MY FAIR LADY
The strong man of Carlinwark made no long job of the horseshoeing.
For, as he hammered and filed, he marked the eye of the young Earl
restlessly straying this way and that along the green riverside paths,
and his fingers nervously tapping the ashen casing of the smithy
window-sill. Malise MacKim smiled to himself, for he had not served a
Douglas for thirty years without knowing by these signs that there was
the swing of a kirtle in the case somewhere.
Presently the last nail was made firm, and Black Darnaway was led,
passaging and tossing his bridle reins, out upon the green sward.
Malise stood at his head till the Douglas swung himself into the
saddle with a motion light as the first upward flight of a bird.
He put his hand into a pocket in the lining of his "soubreveste" and
took out a golden "Lion" of the King's recent mintage. He spun it in
the air off his thumb and then looked at it somewhat contemptuously as
he caught it.
"I think you and I, Master-Armourer, could send out a better coinage
than that with the old Groat press over there at Thrieve!" he said.
Malise smiled his quiet smile.
"If the Earl of Douglas deigns to make me the master of his mint, I
promise him plenty of good, sound, broad pieces of a noble
design--that is, till Chancellor Crichton hangs me for coining in the
Grassmarket of Edinburgh."
"That would he never, with the Douglas lances to prick you a way out
and the Douglas gold to buy the good-will of traitorous judges!"
Half unconsciously the Earl sighed as he looked at the fair lake
growing rosy in the light of the sunset. His boyish face was
overspread with care, and for the moment seemed all too young to have
inherited so great a burden. But the next moment he was himself again.
"I know, Malise," he said, "that I cannot offer you gold in return for
your admirable handicraft. But 'tis nigh to Keltonhill Fair, do you
divide this gold Lion betwixt those two brave boys of yours. Faith,
right glad was I to be Earl of Douglas and not a son of his master
armourer when I saw you disciplining for their souls' good Messires
Sholto and Laurence there!"
The smith smiled grimly.
"They are good enough lads, Sholto and Laurence both, but they will be
for ever gnarring and grappling at each other like messan dogs round a
kirk door."
"They will not make the worse soldiers for that, Malise. I pray you
forgive them for my sake."
The master armourer took the hand of his young lord on which he was
about to draw a riding glove of Spanish leather. Very reverently he
kissed the signet ring upon it.
"My dear lord," he said, "I can refuse naught to any of your great and
gracious house, and least of all to you, the light and pleasure of
it--aye, and the light of a surly old man's heart, more even than the
duty he owes to his own married wife! Oh, be careful, my lord, for you
are the desire of many hearts and the hope of all this land."
He hesitated a moment, and then added with a kind of curious
bashfulness--
"But I am concerned about ye this nicht, William Douglas--I fear that
ye could not--would not permit me--"
"Could not permit what--out with it, old grumble-pate?"
"That I should saddle my Flanders mare and ride after you. Malise
MacKim would not be in the way even if ye went a-trysting. He kens
brawly, in such a case, when to turn his head and look upon the hills
and the woods and the bonny sleeping waters."
The Earl laughed and shook his head.
"Na, na, Malise," he said, "were I indeed on such a quest the sight of
your grey pow would fright a fair lady, and the mere trampling of that
club-footed she-elephant of yours put to flight every sentiment of
love. Remember the Douglas badge is a naked heart. Can I ride
a-courting, therefore, with all my fighting tail behind me as though I
besought an alliance with the King of England's daughter?"
Silently and sadly the strong man watched the young Earl ride away to
the south along that fair lochside. He stood muttering to himself and
looking long under his hand after his lord. The rider bowed his head
as he passed under the rich blazonry of the white May-blossom, which,
like creamy lace, covered the Three Thorns of Carlinwark, now deeply
stained with rose colour from the clouds of sunset.
[Illustration: WILLIAM OF DOUGLAS REINED UP DARNAWAY UNDERNEATH
THE WHISPERING FOLIAGE OF A GREAT BEECH.]
"Aye, aye," he said, "the Douglas badge is indeed a heart--but it is a
bleeding heart. God avert the omen, and keep this young man safe--for
though many love him, there be more that would rejoice at his fall."
The rider on Black Darnaway rode right into the saffron eye of the
sunset. On his left hand Carlinwark and its many islets burned rich
with spring-green foliage, all splashed with the golden sunset light.
Darnaway's well-shod hoofs sent the diamond drops flying, as, with
obvious pleasure, he trampled through the shallows. Ben Gairn and
Screel, boldly ridged against the southern horizon, stood out in dark
amethyst against the glowing sky of even, but the young rider never so
much as turned his head to look at them.
Presently, however, he emerged from among the noble lakeside trees
upon a more open space. Broom and whin blossom clustered yellow and
orange beneath him, garrisoning with their green spears and golden
banners every knoll and scaur. But there were broad spaces of turf
here and there on which the conies fed, or fought terrible battles for
the meek ear-twitching does, "spat-spatting" at each other with their
fore paws and springing into the air in their mating fury.
William of Douglas reined up Darnaway underneath the whispering
foliage of a great beech, for all at unawares he had come upon a sight
that interested him more than the noble prospect of the May sunset.
In the centre of the golden glade, and with all their faces mistily
glorified by the evening light, he saw a group of little girls,
singing and dancing as they performed some quaint and graceful
pageant of childhood.
Their young voices came up to him with a wistful, dying fall, and the
slow, graceful movement of the rhythmic dance seemed to affect the
young man strangely. Involuntarily he lifted his close-fitting
feathered cap from his head, and allowed the cool airs to blow against
his brow.
_"See the robbers passing by, passing by, passing by,
See the robbers passing by,
My fair lady!"_
The ancient words came up clearly and distinctly to him, and softened
his heart with the indefinable and exquisite pathos of the refrain
whenever it is sung by the sweet voices of children.
"These are surely but cottars' bairns," he said, smiling a little at
his own intensity of feeling, "but they sing like little angels. I
daresay my sweetheart Magdalen is amongst them."
And he sat still listening, patting Black Darnaway meanwhile on the
neck.
_"What did the robbers do to you, do to you, do to you,
What did the robbers do to you,
My fair lady?"_
The first two lines rang out bold and clear. Then again the
wistfulness of the refrain played upon his heart as if it had been an
instrument of strings, till the tears came into his eyes at the
wondrous sorrow and yearning with which one voice, the sweetest and
purest of all, replied, singing quite alone:
_"They broke my lock and stole my gold, stole my gold, stole my gold,
Broke my lock and stole my gold,
My fair lady!"_
The tears brimmed over in the eyes of William Douglas, and a deep
foreboding of the mysteries of fate fell upon his heart and abode
there heavy as doom.
He turned his head as though he felt a presence near him, and lo!
sudden and silent as the appearing of a phantom, another horse was
alongside of Black Darnaway, and upon a white palfrey a maiden dressed
also in white sat, smiling upon the young man, fair to look upon as an
angel from heaven.
Earl William's lips parted, but he was too surprised to speak.
Nevertheless, he moved his hand to his head in instinctive salutation;
but, finding his bonnet already off, he could only stare at the vision
which had so suddenly sprung out of the ground.
The lady slowly waved her hand in the direction of the children, whose
young voices still rang clear as cloister bells tolling out the
Angelus, and whose white dresses waved in the light wind as they
danced back and forth with a slow and graceful motion.
"You hear, Earl William," she said, in a low, thrilling voice,
speaking with a foreign accent, "you hear? You are a good Christian,
doubtless, and you have heard from your uncle, the Abbot, how praise
is made perfect 'out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.' Hark to
them; they sing of their own destinies--and it may be also of yours
and mine."
And so fascinated and moved at heart at once by her beauty and by her
strange words, the Douglas listened.
_"What did the robbers do to you, do to you, do to you,
What did the robbers do to you,
My fair lady?"_
The lady on the delicately pacing palfrey turned the darkness of her
eyes from the white-robed choristers to the face of the young man.
Then, with an impetuous motion of her hand, she urged him to listen
for the next words, which swept over Earl William's heart with a
cadence of unutterable pain and inexplicable melancholy.
_"They broke my lock and stole my gold, stole my gold, stole my gold,
Broke my lock and stole my gold,
My fair lady!"_
He turned upon his companion with a quick energy, as if he were afraid
of losing himself again.
"Who are you, lady, and what do you here?"
The girl (for in years she was little more) smiled and reined her
steed a little back from him with an air at once prettily petulant and
teasing.
"Is that spoken as William Douglas or as the Justicer of Galloway--a
country where, as I understand, there is no trial by jury?"
The light of a radiant smile passed from her lips into his soul.
"It is spoken as a man speaks to a woman beautiful and queenly," he
said, not removing his eyes from her face.
"I fear I may have startled you," she said, without continuing the
subject. "Even as I came I saw you were wrapped in meditation, and my
palfrey going lightly made no sound on the grass and leaves."
Her voice was so sweet and low that William Douglas, listening to it,
wished that she would speak on for ever.
"The hour grows late," he said, remembering himself. "You must have
far to ride. Let me be your escort homewards if you have none worthier
than I."
"Alas," she answered, smiling yet more subtly, "I have no home near
by. My home is very far and over many turbulent seas. I have but a
maiden's pavilion in which to rest my head. Yet since I and my company
must needs travel through your domains, Earl William, I trust you will
not be so cruel as to forbid us?"
"Yes,"--he was smiling now in turn, and catching somewhat of the gay
spirit of the lady,--"as overlord of all this province I do forbid you
to pass through these lands of Galloway without first visiting me in
my house of Thrieve!"
The lady clapped her hands and laughed, letting her palfrey pace
onwards through the woodland glades bridle free, while Black Darnaway,
compelled by his master's hand, followed, tossing his head indignantly
because it had been turned from the direction of his nightly stable on
the Castle Isle.