ANDRO THE PENMAN GIVES AN ACCOUNT OF HIS STEWARDSHIP
In the fighting of that day James Douglas, the second son of the fat
Earl of Avondale, won the prize, worsting his elder brother William in
the final encounter. The victor was a nobly formed youth, of strength
and stature greater than those of his brother, but without William of
Avondale's haughty spirit and stern self-discipline.
For James Douglas had the easy popular virtues which would drink with
any drawer or pricker at a tavern board, and made him ready to clap
his last gold Lion on the platter to pay for the draught--telling, as
like as not, the good gossip of the inn to keep the change, and (if
well favoured) give him a kiss therefor. The Douglas _cortège_ rode
home amid the shoutings of the holiday makers who thronged all the
approaches to the ford in order to see the great nobles and their
trains ride by, and Sholto and his men had much trouble to keep these
spectators as far back as was decent and seemly.
The Earl summoned his victorious cousins, William and James, to ride
with him and the tourney's Queen of Beauty. But William proved even
more silent than usual, and his dark face and upright carriage caused
him to sit his charger as if carved in iron. Jolly James, on the other
hand, attempted a jest or two which savoured rustically enough.
Nevertheless, he received the compliments of the Lady Sybilla on his
courage and address with the equanimity of a practised soldier. He was
already, indeed, the best knight in Scotland, even as he was twelve
years after when in the lists of Stirling he fought with the famous
Messire Lalain, the Burgundian champion.
Earl William dropped behind to speak a moment with Sholto, and to give
him the orders which he was to convey to the provost of the games with
regard to the encounter of the morrow.
La Joyeuse took the opportunity of addressing her nearer and more
silent companion.
"You are, I think, the head of the other Douglas House," said the Lady
Sybilla, glancing up at the stern and unbending Master of Avondale.
"There is but one house of Douglas, and but one head thereof," replied
Lord William, with a certain severity, and without looking at her. The
lady had the grace to blush, either with shame or with annoyance at
the rebuff.
"Pardon," she said, "you must remember that I am a foreigner. I do not
understand your genealogies. I thought that even in France I had heard
of the Black Douglas and the Red."
"The Red and the Black alike are the liegemen of William of Douglas,
whom Angus and Avondale both have the honour of serving," answered he,
still more uncompromisingly.
"Aye," cried the jovial James, "cousin Will is the only chief, and
will make a rare lance when he hath eaten a score or two more bolls of
meal."
The Earl William returned even as James was speaking.
"What is that I hear about bolls of meal?" he said; "what wots this
fair damosel of our rude Scots measures for oats and bear? You talk
like the holder of a twenty-shilling land, James."
"I was saying," answered James Douglas, "that you would be a proper
man of your lance when you had laid a score or two bolls of good
Galloway meal to your ribs. English beef and beer are excellent, and
drive a lance home into an unarmed foe; but it needs good Scots oats
at the back of the spear-haft to make the sparks fly when knight meets
with knight and iron rings on iron."
"Indeed, cousin Jamie," said the Earl, "you have some right to your
porridge, for this day you have overturned well nigh a score of good
knights and come off unhurt and unashamed. Cousin William, how liked
you the whammel you got from James' lance in your final course?"
"Not that ill," said the silent Master; "I am indeed better at taking
than at giving. James is a stouter lance than I shall ever be--"
"Not so," cried jolly James. "Our Will never doth himself justice. He
is for ever reading Deyrolles and John Froissard in order to learn new
ways and tricks of fence, which he practises on the tilting ground,
instead of riding with a tight knee and the weight of his body behind
the shaft of ash. That is what drives the tree home, and so he gets
many a coup. Yet to fall, and to be up and at it again, is by far the
truer courage."
The Lady Sybilla laughed, as it seemed, heartily, yet with some little
bitterness in the sound of it.
"I declare you Douglases stick together like crabs in a basket.
Cousins in France do not often love each other so well. You are
fortunate in your relations, my Lord Duke."
"Indeed, and that I am," cried the young man, joyously. "Here be my
cousins, William and James--Will ever ready to read me out of wise
books and advise me better than any clerk, Jamie aching to drive lance
through any man's midriff in my quarrel."
"Lord, I would that I had the chance!" cried James. "Saint Bride! but
I would make a hole clean through him and out at the back, though my
elbuck should dinnle for a week after."
So talking together, but with the lady riding more silent and somewhat
constrainedly in their midst, the three cousins of Douglas passed the
drawbridge and came again to the precincts of the noble towers of
Thrieve.
* * * * *
In an hour Sholto followed them, having ridden fast and furious across
the long broomy braes of Boreland, and wet the fringes of his
charger's silken coverture by vaingloriously swimming the Dee at the
castle pool instead of going round by the fords. This he did in the
hope that Maud Lindesay might see him. And so she did; for as he came
round by the outside of the moat, making his horse caracole and
thinking no little of himself, he heard a voice from an upper window
call out: "Sholto MacKim, Maudie says that you look like a draggled
crow. No, I will not be silent."
Then the words were shut off as if a hand had been set over the mouth
which spoke. But presently the voice out of the unseen came again:
"And I hate you, Sholto MacKim. For we have had to keep in our chamber
this livelong day, because of the two men you have placed over us, as
if we had been prisoners in Black Archibald.[1] This very day I am
going to ask my brother to hang Black Andro and John his brother on
the dule tree of Carlinwark."
[Footnote 1: The pet name of the deepest dungeon of Castle Thrieve,
yet extant and plain to be seen by all.]
"Yes, indeed, and most properly," cried another voice, which made his
very heart flutter, "and set his new captain of the guard a-dangle in
the midst, decked out from head to foot in peacocks' feathers."
Sholto was very angry, for like a boy he took not chaffing lightly,
and had neither the harshness of hide which can endure the rasping of
a woman's tongue, nor the quickness of speech to give her the counter
retort.
So he cast the reins of his horse to a stable varlet and stamped
indoors, carrying his master's helmet to the armoury. Then still
without speech to any he brushed hastily up the stairs towards the
upper floor, which he had set Andro the Penman and his brother to
guard.
At the turning of the staircase David Douglas, the Earl's brother,
stopped him. Sholto moved in salute and would have passed by.
But David detained him with an impetuous hand.
"What is this?" he said; "you have set two archers on the stairs who
have shot and almost killed the ambassador's two servants, Poitou the
man-at-arms, and Henriet the clerk, just because they wished to take
the air upon the roof. Nay, even when I would have visited my sister,
I was not permitted--'None passes here save the Earl himself, till
our captain takes his orders off us!' That was the word they spoke.
Was ever the like done in the castle of Thrieve to a Master of Douglas
before?"
"I am sorry, my Lord David," said Sholto, respectfully, "but there
were matters within the knowledge of the Earl which caused him to lay
this heavy charge upon me."
"Well," said the lad, quickly relenting, "let us go and see Margaret
now. She must have been lonely all this fair day of summer."
But Sholto smiled, well pleased, thinking of Maud Lindesay.
"I would that I had a lifetime of such loneliness as Margaret's hath
been this day," he said to himself.
At the turning of the stair they were stayed, for there, his foot
advanced, his bow ready to deliver its steel bolt at the clicking of a
trigger, stood Andro the Swarthy.
From his stance he commanded the stair and could see along the
corridor as well.
David Douglas caught his elbow on something which stood a few inches
out of the oaken panelling of the turnpike wall. He tried to pull it
out. It was the steel quarrel of a cross-bow wedged firmly into the
wood and masonry. He cried: "Whence came this? Have you been murdering
any other honest men?"
The archer stood silent, glancing this way and that like a sentinel on
duty. The two young men went on up the stair.
As their feet were approaching the sixth step, a sudden word came from
the Penman like a bolt from his bow.
"Halt!" he cried, and they heard the _gur-r-r-r_ of his steel ratchet.
Sholto smiled, for he knew the nature of the man.
"It is I, your captain," he said. "You have done your duty well, Andro
the Penman. Now get down to your dinner. But first give an account of
your adventures."
"Do you relieve us from our charge?" said the archer, with his bow
still at the ready.
"Certainly," quoth Sholto.
"Come, Jock, we are eased," cried Andro the Swarthy up the stair, and
he slid the steel bolt out of its grip with a little click; "faith, my
belly is toom as a last year's beef barrel."
"Did any come hither to vex you?" asked Sholto.
"Not to speak of," said the archer; "there were, indeed, two varlets
of the Frenchmen, and as they would not take a bidding to stand, I had
perforce to send a quarrel buzzing past their lugs into the wall. You
can see it there behind you."
"Rascal," cried David Douglas, indignantly, "you do not say that first
of all you shot it through the arm of the poor clerk Henriet."
"It is like enough," said Andro, coolly, "if his arm were in the way."
Then came a voice down the stairs from above.
"And the wretches would neither let any come to visit us nor yet
permit us to go into the hall that we might speak with our gossips."
"How should we be responsible with our lives for the lasses if we had
let them gad about?" said Andro, preparing to salute and take himself
off.
At this moment the little maid and her elder companion came forward
meekly and kneeled down before Sholto.
"We are your humble prisoners," said Maud Lindesay, "and we know that
our offences against your highness are most heinous; but why should
you starve us to death? Burn us or hang us,--we will bear the extreme
penalty of the law gladly,--but torture is not for women. For dear
pity's sake, a bite of bread. We have had nothing to eat all day,
except two lace kerchiefs and a neck riband."
"Lord of Heaven," cried Sholto, swinging on his heel and darting down
towards the kitchen, "what a fool unutterable I am!"