THE GIFT OF THE COUNTESS
It was the Countess of Douglas who commanded that night in the Castle
of Thrieve. Sholto wished to start at once upon the search for the
lost maidens. But the lady forbade him.
"There are a thousand searchers who during the night will do all that
you could do--and better. To-morrow we shall surely want you. You have
been three nights without sleep. Take your rest. I order you in your
master's name."
And on the bare stone, outside Maud Lindesay's empty room, Sholto
threw himself down and slept as sleep the dead.
But that night, save about the chamber where abode the mother of the
Douglases, the hum of life never ceased in the great Castle of
Thrieve. Whether my lady slept or not, God knows. At any rate the door
was closed and there was silence within.
Sholto awoke smiling in the early dawn. He had been dreaming that he
and Maud Lindesay were walking on the shore together. It was a lonely
beach with great driftwood logs whereon they sat and rested ere they
took hands again and walked forth on their way. In his dream Maud was
kind, her teasing, disdainful mood quite gone. So Sholto awoke
smiling, but in a moment he wished that he had slept on.
He lay a space, becoming conscious of a pain in his heart--the
overnight pain of a great disaster not yet realised. For a little he
knew not what it was. Then he saw himself lying at Maud's open door,
and he remembered--first the death of his masters, then the loss of
the little maid, and lastly that of Maud, his own winsome sweetheart
Maud. In another moment he had leaped to his feet, buckled his
sword-belt tighter, slung his cloak into a corner, and run downstairs.
The house guard which had ridden to Crichton and Edinburgh had been
replaced from the younger yeomen of the Kelton and Balmaghie levies,
even as the Earl had arranged before his departure. But of these only
a score remained on duty. All who could be spared had gone to join the
march on Edinburgh, for Galloway was set on having vengeance on the
Chancellor and had sworn to lay the capital itself in ashes in revenge
for the Black Dinner of the castle banqueting-hall.
The rest of the guard was out searching for the bonny maids of
Thrieve, as through all the countryside Margaret Douglas and Maud
Lindesay were named.
Eager as Sholto was to accompany the searchers, and though he knew
well that no foe was south of the Forth to assault such a strong place
as Thrieve, he did not leave the castle till he had set all in order
so far as he could. He appointed Andro the Penman and his brother John
officers of the garrison during his absence.
Then, having seen to his accoutrement and providing, for he did not
mean to return till he had found the maids, he went lastly to the
chamber door of the Lady of Douglas to ask her leave to depart.
At the first knock he heard a foot come slowly across the floor. It
was my lady, who opened the latch herself and stood before Sholto in
the habit she had worn when at the castle gateway Malise had told his
news. Her couch was unpressed. Her window stood open towards the
south. A candle still glimmered upon a little altar in an angle of the
wall. She had been kneeling all night before the image of the Virgin,
with her lips upon the feet of her who also was a woman, and who by
treachery had lost a son.
"I would have your permission to depart, my Lady Countess," said
Sholto, bowing his head upon his breast that he might not intrude upon
her eyes of grief; "the castle is safe, and I can be well spared. By
God's grace I shall not return till I bring either the maids
themselves or settled news of them. Have I your leave to go?"
The Lady of Douglas looked at him a moment without speech.
"Surely you are not the same who rode away behind my son William. You
went out light and gay as David, my other young son. There is now a
look of Earl William himself in your face--his mother tells you so.
Well, you were suckled at the same breast as he. May a double portion
of his spirit rest on you! That lowering regard is the Douglas mark.
Follow on and turn not back till you find. Strike and cease not, till
all be avenged. I have now no son left to save or to strike. Go,
Sholto MacKim. He who is dead loved you and made you knight. I said at
the time that you were too young and would have dissuaded him. But
when did a Douglas listen to woman's advice--his mother's or his
wife's? Foster brother you are--brother you shall be. By this kiss I
make you even as my son."
She bent and laid her lips on the young man's brow. They were hot as
iron uncooled from the smithy anvil.
"Come with me," she added, and with a vehemence strangely at odds with
her calm of the night before, she took Sholto by the hand and drew him
after her into the room that had been Earl William's.
From the bundle of keys at her side she took a small one of French
design. With this she unlocked a tall cabinet which stood in a corner.
She threw the folding doors open, and there in the recess hung a
wonderful suit of armour, of the sort called at that time "secret."
"This," said the Lady of Douglas, "I had designed for my son. Ten
years was it in the making. His father trysted it from a cunning
artificer in Italy. All these years has it been perfecting for him. It
comes too late. His eyes shall never see it, nor his body wear it. But
I give it to you. No Avondale shall ever do it upon him. It will fit
you, for you and he were of a bigness. No sword can cut through these
links, were it steel of Damascus forged for a Sultan. No spear-thrust
can pierce it, though I leave you to avenge the bruise. Yet it will
lie soft as silk, concealed and unsuspected under the rags of a beggar
or the robes of a king. The cap will turn the edge of an axe, even
when swung by a giant's hand, yet it will fit into the lining of a
Spanish hat or velvet bonnet. This your present errand may prove more
dangerous than you imagine. Go and put it on."
Sholto kneeled down and kissed the hand of his liege lady. Then when
he had risen she gave him down the armour piece by piece, dusting
each with her kerchief with a sort of reverent action, as one might
touch the face of the dead. In Sholto's hands it proved indeed light
almost as woven cloth of homespun from Dame Barbara's loom, and
flexible as the spun silk of Lyons which the great wear next their
bodies.
With it there went an under-suit of finest and softest leather, that
the skin should not be chafed by the cunning links as they worked
smoothly over one another at each movement of the body within.
Sholto buckled on his lady's gift with a swelling heart. It was his
dead master's armour. And as piece by piece fitted him as a glove fits
the hand, the spirit of William Douglas seemed to enter more and more
into the lad.
Then Sholto covered this most valuable gift with his own clothing
which he had brought from the house of Carlinwark, and presently
emerged, a well-looking but still slim squire of decent family.
Then the Countess belted on him the sword of price which went
therewith, a blade of matchless Toledan steel, but covered with a
plain scabbard of black pigskin.
"Draw and thrust," commanded the lady, pointing at the rough stone of
the wall at the end of the passage.
Sholto looked ruefully at the glittering blade which he held in his
hand, flashing blue from point to double guard.
"Thrust and fear not," said the Countess of Douglas the second time.
Sholto lunged out at the stone with all his might. Fire flew from the
smitten blue whinstone where the point, with all the weight of his
young body behind it, impinged on the wall. A tingling shock of
acutest agony ran up the striker's wrist to the shoulder blade. The
sword dropped ringing on the pavement, and Sholto's arm fell numb and
useless to his side.
"Lift the sword and look," commanded the Lady Douglas.
Sholto did as he was bidden, with his left hand, and lo, the point
which had bent like a hoop was sharp and straight as if just from the
armourer's. "Can you strike with your left hand?" asked the lady.
"As with my right," answered the son of Malise the Brawny.
There was a bar at a window in the wall bending outward in shape like
the letter U.
"Then strike a cutting stroke with your left hand."
Sholto took the sword. It seemed to him short-sighted policy that in
the hour of his departure on a perilous quest he should disable
himself in both arms. But Sholto MacKim was not the youth to question
an order. He lifted the sword in his left hand, and with a strong
ungraceful motion struck with all his might.
At first he thought that he had missed altogether. There was no
tingling in his arm, no jar when the blade should have encountered the
iron. But the Countess was examining the centre of the hoop.
"I have missed," said Sholto.
"Come hither and look," she said, without turning round.
And when he looked, lo, the thick iron had been cut through almost
without bending. The sides of the break were fresh, bright, and true.
"Now look at the edge of your sword," she said.
There was no slightest dint anywhere upon it, so that Sholto,
armourer's son as he was, turned about the blade to see if by any
chance he could have smitten with the reverse.
Failing in this, he could only kneel to his lady and say, "This is a
great gift--I am not worthy."
For in these times of peril jewels and lands were as nothing to the
value of such a suit of armour, which kings and princes might well
have made war to obtain.
The faintest disembodied ghost of a smile passed over the face of the
Countess of Douglas.
"It is the best I can do with it now," she said, "and at least no one
of the Avondales shall ever possess it."
After the Lady Douglas had armed the young knight and sped him upon
his quest, Sholto departed over the bridge where the surly custodian
still grumbled at his horse's feet trampling his clean wooden
flooring. The young man rode a Spanish jennet of good stock, a plain
beast to look upon, neither likely to attract attention nor yet to
stir cupidity.
His father and Laurence were already on their way. Sholto had arranged
that whether they found any trace of the lost ones or no, they were
all to meet on the third day at the little town of Kirkcudbright. For
Sholto, warned by the Lady Sybilla, even at this time had his idea,
which, because of the very horror of it, he had as yet communicated to
no one.
It chanced that as the youth rode southward along the banks of the
Dee, glancing this way and that for traces of the missing maids, but
seeing only the grass trampled by hundreds of feet and the boats in
the stream dragging every pool with grapnels and ropes, two horsemen
on rough ponies ambled along some distance in front of him. By their
robes of decent brown they seemed merchants on a journey, portly of
figure, and consequential of bearing.
As Sholto rapidly made up to them, with his better horse and lighter
weight, he perceived that the travellers were those two admirable and
noteworthy magistrates of Dumfries, Robert Semple and his own uncle
Ninian Halliburton of the Vennel.
Hearing the clatter of the jennet's hoofs, they turned about suddenly
with mighty serious countenances. For in such times when the wayfarer
heard steps behind him, whether of man or beast, it repaid him to give
immediate attention thereto.
So at the sound of hoofs Ninian and his friend set their hands to
their thighs and looked over their shoulders more quickly than seemed
possible to men of their build.
"Ha, nephew Sholto," cried Ninian, exceedingly relieved, "blithe am I
to see you, lad. You will tell us the truth of this ill news that has
upturned the auld province. By your gloomy face I see that the major
part is overtrue. The Earl is dead, and he awes me for twenty-four
peck of wheaten meal, forbye ten firlots of malt and other sundries,
whilk siller, if these hungry Avondale Douglases come into possession,
I am little likely ever to see. Surely I have more cause to mourn
him--a fine lad and free with his having. If ye gat not settlement
this day, why then ye gat it the neist, with never a word of drawback
nor craving for batement."
Sholto told them briefly concerning the tragedy of Edinburgh. He had
no will for any waste of words, and as briefly thereafter of the loss
of the little maid and her companion.
The Bailie of Dumfries lifted up his hands in consternation.
"'Tis surely a plot o' thae Avondales. Stra'ven folk are never to
lippen to. And they hae made a clean sweep. No a Gallowa' Douglas
left, if they hae speerited awa' the bonny bit lass. Man, Robert, she
was heir general to the province, baith the Lordship o' Gallowa' and
the Earldom o' Wigton, for thae twa can gang to a lassie. But as soon
as the twa laddies were oot o' the road, Fat Jamie o' Avondale cam'
into the Yerldom o' Douglas and a' the Douglasdale estates, forbye the
Borders and the land in the Hielands. Wae's me for Ninian Halliburton,
merchant and indweller in Dumfries, he'll never see hilt or hair o'
his guid siller gin that wee lassie be lost. Man, Sholto, is't no an
awfu' peety?"
During this lamentation, to which his nephew paid little attention,
looking only from side to side as they three rode among the willows by
the waterside, the other merchant, Robert Semple, had been pondering
deeply.
"How could she be lost in this country of Galloway?" he said, "a land
where there are naught but Douglases and men bound body and soul to
the Douglas, from Solway even to the Back Shore o' Leswalt? 'Tis just
no possible--I'll wager that it is that Hieland gipsy Mistress
Lindesay that has some love ploy on hand, and has gane aff and aiblins
ta'en the lass wi' her for company."
At these words Sholto twisted about in his saddle, as if a wasp had
stung him suddenly.
"Master Semple," he said, "I would have you speak more carefully.
Mistress Lindesay is a baron's daughter and has no love ploys, as you
are pleased to call them."
The two burgesses shook with jolly significant laughter, which angered
Sholto exceedingly.
"Your mirth, sirs, I take leave to tell you, is most mightily ill
timed," he said, "and I shall consider myself well rid of your
company."
He was riding away when his uncle set his hand upon the bridle of
Sholto's jennet.
"Bide ye, wild laddie," he said, "there is nae service in gaun aff
like a fuff o' tow. My freend here meaned to speak nae ill o' the
lass. But at least I ken o' ae love ploy that Mistress Lindesay is
engaged in, or your birses wadna be so ready to stand on end, my bonny
man. But guid luck to ye. Ye hae the mair chance o' finding the flown
birdies, that ye maybes think mair o' the bonny norland quey than ye
think o' the bit Gallowa' calf. But God speed ye, I say, for gin ye
bringna back the wee lass that's heir to the braid lands o' Thrieve,
it's an ill chance Ninian Halliburton has ever to fill his loof wi'
the bonny gowden 'angels' that (next to high heeven) are a man's best
freends in an evil and adulterous generation."