THE BRAES OF BALMAGHIE
By ten of the clock the braes of Balmaghie were a sight most glorious
to look upon. Well nigh twelve thousand men were gathered there, of
whom five thousand were well-mounted knights and fully equipped
men-at-arms, every man of them ready and willing to couch a lance or
ride a charge.
The line of the tents which had been set up extended from opposite the
Castle island of Thrieve to the kirk hill of Balmaghie. Every knight's
following was strictly kept within its own pale, or fence of green
wands set basket-wise, pointed and thrust into the earth like the
spring traps of those who catch mowdiewarts. Many also were the
quarrels and bickerings of the squires who had been sent forward to
choose and arrange the several encampments. Nor were rough and tumble
fights such as we have seen the MacKims indulging in, thought
derogatory to the dignity of any, save belted knights only.
Each camp displayed the device of its own lord, but higher than all,
from the top of every mound and broomy hillock floated the banner of
the overlord. This was the lion of Galloway, white on a ground of
blue, and beneath it, but on the same staff, a pennon whereon was the
bleeding heart of the Douglas family.
The lists were set up on the level meadow that is called the Boat
Croft. At either end a pavilion had been erected, and the jousting
green was strongly fenced in, with a rising tier of seats for the
ladies along one side, and a throne in the midst for the Douglas
himself, as high and as nobly upholstered as if the King of Scots had
been presiding in person.
At ten by the great sun-dial of Thrieve, the Earl, armed in complete
armour of rare work, damascened with gold, and bearing in his hand the
truncheon of commander, rode first through the fords of Lochar, and
immediately after him came his brother David, a tall handsome boy of
fourteen, whose olive skin and highbred beauty attested his Douglas
birth.
Next rode the Earl of Angus, a red, foxy-featured man, with mean and
shifty eyes. He sat his horse awkwardly, perpetually hunching his
shoulders forward as if he feared to fall over his beast's head. And
saving among his own company, no man did him any honour, which caused
him to grin with wicked sidelong smiles of hate and envy.
Then amid the shouting of the people there appeared, on a milk-white
palfrey, Margaret, the Earl's only sister, already famous over all
Scotland as "The Fair Maid of Galloway." With her rode one who, in the
esteem of most who saw the pair that day, was a yet rarer flower, even
Maud Lindesay, who had come out of the bleak North to keep the lonely
little maid company. For Margaret of Douglas was yet no more than a
child, but Maud Lindesay was nineteen years of age and in the first
perfect bloom of her beauty.
Behind these two came the whole array of the knights and barons who
owned allegiance to the Douglas,--Herons and Maxwells, Ardwell
Macullochs, Gordons from the Glen of Kells, with Agnews and MacDowalls
from the Shireside. But above all, and outnumbering all, there were
the lesser chiefs of the mighty name--Douglases of the North, the
future Moray and Ormond among them, the noble young sons of James the
Gross of Avondale, who rode nearest their cousin, the head of the
clan. Then came Douglases of the Border, Douglases of the Hermitage,
of Renfrew, of Douglasdale. Every third man in that great company
which splashed and caracoled through the fords of Lochar, was a
William, a James, or an Archibald Douglas. The King himself could not
have raised in all Scotland such a following, and it is small wonder
if the heart of the young man expanded within him.
Presently, soon after the arrival of the cavalcade, the great
wappenshaw was set in array, and forming up company by company the
long double line extended as far as the eye could reach from north to
south along the side of the broad and sluggish-moving river.
Sholto, who in virtue of his courage and good marksmanship had been
placed over the archer company which waited on the right of the ford,
fell in immediately behind the _cortège_ of the Earl. He was first man
of all to have his equipment examined, and his weapons obtained, as
they deserved, the commendation of his liege lord, and the grim
unwilling approval of Malise, the master armourer, whose unerring eye
could not detect so much as a speck on the shirt of mail, or a grain
of rust on the waist brace of shining steel.
Then the Earl rode down the lines, and Sholto, remembering the
encounter amidst the dust of the roadway, breathed more freely when he
saw his father's back.
And surely that day the heart of the Douglas must have beat proud and
high within him, for there they stood, company behind ordered company,
the men on whom he could count to the death. And truly the lad of
eighteen, who in Scotland was greater than the King, looked upon their
steadfast thousands with a swelling heart.
The Abbot had made particular inquiries where Laurence was stationed,
which was in the archer company of the Laird of Kelton. Most of the
monkish band had been made too happy by the deception practised on
their Abbot concerning "Mary Quean," and were too desirous to have
such a rogue to play his pranks in the dull abbey, to tell any tales
on Laurence MacKim. But one, Berguet, a Belgian priest who had begged
his way to Scotland, and whose nature was that of the spy and
sycophant, approached and volunteered the information to the Abbot
that this lad to whom he was desirous of showing favour, was a ribald
and hypocritical youth.
"Eh, what?" said the Abbot, "a bodle for thy ill-set tongue, false
loon, dost think I did not hear him sing his fair and seemly orisons?
I tell thee, rude out-land jabberer, that I am a Douglas, and have ears
better than those of any Frenchman that ever breathed. For this thou
shalt kneel six nights on the cold stone of the holy chapel house, and
say of paternosters ten thousand and of misereres thou shall sing
three hundred. And this shall chance to teach thee to be scanter with
thy foul breath when thou speakest to the Abbot of the Foundation of
Devorgill concerning better men than thyself."
The Belgian priest gasped and fell back, and none other was found to
say aught against Master Laurence, which, considering the ten thousand
paternosters and the three hundred misereres, was not unnatural.
As the Earl passed along the line he was annoyed by the iterated
requests of his uncle to be informed when they should come to the
company of the Laird of Kelton. And the good Abbot, being like all
deaf men apt to speak a little loud, did not improve matters by
constantly making remarks behind his hand, upon the appearance or
character (as known to him) of the various dependents of the Douglas
House who had come out to show their loyalty and exhibit their
preparedness for battle.
As thus it was. The young Earl would come in his inspection to a
company of Solway-side men--stiff-jointed fishers of salmon nets out
of the parishes of Rerrick or Borgue--or, as it might be, rough colts
from the rock scarps of Colvend, scramblers after wild birds' nests on
perilous heuchs, and poachers on the deer preserves of Cloak Moss, as
often as they had a chance. Then the Earl, having zealously commended
the particular Barnbacle or Munches who led them, all would be peace
and concord, till out of the crowd behind would issue the growling
comment of his uncle, the Abbot of Dulce Cor.
"A close-fisted old thief! The saints pity him not! He will surely fry
in Hell! Last Shrovetide did he not drive off five of our best milch
cows, and hath steadfastly refused to restore them? _Anathema
maranatha_ to his vile body and condemned be his huckstering soul!"
Needless to add, every word of this comment and addition was heard by
the person most concerned.
Or it might be, "Henry A'milligan--his mother's son, God wot. And his
father's, too, doubtless--if only one could know who his father was.
The devil dwell in his fat belly! _Exorciso te_--"
So it went on till the temper of the young lord of Galloway was
strained almost to the breaking point, for he wished not to cause a
disturbance among so great a company and on a day of such renown.
At last they came to the muster of the clean-run limber lads of
Kelton, artificers mostly, and stated retainers of the castle and its
various adjacent bourgs of Carlinwark, Rhonehouse, Gelston, and Mains
of Thrieve.
Some one at this point took the Abbot by the elbow and shouted in his
ear that this was the company he desired to see. Then he rode forward
to the left hand of his nephew, as Malise and he passed slowly down
the line examining the weapons.
"Laurence MacKim, I would see Laurence MacKim!" cried the Abbot,
holding up his hand as if in the chapel of his monastery. The Earl
stopped, and Malise turned right about on his heel in great
astonishment.
"What wants old marrowbones with our Laurie?" he muttered; "surely he
cannot have gotten into mischief with the lasses already. But I
kenna--I kenna. When I was sixteen I can mind--I can mind. And the
loon may well be his father's own son."
And Malise, the man of brawn, watched out of his quiet grey eyes the
face of the Abbot William, wondering what was to come next.
Laurence stood forth at a word of command from the Earl. He saluted,
and then dropped the point of his sword meekly upon the ground. His
white-and-rose cherub's face expressed the utmost goodness and
innocence.
"Dear kinsman," said the Abbot to his nephew, "I have a request to
prefer which I hope you will grant, though it deprive you of one
retainer. This sweet youth is not fit company for rude soldiers and
ill-bred rufflers of the camp. His mind is already on higher things.
He hath good clerkly Latin also, being skilled in the humanities, as I
have heard proven with mine own ears. His grace of language and
deportment is manifest, and he can sing the sweetest and most
spiritual songs in praise of Mary and the saints. I would have him in
our choir at Sweetheart Abbey, where we have much need both of a voice
such as his, and also of a youth whose sanctity and innocence cannot
fail to leaven with the grace of the spirit the neophytes of our
college, and the consideration of whom may even bring repentance into
older and more hardened hearts."
Malise MacKim could not believe his ears as he listened to the Abbot's
rounded periods. But all the same his grey eyes twinkled, his mouth
slowly drew itself together into the shape of an O, from which issued
a long low whistle, perfectly audible to all about him except the
Abbot. "Lord have mercy on the innocence and cloistered quiet of the
neophytes if they get our Laurie for an example!" muttered Malise to
himself as he turned away.
Even the young Earl smiled, perhaps remembering the last time he had
seen the youth beside him, clutching and tearing like a wild cat at
his brother's throat in the smithy of Carlinwark.
"You desire the life of a clerk?" said Lord William pleasantly to
Laurence. He would gladly have purchased his uncle's silence at even
greater price.
"If your lordship pleases," said Laurence, meekly, adding to himself,
"it cannot be such hard work as hammering at the forge, and if I like
it not, why then I can always run away."
"You think you have a call to become a holy clerk?"
"I feel it here," quoth Master Laurence, hypocritically, indicating
correctly, however, the organ whose wants have made clerks of so
many--that is, the stomach.
Earl William smiled yet more broadly, but anxious to be gone he said:
"Mine Uncle, here is the lad's father, Malise MacKim, my master
armourer and right good servant. Ask him concerning his son."
"'Tis all up a rotten tree now," muttered Laurence to himself; "my
father will reveal all."
Malise MacKim smiled grimly, but with a salutation to the dignitary of
the church and near relative of his chief, he said: "Truly, I had
never thought of this my son as worthy to be a holy clerk. But I will
not stand in the way of his advancement nor thwart your favour. Take
him for a year on trial, and if you can make a monk of him, do so and
welcome. I recommend a leathern strap, well hardened in the fire, for
the purpose of encouraging him to make a beginning in the holy life."
"He shall indeed have penance if he need it. For the good of the soul
must the body suffer!" said Abbot William, sententiously.
"Saints' bones and cracklings," muttered Laurence, "this is none so
cheerful! But I can always run away if the strap grows overlimber, and
then let them catch me if they can. Sholto will help me."
"Fall out!" commanded the Earl, sharply, "and join yourself to the
company of the Abbot William. Come, Malise, we lose our time."
Thus was one of our heroes brought into the way of becoming a learned
and holy clerk. But all those who knew him best agreed that he had a
far road to travel.