SHOLTO ALSO IS A M‘KIM
_Wherein Margaret Douglas again takes up the tale._
And in the meantime, how passed the days and weeks and months on the
high bastions and in the higher keep of Thrieve?
I will try to tell.
Every morn Maud and I went up to the roof to see the muster of the
king’s troops, which was like a pageant. There were trumpets that
blew, and banners that waved, and knights and horses all covered with
cloth of red and gold--a gallant sight, and one which Maud and I
(being as much children as any) were never tired of watching, so long,
that is, as Sholto assured us that there was no danger.
At times James Douglas would come up to the roof battlements; but,
like one outcasted and desolate, he would abide in a place by himself,
speaking with none, or only with the officers and soldiery of the
garrison. Sometimes one of the children would run to take his hand and
talk, of which he seemed glad.
When he met Sholto, the Captain of the Guard of Thrieve saluted
gravely, and stood listening. Then, if the earl put a question, Sholto
answered it in so many words; but if not, he would salute again, and
betake himself to the outposts or to the dungeon of Archibald the
Grim, which, with purposes of his own, he was wholly refitting,
strengthening even the walls, doubling the thickness of the top in
solid stone and lime, and providing for view and air by narrow slits,
through which one could scarce thrust one’s hand edgewise.
One day, to try him, I asked Sholto if he meant to shut up the King of
Scots in Archibald the Grim.
“Nay,” he answered me at once, “but some few things far more
precious!”
One day, being in my ancient south-looking chamber, of which the fear
had gradually grown away (though I admit that even then I liked not to
sleep there), I heard the noise of voices beneath, on the balcony. The
window was open, and I seated idly with my hands in my lap. I could
not help but hear.
* * * * * * *
The men proved to be Sholto M‘Kim and James Douglas, my husband, who
spoke on the platform of stone beneath my windows.
“What think you, Sir Sholto,” said the earl, “shall we hold it or no?
They make no progress. Their trumpetings, their shooting of arrow
flights, their cracking of pop-guns--what are these as against the
solid walls of Thrieve and the strong virgin defences of the isle?”
For an instant Sholto did not answer, and I could clearly hear the
soothing _hush_ of the Dee over its shallows at the bridge-end. Then
he spoke.
“My lord,” he said, “we have seen, as you say, many useless marches
and counter-marches! We have repelled feints of attack, and hearkened
to many summonses to surrender in the name of our lord the king. Yet
no man in the garrison is grievously hurt, while those of us who have
been smitten owe their wounds mostly to their own recklessness. But
there is one thing concerning which my mind is not easy.”
“And that?” said the earl, idly chipping little bits of the plaster
and skimming them over the wall.
“It is,” said Sholto, “that in all these things we see naught of
Malise M‘Kim, my father, nor yet of his sons, my brothers!”
“Oh, there is small need to concern oneself with that,” said the earl;
“they have gone afield to raise more troops. Or mayhap, there lies a
sorrow upon their minds to help in breaking down that which they have
built up--I mean because the M‘Kims have been master armourers at
Thrieve, in a manner of speaking, since the world began.”
Sholto gazed long at James Douglas. I could not see his face, but I
knew well the way he would look. About this time his master was a
constant surprise to him--his unconscious brutality of selfishness,
the crassness of his judgment in all that concerned others--in
especial, the fatal lightness of his mind, habiting a body so strong
and so fair, joined to a nature so truly courageous as between man and
man, yet so self-seeking and contracted towards women and God! All
this joined in one person might well make Sholto M‘Kim marvel. True, I
knew James Douglas over well. I had long gotten over my wondering.
“You think that my father will come back to you--that after a time he
will forgive--let all be as it was?” Sholto stammered, scarce knowing
what to say.
James Douglas moved uneasily, I knew exactly how. I could feel him,
though see him I could not.
“No, not that,” he said; “so much no man could expect. But some token
of forgiving--some kindly remembrance, some returning loyalty toward
the house his father served--so much seems to me by no means
unreasonable!”
Sholto nodded, with what of grim countenance I could guess. Even by
leaning out I could see no more than the peak of the plain steel cap
in which he made his rounds.
“No, it is not impossible,” he said slowly; “there is, however, one
condition.”
“And what might that condition be?” cried James Douglas. (As he spoke
I could hear the returning hope in his voice. It hurt him that men
should not approve him.)
“_That he should see One Man lie dead!_”
I felt the question tremble on James Douglas’s lips. But it was not
put. The prophet’s “Thou art the man!” was not an answer which he
desired to hear from the lips of his truth-speaking Captain of the
Guard.
Abruptly he turned on his heel and walked away. Sholto M‘Kim was left
behind, leaning one elbow on the stone baluster and gazing pensively
across the water-meadows towards the ridge of Carlinwark, where,
through the pale purple of the gloaming, certain red bursts of flame
sent a ruddy “skarrow” vibrating aloft to the lower clouds.
Long and carefully Sholto watched. The night grew rapidly
darker--chiller also. The light in the east waxed more and more lurid.
There came a noise of shouting on the breeze.
“That is my father!” said Sholto, aloud; “I must go and see what he is
about!”
All the same he went his rounds with a little more than his usual
care. Then he came up by the turret stairs, kissed the babes who were
asleep in their cots, sat a while by Marcelle’s trundle-bed to talk
over the events of the day as was his wont--how a new blazon had been
seen in front of a troop which rode past the castle on the Balmaghie
shore; how a certain bullock in the byres, Red Jock by name, had
gotten an arrow wound in his heel, which she had helped to bind, in
spite of the unthankful and ill-behaved kicking and plunging of the
patient.
Then descending, Sholto said a quiet courtly word to me in the great
hall, kissed Maud his wife, and (here all we knew at the time
finishes) dressed himself in countryman’s garb, crossed the Dee water
to the southward, where, among the marshes the enemy’s watch-huts were
few and ill-tended--only some few folk of Solway moss abiding there,
and even they having mostly removed themselves over to the Carlinwark
on the chance of picking the king’s supper bones, and getting a peep
at the works of Malise the smith over the palisades of the Three
Thorns.
So Sholto, to whom all the bogs and marshes, with their green “quaas”
slimy and mysterious, their humpy islands of crumbling peat, their
blind leads of ink-black water, stagnant and oily, were familiar--who
knew them as a man that rises in the night knows his way back to his
bed--found little difficulty in outwitting and outstripping the guards
to the south of the isle of Thrieve. An arrow whistled in his wake
once or twice. A cur barked as he crossed its wind within a few yards
of a Lochar men’s post, striding onward, contemptuous of such
soldiering. Brief, in less than an hour, Sholto, his face blackened
with grime which he knew where to seek on the rubbish heaps of the old
smithy, stood among the crowd outside the barriers, elbowing and
cursing with the best, while they watched the roaring of the flames
and marvelled at the fierce pulling down of the ancient smithy for the
sake of the beams.
But the shed over the great cannon balked his curiosity, through every
crevice of which the flames seemed to dart from an interior filled to
bursting with the glow of red-hot metal and the clank of hammers.
“I am the Captain of Thrieve--I must see,” growled Sholto. “I am a
M‘Kim--God’s grace, see I will!”
And while the youths were still scrambling on the rigging of the
smithy, and while the Young Man in Black (whose narrative has been
entered before) was tearing at the palisades to keep up the fire,
Sholto M‘Kim, unseen of any, stole along the dark waterside, and in a
moment paused at the door of that Vulcan’s cavern of noise and heat
and flame. A while he stood, stricken dumb and motionless with
amazement.
Then, seeing that certain of his brothers were a-missing, and that
there needed someone to deal stroke-and-stroke about with his father,
something suddenly pricked in his heart. He thought of James Douglas
as he had never done before. He muttered, “’Fore God, am not I also a
M‘Kim? I will do my part!” And with that he rushed within, picked up a
forehammer, and was at his ancient task, as of yore, in the unroofed
smithy a little lower down by the waterside of Carlinwark.
He it was of whom the Young Man in Black caught a glimpse ere he
returned from hearing the king order his Provost Marshal to impress a
respect for kingcraft upon the insolent back of that “good soldier of
my Lord of Angus”--the which (the fellow being a Douglas fighting
against the head of his house) I trust the Provost Marshal achieved in
due time and with a stout right arm.
And long ere the morning light, Sholto M‘Kim, with full information as
to what the castle of Thrieve might expect when the monster cannon was
completed, lay stretched out sound asleep beside his Maud. Yet when
she waked, with the thought of her ailing babes on her mind, her
husband said nothing to her of his night adventures--nothing, indeed,
to any of us. But from that time forth, the strengthening of the
dungeon place, called Archibald the Grim, and the due provisioning of
it with light and food and air, were pushed forward with tenfold
speed.
And though I was the first to know of Sholto’s night work, it was not
till long afterwards that he told even me anything.
Nevertheless, from the cessation of the customary attacks upon the
outworks of the isle, from the drawing away of men for purposes to us
unseen, there fell an uneasy consciousness upon Thrieve that something
serious was impending. The men no longer sang behind the
fortifications, but conferred in whispers. And every night you might
see a group of them on the castle roof, eagerly looking towards the
red flicker in the sky which told of some notable work to our
disadvantage going on behind the hill of Carlinwark.
We know now what that work was. It was the making of the carriage for
the huge cannon, called afterward Mons Meg’s cradle, and the vast
chariot whereon to drag her to a hill just beyond the fords of
Glenlochar--a round hill, called at that time the Byne of Camp
Douglas, because the shape of it was like an upturned basin--but
afterwards, and to this day, “Knockcannon,” or the mount of the
cannon.
At last one day we heard a great shouting and affray to the northward,
and Sholto, looking out, made out a long procession keeping well in
the rear of the line of tents upon the Clairbrand heights. But they
could by no possibility keep themselves hidden at the fords of Lochar.
For they were bound to cross that way, the water being deep above, and
the castle too near and dangerous below. So that we on the topmost
towers of Thrieve could see plainly, as it were, all the king’s horses
and all the king’s men, convoying, with pain and travail, what seemed
a great long cask or barrel across the shallows of the Dee.
Then it was that Sholto spoke, but in few words.
“It behoves that we keep good watch,” he said.
“They have made a great cannon at Carlinwark. I have seen it with
these eyes. It may well be that before it the walls of the castle will
be as paper. But as yet no man knows whether the shot will strike us,
or whether the piece may not burst at the first discharge. But be
these things as they may, I have caused make a place of refuge in the
dungeon, which no cannon shot, an it were three times as huge, could
possibly break into. Thither, my Lady Margaret, you will retire with
Maud and the babes when I give the word. But there is yet enough of
time. Much remains for them to do, and of warning, ere the danger
arrives, there will be enough and to spare. They are now on a hill,
and cannot be hid.”
“In any case, I shall remain with you, Sholto!” said Maud Lindsay.
“You will obey your husband, wife!” retorted Sholto, without heat.
At which Maud heaved a sigh, for she knew that she would indeed abide
by the babes in obedience to her husband. He was, in any case, a
difficult person to disobey, this same Sir Sholto M‘Kim.