THE WHITE TOWER OF MACHECOUL
So at the command of the Marshal de Retz they sent to bring forth
Margaret of Douglas and Maud Lindesay out of the White Tower, where
they had been abiding. Margaret had gone to bed, and, as was her
custom, Maud Lindesay sat awhile by her side. For so far as they could
they kept to the good and kindly traditions of Castle Thrieve. It
seemed somehow to bring them nearer home in that horrible place where
they were doomed to abide.
"Give me your hand, Maud, and tell on," said little Margaret, nestling
closer to her friend, and laying her head against her arm as she
leaned on the low bedstead beside her.
Margaret was gowned in a white linen night-rail, made long ago for the
marshal's daughter, little Marie de Retz, in the brighter days before
the setting up of the iron altar. Catherine, his deserted wife, had
been kind to the girls at Pouzages, and had given to both of them such
articles of garmenture as they were sorely in need of.
"Tell on--haste you," commanded little Margaret, with the
imperiousness of loving childhood, nestling yet closer as she spoke.
"It helps me to forget. I can almost think when you are speaking that
we are again at Thrieve, and that if we looked out at the window we
should see the Dee running by and Screet and Ben Gairn--and hear
Sholto MacKim drilling his men out in the courtyard. Why, Maudie, what
is the matter? I did not mean to make you cry. But it is all so sweet
to think upon in this place. Oh, Maudie, Maudie, what would you give
to hear a whaup whistle?"
Then drawing herself into a sitting posture, with her hands about
Maud's neck, she took a kerchief from under the pillow and dried her
friend's tears, murmuring the while, "Ah, do not cry, Maud, my vision
will yet come true, and you shall indeed see Ben Gairn and
Thrieve--and everything. I was dreaming about it last night. Shall I
tell you about it, sweet Maud?"
Maud Lindesay did not reply, not having recovered power over her
voice. So the little Maid of Galloway went on unbidden.
"Yes, I dreamed a glad dream yester-even. Shall I tell it you all and
all? I will--though you can tell stories far better than I.
"Methought that I and you--I mean, dear Maud, you and I, were sitting
together in the gloaming at the door of a little house up on the edges
of the moorland, where the heather is prettiest, and reddest, and
longest. And we were happy. We were waiting for some one. I shall not
tell you who, Maudie, but if you are good, and stop crying, you can
guess. And there was a ring on your finger, Maud. No, not like the old
ones--not a pretty ring like those in your box, yet you loved it more
than them all, and never stopped turning it about between your finger
and thumb.
"They had let me come up to stay with you, and the men who had
accompanied me were drinking in the clachan. As we sat I seemed to
hear their loud chorus, sounding up from the change-house.
"And you listened and said: 'I wish he would come. He is very long. It
is always long when he is away.' But you never said who it was that
was long away. And I shall not tell you, though I know. Perhaps it was
old Jock Lacklands, who used to be captain of the guard, and perhaps
grouting Peter, from the gate-house by the ford. But somehow I do not
think so. Ah, that is better! Now do not cry again. But listen, else I
will not tell you any more, but go off to sleep instead.
"Perhaps you do not want to hear the rest. Yet--it was such a pretty
dream, and of good omen.
"You _do_ want to hear? Well, then, be good!
"As we sat there we could hear the bumblebees scurrying home, and
every now and then one of the big boom-beetles would sail whirring
past us. We could hear the sheep crying below in the little green
meadows so lonesomely, and the snipe bleating an answer away up in the
sky above their heads, and you said, '_It is all so empty, wanting
him!_'
"Then the maids brought in the cows, and milked them standing at the
gable end, and we could smell the smell of their breath, sweet like
the scent of the flowers they had been eating all day long. Then,
after a while, they were driven out of the yard again, and went in a
string, one after the other, back to their pastures, doucely and
sedately, just like folk going to holy kirk on Sabbath days when it is
summer time in Galloway.
"Then you said, 'I am weary of waiting for him!' And I answered,
'Why,--he has not been gone more than a day. Sometimes I do not see
him for weeks, and _I_ never fret like that!'
"Then you answered (it has all come so clear into my mind), 'Some day
you will know, little one!' And you patted me on the head, and went to
the house end to look into the sunset. You looked many minutes under
your hand, and when you came back you said, as if you had never said
it before, 'He is long a-coming! I wonder what can be keeping him.'
"Then the maidens told us that the supper was ready to put on the
table, whereat you scolded them, telling them that it was too early,
and that they must keep it hot against their master's coming. And to
me you said, 'You are not hungry, are you?' And I answered, 'No,'
though I was indeed very hungry--(in my dream, that is). Then you said
again, sighing: 'It is strange that he should not come home! I cannot
eat till he comes! Perhaps he has fallen into a ditch, or some eagle
may have pecked out his eyes!'
"Then all the while it grew darker, and still no one came. Whereat you
cried a little softly, and said: 'He might have come--I know right
well he could have been here by this time if he had tried. But he does
not love me any more.' And you were patting the ground with your foot
as you used to do when--well, when he went away from Thrieve without
coming out upon the leads to say 'Good-night.' Then, all at once,
there was a noise of quick feet brushing eagerly through the heather,
and some one (no, not Landless Jock) leaped the wall and caught
me--_me_--in his arms."
"No, it was not you whom he caught in his arms!" cried Maud Lindesay,
indignantly, and then stopped, abashed at her own folly. But the
little maid laughed merrily.
"Aha!" she said, "_I_ caught you that time in my trap. You know who it
was in my dream, though I have never told you, nor so much as hinted.
"And he asked if you had missed him, and you made a sign for me not to
speak, just as you used to do at Castle Thrieve, and answered, 'No,
not a little bit! Margaret and I were quite happy. We hoped you would
not come back at all this night, for then we could have slept
together.'"
Maud Lindesay drew a long, soft breath, and looked out of the window
of the White Tower into the dark.
"That is a sweet dream," she murmured. "Ah, would that it were true,
and that Sholto--!"
She broke off short again, for the maid clapped her hands gleefully.
"You said it! You said it!" she cried. "You called him Sholto. Now I
know; and I am so glad, for he is nearly as good to play with as you.
And I shall not mind him a bit."
Little Margaret stopped short in her turn, seeing something in her
friend's face.
"Why are you suddenly grown so sad, Maudie?" she asked.
"It came upon me, dear Margaret," said Maud, "how that we are but two
helpless maids in a dreadful place without a friend. Let us say a
prayer to God to keep us!"
Then Margaret Douglas turned and knelt with her face to the pillow and
her small hands clasped in front of her.
"Give me your silver cross," she said, "I lent the little gold one
that was William's to the Lady Sybilla, and she hath not returned it
me again."
Maud gave her the cross and she took it and held it in the palm of her
hand looking long at it. Then she repeated one by one the children's
orisons she had been taught, and after that she made a little prayer
of her own. This is the prayer.
"Lord of mercy, be good to two maids who are lonely and weak, and shut
up in this place of evil men. Keep our lives and our souls, and also
our bodies from harm. Make us not afraid of the dark or of the devil.
For Thou art the stronger. And do not forget to be near us this night,
for we have no other friend and sorely do we need one to love and
deliver us. Amen."
It was true. More bitterly than any two in the whole world, these
maidens needed a friend at that moment. For scarcely had the childish
accents been lost in the night silence, when the outer door of the
White Tower was thrown open to the wall, and on the steps of the
turret stair they heard the noise of men coming upwards to their
prison-room.
But first, though the inner door of their chamber was locked within,
the bolts glided back apparently of their own accord. It opened, and
the hideous face of La Meffraye looked in upon them with a cackle of
fiendish laughter.
"Come, sweet maidens," she cried gleefully, as the frightened girls
clasped each other closer upon the bed, "come away. The Marshal de
Retz calls for you. He hath need of your beauty to grace his feast.
The lights of the banquet burn in his hall. See the fire of burning
shine out upon the night. The very trees are red with it. The skies
are red. All is red. Come--up--make yourselves fair for the eyes of
the great lord to behold!"
Then behind La Meffraye entered Gilles de Sillé and Poitou, the
marshal's servants.
"Make ready in haste--you are both to go instantly before my lord, who
abides your coming!" said Gilles de Sillé. "Poitou and I will abide
without the door, and La Meffraye here shall be your tirewoman and see
that you have that which you need. But hasten, for my lord is instant
and cannot be kept waiting!"
* * * * *
So they brought the Scottish maidens down from the White Tower into
the night. They walked hand in hand. Their steps did not falter, and,
as they went, they prayed to God to keep them from the dangers of the
place. Astarte, the she-wolf, who must have kept guard beneath,
stalked before them, and behind them they seemed to hear the hobbling
crutch and cackling laughter of La Meffraye.
Across the wide courtyard of Machecoul they went. It also was filled
with the reflection of the red tide of light which ebbed and flowed,
waxing and waning above. Saving for that window the whole castle was
wrapped in gloom and silence, and if there were any awake within the
precincts they knew better than to spy upon the midnight doings of
their dread lord.
The little party passed up the great staircase of the keep and
presently halted before the inscribed wooden door by which Laurence
had entered the Temple of Evil.
As Gilles de Sillé opened it for the maids to precede him, the skirt
of Maud Lindesay's robe, blown back by the draught of the chamber,
fluttered against the cheek of Laurence MacKim as he lay on his face
in the niche of the wall. At the light touch he came to himself, and
looked about with a strange and instant change in all the affections
and movements of his heart.
With the coming in of the maidens, fear seemed utterly to forsake him.
A clarity of purpose, an alertness of brain, a strength of heart
unknown before, took the place of the trembling bath of horror in
which he had swooned away.
It was like the sudden appearance of two white angels walking fearless
and unscathed through the grim dominions of the Lords of Hell.
Incarnate Good had somehow entered the house of the Demon, though it
was in the slender periphery of two maidens' bodies, and evil, strong
and resistless before, seemed in the moment to lose half its power.
[Illustration: IT WAS LIKE THE SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF TWO WHITE ANGELS
WALKING FEARLESS AND UNSCATHED THROUGH THE GRIM DOMINIONS OF THE LORDS
OF HELL.]