On that same June evening, in the year 1262, whilst Kenric was at the
stream side with Ailsa Redmain, the three strangers who had landed
earlier in the day on the shores of Bute were feasting in the great
banqueting hall of the castle of Rothesay. For although to the tired lad
Lulach and to Ailsa they had appeared in the guise of enemies, yet each
of the three was known to the Earl Hamish. Their leader was, in truth,
none other than his own brother, the Earl Roderic of the Isle of Gigha.
The other two were Erland the Old of Jura, and Sweyn the Silent of Colonsay.
What their unexpected mission to the lord of Bute might be had yet to be
learnt. But when, betimes, they came to the gate of Rothesay Castle they
found Earl Hamish and his steward, Sir Oscar Redmain, on the point of
setting out on a hunting expedition into the wilds of Glen More. And of
the band of hunters were Kenric's elder brother Alpin and young Allan
Redmain.
So when the strangers entered the castle and had broken bread and
refreshed their deep throats with wine, they left their swords and dirks
in the armoury and took bows and hunting spears. Thus equipped, they set
off with Earl Hamish and his merry men and long-limbed hounds. And they
had great sport that day, coming back at sunset with a wild boar that
Earl Roderic had slain, and three antlered stags and other spoil.
In their absence Kenric's mother, the Lady Adela, had made prepare a
feast for them all, with much venison and roasted beef and stewed black
cock, with cakes of bread, both white and brown, and many measures of
red wine and well-spiced liquors. A silver drinking bowl was set down
for each of the kingly guests, and a goblet of beaten gold for the king
of Bute.
The hall was lighted with many cruse lamps that hung suspended from the
oaken joists, and, lest the evening should be chill, there was a fire of
fragrant pine logs blazing on the open hearth. Round the walls of the
hall, that were panelled with black oak boards, there were many
glittering shields and corselets, with hunting horns and various
trophies of the chase.
At the fireside there sat an aged minstrel, whose duty it was to fill in
the intervals of the feast with the music of his harp, or, if need were,
to recite to the company the saga of King Somerled and other great
ancestors of the kings of Bute.
Earl Hamish -- a tall, courtly Highlander, with sad eyes and a long
brown beard -- sat at the head of the board, that with his own strong
hands he might carve the steaming venison. At his right hand sat the
earl of Jura, Erland the Old, and at his left Earl Sweyn the Silent. His
beautiful wife, the Lady Adela -- attired in a rich gown inwoven with
many devices of silk, and spun by the Sudureyans -- sat facing him at
the far end of the board. At her right hand sat Earl Roderic of Gigha;
and at her left Alpin, her son.
So the feast began, with much merry discourse of how the men had fared
that day at the hunting in Glen More.
Now Erland and Sweyn, kinglings of Jura and Colonsay, though owing
yearly tribute to their overlord, Alexander the Third of Scotland, were
both men of the North, and they spoke with Earl Hamish in the Norse
tongue. Their discourse, which has no bearing upon the story, was mainly
of cattle and sheep, and of the old breast laws of the Western Isles.
But Roderic of Gigha spoke in the Gaelic, which the Lady Adela, though
an Englishwoman born, could well understand.
"Ah, but," said he, addressing young Alpin, who had been boasting of the
manly sports that might be enjoyed in his father's dominions, "you
should one day come to Gigha, for there, I do assure you, we have
adventure such as you never dream of in Bute."
"I marvel, my lord, how that can be," said Allan Redmain scornfully,
"for the kingdom of which you boast is but a barren rock in the mid sea,
and methinks your beasts of the chase are but vermin rats and shrew mice."
"The sports of which I speak, young man," said Roderic, frowning and
wiping his red beard with his broad hand, "are not such bairns' play as
you suppose. Our beasts of the chase are burly men, and our hunting
ground is the wide ocean. I and my gallant fellows carry our adventures
far into the north to Iceland and Scandinavia, or southward even into
the land of the Angles, where there is sport in plenty for those who
would seek it."
The Lady Adela looked up in shocked surprise.
"But," said she, "you do not surely count the Angles among your enemies,
my lord? The Scots are at peace these many years with my country England."
"I should be grieved to call any man my enemy who is your friend, my
fair Lady Adela," said Roderic gallantly. "But though the Scots be
indeed at peace with King Henry, yet the brave Easterlings of Ireland do
ofttimes find the need of slaying a few of your proud countrymen; and if
I help them -- well, where there is aught to be gained what matters it
who our victims be, or what lands we invade? I am for letting him take
who has the power to conquer. Let them keep their own who can.
"What say you, Sir Oscar? Am I not right?"
"I am a man of peace, Earl Roderic," said Sir Oscar Redmain gravely. "I
have no enemies but the enemies of my king and country. And methinks, my
lord, that a loyal subject of the King of Scots is but a traitorous
hound if he stoop to take arms in favour of either Easterling or
Norseman, and against our good friends of England. You, my lord, may
perhaps pay fealty to King Hakon of Norway, as well as to his majesty
Alexander of Scotland. It is not all men who can make it so easy to
serve two masters."
"A traitorous hound, forsooth! You surely mistake me, Sir Oscar," cried
Roderic, reddening at the reproach. "I said not that I paid truage to
any king but our own King of Scots, God bless him! And though, indeed,
King Alexander is but a stripling, knowing little of kingcraft, yet,
even though he were a babe in arms, he and no other is still my
sovereign lord."
And at that he raised his goblet to his lips and drank a deep draught of
wine. Then, lightly turning to the lady of Rothesay, and helping her to
cut up the venison on her platter, that she might the more easily take
the small pieces in her dainty white fingers, he said:
"After the rough roving life that I have been leading these many years,
my lady, 'tis truly a great joy to come back once more to the peaceful
Isle of Bute. Much do I envy my good brother Hamish, in that he hath so
beauteous a partner as yourself to sit before him at his board. Truly he
is a most fortunate man!"
Adela's fair cheeks blushed rosy red at this compliment, but she did not
smile.
"Methinks, Lord Roderic," said she, nervously breaking the white bread
cake at her side, "that with so small a distance between Bute and Gigha,
you might surely have come to visit your brother long ere this present
time. For although Earl Hamish hath ofttimes spoken of you, yet never
until this day have I seen you; and 'tis well-nigh a score of years that
I have lived in Bute."
"Alas!" said Roderic, looking uneasy, "since my poor father, Earl Alpin,
died, I have had little spirit to come back to these scenes. It was in
anger that my brother and I parted, when, as you well know, the lordship
over the two islands was divided. The larger dominion of Bute fell to
the share of Hamish. I, as the younger son, was perforce content to take
the miserable portion that I now possess. Gigha is but a small island,
my lady."
"Our happiness need not depend upon the extent of our dominions, Lord
Roderic," said Adela; "and I doubt not you are passing happy,
notwithstanding that you have but a younger son's inheritance."
"Not so," said Roderic, planting his heavy elbows on the board; "for
where can a man find happiness when those who are dearest to him have
been torn away?"
"Then you have had sorrows?" questioned the lady.
"When I went forth to take the kingship of my island home," said he, "my
life was indeed most bright and joyous; and on a time it befell that I
went north to Iceland, and there I met one who (with submission I say
it) was not less beautiful than yourself, my lady. She was the most
beauteous damsel that ever came out of the Northland, and her name was
Sigrid the Fair. I married her and we were happy."
Roderic again filled his drinking bowl and looked across the table at
Alpin's handsome brown face.
"We had two children," he continued sadly. "The girl would have been of
the years of your own son there, the boy was two summers younger than she."
"Oh, do not tell me that they are dead!" cried Adela.
"Alas! but that is so," he sighed. "One sunny day they went out hand in
hand from our castle to play, as was their wont, among the rocks and
caves that are at the south of our island. Never since then have they
returned, and some said that the water kelpie had taken them and carried
them away to his crystal home under the sea. Others whispered that the
kraken or some other monster of the deep had devoured them. They said
these things, believing that Sigrid had no heart for her children, and
that she was unkind to them. But many days thereafter I learned that a
strange ship had been seen bearing outward between Gigha and Cara; and
it was the ship of Rapp the Icelander, the cruellest sea rover that ever
sailed upon the western seas. Then did I believe that neither kelpie nor
kraken had taken my bairns, but Rapp the Rover.
"So I got ship and followed him. For three long years I followed in his
track -- to the frozen shores of Iceland, and into every vic and fiord
in Scandinavia. Southward then I sailed to the blue seas of England --
always behind him yet never encountering him. But at last there came a
day of terrible tempest. The thunder god struck my ship and we were
wrecked. Every man that was on board my ship was drowned saving only
myself, for the white sea mew swims not more lightly on the waters than
I. So I was picked up by a passing vessel, and it was the vessel of Rapp
the Icelander. Instead of killing him I loved him, in that he had saved
my life. Then he told me, swearing by St. Olaf, that never in all his
time of sea roving had he touched at the little island of Gigha, and
that he knew naught soever of the dear children I had lost."
"Greatly do I pity you, Earl Roderic," said Adela, clasping her hands.
"And you have not yet found trace of your little ones?"
"No," said Roderic. "And now do I believe that they are still at play in
the crystal halls of the water kelpie, whence no man can rescue them."
"And your wife Sigrid, what of her?" asked Sir Oscar Redmain.
"When I got back to Gigha," murmured Roderic, "they told me that in my
absence she had gone mad, and that in her frenzy she had cast herself
from the cliffs into the sea. Whithersoever I have gone since that sad
time, there have I found unhappiness."
The Lady Adela looked upon the man with gentle pity in her dark eyes.
She felt how different had been his lot from hers and her dear
husband's. For notwithstanding that she dwelt in a country not her own,
and among people who spoke a foreign tongue, yet she was very happy. The
Earl Hamish loved her well and was ever good to her. And their two sons,
Alpin and Kenric, growing up into manhood, were very dear to her heart.
She was the daughter of a proud English baron, who had wide dominions
near the great city of York. Twenty years before, Earl Hamish of Bute
had been sent with other wise counsellors by King Alexander the Second
on a mission to the court of the English king, Henry the Third,
concerning the great treaty of peace between England and Scotland, and
also to consider the proposal of a marriage between the daughter of the
King of England and the son of the King of Scots. The treaty established
a peace which had not yet been broken, and the Princess Margaret of
England was now the Queen of Scotland. But while on that embassy to York
Earl Hamish of Bute won more than the gratitude of his sovereign, for he
won the heart of the Lady Adela Warwick, and, making her his wife, he
brought her to his castle of Rothesay, where she had lived happily ever
since.
She was thinking of these matters as she heard Earl Roderic's story of
his great unhappiness, and her eyes were fixed dreamily before her.
Now Roderic, to whom the presence of this sweet and beautiful lady was a
new experience, observed her pensiveness and wondered thereat. His
roving glance presently fell upon her plate.
"Ah!" said he, "you have no salt, my lady."
And thereupon he took her knife and dug its point into the salt horn.
"Nay, nay!" she cried in alarm; and she grasped his wrist so that he
spilled the salt upon the table.
"What have you done?" he exclaimed. "This is the most unlucky thing that
could have happened! Alas, alas!"
"Would you, then, have helped my lady to sorrow?" cried Sir Oscar
Redmain, rising wrathfully. "By the rood, but you are a thoughtless loon!"
Earl Hamish at the head of the board, hearing his lady's cry, rose
hastily and approached her, and saw that she was very pale.
"I will retire," said she, "for the hall is over warm. I am faint and
uneasy."
Earl Hamish led her to the door. There he kissed her fondly on her white
brow and she went to her chamber.