DIES IRÆ IV--HOW THE SUN WENT DOWN
This is James Douglas’s story of the last stand made by the
Douglases of the Black, on the green river crofts of Arkinholm, by the
Esk water, in Annandale.
“No--I bid you not to touch me, Margaret. Not now--I am not worthy. I
am a man of fibre too coarse for you or any woman like you. Maud
Lindsay there should draw aside from me her garment’s hem. She should
take away her little Marcelle from off the green down there, lest
these eyes should light upon her unseemly, this breath of mine defile
the pure air she breathes!
“But with men it is other. With men I can speak face to face, and, if
need be, hand to hand. To them I am answerable. I have answered, and I
will answer again!
“But it was of Arkinholm that I would speak. Not long time I have,
lest my wounds break out afresh, or the wheels in my head whirl
backwards again. You have heard, you must have heard, how we were
beaten in the north--how Douglas Castle, Lochindorb, and Abercorn were
taken one by one. The lads fought hard and well--ay, like Douglases
and men--while I, in England, was striving to get the king to help me
retake my castles and enter again upon that which was mine own.
“But Henry of Lancaster, being the man he is, could not be satisfied
to render a gentleman service and take therefor the consideration of a
gentleman.
“He sat niffering and argle-bargling with James Douglas as if he had
been a Crichton or some other dyke-side vermin. I must, forsooth, so
he said, give him the pick of my castles to set English garrisons in.
I must surrender the Border peels, the Annandale holds, Avondale,
Douglasdale, Eskdale--last, and chiefest, Thrieve… that they might be
filled to the brim with English pock-puddings, drinking beer, twanging
bows, and calling us no better than lowsy Scots and rough-footed
rievers!
“‘Your Majesty,’ so I answered the poor silly Henry, who had Somerset
standing behind to prompt him, ‘you mistake your man, my Lord of
England. I am a Douglas, and though to go back to my own country alone
is surely to die, I would rather die with all my house--I would rather
see, of all my castles and fortresses, not one stone left upon
another--than that any soldier of England should hold one foot of
Scottish soil!’
“Then I saw Somerset smile meaningly, as one would say, ‘What do you
here, then?’ And him I answered, ‘If my Lord of Somerset will come out
with me into the fields for half an hour, I will better inform him as
to the exactitude of my meaning.’
“So I came back to Annandale and summoned my brothers to meet me at
the Johnstone’s Tower. They came from Douglasdale, from Straven, and
the north--those that were true--my brothers, every man of them,
Archibald of Murray, and Hugh of Ormond, and staunch little John. Not
one was awanting!”
“And why?” said Sholto, his voice of a sudden net and dry, as the
rattling of castanets, “why did not your lordship summon your men from
Thrieve? Were any that came with your brothers better soldiers than
the five hundred you have here?”
At this the face of James Douglas paled and flushed alternate. Sholto
watched him closely, and not Sholto alone.
“Because,” he said at last, turning in his bed with a grimace of pain,
“it was a far cry--and I knew not”--
“Nay,” said Sholto, “it was not so far as to Avondale--not so far as
to Moray--not so far as to Wigton. Tell me why you sent not the
gathering cry to Thrieve, my lord earl?”
But it was a man who questioned James Douglas, and at the anger in
Sholto’s voice the sick man gathered himself, tossing his head like
the war-horse that scents the battle from afar. I think for the moment
he had quite forgotten me. He answered as he might have answered
Malise M‘Kim. For of courage of that kind James Douglas had no lack.
“Your sister was with me!” he said briefly.
“I thought you said she was dead, and I thanked God, my lord earl,”
returned Sholto, with further challenge in his voice.
James moved his hand feebly.
“Ah, for such speech betwixt you and me, my good Sir Sholto, you must
e’en wait some while. I have discussed the matter with one of your
house already. As he left me, I am not yet ready for the next!”
“But,” said Sholto, more gently, “as I understood your first spoken
words--Magdalen, my sister, was dead.”
Again the unwounded left hand moved with a kind of deprecation, not
unpitiful.
“Abide,” he said, with a sigh of weariness; “I will tell you
all--Where was I when--when you garred me think--of--_her_?”
I sat at the bed-foot listening in a strange quiet. It seemed to be of
another woman’s concerns that I was hearing. My heart, as it were, had
grown numb and frozen, tingling too, but not with pain--more as if in
sympathy with the pain of some other. I was listening to a tale such
as I had heard when the troubadours came and sang to ladies at the
broidery in dear sunny France, or in Scotland when a minstrel
wandering to Thrieve stood below the salt, chanting his dolorous ditty
and thawing the icicles out of his beard with the mulled wine.
“Ah,” said Sholto, “tell on, then, my lord--that is, when you
can--when you will. We can await your pleasure.”
“A cup of Burgundy!” cried James again. “Nay, let me have it; it will
do me no harm. I tell you, man, there is no blood left in me. Ah, that
warms! Ill for the fever of the wounds, you say? Nay, Sir Sholto, and
if it were--why, what great matter? The sooner under sod--where”--
Sholto poured another full tankard of the wine of Nuits. The earl
drank it at a draught, as in old days, flinging his head up to take
the strong vintage down, and dusting the drops from his short crisp
beard with something of his old careless grace.
“Ah,” he said, “that finds its way to a man’s heart, even if it makes
the blood to flow and the green wounds to pinch somewhat shrewdly. Now
I can tell you all, and after I have told you, Sir Sholto, I will
beseech you, as King Saul did his armour-bearer, that he might slay
him with his own sword.”
“I was never your armour-bearer, my lord earl,” said Sholto, “but (as
I think) already a knight when first we met. Yet it is recalled to me
that when his armour-bearer refused, Saul did more and better!”
“As to that, we shall see,” said James. “They fought for me, these
true brothers, and are dead! One by one they fell, and I--am alive in
Thrieve! Yet I have never yet been called coward. Only, when all was
lost, when Arkinholm was black with dead bodies scattered among the
crushed daisies and dimpled among the green grass, when Esk water ran
red, and the Douglases were broken--then, wending my way out of the
press, my horse brought me hither knowing nothing. Tell me how I came,
Sholto! I would know.”
“Why, like yourself, my lord earl,” said Sholto, who, being a man,
liked a man to be manlike, “your sword broken in your hand, reeling in
your saddle, wounded as it seemed unto the death, the steel point that
smote you still in your shoulder. Thus did you come home to Thrieve!”
The Lord James sighed a sigh of content. It was his form of
conscience, and so far he was satisfied. He lay for a while with his
eyes closed. Then suddenly, and as if seeing a vision, he brake out,
his voice stronger than before--
“They came as I tell you--Archibald from the north, and with him Hugh,
who had threshed the Percies at Sark as corn is threshed in a barn.
From Wigton came little John--all with their men behind them. As for
me, I came from England, and brought with me but one--and she a woman!
“Nay, sit still, and hear it this once, Margaret! Perhaps after that
you may be in better case to forgive. At any rate, hear it now!
“I would have left her in sanctuary in England, and did so at
Carlisle. Yet stay behind she would not, but followed after--ay, even
to Arkinholm, to the last muster of the Douglases of the Black. I
begged of my brothers, Archie and Hughie and little John, to take her
again to sanctuary. But she gat them on her side, being determined to
abide with the host.
“In the strath of the Esk they closed upon us, trapping us on either
side--Douglases to take Douglases--George of Angus on one flank and
Dalkeith on the other. They had the king’s men with them
too--Crichtons and Stewarts and men without name or holding, every cur
that could yelp or snap--any jackal which, turning, could set his
teeth in the lion at bay. Gordons, too, were there--Huntly’s men, come
to avenge their defeat at the hands of Mistress Maud’s kinsfolk in the
marsh of Dunkinty. And as we saw their highland plaids we sang this
lilt--
‘Where left thou thy men, thou Gordon so gay?
In the Bog of Dunkinty, mowing the hay!’
“But they came more and more, like swarms of wasps from a thousand
nests, from north and east and west. They hemmed us in. And when we
went to count our array, lo! false Hamilton was off in the dusk of the
evening, gone to make his peace with the king, taking with him a full
third of our men!
“For that which followed I blame only myself. If I had been as good a
general as I am a man of my hands in the day of battle, we might have
burst through them all. But though Archie urged, and Hughie and little
John added thereto, I would not budge. Because _she_ was with us, and
in the rough and tumble of the fray. Well, enough said! We abode where
we were, and about us the ring of foes thickened every hour, waiting
for the dawn and the trump of battle.
“The worst was that the pick of these men there were of our name and
family, Douglases led on by Douglases. But I warrant you George of
Angus strove for no occasions of converse with me that day. Dalkeith
fought like a man, but Angus lurked behind the troops--because,
forsooth, he was the general. Stratagem, you call it. When I fought in
France by the side of the young Dunois we had another word for such
generalship.
“Hand to hand, is James Douglas’s mind on’t. Lay on--no lack--the
ringing steel and plenty of it--as indeed I gat that day a bellyful of
from your father.
“So then we had to lay our arms on Arkinholm, with one you know of in
the midst, chanting snatches of song and wild rattling catches of
which Hughie had great store. But Magdal--she, that is, for whose sake
we awaited our fates on those wide holms by the Esk, besought us with
tears to get to our prayers instead of singing such words.
“But wild Hughie cried out that as the Douglases had lived so they had
better die.
“‘What came after all of our own Will’s niceness with womankind?’ he
cried, ‘his conscience fine as a threaded needle? Ask the little back
window in Stirling that overlooks the ladies’ court. What was the end
of Cousin Will’s devotion and single-heart service to his love and his
lady? The Black Bull’s head on the board of Edinburgh Castle will
answer you that.’
“‘Hush, Hughie,’ I bade him, under my breath; ‘mind whom we have with
us, or I will break that addle-pate of thine!’
“‘Break it and welcome, Jamie,’ he retorted; ‘as well you as another.
’Tis you have broken us all. Up in the host yonder is one Malise M‘Kim
and his seven sons with him’ (there were but six, but Hughie knew not
that you, Sholto, abode in Thrieve). ‘And doubt not that he who has
made the armour for generations of Douglases, who has tempered the
steel we fight with, and hammered the armour that covers us, will
to-morrow send us all four to gather the green birk and the yellow by
the banks of Jordan’s river!’
[This, to a turn, was Hugh Douglas’s wild way of speaking. We could
almost hear him as his brother spoke.]
“Then at these words she started up.
“‘I will go to him,’ she cried. ‘I will beg of Malise M‘Kim to slay
me, me only, and to let James go free. In bitterness I will tell him
my fault. Let me go. I will seek my father! You have no right to
restrain me, Hugh of Ormond!’
“‘Lie you still, lassie,’ said Hughie, who, indeed, meant no
unkindness, ‘lie you still where ye are. Jamie may chance to save you
the morn’s morning, but ye will never save Jamie. He hath tripped us
all up by this day’s wark.’
“Then, fearing to hurt me, his brother, he added quickly, ‘No’ that
deil yin o’ us is fit to better anither--except only Will, and Will’s
dead. Aweel, here we be four Douglases of us, brothers, sons of one
father and of one mother. I fear we are but rough colts, and when we
die we will go where they do not sing many psalms or play muckle upon
instruments of ten strings. But this virtue at least we have. We blame
Jamie no more than we blame oursels. We will stand to Jamie’s quarrel
and die the death for Jamie--ay, and for the puir bit lass here! Nay,
bide ye still, Magdalen; we will not let ye gang to your death, gin we
can help it, my bairn. Stand up, Archie! Stand up, little John! Stand
up, Jamie--that has the most need! Hands about--this lassie-bairn in
the midst! There!’
“Even as he said, so we did. He went on--
“‘Now we hae nae priest. Nane o’ us hae tormented Him-Up-Yonder wi’
mony supplications. Therefore He is like to hear this last yin the
readier. Join hands and say after me, “Tak’ pennyworths o’ us, guid
Lord, but save an’ forgie the lassie. She is but a bairn.” _What are
ye greetin’ for, Jamie?_ Ye should hae ta’en thocht on that afore!
Noo, after me, ilka yin o’ ye, say Hughie Douglas’s prayer--his first,
last, and only--
“‘_Tak’ ye pennyworths o’ us, guid Lord, but save the lassie, and oh,
forgie her. For, kennin’ what is in man, brawly ye ken it’s no’ her
faut!_’”