The low-lying island upon which we found ourselves was certainly a
dismal, out-of-the-world place, covered by rank grass and nettles, and
yellow with St John's wort. Ruined walls were scattered around the
castle of Threave itself, a square, roofless tower, which in the
bleakness of its gaunt and terrible majesty suggested the idea of an
armed skeleton, in the facial apertures of which lay the darkness of
death and decay.
This was the monument of the Douglases' pride and the engine of their
oppression during their galling ascendancy, when Archibald rode with his
retinue of two thousand armed retainers, many of them the most noted
desperadoes, and ravaged the Border. The huge fourteenth-century
fortress, once the pride of kings, was still a massive pile, with walls
nearly seventy feet high, built of common grey moor stone.
As we wandered through it, the wind howling through the narrow slits
where archers had sent forth their shafts, our friend Mr Batten pointed
out in the lowest story the dungeon, arsenal, and larder; the barracks
on the first floor; and, above, the apartments of state, where the Black
Douglas lodged his friends or feasted his vassals, the walls of all
massive, but now crumbling to decay.
Around the castle were the remains of a strong barbican, flanked at each
angle by a circular tower, which had been secured in front by a deep
fosse and vallum, both water and walls of the latter having long since
disappeared.
Then, standing outside--while the rest of the party, seated on the
grass, were eating their luncheon, laughing merrily and thoroughly
enjoying the novelty of reaching such a place--Mr Batten pointed to a
large granite bracket projecting from the front of the castle, high up
near the roof: the far-famed "Gallows Knob" or "Hanging Stone," which
the Black Douglas was wont to boast was never without a "tassel," either
in the shape of a malefactor, or, if none such were in custody, some
unoffending vassal!
When the Douglases maintained their power in Galloway the deeds
committed within that grim, grey fortress were such as invest it with
fearful interest. I recollected having read of its sinister memories,
and some of them were now recalled to me by Mr Batten, who made a deep
study of the subject. Indeed, as I stood there with Walter Wyman, apart
from the gay Crailloch house party, gazing up at the high grey walls
that had once sheltered the old soldier monk and chronicler, Godfrey
Lovel, I recollected how well the weirdlike halo that, to the present
day, surrounds the place is expressed in those plaintive lines of the
unfortunate Inglis of Torsonce:
Threave's Castle looms as dark by day,
With its walls of moorland grey,
And the sad and sullen stream
Which, like some dank, unwholesome dream,
Creeps on its stagnant way,
In mossy pool and quagmire pent
Around the island battlement.
Dismal is the granite pile
With barbican and flanking tower,
That frown beneath the merry smile
Of laughing noontide hour.
Dismal is the island when,
With herbage rank and stunted thorn
That clothe the blood-besprinkled fen
In leaf and bough forlorn,
Some evil spirit haunts it yet.
The dreary annals of the past
Athwart the meadow wan and wet
Their spectral shadows cast;
No feathered minstrel tunes his throat
On lowly bush or lofty spray;
No skylark pipes his dulcet note
In the sun's yellow ray;
And still the prisoned oxen low
To reach the farther shore,
Like captives of the spear and bow
In Douglas raids of yore;
No rural lover comes to hide
The stolen tryst at eventide;
And the otter seeks his prey,
And the wild duck leads her brood,
And desolation and decay
Sleep in the ghastly solitude.
Mr Batten was called over to the luncheon party by Connie Fenwicke, who
cried, "I say, Mr Batten, leave the author to meditate, and come and
have something to eat. And you also, Captain Wyman. Allan will come
when he's hungry; he's feasting on ruins at present."
Wyman excused himself for a moment, but Mr Batten succumbed to the
temptation of cold partridge and claret.
With Walter, I walked behind one of the round flanking towers,
scrambling over the fallen masonry, and when out of sight of the others
we commenced to search carefully for any traces of previous visitors
there. The rank grass and weeds were trodden down here and there by
recent footsteps; but we concluded that it had been done by some of our
party who had wandered about the place prior to our own landing. We
wondered whether Lord Glenelg or his companions had already been there;
but the absence of any evidence that the laird's boat had been used for
months convinced us that they had not.
"Our first direction is to follow the shadow of the keep to its easterly
angle when the sun shines, at 3:30, on the sixth of September," I began,
when Walter interrupted me with:
"But has it occurred to you that since that record was written the
calendar has been altered? What was the sixth of September in the
sixteenth century is not the sixth of September in the present day."
"By Jove?" I gasped. "I never thought of that. But what is the
precise difference?"
"I happened to be looking that very point up not long ago," said Walter,
"which is what brought it to my mind now. About 1582 Pope Gregory XIII
decreed that ten days should be omitted, and October fifth was reckoned
as the fifteenth. But this was not universal till 1751, when a bill was
passed for regulating the commencement of the year, and for correcting
the calendar. By that bill eleven days were omitted after the second of
September, so that the ensuing day was the fourteenth."
"In that case, then, September sixth of Godfrey Lovel's day is really
our September seventeenth. That gives us nearly two weeks more time
than we had counted on," I remarked. "Yet it will be half-past three
before we leave today, and we shall then, at any rate, be able to see
the vicinity of the spot, although we cannot fix it exactly until the
day and hour indicated."
"I wonder whether we shall really find the casket?" Walter said,
eagerly. "To me this is just the sort of place where some treasure lies
buried. The day before we left town I went to the British Museum and
looked up the history of the place. Our record in The Closed Book is
certainly borne out by history. Maxwell of Terregles was keeper of the
Threave in Godfrey's day, the dawn of the Reformation, and seems to have
had rather a rough time of it, just as the old monk has written. John
Gordon of Lochinvar, Dean Vaus of Soulseat, the Macdowalls of Freuch and
of Mindork, who burned Brodick Castle and invaded Arran, and James Earl
of Bothwell, of Earlston, as mentioned by Godfrey Lovel, were all his
prominent contemporaries. Therefore it is certainly likely that the
ex-favourite of Lucrezia Borgia did actually conceal the casket
intrusted to him somewhere on this island, which in his day was, of
course, impregnable."
"I quite agree," I answered, looking wonderingly around. "Of course,
the directions are complicated, purposely no doubt; and today it seems
quite useless to attempt to follow them. We must arouse no suspicion of
our intentions."
"We shall require assistance when we really do investigate," my
companion remarked.
"Then we'll take Fred into our confidence. He would thoroughly enter
into the spirit of the thing--that I know."
We walked back to where the others were still seated on the grass, in
the shadow of the high grey wall, with its grim "hanging knob," and a
chorus of jeers at my studious nature greeted me.
"Going to write a book, I suppose, Allan?" cried Sammy Waldron, his
mouth full of sandwich. "Put me in it, old fellow. I'm good-looking
enough to be a hero, aren't I?"
Bertie Sale opened a bottle of soda clumsily, and squirted it in a
lady's face, and Mrs Payling, to whom Walter turned his attention, was
discovered actually talking frocks with Connie, and was allowed to
continue, for both men and women admired her for being so well
turned-out on every occasion. Godfrey Handsworth had been heard to
remark that it was a pity that she was not twenty years younger; but, as
it was, she was still very handsome, with a figure that many a younger
woman envied.
Fred Fenwicke and Connie looked after everyone's comfort. On such
occasions they never took servants. Everyone helped himself and looked
after a lady, and, as such _al fresco_ luncheons were weekly in the
shooting season, this kind of entertainment had been brought to a fine
art.
The men smoked and idled, some of them lying stretched upon the grass,
while others escorted the ladies around the ruins, the chief excitement
being the loss of Connie's Aberdeen "Jack," a one-eyed dog of Satanic
expression and cunning, the terror of Campbell, the sturdy,
good-humoured gamekeeper of Crailloch.
I sat on the grass, smoking, chatting, and drinking whisky and soda with
Fred,--Walter, Sammy, and Mr Batten, while the others wandered about
the island. The afternoon was absolutely perfect, with as blue a sky as
ever seen in Italy, and across the wide sweep of river, towards
Greenlaw, rose the long, low heathery hills.
From where we idled Mr Batten pointed out to us the peaks Bengairn and
Cairntosh and the highlands of Balmaghie, and related several
archaeological facts that, in view of our forthcoming explorations, were
of intense interest to us.
"You see that great rugged hole in the wall, half-way up the front of
the castle?" he said, pointing to it. "The hole looks almost like a
window, but it is a breach made by the cannon known as Mons Meg, now to
be seen at Edinburgh Castle. The piece of artillery was made by a
blacksmith and his sons at Buchan, and was used by the king in his
operations against Threave. The charge consisted of a peck of gunpowder
and a granite ball the weight of a Carsphairn cow. The first discharge
produced a panic among the inmates of the castle, and the second shot
went through the walls and carried away the right hand of the Countess,
the celebrated Fair Maid of Galloway, as she sat at table in the
banqueting hall about to raise a wine cup to her lips. The garrison
quickly surrendered, and the blacksmith was granted the forfeited lands
of Mollance and Barncrosh."
"Curious?" I remarked. "Only a legend, I suppose?"
"Not at all--a historical fact. As late as 1841 Mr Gordon of Greenlaw,
tenant of this island, discovered an immense granite ball which, on
examination, was found to be a bullet, in all respects the same as those
belonging to Mons Meg, while a massive gold ring inscribed `Margaret de
Douglas' was discovered by a workman employed to clear out some rubbish
when the castle was repaired as a barrack for French prisoners. This
was the actual ring supposed to have been on the hand of the Fair Maid
of Galloway when it was blown away at the siege."
Such discovery caused hope to arise within us. I exchanged glances with
Wyman, and saw that he considered this additional evidence that treasure
might be hidden beneath that turf on which we were lounging.
Presently we all rose to rejoin the party, and again Walter and I
managed to separate ourselves from the rest and strolled around the
small marshy island.
It was ten minutes past three, and the sun, still shining brightly, cast
a long, straight, sharply defined shadow in the direction of the broad
river and the high land of Greenlaw. The great square tower was higher
on the eastern angle than the western, therefore from its position to
the sun the eastern angle threw a longer shadow, which, together, we
followed through the grass-grown ditch which was once the fosse and up
the bank, then, counting forty-three paces, we halted at a spot covered
with nettles or grass.
"The starting point for measurements must be somewhere here. Fifty-six
paces with the face toward Bengairn," I remarked. "I'm no astronomer;
but I suppose that, on the date mentioned, the shadow will be more to
eastward or to westward. We will, at any rate, mark this spot," and,
finding a piece of broken hurdle, used some time or other to pen in
cattle which had grazed on the island, I stuck it deeply in the ground
just at the farthermost point of the great oblong shadow across the
grass.