'Dominie,' I said, 'if they come at us, mind that we are not to leave
the lasses alive to fall into their bloody hands.'
He looked at me with a haggard face and shook his head.
'I cannot do it!' he said, and set his hands over his eyes to hide the
torches' flare.
When he looked up again I pointed to the loathed things that decked the
walls in the eaves of the cave, and to the pickle barrels that stood in
the corners.
The Dominie understood and nodded.
'Surely you can if _I_ can,' I whispered to him. 'I will take care of
Nell--my love, if you--'
And I looked at Marjorie so that he understood fully. Then came my eyes
back to Nell. They felt hot and dry.
For I was taken with the reek in them, and my heart rose within me to
think that in a swift tale of moments I might have to take away the
sweet life from my own heart's love. But when I went back to her, there
was a new light of understanding in the face on which the flicker of the
fire was reflected from the roof. I knew that she had seen and
understood the import of my colloquy with the Dominie, and our looking
from the one to the other of them.
Yet the fear had strangely gone from her face. I declare she looked
almost glad. She set her lips to my ear.
'Launce,' she whispered, 'I want none but you to do it--if so be that it
comes to that. You will, will you not, Launce?'
Then I knew that she had understood all the love she had seen in my
face. For, indeed, I would rather had killed my sweetheart a hundred
times, than let her fall alive into the hands of such a ghastly, bestial
devil's crew.
So Nell Kennedy, trusting me with the manner of her death as though it
had been a little love-tryst between ourselves, sat looking up at me
with such eyes of love and trust that they went nigh to make me forget
that Cimmerian den and the ghoulish beasts that rioted in it.
*CHAPTER XLI*
*THE WERE-WOLF OF BENERARD*
Thus we sat a long time, waiting. Suddenly there was a pause in the
noise which filled the cavern below. I thought for a moment that they
had discovered us. But Marjorie moved her hand a little to bid me keep
down. And very carefully I raised my head over the rock, so that through
the niche I could as before look down upon them.
The water-door of the cave was now entirely filled by a black bulk, in
shape like a grizzly ape. Even in the flickering light I knew instantly
that I had seen the monster before. A thrill ran through me when I
remembered the man-beast, the thing with which I had grappled in the
barn of Culzean the night I out-faced the Grey Man. And now by the
silence and the crouching of the horde beneath me, I learned that their
master had come home. The monster stood a moment in the doorway as
though angered at something, then he spoke in a voice like a beast's
growl, certain things which I could not at all understand--though it was
clear that his progeny did, for there ensued a tumultuous rushing from
side to side. Then Sawny Bean strode into the midst of his den. It
happened that by misadventure he stumbled and set his foot upon a lad of
six or seven, judging by the size of him, who sprawled naked in the
doorway. The imp squirmed round like a serpent and bit Sawny Bean in
the leg, whereat he stooped, and catching the lad by the feet, he dashed
his head with a dull crash against the wall, and threw him quivering
like a dead rabbit into the corner.
The rest stood for a moment aghast. But in a trice, and without a
single one so much as going to see if the boy were dead or only stunned,
the whole hornet's byke hummed again, and the place was filled with a
stifling smell of burning fat and roasting victual, upon the origin of
which I dared not let my mind for a moment dwell.
When Sawny Bean came in, he had that which looked like a rich cloth of
gold over his arm--the plunder of some poor butchered wretch, belike.
He stood with this trophy in front of him, examining it before the fire.
Presently he threw it over his shoulders, with the arms hanging idly
down in front, and strode about most like a play-actor or a mad
person--but manifestly to his own great content and to the huge
admiration of his followers, who stood still and gaped after him.
When he had satisfied himself with this posturing, the monster looked
towards our place of refuge. A great spasm seized my heart when I saw
him take the first step towards us, for I guessed that it was his
forbidden treasure-house in which we lurked.
So I thought it had certainly come to the last bitter push with us. But
something yet more terrible than the matter of the boy diverted for the
moment the monster's attention. The lad whom he had cast to the side had
been left alone, none daring to meddle. But now, as he passed him,
Sawny Bean gave the body a toss with his foot. At this, quick as a
darting falcon on the stoop, a woman sprang at him from, a crevice where
she had been crouching--at least by her shape she was a woman, with long
elf-locks twisting like snakes about her brow and over her shoulders.
She held an open knife in her hand, and she struck at the chieftain's
hairy breast. I heard the point strike the flesh, and the cry of anger
and pain which followed. But the monster caught the woman by the wrist,
pulled her over his knee, and bent back her head. It was a horrid thing
to see, and there is small wonder that I can see it yet in many a dream
of the night. And no doubt also I shall see it till I die--hear it as
well, which is worse.
Then for a long season I could look no more. But when I had recovered
me a little, and could again command my heart, I saw a great part of the
crew swarm thick as flies--fetching, carrying, and working like bees
upon spilled honey about the corner where had lain the bodies of the lad
and the woman. But it was not in the ordinary way that these were being
prepared for burial. In the centre of the cave sat Sawny Bean, with
some of the younger sort of the women pawing over him and bandaging his
wounded shoulder. He was growling and spitting inarticulately all the
while like a wild cat. And every time his shoulder hurt him as the
women worked with the wound and mouthed it, he would take his other hand
and strike one of them down, as though it was to her that he owed the
twinge of pain.
Presently the monster arose and took the gold brocade again in his hand.
I thought that of a certainty now our time was come, and I looked at
Nell Kennedy.
God knows what was in my eyes. My heart within me was ready to break,
for the like of this pass had never man been in. That I should have to
smite my love to the death within an hour of my first kiss and the first
owning of her affection.
But she that loved me read my thought in mine eyes.
She bared her neck for me, so that I could see its tender whiteness in
the flicker of the fire.
'Strike there,' she said, 'and let me die in your arms, who art my own
heart's love, Launcelot Kennedy.'
I heard the beast-man's step on the stair. I looked from Nell's dear
neck to her eyes and back again to her bosom. Then I lifted my hand
with the steel in it, and nerved myself for the striking, for I must
make no mistake. And even in that moment I saw the gleam of a dagger in
Marjorie's hand also.
Suddenly a tremendous rush of sound filled the cave. The blade fell from
my hand, and by instinct, not knowing what we did, Nell and I clasped
one another. The clamour seemed to be about us and all round us.
Roaring echoes came back to us. The bowels of the earth quaked. Yet
methought there was something strongly familiar in the sound of it. I
turned me about, and there, standing erect with all his little height
was the Dominie. His cheeks were distended, and he was blowing upon his
great war-pipes such a thunderous pibroch as never had been heard east
of the Minch since the island pipes skirled on the Red Harlaw.
What madcap possession had come upon his mind, I know not. But the
effect I can tell. The pack of fiends that caroused and slew beneath,
stood stricken a moment in amaze at the dreadful, incomprehensible
sounds. Then they fled helter-skelter, yellyhooing with fear, down the
narrow sea-way from which the tide had now fully ebbed. And when I
looked again, there was not a soul to be seen. Only over the edge of a
lappered cauldron the body of the murdered woman (or, at least, a part
of it), lay doubled--a bloody incentive to make haste out of this
direful Cave of Death.
The Dominie stepped down from our hidden alcove as though he had been
leading a march, strutting and passaging like the King's piper marching
about the banqueting table at Holyrood. I declare the creature seemed
'fey.' He was certainly possessed with a devil. But the very
fearlessness of the deed won into our veins also, for with steel or
pistol in each of our hands we marched after him--ready, and, indeed,
eager, to encounter aught that might come in our way. Ay, and even thus
we passed out of the cave, hasting down the long passage without a
quiver of the heart or a blenching of the cheek--so suddenly and so
starkly, by way of unexpected hope, had the glorious music brought the
hot blood back to our hearts, even as it had stricken our cruel foes
with instant terror.
Thus dryshod we marched out of the cave of Sawny Bean, and, as I am a
true man, not so much as a dog barked at us. But when we emerged into
the grey of a stormy morning and reached the cliff's edge, we heard
inland the wild voices of the gang yelling down the wind, as though the
furies of fear were still pursuing them and tearing at their vitals.
What they expected I know not, but I conceive that they must have taken
the Dominie's pipes for whatever particular devil they happened to
believe in, come to take them quick to their own place. Which, after
all, could not be much worse than the den in which we had seen them at
their disport. Nor could all the torturing fiends of lowest hell have
been their marrows in devilish cruelty.
*CHAPTER XLII*
*ANE LOCHABER AIX GIED HIM HIS PAIKS*
So once more the world was before us, and strangely peaceful it seemed,
as if somehow or other we had died in stress and riot and been born
again into an uncanny quiet. There remained for us now only the
bringing to pass of righteous judgments upon the wicked ones who had
compassed and plotted all this terrible tale of evils--these murders
without end, these hellish cruelties and death-breeding deceits. For
the vengeance must not fall alone on the crazed outlaw and his brood,
since the chief criminals were those that were greater and wiser than
Sawny Bean and his merciless crew.
It was, as I say, the breaking of a stormy morrow when we faced up the
brae, sword in hand, finding none to withstand us, for all had fled
before the music of the wild Highland drones. Then in the sustaining
quiet I asked the Dominie by what inspiration he had thought of such a
mad thing as thus blasting upon the war-pipes.
'Oh it just came to me!' said he, lightly. And with that he wiped his
chanter and set the drones under his arm, letting them hang down as
though they had been the legs of a lamb which a herd has found on the
hill.
But our troubles were not yet over, for we had to pass through many
miles of Bargany country ere we could reach our own folk. I proposed to
turn landwards, for that, as the crow flies, is the shortest road. But
the Dominie denied me, saying that since those cruel monsters of the
were-wolfs band had fled that way, the closer we kept to the coast, the
safer we should be.
We made, therefore, only such a detour as would enable us to escape the
town of Girvan, which was a strength of our foes, and passing by
Killochan, a pleasant and friendly tower, well set in a wooded valley
with a view of our old strength of Ailsa, we hastened as fast as we
could march with the women in our company to Culzean.
Now near by Killochan there was a school and a schoolmaster, the name of
him John Guid. He had been for a long season a friend and crony of our
Dominie Mure. To him we resorted, or rather the Dominie went alone to
seek him, while I abode with Marjorie and Nell. It was over in the
afternoon when he came back, and what was our joy to hear behind him the
trampling of a pair of hardy ponies, for with the weariness of her
terrible quest and the stress of the night in the Cave of Death,
Marjorie looked dismally near to her end. And, indeed, I am not sure
that Nell was greatly better.
Marjorie had passed some part of the long march in telling us in bits
and snatches the tale of her sufferings, her flight and capture, and how
by evil and hateful hands she had been flung into the water from off the
Heuch of Benerard.
It was a tale of most tyrannous wrong, and shall be kept for its own
place, when Marjorie came to tell it to a greater and more powerful than
either Launcelot Kennedy or Dominie Mure of Maybole.
I shall, therefore, let the reader wait yet a brief space for the
explanation of many things which are dark to him now, and which had been
equally dark to me till that gusty, rain-plashing morning.
So we four fared northward over the moors of Carrick, with Marjorie and
Nell riding upon the garrons, and the Dominie and myself hasting along
by their side with a hand apiece in their stirrup-leathers. We were
just by the edge of the Red Moss, and going straight and snell for my
Lord Earl's house of Cassillis, when Nell, who was ever our most
keen-eyed watcher, cried out that we were pursued. And when I had
turned me about and looked, I saw that of a surety it was so.
Then I thought that if it should happen that we were attacked, it might
be as well to have the advantage of position. So I posted our party on
a little heathery mound, having an open lairy moss in front with
dangerous quags, trembling bogs, and square black islands of moss and
peat standing in the midst, all gashed and riven. Here we waited, the
two men of us under arms in front, and the maids standing close behind
the horses, with the bridles loose in their hands.
I had cast my cloak over the shoulder of Nell's sheltie to clear my arms
for the fray, if indeed it should come to the clash of blows; and it
pleased me well to see her catch it without a word, and fold it like a
wife who watches her husband and is pleased to anticipate his need.
This indeed (I say it twice) pleased me well, for I knew that she had
done with daffing with me any more, and that she had at last forgotten
all the matters concerning that pretty tell-tale Kate Allison.
The three men who rode toward us were at first to our sight like ships
low down on the sea-line. But they mounted steadily, spears and pennons
first, after that the shine of armour, and then the heads of their
horses, becking and bowing with the travail of the moss.
Then verily we that stood had anxious hearts, for we knew not whether
they might chance to be friend or foe, and, indeed, it was well that we
looked for the worst. As they came nearer we saw that the two who rode
ahead were armed in a knightly way, and gripped lances in their hands.
But the third, who came behind and held a little aloof, was plainly clad
in a grey cloak and hat.
'It is Auchendrayne and a younger man, with the Wolf of Drummurchie in
their company; it could not well be worse,' said the Dominie. 'We are
like to be hard bested.'
And I knew that Marjorie Kennedy looked once more upon the man who, in
cold blood, had slain her father, and also upon the man who according to
the law, was her husband.
I had looked for them to call a parley, and had set myself in front to
acquit me well in the barter of words before the damsels; but I was not
prepared for the event as it happened.
For without a word of preamble, warning or speech-making, John Mure of
Auchendrayne (he in the cloak of grey) cried out, 'Have at them! Slay
them every one! 'Tis now too late for whimsies. It is our lives for
theirs if we do not.'
So with that the two younger men-at-arms came on, couching their long
lances and riding directly at us. I stuck my sword downward by the
point, naked in the soft moss at my side, so that I should not have it
to draw out of the sheath when it came to the pinch. And for the last
time I looked at my pistol priming, and longed horribly for one of my
lord's new hackbutts of the French pattern out of the armoury of
Cassillis.
But wishing would not bring them or I had had a dozen, each with a good
Culzean man behind it, with his finger on the touch. But yet you may
depend that my imagination bodied them forth, standing there useless in
the press, oiled and burnished, as I had seen them. And all the while
the two villains came on.
Now, in a plain place we had had but little chance to stand against
them, cumbered with the women as we were; but the peat hag I had chosen
for our defence on the edge of the Red Moss favoured us. When, however,
I had fired my pistol and made nothing of it, save only the clink of the
bullet whizzing off the plate metal, they got time to ride round the
main obstruction. Then it had gone hard with us indeed, but that the
Dominie Mure, as the horses came forward, blew so sudden a snorting
blast upon his pipes, that one of the steeds swerved and stumbled,
almost throwing his rider to the ground. Then, ere he had time to
recover, the Dominie was upon him with his sword, springing upward and
striking like an angry etter-cap ever at the face, so that it took the
horseman all his time to defend himself.
The other drave at me full tilt with his long spear, and though I leapt
aside from the lance-thrust, I, with only my pistol and sword, had been
no better than a dead man at the next turn. But Marjorie Kennedy,
giving the bridle reins of both horses to her sister, seized the
Dominie's Lochaber axe. She sprang behind the visored man, and, hooking
the bent prong in his gorget collar behind, she pulled him down from his
horse with a clash of armour. Then, after that, there remained nothing
for me to do, but to set my sword to his throat and bid him yield
himself.
By this time the frightened horse which had stumbled first became
perfectly mad, and turning in spite of all that Thomas of Drummurchie
could do, it galloped away with him, belly-to-earth, across the Red
Moss.
Then the man in the grey cloak also put his horse to its speed, so soon
as he saw how the matter was like to go. For he had kept at a distance
and taken no part in the fighting. We were therefore left alone,
victorious, without a wound, and with the man in the visor, our
prisoner.
He seemed to be stunned with his fall, so Marjorie stooped and undid his
laced steel-cap, shelling his head as one shells the husk of a nut from
the kernel.
The man whom she revealed was James Mure the younger of Auchendrayne,
her wedded husband.
We stood thus some time in wonderment what should be the upshot.
Marjorie Kennedy (I cannot while I live call her by any other name)
stood looking down at the man to whom in foulest treachery she had been
given. Then after a while Nell touched my arm, and lo! on the Moss,
there was yet another man on horseback coming towards us. I knew the
beast. It was the same on which the Wolf of Drummurchie had ridden.
But the man was other than the Wolf.
The thing was a mystery to us.
But at last Nell, whose eyes were like an eagle's for keenness--though,
as I have before observed, of heavenly beauty, cried out, 'It is Robert
Harburgh--we are saved!' Which was no great things of a saying, for I
myself had saved her ten times during that last night and day, if it
came to any talk of saving. Yet I think from that moment she began to
draw away a little from me. Whether as remembering some of my old ploys
with that tricksy lass who was now Robert Harburgh's wife, or partly
lest she should have seemed to be over-ready in owning her love for me.
At any rate, after I had thought over her unkindness and sudden chill a
little while, I was not sure that it might not be after all the best
sign in the world. For as the reader of this chronicle must have
gathered, I am a man of some penetration in these matters, and it is not
given to any woman to twine Launcelot Kennedy in a knot about her little
finger.
Also I have had very considerable experience.
'Faith,' cried Robert Harburgh, when he had ridden up, 'whom have we
here?'