The Black Douglas - Samuel Rutherford Crockett (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📗

and in a moment Sholto had recognised in the rider his brother Laurence, pale as death, and the figure that had clung to the stirrup as the horse took the water, was his father, Malise MacKim.
Thus in one moment came the three MacKims to the door-step of Thrieve.
The clatter and cry of their arrival brought a pour of torches from every side of the isle and from within the castle keep.
"Have you found them--where are they?" came from every side. But Laurence seemed neither to hear nor see.
"Where is my lady?" he cried in a hoarse man's voice; and again, "Instantly I must see my lady."
Sholto stood aside, for he knew that these two brought later tidings than he. Presently he went over to his father, who was leaning panting upon a stone post, and asked him what were the news. But Malise thrust him back apparently without recognising him.
"My lady," he gasped, "I would see my lady!"
Then through the torches clustered about the steps of the castle came the tall, erect figure of the Earl's mother, the Countess of Douglas. She stood with her head erect, looking down upon the MacKims and upon the dropped heads and heaving shoulders of their horses. Above and around the torches flared, and their reek blew thwartwise across the strange scene.
"I am here," she said, speaking clearly and naturally; "what would ye with the Lady of Douglas?"
Thrice Laurence essayed to speak, but his ready tongue availed him not now. He caught at his horse's bridle to steady him and turned weakly to his father.
"Do you speak to my lady--I cannot!" he gasped.
A terrible figure was Malise MacKim, the strong man of Galloway, as he came forward. Stained with the black peat of the morasses, his armour cast off piecemeal that he might run the easier, his under-apparel torn almost from his great body, his hair matted with the blood which still oozed from an unwashed wound above his brow.
"My lady," he said hoarsely, his words whistling in his throat, "I have strange things to tell. Can you bear to hear them?"
"If you have found my daughter dead or dying, speak and fear not!"
"I have things more terrible than the death of many daughters to tell you!"
"Speak and fear not--an it touch the lives of my sons, speak freely. The mother of the Douglases has learned the Douglas lesson."
"Then," said Malise, sinking his head upon his breast, "God help you, lady, your two sons are dead!"
"Is David dead also?" said the Lady of Douglas.
"He is dead," replied Malise.
The lady tottered a little as she stood on the topmost step of the ascent to Thrieve. One or two of the torch-bearers ran to support her. But she commanded herself and waved them aside.
"God--He is the God," she said, looking upwards into the black night. "In one day He has made me a woman solitary and without children. Sons and daughter He has taken from me. But He shall not break my heart. No, not even He. Stand up, Malise MacKim, and tell me how these things came to pass."
And there in the blown reek of torches and the hush of the courtyard of Thrieve Malise told all the tale of the Black Dinner and the fatal morning, of the short shrift and the matchless death, while around him strong men sobbed and lifted up right hands to swear the eternal vengeance.
But alone and erect as a banner staff stood the mother of the dead. Her eyes were dry, her lips compressed, her nostrils a little distended like those of a war-horse that sniffs the battle from afar. Outside the castle wall the news spread swiftly, and somewhere in the darkness a voice set up the Celtic keen.
"Bid that woman hold her peace. I will hear the news and then we will cry the slogan. Say on, Malise!"
Then the smith told how his horse had broken down time and again, how he had pressed on, running and resting, stripped almost naked that he might keep up with his son, because that no ordinary charger could long carry his great weight.
Then when he had finished the Lady of Thrieve turned to Sholto--"And you, captain of the guard, what have you done, and wherefore left you your master in his hour of need?"
Then succinctly and to the point Sholto spoke, his father and Laurence assenting and confirming as he told of the Earl's commission and of how he had accomplished those things that were laid upon him.
"It is well," said the lady, calmly, "and now I also will tell you something that you do not know. My little daughter, whom ye call the Fair Maid of Galloway, with her companion, Mistress Maud Lindesay, went out more than twelve hours agone to the holt by the ford to gather hazelnuts, and no eye of man or woman hath seen them since."
And, even as she spoke, there passed a quick strange pang through the heart of Sholto. He remembered the warning of the Lady Sybilla. Had he once more come too late?


CHAPTER XXXIX
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