CASTLE CRICHTON
Crichton Castle was much more a defenced château and less a feudal
stronghold than Thrieve. It stood on a rising ground above the little
Water of Tyne, which flowed clear and swift beneath from the blind
"hopes" and bare valleys of the Moorfoot Hills. But the site was well
chosen both for pleasure and defence. The ground fell away on three
sides. Birch, alder, ash, girt it round and made pleasant summer
bowers everywhere.
The fox-faced Chancellor had spent much money on beautifying it, and
the kitchens and larders were reported to be the best equipped in
Scotland. On the green braes of Crichton, therefore, in due time the
young Douglases arrived with their sparse train of thirty riders. Sir
William Crichton had ridden out to meet them across the innumerable
little valleys which lie around Temple and Borthwick to the brow of
that great heathy tableland which runs back from the Moorfoots clear
to the Solway.
With him were only the Marshal de Retz and his niece, the Lady
Sybilla.
Not a single squire or man-at-arms accompanied these three, for, as
the Chancellor well judged, there was no way more likely effectually
to lull the suspicions of a gallant man like the Douglas than to
forestall him in generous confidence.
The three sat their horses and looked to the south for their guests at
that delightsome hour of the summer gloaming when the last bees are
reluctantly disengaging themselves from the dewy heather bells and the
circling beetles begin their booming curfew.
"There they come!" cried de Retz, suddenly, pointing to a few specks
of light which danced and dimpled between them and the low horizon of
the south, against which, like a spacious armada, leaned a drift of
primrose sunset clouds.
"There they come--I see them also!" said the Lady Sybilla, and
suddenly sighed heavily and without cause.
"Where, and how many?" cried the Chancellor, in a shrill pipe usually
associated with the physically deformed, but which from him meant no
more than anxious discomposure.
The marshal pointed with the steady hand of the practised commander to
the spot at which his keen eye had detected the cavalcade.
"Yonder," he said, "where the pine tree stands up against the sky."
"And how many? I cannot see them, my eyesight fails. I bid you tell me
how many," gasped the Chancellor.
The ambassador looked long.
"There are, as I think, no more than twenty or thirty riders."
Instantly the Chancellor turned and held out his hand.
"We have him," he muttered, withdrawing it again as soon as he saw
that the ambassador did not take it, being occupied gazing under his
palm at the approaching train of riders.
The Lady Sybilla sat silent and watched the company which rode towards
them--with what thoughts in her heart, who shall venture to guess? She
kept her head studiously averted from the Marshal de Retz, and once
when he touched her arm to call attention to something, she shuddered
and moved a little nearer to the Chancellor. Nevertheless, she obeyed
her companion implicitly and without question when he bade her ride
forward with them to receive the Chancellor's guests.
Crichton took it on himself to rally the girl on her silence.
"Of what may you be thinking so seriously?" he said.
"Of thirty pieces of silver," she replied instantly.
And at these words the marshal turned upon the girl a regard so black
and relentless that the Chancellor, happening to encounter it, shrank
back abashed, even as some devilkin caught in a fault might shrink
from the angry eyes of the Master of Evil.
But the Lady Sybilla looked calmly at her kinsman.
"Of what do you complain?" he asked her.
"I complain of nothing," she made him answer. "I am that which I am,
and I am that which you have made me, my Lord of Retz. Fear not, I
will do my part."
Right handsome looked the young Earl of Douglas, as with a flush of
expectation and pleasure on his face he rode up to the party of three
who had come out to meet him. He made his obeisance to Sybilla first,
with a look of supremest happiness in his eyes which many women would
have given their all to see there. As he came close he leaped from his
horse, and advancing to his lady he bent and kissed her hand.
"My Lady Sybilla," he said, "I am as ever your loyal servant."
The Chancellor and the ambassador had both dismounted, not to be
outdone in courtesy, and one after the other they greeted him with
what cordiality they could muster. The narrow, thin-bearded face of
the Chancellor and the pallid death-mask of de Retz, out of which
glittered orbs like no eyes of human being, furnished a singular
contrast to the uncovered head, crisp black curls, slight moustache,
and fresh olive complexion of the young Earl of Douglas.
And as often as he was not looking at her, the eyes of the Lady
Sybilla rested on Lord Douglas with a strange expression in their
deeps. The colour in her cheek came and went. The vermeil of her lip
flushed and paled alternate, from the pink of the wild rose-leaf to
the red of its autumnal berry.
But presently, at a glance from her kinsman, Sybilla de Thouars seemed
to recall herself with difficulty from a land of dreams, and with an
obvious effort began to talk to William Douglas.
"Whom have you brought to see me?" she said.
"Only a few men-at-arms, besides Sholto my squire, and my brother
David," he made answer. "I did not wait for more. But let me bring the
lad to you. Sholto you did not like when he was a plain archer of the
guard, and I fear that he will not have risen in your grace since I
dubbed him knight."
David Douglas willingly obeyed the summons of his brother, and came
forward to kiss the hand of the Lady Sybilla.
"Here, Sholto," cried his lord, "come hither, man. It will do your
pride good to see a lady who avers that conceit hath eaten you up."
Sholto came at the word and bowed before the French damosel as he was
commanded, meekly enough to all outward aspect. But in his heart he
was saying over and over to himself words that consoled him mightily:
"A murrain on her! The cozening madam, she will never be worth naming
on the same day as Maud Lindesay!"
"Nay," cried the Lady Sybilla, laughing; "indeed, I said not that I
disliked this your squire. What woman thinks the worse of a lad of
mettle that he does not walk with his head between his feet. But 'tis
pity that there is no fair cruel maid to bind his heart in chains, and
make him fetch and carry to break his pride. He thinks overmuch of his
sword-play and arrow skill."
"He must go to France for that humbling," said the Earl, gaily, "or
else mayhap some day a maid may come from France to break his heart
for him. The like hath been and may be again."
"I would that I had known there were such gallant blades as you three,
my Lords of Douglas and their knight, sighing here in Scotland to have
your hearts broke for the good of your souls. I had then brought with
me a tierce of damsels fair as cruel, who had done it in the flashing
of a swallow's wing. But 'tis a contract too great for one poor maid."
"Yet you yourself ventured all alone into this realm of forlorn and
desperate men," answered the Earl, scarcely recking what he said, nor
indeed caring so that her dark eyes should continue to rest on him
with the look he had seen in them at his first coming.
"All alone--yes, much, much alone," she answered with a strange
glance about her. "My kinsman loves not womankind, and neither in his
castles nor yet in his company does he permit any of the sex long to
abide."
The men now mounted again, and the three rode back in the midst of the
cavalcade of Douglas spears, the Chancellor talking as freely and
confidently to the Earl as if he had been his friend for years, while
the Earl of Douglas kept up the converse right willingly so long as,
looking past the Chancellor, his eyes could rest also upon the
delicately poised head and graceful form of the Lady Sybilla.
And behind them a horse's length the Marshal de Retz rode, smiling in
the depths of his blue-black beard, and looking at them out of the
wicks of his triangular eyes.
Presently the towers of the Castle of Crichton rose before them on its
green jutting spur. The Tyne Valley sank beneath into level meads and
rich pastures, while behind the Moorfoots spread brown and bare
without prominent peaks or distinguished glens, but nevertheless with
a certain large vagueness and solemnity peculiarly their own.
The _fêtes_ with which the Chancellor welcomed his guests were many
and splendid. But in one respect they differed from those which have
been described at Castle Thrieve. There was no military pomp of any
kind connected with them. The Chancellor studiously avoided all
pretence of any other distinction than that belonging to a plain man
whom circumstances have raised against his will to a position of
responsibility.
The thirty spears of the Earl's guard, indeed, constituted the whole
military force within or about the Castle of Crichton.
"I am a lawyer, my lord, a plain lawyer," he said; "all Scots lawyers
are plain. And I must ask you to garrison my bit peel-tower of
Crichton in a manner more befitting your own greatness, and the honour
due to the ambassador of France, than a humble knight is able to do."
So Sholto was put into command of the court and battlements of the
castle, and posted and changed guard as though he had been at Thrieve,
while the Chancellor bustled about, affecting more the style of a rich
and comfortable burgess than that of a feudal baron.
"'Tis a snug bit hoose," he would say, dropping into the countryside
speech; "there's nocht fine within it from cellar to roof tree, save
only the provend and the jolly Malmsey. And though I be but a poor
eater myself, I love that my betters, who do me the honour of
sojourning within my gates, should have the wherewithal to be merry."
And it was even as he said, for the tables were weighted with
delicacies such as were never seen upon the boards of Thrieve or
Castle Douglas.