bitter nip in the air. Andro
the Penman sniffed and said, “Snow!” Maud, with her nose to the wind,
looked out on the terrace towards the north, in turn shook her head
and said, “Snow! And I pray that goodman of mine may be somewhere snug
in hold to-night.”
Then she went and saw to it that the bairns’ window-shutters were
properly fastened inside the shot bars which kept them from falling
out ten times a day.
Then, softly at first, small dampish snow began to fall drizzlingly,
drifting on the ledges, forming into little piles behind the
gargoyles, and making long lines with waving crests in the roof
gutters. The men on guard on the towers and about the fortifications
had an ill time of it. The storm seemed to take them every way at
once.
“God help all such as are abroad to-night!” I said, as I drew my furs
close about me. For even in the great hall, with fires blazing at
either end, piled high with beech-logs and crackling bog-oak, hissing
birchen twigs and steady burning peat, it was bitter cold.
And so that February afternoon the twilight darkened early into the
solid blackness of Egypt. Wrapped in shawls, Maud and I sat about the
fire, after we had supped, the candles feeble behind us, and the
tapestries on the walls moving in long regular waves, that seemed to
go from one end of the room to the other, giving boars and hunters and
steeds a wonderful appearance of life.
It was creepy and eerie enough sitting there in the leaping firelight.
And Maud did not help matters, with her Highland tales of second-sight
and death warnings, added to my own reminiscences of the wicked Lord
Soulis, with his familiar spirit, Red Cap. More than once we looked
fearfully over our shoulders, expecting to see that famous imp leaping
out of the old charter-chest to ask for new labours and to remind his
master of his promised wages.
Such tales, told in the flicker of the firelight, in a castle full of
dark deeds and memories, might well try the strongest nerves, and it
is small wonder that presently Maud murmured, “Oh, I wish that Sholto
were here!”
But it was not Sholto who was to visit Thrieve that night. Red Cap
had, indeed, been at his tricks, and, at any moment, we might expect
his head out of the chest with a demand for his wages.
Long time we sat thus, Maud and I, listening to the varying roll of
the tempest without, discerning at intervals a shriller note as the
wind, halting as if to catch its breath upon the outer walls, leaped
with a fierce hoot upon the huge square keep of Thrieve, whistled
through its window bars, clanged every unpinned door, and almost tore
from its staff the banner that flapped and lunged noisily above the
highest battlements.
At intervals Maud would raise her head as if listening for Sholto’s
return. But it was really toward the children’s chamber that her ear
inclined. Then after three or four hearkenings, her anxiety would
compel her to rise and steal up on tiptoe into that place of sweet
children’s breathings, with the shutters closed upon the windows and
the peat fire smouldering red upon the hearth. From bed to bed she
would steal, laying a kiss on that tress of flax and yonder dark head
of crispy black, all the while with her mother’s adoring look plain in
her eyes.
At which point, if I accompanied her, I was wont to betake me down
with a little jealous pain pinching shrewdly at my heart. But that
night, whether from wistful feeling akin to the storm, or in sympathy
with the poor houseless knaves and gangrel wenches abroad in the snow,
I sat still where I was, wae and silent, by the fire in the great hall
of Thrieve. The snow was not the ordinary snow of Galloway, broad,
moist, and flaked, but had changed into small, bitter, east-land snow,
more like powdered ice. I could hear it patter against the closed
windows, and fall with a hushing sound on the wooden roof of the
balcony above.
Silently Syneton, the French boy William had brought with him to be
groom to my Arab, would enter and heap fresh logs on the fire. As
silently he would disappear. A Galloway lad of his years would have
clanked in with a pair of wooden clogs all too scantly wiped on a bass
of straw brought from the barn. But Syneton came and went like a
shadow--clean, swift, and biddable--a treasure save in this, that the
truth was not in him.
Above, Maud Lindsay tarried long, and I grew weary and a little
afraid. I think Maud forgot herself when she gat among her babes. At
least, she would promise solemnly to descend in one short quarter of
an hour, and then look aggrieved and hurt when it was pointed out to
her that her absence had extended over an hour and a half! Then it was
that she would say, as if that explained all, “Ah, you are not a
mother, Margaret!”
And I would reply, “Nor you, Mistress Maud, a maid that should be
none!”
Which (though truth) did not greatly mend matters.
And indeed, to be just, Maud did not boast of her brave bairns, though
I knew her heart stirred within her with pride.
At any rate, I was long alone--left with my thoughts in the uncertain
flicker of the firelight, while the wind down the wide chimney
scattered the grey wood ashes abroad over the oaken floor, and over
William’s great rug of Turkey red.
Then through a pause of the storm I heard a far-off sound, clear and
piercing, but so distant that I started as if from a dream. It was
like a trumpet blown in the lists before the bars are let down, and
the champions bid fall to. I smiled. Certainly I had been dreaming. So
anew I began to watch the clear blue flames licking and hissing
upwards about the new wood, the equal orange of the seasoned billets,
and the rich red glow of the black log, half eaten into by the long
afternoon’s fire.
Again it seemed that I dreamed. But nearer, clearer, more insistent,
the notes came to my ear, blown as Laurence used to blow them when he
was ready to convey me across to the flower-gathering, in the boat
which he had stolen from old grumble-pate A’Cormack, at the gate-house
by the drawbridge.
Eagerly I lifted my head, and listened with long and strained
attention. But I heard only the hurl of the tempest overhead among the
high roof-spaces of Thrieve, the steady “brool” of the wind all about
the four corners of grim, impassive masonry, the spirting sound of the
snow--small, like hail--on the windows. I had been mistaken. None
could possibly be abroad on such a night; at any rate, so much the
worse for them if they were! Thrieve was a shut gate, a fortress
barred. None could enter there. Only Sholto had the word--Sholto, and
his master.
But yet a third time, and very near, I heard the trumpet blow--clarion
clear, net as thunder-clap when thunder follows flash swifter than
thought succeeds to thought. Something struck the window at that
moment; it might have been only the icy fingers of the storm, save
that it sounded somewhat more solid. It struck again, and yet again. I
was affrighted, and I cried aloud for Maud; but she was above, effaced
among the tangles of blonde and dark that were scattered on the
nursery pillows.
The noise came again, with a crying that was like the soul of a man in
pain.
But, mastering myself, I went to the window and flung it open.
Something huge and black, which might have been a raven or a great
bird of prey, fluttered away into the half-luminous mist of the
courtyard.
I looked down in amazement. There were torches beneath, awakening
voices, apparent through the enveloping snow. The window I had opened
slammed to in one of the fierce gusts, and I caught my hand in the
sill.
I stood sucking at the hurt like a baby, half crying, and in the
intervals of pain calling for Maud almost like one of her own bairns,
when suddenly the door of the great hall was flung open, and the
tapestry parted itself as with the wrench of a strong hand.
It was my husband who stood before me, with such an expression on his
face as I had never seen there
[Illustration: IT WAS MY HUSBAND WHO STOOD BEFORE ME, WITH SUCH AN
EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE AS I HAD NEVER SEEN THERE BEFORE.]
before. Mired and slimed he was with the bogs and morasses of his long
travel, the snow lying white in the links of his armour and along the
verges of his breastplate. He held only a plain steel cap in his hand,
without plume or ensign. For he had ridden light like a moss-trooper,
with only a single attendant at his heels.
“Where is James Douglas, my brother?” he panted rather than spoke.
And the anger, cold and bitter, on his face almost deprived me of the
power of reply.
“Come,” he said roughly, “where have you hidden him? Tell me quickly!”
“James”--I stammered, with that surprise which is so often mistaken
for the signs of guilt, “James Douglas? I have not seen him since my
wedding-day!”
William stood staring at me for a long moment, and then dropping his
head between his wet hands, he cried, “Great God, have I wronged him?”
There came a new voice from the doorway.
“As to that I know nothing, and as little care, my Lord of Douglas!”
cried Maud Lindsay, “but this I do know, right bitterly and right
grievously have you wronged your wife.”