THE GREY MOWDIEWORT.
But by this time I was shaking like a leaf for fear, together with the
thought of what I had done in the taking of life, and the sending of my
fellow-creatures to their account. Also the tears came hopping down my
cheek, which is ever the effect that fighting has on me. Yet in spite of
this weakness Wat shook me again by the hand, and said only:
"You are a man!"
Notwithstanding, I was not cheered, but continued to greet like a bairn,
only quietly, though I was grateful for his words, and took them not
ill.
Then Walter Gordon went forward to the dead men, and turned them over,
looking at each but saying no word. Lastly he went to the little stout
man whom I had shot in the shoulder. As he looked in his face, from
which the mask had fallen aside, he started so greatly that he almost
leaped bodily in the air.
"William, William," he cried, "by the King's head, we must run for it.
This is not a 'horning' but a hanging job. _'Tis the Duke of Wellwood
himself._"
Greatly startled at the name of the great Privy Councillor and favourite
of the King, I went and looked. The man's face had fallen clear of the
velvet mask with which it had been hidden, and looked livid and grey
against the snow in the moon's uncertain light. But it was indeed the
Duke, for I had often seen him going to the Parliament in his state and
dignity, but there in the snow he looked inconceivably mean, dirty and
small.
"It's a' by wi' the estate noo, Walter," I said. "You and me maun tak'
the heather like the lave."
So saying, I snatched up the head wrapped in the plaid, which I had
almost forgotten, and called him to come on. For we were on the
outskirts of the waste ground called the King's hunting parks, and could
get directly away without passing a house.
But Walter was determined to return and see his mother, lest otherwise
the horror of the news might take her unawares. Walter was ever his
mother's boy, and I think his undutiful conduct that night now went hard
with him, seeing how the affair had turned out.
I argued with him that it was the maddest ploy thus to go back. His
lodgings would certainly be searched as soon as the Duke was found, and
the two who had escaped should return to assist the watch. But I could
not overcome his determination. He had another plan to set against mine.
"There is a vault hereabout that I used to hide in as a boy. Silly folks
say that it is haunted. But indeed there be few that know of it. You can
bide there and wait till I come."
So we went thither, and found the place commodious enough indeed, but
damp and unkindly. It was situate by the chapel wall, but of late years
it has been much filled up with rubbish since the pulling down of the
Chapel Royal by the mob in the riots of the Revolution year.
Yet even at that time it was not a place I had any stomach for. I had
liefer have been going decently to my bed in my lodgings in the West
Bow--as indeed at that moment I should, but for that daft heathercat of
a cousin of mine, with whose gallantries, for my sins, I thus found
myself saddled.
So he went off upon his errand, leaving me alone; and I hardly looked to
see him again, for I made sure that the guard would arrest him or ever
he had gone a hundred yards. It was little that I could do in that
sorrowful place. But I unwrapped the poor head I had brought with me,
and put it with reverence in the farthest corner of the dismal den. Then
I retired to an angle to wait, wrapping my plaid about me for warmth;
for the night had fallen colder, as it ever does after the ceasing of a
storm.
I had time and to spare then for thinking upon my folly, and how I had
damaged the cause that I had so nearly gained by my unlucky interference
in Walter's vanities. It came to me that now of a certainty both
Earlstoun and Lochinvar must pass wholly away from the Gordons, and we
become attainted and landless like the red Gregors. And indeed Kenmuir's
case was not much better.
So I wore the weary night away, black dismal thoughts eating like canker
worms at my heart. How I repented and prayed, no man knows. For that is
the young man's repentance--after he has eaten the sour fruit, to pray
that he may not have the stomach-ache.
Yet being Galloway-born, I had also in me the fear of the unseen, which
folks call superstition. And it irked me more than all other fears to
have to bide all the night (and I knew not how much longer) in that
horrible vault.
It seems little enough to some, only to abide all night in a place where
there is nothing but quiet bones of dead men. But, I warrant you, it is
the burgher folk, who have never lain anywhere but bien and cosy in
their own beds at home that are the boldest in saying this.
So the night sped slowly in that horrid tomb. I watched the white
moonbeams spray over the floor and fade out, as the clouds swept clear
or covered the moon's face. I listened to every sough of the wind, with
a fear lest the clanking halberts of the watch should be in it. The
sound of a man walking far away made me hear in fantasy the grounding of
their axe-shafts as they surrounded my place of concealment. It is bad
enough to have one's conscience against one, but when conscience is
reinforced by a well-grounded fear of the hangman's rope, then the case
grows uncouth indeed.
Yet in spite of all I think I slept a little. For once I waked and saw
the moon, red and near the setting, shining through a great round hole
in the end of the vault, and that so brightly that I seemed to see motes
dancing in its light as in a hay-loft in the summer season.
But that was not the worst of it. In my dream my eyes followed the
direction of the broad beam, and lo! they fell directly on the poor
blackened head of him that had once been John Gordon of Lochinvar. The
suns and rains had not dealt kindly with him, and now the face looked
like nothing earthly, as I saw it in the moonlight of the ugsome vault.
I could have screamed aloud, for there seemed to be a frown on the brow
and a writhed grin on the mouth that boded me irksome evils to come.
Now half a dozen times I have resolved to leave out of my tale, that
which I then saw happen in my dream of the night. For what I am about to
relate may not meet with belief in these times, when the power of Satan
is mercifully restrained; and when he can no longer cast his glamourie
over whom he will, but only over those who, like witch-wives and others,
yield themselves up to him as his willing subjects.
But I shall tell plainly what, in the moonlight, seemed to me to befal
in my dream-sleep.
It appeared then to me that I was staring at the blackened head, with
something rising and falling in my throat like water in a sobbing well,
when the ground slowly stirred in the corner where the head lay, and
even as I looked, a beast came forth--a grey beast with four legs, but
blind of eye like a grey mowdiewort, which took the head between its
forepaws and rocked it to and fro as a mother rocks a fretful bairn,
sorrowing over it and pitying it. It was a prodigy to see the eyes
looking forth from the bone-sockets of the head. Then the beast left it
again lying by its lone and went and digged in the corner. As the
moonlight swept across, broad and slow, through the loud beating of my
heart, I heard the grey mowdiewort dig the hole deeper and yet deeper.
Now the thing that made me fullest of terror was not the digging of the
beast, but the manner of its throwing out the earth, which was not
behind it as a dog does, but in front, out of the pit, as a sexton that
digs a grave.
Then, ere the moonbeams quite left it and began to climb the wall, I
seemed to see the beast roll the black Thing to the edge and cover it
up, drawing the earth over it silently. After that, in my fantasy, it
seemed to look at me. I heard the quick patter of its feet, and with a
cry of fear I started up to flee, lest the beast should come towards
me--and with that I knew no more.