THE DOUGLAS MUSTER
The day of the great weapon-showing broke fair and clear after the
storm of the night. The windows of heaven had had all their panes
cleaned, and even after it was daylight the brighter stars
appeared--only, however, to wink out again when the sun arose and
shone on the wet fields, coming forth rejoicing like a bridegroom from
his chamber.
And equally bright and strong came forth the young Earl, every trace
of the anger and disappointment of the night having been removed from
his face, if not from his mind, by the recreative and potent sleep of
youth and health.
In the hall he called for Sir John of Abernethy, nicknamed Landless
Jock.
"Conduct my uncle the Abbot from the chapel where he has been all
night at his devotions, to his chamber, and furnish him with what he
may require, and bring up Malise the Smith from the dungeon. Let him
come into my presence in the upper hall."
William Douglas went into a large oak-ceiled chamber, wide and high,
running across the castle from side to side, and with windows that
looked every way over the broad and fertile strath of Dee.
Presently, with a trampling of mailed feet and the double rattle which
denoted the grounding of a pair of steel-hilted partisans, Malise was
brought to the door by two soldiers of the Earl's outer guard.
The huge bulk of Brawny Kim filled up the doorway almost completely,
and he stood watching the Douglas with an unmoved gravity which, in
the dry wrinkles about his eyes, almost amounted to humorous
appreciation of the situation.
Yet it was Malise who spoke first. For at his appearance the Earl had
turned his back upon his retainer, and now stood at the window that
looks towards the north, from which he could see, over the broad and
placid stretches of the river, the men putting up the pavilions and
striking spears into the ground to mark out the spaces for the tourney
of the next day.
"A fair good morrow to you, my lord," said the smith. "Grievous as my
sin has been, and just as is your resentment, give me leave to say
that I have suffered more than my deserts from the ill-made chains and
uncouth manacles wherewith they confined me in the black dungeon down
there. I trow they must have been the workmanship of Ninian Lamont the
Highlandman, who dares to call himself house-smith of Thrieve. I am
ready to die if it be your will, my lord; but if you are well advised
you will hang Ninian beside me with a bracelet of his own rascal
handiwork about his neck. Then shall justice be satisfied, and Malise
MacKim will die happy."
The Earl turned and looked at his ancient friend. The wrinkles about
the brow were deeply ironical now, and the grey eyes of the master
armourer twinkled with appreciation of his jest.
"Malise," cried his master, warningly, "do not play at cat's cradle
with the Douglas. You might tempt me to that I should afterwards be
sorry for. A man once dead comes not to life again, whatever monks
prate. But tell me, how knew you whither I had gone yester-even? For,
indeed, I knew not myself when I set out. And in any event, was it a
thing well done for my foster father to spy upon me the son who was
also his lord?"
The anger was mostly gone now out of the frank young face of the Earl,
and only humiliation and resentment, with a touch of boyish curiosity,
remained.
"Indeed," answered the smith, "I watched you not save under my hand as
you rode away upon Black Darnaway, and then I turned me to the seat by
the wall to listen to the cavillings of Dame Barbara, the humming of
the bees, and the other comfortable and composing sounds of nature."
"How then did you come to follow me in the undesirable company of my
uncle the Abbot?"
"For that you are in the debt of my son Sholto, who, seeing a lady
wait for you in the greenwood, climbed a tree, and there from amongst
the branches he was witness of your encounter."
"So--" said the Douglas, grimly, "it is to Master Sholto that I am
indebted somewhat."
"Aye," said his father, "do not forget him. For he is a good lad and a
bold, as indeed he proved to the hilt yestreen."
"In what consisted his boldness?" asked the Earl.
"In that he dared come home to me with a cock-and-bull story of a
witch lady, who appeared suddenly where none had been a moment before,
and who had immediately enchanted my lord Earl. Well nigh did I twist
his neck, but he stuck to it. Then came riding by my lord Abbot on his
way to Thrieve, and I judged that the matter, as one of witchcraft,
was more his affair than mine."
"Now hearken," cried the Earl, in quick, high tones of anger, "let
there be no more of such folly, or on your life be it. The lady whom
you insulted was travelling with her company through Galloway from
France. She invited me to sup with her, and dared me to adventure to
Edinburgh in her company. Answer me, wherein was the witchcraft of
that, saving the witchery natural to all fair women?"
"Did she not prophesy to you that to-day you would be Duke of
Touraine, and receive the ambassadors of the King of France?"
"Well," said the Earl, "where is your wit that you give ear to such
babblings? Did she not come from that country, as I tell you, and who
should hear the latest news more readily than she?"
The smith looked a little nonplussed, but stuck to it stoutly that
none but a witch woman would ride alone at nightfall upon a Galloway
moor, or unless by enchantment set up a pavilion of silk and strange
devices under the pines of Loch Roan.
"Well," said Earl William, feeling his advantage and making the most
of it, "I see that in all my little love affairs I must needs take my
master armourer with me to decide whether or no the lady be a witch.
He shall resolve for me all spiritual questions with his forehammer.
Malise MacKim a witch pricker! Ha--this is a change indeed. Malise the
Smith will make the censor of his lord's love affairs, after what
certain comrades of his have told me of his own ancient love-makings.
Will he deign to come to the weapon-showing to-day, and instead of
examining the swords and halberts, the French arbalasts and German
fusils, demit that part of his office to Ninian the Highlandman, and
go peering into ladies' eyes for sorceries and scanning their lips for
such signs of the devil as lurk in the dimples of their chins? In this
he will find much employment and that of a congenial sort."
Malise was vanquished, less by the sarcasm of the Earl than by the
fear that perhaps the Highlandman might indeed have his place of
honour as chief military expert by his master's right hand at the
examination of weapons that day on the green holms of Balmaghie.
"I may have been overhasty, my lord," he said hesitatingly, "but still
do I think that the woman was far from canny."
The Earl laughed and, turning him about by the shoulders, gave him a
push down the stair, crying, "Oh, Malise, Malise, have you lived so
long in the world without finding out that a beautiful woman is always
uncanny!"
The levy that day of clansmen owning fealty to the Douglas was no
hasty or local one. It was not, indeed, a "rising of the countryside,"
such as took place when the English were reported to be over the
border, when the beacon fires were thrown west from Criffel to Screel,
from Screel to Cairnharrow, and then tossed northward by the three
Cairnsmuirs and topmost Merrick far over the uplands of Kyle, till
from the sullen brow of Brown Carrick the bale fire set the town drum
of Ayr beating its alarming note. Still this muster was a day on
which every Douglas vassal must ride in mail with all his spears
behind him--or bide at home and take the consequences.
All the night from distant parishes and outlying valleys horsemen had
been riding, clothed in complete panoply of mail. These were the
knights, barons, freeholders, who owned allegiance to the house of
Douglas. Each lord was followed by his appointed tail of esquires and
men-at-arms; behind these dense clusters of heavily armed spearmen
marched steadily along the easiest paths by the waterside and over the
lower hill passes. Light running footmen slung their swords over their
backs by leathern bandoliers and pricked it briskly southwards over
the bent so brown. Archers there were from the border towards the
Solway side--lithe men, accustomed to spring from tussock to tuft of
shaking grass, whose long strides and odd spasmodic side leapings
betrayed even on the plain and unyielding pasture lands the place of
their amphibious nativity.
"The Jack herons of Lochar," these were named by the men of Galloway.
But there was no jeering to their faces, for not one of those
Maxwells, Sims, Patersons, and Dicksons would have thought twice of
leaping behind a tree stump to wing a cloth-yard shaft into a
scoffer's ribs at thirty yards, taking his chance of the dule tree and
the hempen cord thereafter for the honour of Lochar.