A RARE SALT FELLOW
Well, after a time and a time Laurence and I went back to the Larg
together, for the present determined to say naught about the matter,
till I should have gone with my letter and petition to the king and
the archbishop. For though divorce was not at any time the canon law
of Holy Church, yet in these outland realms of Scotland and England
men heeded that but little when interest or inclination drove them.
Moreover, the pope, his cardinals and bishops, were ready enough to
give absolution. For, be he priest or cardinal, ’twixt Caithness and
Kirkmaiden all were in the king’s hands, or, worse yet, in those of
the great houses. And, mostly, a cardinal ettled at the saving of his
life just like another man, save Thomas à Becket only. But in my
time, at least, there was never another like him in any kirk that I
heard tell of. So that which lay before me to perform was just
this--that I should go to the king and ask his leave to marry
Laurence, and live retired and peaceably thereafter: the which
permission I was certain of obtaining--that is, for a price.
So Laurence and I went in together, and I showed Sholto and Maud the
letter. I gave it to them laughing, though there was a kind of shame
in my heart, too, that ever I should have shared bed and board with
such a man. Yet for all--I own it--I could not hate or even greatly
dislike James Douglas. As he said, he had always done his best for the
“poor Jack Neville’s Anne” of the moment. Pity was that his best
proved never very good, and never very lasting.
But when Sholto M‘Kim read the letter, his countenance changed. He had
never any great sense of the humours of life. And such an one as James
Douglas was clean out of his ken.
“If I had but known in time that I was serving such a man,” he said
slowly with darkened brows, “I had slain him with my hand!”
Then I took his wounded right hand and kissed it tenderly, so that his
face flushed with pleasure. For even now--nay more than ever now I was
to him his liege lady.
“You did better work with this your hand,” I said, “when you kept the
breach of Thrieve with naught but the edge of your broadaxe.”
And as for Maud, she also came and stood beside me, glancing from one
to the other of us, but not laughing as I expected. Then I saw a
strange thing.
Maud cared nothing for that which made me laugh, not for that which
made her husband hot with anger--in itself naught for the letter of
James Douglas, save--that it made me a free woman.
She kept looking from one to the other of us--troubled and uncertain.
Under her summer gown I could see her bosom heave.
Then Maud went to the door, and turning made a sign to me.
“Shall we go look for the children?” she said. But I knew she had
other things to say to me than that. We were silent till we had put
the house of Larg a hundred feet or so beneath our feet and were out
on the open fell.
Then she spoke.
“Why will you not tell your Maud?” she said sadly.
“What am I to tell?” I answered, fencing with words.
“My Lady Margaret,” she said with dignity, “if you do not deign to
tell me, I will ask no more. But I think--I think--that after these
many years I had not deserved this from you!”
And she began to sob.
“Maud--my Maud!” I cried with sudden contriteness, “I will tell you
all that you wish to know--all there is to tell. You gave me a home
with you when I had none other friends. You have loved me all my life!
What is there I would not tell you?”
“And now you hide from me--you will not tell me”--
“Tell you what, dear Maud?”
“What Laurence hath said to you!”
At this I laughed outright. For somehow I seemed in a mood to laugh
that day. The air was lighter, rarer, of a more intoxicating charm. It
scented of the spring, and I seemed sharply to regain my youth
again--the youth that had never been mine. Nay, I seemed to win it
rather for the first time, savouring its sweetness in the very wind
that blew off the hills of heather.
“Laurence say aught to me, dear innocent!” I cried to her laughing.
“Ah, but it is our own dear Maud Lindsay who is the matchmaker! Would
Laurence ever have had the assurance to speak of love to Margaret
Douglas?”
Then Maud jerked her Highland head in the air.
“I know not,” she said. “His brother had a Lindsay for the asking!”
“Ah, yes,” said I, “the third time of asking, but Laurence would never
have had the courage to ask even once!”
“Do not tell me,” she said, turning suddenly upon me as she used to do
at Thrieve when I was a little girl and had been misbehaving, “I see
wickedness and deceit in your eye--in that of Laurence too. There is
something between you two. You need not deny it--not to me. You never
could deceive me, even when you were a little kilted hempie that had
been in the orchard stealing of the sugar plums. What is it?”
“Well”--I began, pouting and hesitating.
Then I believe verily that in another moment Maud Lindsay might have
done even as she was used to do in those ancientest days I can
remember--when on one occasion she greatly surprised a certain spoilt
child the morning after she came out of the north to be her tutrix and
companion.
“Nay,” I said hastily, “Laurence said naught to me. But--_I had
something to say to him_.”
“What was it?” she demanded fiercely. “Tell me all!”
“I know--but I promised not to tell! Ask himself!” I cried over my
shoulder and ran back quickly into the house.
She called one sentence after me.
“I might have thought!” she said, “I knew all the time why he stayed
away from Thrieve!”
* * * * * * *
So I went to see the king, Laurence and Herries going with me to be my
squires in time of need. We rode poorly and unattended, both because
that would be better pleasing to the king, who loved not arrays of
folk riding hither and thither athwart his kingdom, and also because
unless we had taken the herds from the hills, there were no other
retinue about the Larg of Kenmore save only Sholto hirpling on his
crutch.
First we went to Stirling, and the King of Scots was not there. He had
gone to Carron. We would find him on the straths, they said, watching
the forging of the great cannon. Quoth another, “The king hath gone to
Edinburgh to make him ready for the siege of Roxburgh Castle--the sole
strength still held by the English north of Berwick bound. He cannot
abide it, and is making ready to batter it down.”
From Carron to Edinburgh we followed on, and there at last we found
the king marshalling his forces upon the Borough Muir.
“Ah,” he cried, catching sight of me first, “what do you here, my
little lady of Galloway? Is this biding within your bounds? Are you
come to fight for us or against us? Or aiblins, would you lead a
partizan revolt in your own pretty person? And what doth my bold Sir
Laurence of the Black Plaid in your company, and this young M‘Kim?
Wherefore are not you two at Carron with the engines of war?”
Then I smiled at him and said, “These be too many questions for one to
answer all at once even to pleasure a king. But as for me, I have come
to show your Majesty this! And not for that alone!”
So with that I drew from my pocket the letter of James Douglas.
And then and there before all his men the king read the letter aloud,
from “Dear Cozin Margaret,” all the way through to “Written at our
lodging in Southwark!”
Then he laughed very loud, as was his custom, slapping his hand upon
his thigh hard and often.
“Faith, I was wrong,” he cried, “I should have kept such a man within
my kingdom. I shall never find another! He is salt enough, this
husband of yours, to keep all the butchers meat in Scotland fresh
through the dog days. He puts off and on a wife as I would a
glove--then eke writes to the last to send him the plenishing siller
for the new. And a good lance too he was! None drave a better. And,
Lord! he had need--he had need! Ho! Ho! A rare salt fellow, brined
through and through like a barrel-kept herring--this James of Douglas!
I take pleasure in him. I take great pleasure in him--now that it is
too late!”
For after his kind he was a hearty man--this king who could murder a
friend with a dagger-stroke, who found his way about among the
Commandments Ten, much as Alexander solved the Gordian knot. A
hot-headed, fiery-faced butcher-man, by nature a fighter, was this
Stewart king--in some ways not unlike our own James, though his
iniquities were rather those of the red hand and the blow struck in
anger than the good-natured cavalier wantonnesses of my “Dear Cozin.”
Then with the letter still between his fingers, the king cast the
slantwise Stewart eye upon me sometime before he spoke.
“And now I suppose ye will consider yourself a free woman and a
wanter,” he said, “so ye’ll e’en be comin’ to me to seek ye a man!”
“Nay, King James,” I made him answer, “_that_ I have already done for
myself. Two I have had chosen for me--I will e’en be content to pick
the other without the royal bounty! Beside, the king has mickle on his
mind, and God forbid I should set him a task so thankless!”
“And wha is the lad? Tell us,” cried the king; “mind this though--he
gets neither a foot o’ Gallowa’ nor o’ Ettrick, never an inch south o’
the Forth. But I willna say that gin he be a decent lad, I will not
maybe gie ye a park or twa to sow your oats somewhere at the back of
beyont!”
Then all at once he seemed to forget, returning to James Douglas’s
letter, which he rolled like a morsel under his tongue, savoury and
sweet.
“‘Poor Jack Neville’s Anne!’” he cried, blattering again on his thigh;
“I must e’en tell that to the bishop! Yes, by the saints, Kennedy will
taste that, I warrant him! Sly old dog that he is!”
I stood before him waiting his reply.
“Your Majesty has not yet heard the name of the man I ask your
permission to marry!” I said quietly.
“Well,” he laughed, “’tis somewhat early days yet to be thinking o’
that, when ye hae gotten never a line frae holy kirk nor ony permit
ecclesiastical to stand afore the altar. But you Douglases were aye
forehandit. Wha is the loon?”
“He is of your Majesty’s name,” said I, “and like all the Stewarts,
blate to speak for themselves in such a matter. So I am sent to do it.
This is he!”
“What?” cried King James, “the Lad in Black, the Nameless Master of
Enginery, the Deevil-Bishop, the Armourer-Clerk--doubtless some
Douglas loon in disguise? Him that made the plans for the cannon! Why,
I have already given him the barony of Balveny. I ken not how that
will do, little lady. That was yince Douglas ground, and if you set up
your banner there you might trench upon my Majesty even yet!”
Seeing I did not answer, he went on, getting rid of his surprise in a
cloud of words.
“Na, na--let him stick to his cannon-making and his fortifying! That
will be better than taking to himself a little rebel wife like
yoursel’, wha will keep him in het water all the days o’ his life! Let
him choose again and choose better!”
“Better he could not choose,” said I, “as, if he hath eyes in his
head, his Majesty must see for himself! Moreover, if Laurence gets me
not, he will go to France to the service of Louis the king, from whom
already he has had great offers!”
“Ah, will he--will he? We will see to that,” cried King James. “We may
be poor, but we know how to recompense our lieges as well as how to
punish our enemies. There is old Malise now, the master armourer. He
will not last long. At times madness looks out of the eye of him. But,
Lord! what a hammerman! What a mighty smith! None like him since
Tubal. If only he were younger and had the head--faith, I would sit on
the throne of Westminster with the Two Roses, red and white, doing
homage to me.”
He stopped suddenly as if thinking deeply.
“But there, lass,” he cried, “I have wearied enough of my good time on
your fule marrying and gie’in’ in marriage. Go ye forthwith to Bishop
Kennedy, and he will put ye in the way of being even with ‘Poor Jack
Neville’s Anne!’ But I trust that your chances of keeping your
clerk-lad to yourself are better than poor Anne’s. Ah, the rogue--what
a villain! Troth, I would give him the Cross of St. Andrew to come
back to be my court-jester!”
“My lord,” I made the king answer with some dignity, “I pray recall it
to yourself that there was a time when a certain jest of James
Douglas’s well-nigh made your Majesty smile on the wry side of your
face. The chance of those few hours at Stirling when Ormond and Murray
and this same Lord James entered it with a thousand Douglases--I trow
such a man is no safe court-fool!”
“I ken, I ken,” he cried, waving me down with his hand, “James Stewart
is no unfriend to plain speech, and takes no offence at what you say.
But for all that thou art a little rebel, and if this your Lad in
Black is to keep the upper hand of you, he must be of good council and
have the ready hand. I will take him with me to the siege of Roxburgh
to teach him his A, B--Buff! Meantime, go thou to the bishop. Get a
warranty from him. Here, Morton, my seal! I will write a line on the
back of Jamie Douglas’s letter. ‘_On the day that Roxburgh is taken,
this Laurence of the king’s name is to have Margaret Douglas in
wedlock!_’ There!”
Whereupon he signed, sealing the missive with the signet royal, which
Morton carried for him in a little silver box. Ere he gave it back to
me, he turned over the letter, laughing afresh at every line. It
seemed to have taken him greatly.
“Salt as the sea!” he shouted, “a rare one, by Saint Andrew! Let him
have his two hundred pounds in rose nobles sent to John Tweedie, that
eident leather-seller in the Carlisle watergate. See to it, Morton. He
deserves the like and more. I warrant him--he will of a surety buy
woman’s falderals with it in the Chepe--_if he can_ for poor Jack
Neville’s Anne--if not, at least, for some other Anne!”