FLAME
That night they waited in Garsykes village till the moon dipped over
Scummer Rigg and grey-black gloom shrouded heath and pasture-land. Then
every man who had strength to carry a burden reached out for his
well-filled sack.
Long Murgatroyd came up the hill with his shammocky stride just as they
were shouldering the sacks. He stood awhile in the lamp-glow streaming
from the tavern windows, and they drew away from him as if he had the
plague. There was something unearthly in his white, drawn face, in the
laugh that broke his silence.
“So I’m in time, after all? It’s better pastime, this, than hanging
yourself in Nita’s garter.”
The man still felt raw of a hempen cord about his neck—the cord that
Hardcastle had loosed not long ago. Yet he laughed again, as he glanced
from one to another. Once he had lain in wait for Hardcastle, and twice
the Master had given him his life. The memory bit and rankled.
“Logie flares red as hell to-night,” he said. “Let’s make a start!”
They went out into a dark that could be felt, soon as the inn’s friendly
gleam was left behind. It reared itself against them like a wall, so
that they feared almost to break themselves against it. Then, as their
eyes grew used to it a little, they picked their way across lean fields,
over marshes yielding to the tread, through woods of pine and larch
whose rustling blackness put slack fear into their limbs. But they
dreaded more the open highway that gave them a ready way to Logie. Deep
in the bones and fibre of the Lost Folk lurked distrust of roads where
honest men might be encountered.
It was when they came to Logie Brigg that superstition gathered thick
about them. They huddled together, a lack-luster mob, on their side of
the crossing. It was a saying centuries old in Garsykes that luck never
came of hindering a Hardcastle. They might rob or take tribute of
Logie’s tenants, but must not touch its master.
“Bleating ewes, are you?” snarled Murgatroyd. “There’s all us—and up
yonder only Hardcastle and two women, and an aged man who may be quick
or stiff by now. And you bleat.”
A rough voice answered him through the murk of the windy night, over the
song of Wharfe River as she raced below.
“It was you brought the trouble to Garsykes, when you were fool enough
to wait for Hardcastle at the pinfold. There’s been naught but ill-luck
since.”
The jostling mob, glad of a scapegoat for its panic, turned on
Murgatroyd.
“Aye, be you first to cross the bridge—if you dare, mad Murgatroyd!”
His madness came on him in earnest. The broken years of his slavery to
Nita, came to a head. Better any happening up at Logie than Nita’s
laughter if they left the house standing and came back with the tale.
He forced his way through the press. Shammocky no longer, but grim and
straight and broad he led his Legion of the Lost between the grey,
narrow walls of Logie Brigg. And all men followed him, afraid of the
gaunt figure striding through the gloom.
They came to the gate of Logie, where Donald had found their token in
the autumn days. Above them the house lay dark and hushed. Starlings
cheeped and scolded in the ivied wall, but no other challenge answered
their intrusion.
Murgatroyd gave a low chuckle—bleak and terrible as when he had jested
after looking over the brink of death.
“We’re not expected, though I blabbed to Hardcastle. He fancied,
seemingly, that a liar never can speak truth.”
Then, with savage zest, he planned the night-surprise, giving them no
time for a second panic. He would lead one half to the main door, while
the rest stole through the stable-yard and attacked the kitchen-entry.
“Sharp and ready does it, and any man would be a fool to fall soft now.
He’d have Long Murgatroyd to reckon with.”
Overwhelming weight of numbers was with them. So was the slumber of a
house that did not look for them to-night. But Murgatroyd’s gruff threat
was the steadying note.
Those chosen for the rear attack crept pad-footed round the yard, and
piled their sacks against the kitchen door with frantic haste till the
woodwork was hidden by a bulging load of fuel. They littered the stone
porch with what bags were left, and fired them.
The blaze was so fierce and instant that they leaped back into the cool
dark of the night, and waited for those in Logie to be burned in their
beds, or to come through the flames for what waited them. And the first
that those within-doors heard of trouble was Storm’s frenzied barking as
he hurled himself against his cupboard-door, to break it through for
Logie’s sake.
The Master lay for a moment between sleep and waking. One window of his
room opened on the stable-yard, and below he heard the restless tread of
feet, the crackling of flame. Grey, pungent smoke was drifting in
already across his bed, and he sprang up with an odd sense of
readiness—and of relief. What they had waited for was here at last, to
be met and grappled with.
Brant, too, had heard the uproar, and they met at the stairway head and
ran down together to the kitchen. Hardcastle was in shirt and breeches,
donned hastily, and the shepherd made a queer figure, his beard splayed
above the top of a woollen nightshirt that reached to his unlaced boots.
They glanced at each other in the light of the smouldering kitchen-fire.
“You’ve a fowling-piece, Master?” murmured Brant. “Better have chosen a
likelier gun. From what I’d heard, I fancied they were coming—this
night or the next.”
He broke off to listen to the roar of flame outside, to watch the door
blister and gape open in wide rents.
“I borrowed a blunderbuss before I got up to bed,” he went on, in the
same low voice, “and loaded it. It would make you laugh to know what I
crammed into its muzzle—pebbles and rusty nails, and all kinds of
winsome odds and ends.”
The door they were watching gaped wider, and great joy came to them,
born of the house they loved. Without were fire and all the scum of
Garsykes. Within were two leal men.
“The odds are with us, Stephen,” said Hardcastle, breaking a silence
that seemed long. “When the door’s down, they’ll be in the glare, and we
in darkness.”
“You’re getting quick at the uptake,” grunted Brant.
A light step sounded close behind them, and Causleen stood there, her
hair rippling in a dusky cloud about her night-gear.
“Oh, go back, child,” said the Master. “There’s trouble.”
“I’ve faced many kinds. Shall I tell you why I stay, Hardcastle of
Logie?”
He was daunted by her courage, by the smouldering anger in her face.
Causleen did not seem to hear Brant, or gaping door.
“I stay to see if you’re better at the fighting than the wooing. A
laggard in one is a laggard at both, they say.”
It was no time for warfare of the tongue, and Hardcastle turned sharply
to carry her out of harm’s way. He turned again, for the thick,
nail-studded door had crashed inward with a swirl of flame and dancing
faggot-embers.
Nothing chanced for awhile save fire that drove him back, and stench of
tar and resin. Storm’s barking rang like a wolf-cry through the house,
till suddenly it ceased, and Rebecca stood among them, the dog bristling
by her side.
“Here’s a queer upset in my kitchen,” she said, glancing from the
blazing doorway to the men’s faces. “I wakened late, I own, but I’d
sense to go and loose Storm first. He might have been burned alive, poor
lamb.”
Brant and the sheep-slayer eyed each other with slow wonder, as folk who
had not looked for the meeting and did not relish it. Then, with peril
waiting close at hand for both, the shepherd’s full-fed wrath blazed
out.
“I shot you, Storm. I shot you, d’ye hear, for killing ewes of mine. And
you’re alive!”
Storm left Rebecca and showed bared teeth to Brant. He was no outlaw
here at Logie, but ripe and ready for what was coming to the house he
guarded.
“So much for you, Brant,” said Rebecca, with a cackle of wild laughter.
“A word from the Master, and he’ll have his jaws in your lean throat.”
The flames of the blazing door were lessening now, for kitchen and porch
alike were floored with stone and offered no fresh fuel; and the moment
came that Hardcastle had looked for. The Garsykes Men, when no uproar
sounded from within—though the besieged should be between two fires by
now—grew restless and afraid of some ambush waiting in the dark of the
stable-yard. A common impulse swayed them to dash over the live embers
into the house before the first shock of surprise was over.
As they came into the ruddy murk of the porch, Hardcastle aimed
point-blank at them. A wild-beast howl followed from men not used to
bearing pain. Then the porch was empty, save for the foremost of the
Garsykes Folk, whose legs were full of shot.
Outside there was a rough stampede of men who fought each other in their
panic to get out of gun-reach. And Brant the shepherd suddenly went mad
with the blood-lust. Robbed of his chance to fire a shot, he pushed
Hardcastle aside, trod over the fallen body and ran out with a grim oath
in his heart.
The night was black, impenetrable. Sight aided him nothing, but hearing
did. On the high uplands Brant had learned to see with his ears when
need pressed. The fleeing mob, not far down the road as yet, was making
noise enough to rouse dead men on their gibbets, and Brant’s blunderbuss
bellowed like a stag gone mad at rutting-time.
A livid shriek of anguish followed, and those in Logie’s kitchen waited
for Brant to return in triumph.
“Hark to them,” said Rebecca, rubbing her hands together. “They came to
Logie, as my lad told me at the gate—and they go as he fore-warned me.
By the marrow, how they squeal!”
Causleen thought of her father. He had been asleep when she glanced in
on her way to the kitchen; but the uproar must have roused him, and it
was terrible to picture him lying there, alone and helpless, waiting for
he knew not what.
The Master’s thoughts were with his shepherd, who did not return.
“Brant’s long in coming,” he muttered restlessly, and had taken a step
toward the porch when he halted, checked by the strangest tumult that
had come to Logie on this night of crashing din.
He heard a bellow of mingled rage and fear, and knew the voice for Long
Murgatroyd’s. He heard, too, the muffled oaths of other men. He sprang
to Causleen’s side and put her behind him; and now the sharp stench of
fire wisped and eddied down the passage.
“Go back,” he muttered, hearing her steps close following his.
She would not, and they ran down the long corridor together till they
reached the open door of the room where Donald lay. And on the threshold
they stood as in a nightmare, aghast at what they saw.
Long Murgatroyd and a press of Garsykes Men were in the room, their
faces lit by a fire they had piled in the middle of it. The lamp-glow,
stealing through the room where Donald slept, had shown them an easier
way of entry than burning down the main door. They had crashed through
the window, tossed down their sacks pell-mell and lit them. If they had
seen the sleeping man, they took him for dead or helpless and had not
heeded.
So much was plain to Causleen and Hardcastle, looking on with the
nightmare grip about them still. But the pedlar slept no longer. He was
awake and on his feet. His face caught the fireglow as wrinkled
parchment might—little lines of crimson criss-crossing its ancient
pallor—but the body they had thought chained was alert and strong,
willowy with youth.
Donald had gone to sleep content. His girl would be safe in Hardcastle’s
hands, and he was free to let dreams take him down the roads of old
romance, when those of his race plied claymores and heard the
battle-din. He woke to see an ill-kempt company lighting a fire at the
far end of the room; and suddenly life raced into his palsied limbs.
Peril to Logie was mingled in his thoughts with far-off combats up the
glens at home. He stood there, supple and thin and dominant, gathering
the dreams come true at last. And the Garsykes mob gaped at this dead
man who faced them without any weapon but his consuming joy in battle.
Long Murgatroyd was twitching from one foot to the other. The men behind
him were bound as by a spell. So was Hardcastle, who was aware of deeper
things than he had known till now. The Garsykes Folk saw only Donald.
That was plain, and the pedlar must have his will of this last moment,
till there was need to intervene.
Donald glanced about, as if in search of something that had shared his
tedious days in this same room. And still Murgatroyd and those behind
were held in thrall. The fire they had kindled blazed and smoked by
turns in the sleepy draught, till Murgatroyd kicked it into flame.
“The wood’s wet,” he muttered, “and be damned to the fools that gathered
it.”
“Aye, wet with blood,” shrilled Donald.
With that, strength came to him. His glance, roving again about the
walls, found the thing he sought. With speed incredible he leaped to get
the pike into his hands—the pike that had gone to Flodden and returned.
He swung it gently to and fro for one swift moment, as if he doubted
which of its three blades to ply. Then, with a Gaelic battle-shout, he
leaped forward, through and over the fire’s reek, whirling the axe-edge
high above his old, grey head.
Long Murgatroyd got his skull away from the blow; but the axe clove his
shoulder till it gritted on the bone.
“I’m done, lads,” he growled, swaying to his fall. “Get about this
madman risen from the dead.”
No voice answered him. The Garsykes Men had gone the way they came
taking still dread for company. Alone with one who whirled his axe to
strike again, Murgatroyd gathered what strength was left him, and ran
screaming out into the night.
A great light shone in Donald’s face. There was strength in his body
still, and a pibroch in his soul; and, when Causleen ran to him across
the dwindling fire, he turned happily.
“It was so they fought in the old days gone. I’m glad you saw me make an
end that way.”
He toyed with the pike lovingly. He praised Logie for keeping its edges
grouted and sharp through the centuries for this night’s work of his.
Then his strength fell away, a borrowed joy. The pike dropped from his
grasp, clattering into the embers that Hardcastle was stamping out.
“Your hands, child,” he whispered.
She guided him to the long-settle that had been his bed for many weary
days, and her tears rained on the blankets she gathered round the
motionless body. Donald opened his eyes once—glad, tender eyes, at
peace with this world and the next—and he found voice, as he had got
strength awhile since to lift the pike.
“Causleen, little Evening Star, you’ve lit the roads for me. And
now—dear God, there’s sunrise on the hills.”
The pedlar lay quiet awhile. All that was of this world clamoured round
him. He was saying good-bye to the broken roads he loved. There would be
no to-morrows, with curlews wailing over summer hills and dusk cradling
in purple hollows of the moor—no journeys on blistered feet through the
tang of winter gales. He ached for the northland he must leave, and his
spirit shrank from the last Crossing because the world was full of
lovesome things. Surely he would see once again the shimmer of
buttercups glowing like grace of old allegiance across the ripening
meadows, would hear the storm-cock pipe defiance to the gale. Just once
again he must smell, too, the reek of clover-hay as it came home on
creaking wagons between the briar-rose banks.
“It grows dark,” he murmured suddenly. “And now the light shines
through—and, child, there’s your mother beckoning from the braes. She’s
just as young and bonnie—as bonnie——”
It was so the warrior died, and Hardcastle stood with bowed head till
Causleen’s first storm of grief was ended. A strange gentleness came to
him, a softening of the ice-cold years, as he covered Donald’s face and
drew the girl away.
They stood facing each other in the dim lamplight. A chill breeze blew
through the broken casement, tossing to and fro the reek of the
stamped-out fire. On the floor the pike lay in a little pool of crimson,
darkening fast. Yet nothing prevailed against the austere and tranquil
presence that filled this room of death.
“Causleen,” he said, by and by, “you need not be lonely.”
She was feeling like a child lost in mid-winter moors. No words could
have reached her heart as his simple, “you need not be lonely,” did. He
was changed, as she was, by this alchemy of death, into finer metal.
Then, longing to believe in him, she took a step away. “It is not the
time or place to—to doubt you.”
“It is the place to tell me why you doubt.” His glance went to the
death-bed. “Could I be false, with your father lying there?”
“You could not—no—and yet it seems so mean a thing to talk of here.”
“It divides us, and _he_ did not want that.”
“I am ashamed either way,” she said, her brave eyes meeting his—“of
you, or of myself for doubting.”
Little by little he drew the tale from her. She had come to the wood
between Logie and the slope to Wharfe River, weeks ago, and seen him
with Nita’s arms stretched out to him.
Hardcastle understood now all that had baffled him these late days. He
recalled each detail of that half-forgotten scene—Nita’s alluring
eagerness, the sharp crack of a twig, his glance backward to learn if
one of the Lost Folk was stealing on him from behind.
“You saw us there,” he said, “and she was an old love of mine. What else
could you have thought?”
His quietness seemed to rebuke her. All these weeks she had been the
silent accuser, he the shameless culprit. Was he a liar through and
through, under his mask of gruff honesty?
“We shared the woodmen’s hut for a night,” he went on, “and afterwards
there was trouble. I asked to clear that for you.”
“From pity.” It was her turn now to glance at the silent figure on the
settle. “We never cared for charity, he and I.”
“I did not offer charity,” he said, direct and forthright. “While I was
persuading you to that, Nita wove her devilry into it all.”
“What devilry?” she asked, her eyes grave and questioning.
He glanced from the shattered casement to Donald’s death-bed, and his
face hardened.
“She offered me escape from what has come to Logie—and I would not take
it.”
Causleen’s heart was free at last, as she watched this man whom she had
flouted. He showed greater than his height in the dim lamp-glow that
made flickering lights and shadows through the room. His voice though
hushed in deference to what lay yonder, was vibrant in its simple
candour. He loved her—loved her for herself.
A gusty weariness came about her, a need to lean on the man who had
caused her sleepless nights and tears as salt as the nether brine-pits.
“I was afraid—till now,” she whispered, and put her hands into his as
if she gave a kingdom.