muttered rapidly in the young man’s ear.) “Do not you agree with me?”
“I agree,” concurred the youth promptly; “so it was ever decided by our professors and teachers in the seminary. Indeed, such was the Holy Father’s own opinion. Your Eminence is perfectly right in his interpretation. A marvel!”
And while the bishop continued to mumble the Latin over and over, turning such words as struck him here and there into common speech, the secretary winked at me confidentially over his shoulder, smiling after the fashion of a choir-boy or an ill-behaved acolyte at mass.
But when his master stood erect, shutting his finger upon the place in the book, Master A’Taggart grew all at once of a solemn countenance, as if laughter were very far indeed from his thoughts. The good bishop, having thus consulted the authorities to his satisfaction, stood a full minute pursing his lips and thinking deeply. Then he delivered his verdict.
“Dear lady, no difficulty whatsoever exists! Your first marriage was null—being, by the later Bull of the Holy Father, held as lacking a necessary and binding part of the ceremony. As to your second, that also may be considered as void—by canon law, that is, having been contracted with the brother of your—no, that will not do, for, by hypothesis, you had no former husband. Let me see, let me see—canon law is a wonderful thing. We will try again. There must be a rule for that. Was James, Earl of Douglas, not your cousin-german? Ah, there is something in that!—something very grave in that! Marriage between cousins is against the clear letter of canon law. But the Bull of the Holy See, you say? Ah, I had thought of that. Nothing is more easy. His Holiness was misinformed as to the circumstances—that is all. Yes, yes—it is clear as day. Had the information been complete, the permission would never have been issued—ergo, you have never been married at all. Hence, being a spinster, it follows that you are at liberty to marry to-morrow if you will. And happy will the man be, my child, who takes you to his heart!”
Then he turned to the secretary, who stood demure and slim at his elbow.
“You agree with me, I think, Gilbert, do you not?”
“Your decision is a marvel of acuteness, my uncle,” said the youth. “Truly among all the doctors of Rome I never heard the like.”
The bishop took a pen and wrote rapidly, talking to himself all the while.
“Ah,” he said, in voice of pulpit prelection, “to any but myself the case would have offered difficulties insuperable. You will see the king, my child. Tell him—tell him with what ease I made all clear as day!”
“I am going at once to the camp!” I answered.
“Ah,” he said, “that is not so good! My child, be not taigled with the men-of-war. A camp is no place for a bairn like you—and, ah—betrothed for the first time to a husband!”
“But the queen is there,” I said; “she goes to the siege of Roxburgh likewise!”
“Ah,” he said drily, “then tell the king my decision by himself. Canon law is not a thing to be lightly spoken of before women. He is to remember that there is nothing so strictly forbidden by the laws of Holy Church as divorce. Yet” (here he smiled), “why seek divorce when it is so much easier to prove by canon law that any previous and undesirable marriages never existed at all! Tell the king that—pray tell the king that! Do not forget!”
And indeed, even as the bishop had expounded, so it was done—all duly and in order. I was a woman who had never been wedded. James Douglas had committed no fault. In killing William Douglas, James Stewart had but destroyed a rebel and a traitor—not treacherously slain a friend new-risen from his table. All by canon law—laid down in order and proved to the hilt from the best authorities by the excellent Bishop of Dunkeld! Everyone satisfied, and everything for the best!
No—not all. There was an old man with a slumberous fire in the eyes of him—one Malise M‘Kim by name, whom most in that gay camp had forgotten—who himself remembered no more his dead daughter (God granting it so mercifully!), but who had not forgotten the murdered master he had once served, nor yet the two young lads that had gone forth from Thrieve to their last Black Dinner in the castle of Edinburgh.
All was smooth and well-ordered in the affairs of Scotland and of the king—but, there was this one blear-eyed old armourer-smith to be reckoned with.
CHAPTER XLIX.
MALISE DOES HIS WORK
Right royally arrayed was the king’s camp before Roxburgh, the last English strength left untaken within his realm. To me it was a wondrous sight. For hitherto I had seen only the siege of a great fortress from the point of view of the besieged, and, indeed, immured as we had been in Archibald the Grim, not a great deal of that.
But now I was in the very midst of the movement. On the day after my arrival the queen sent for me, and offered me the shelter of her pavilion. I think that someone—perhaps the king himself—had warned her that a Douglas of the Black, even in adversity, might not be willing to be the maid-of-honour to the wife of a Stewart.
But, thanks to a lifetime of feeding a lonely heart upon the pride of race, I had nothing of that kind left. If they would but give me Laurence, and leave us two alone, with meat and drink sufficient and clothing decent to put on, I would thankfully have scrubbed floors for the Stewart, or stabled their beasts like any careful groom.
Now, while I remained in the camp I was permitted to go freely here and there. I saw the king constantly—a bustling, ingenious, angry man, subject to extraordinary bursts of temper. It was told through the camp how he had gone to the forge of the M‘Kims, who were busy with a certain great gun which neared completion. Here something had not pleased him. The fitting wedges were not yet in position about the great rings of iron which held the gun together.
So in his access of fury he had lifted his hand to strike Malise. But, to the surprise of all, the old smith took with extraordinary calmness—almost, indeed, with humility—the buffet which the king dealt him on the cheek. So much so that all marvelled at it and admired—the king, in his calmer moments, not less than any.
All that the old smith answered was only this: “There is no need of any words. That which I have never received from six earls of Douglas, shall I not take with gratefulness from James Stewart, King of Scots? Am I not, for the time being and for the matter in hand, his very humble servant?”
And when the king again came near with soft words, having gotten over his anger, as was his wont, Malise replied to him: “Your Majesty did but that which your Majesty had the right to do. The wrong was in this—that there was a slackness in the work. But I promise you, the wedges shall be in their places on the day appointed for the bombard to fire, which is August the third!”
And so saying, he bowed to the ground in the ancient fashion. But his son Laurence, who was in the suite of the king, told me afterwards that there was a certain dull red glow in his father’s eye which misliked him—deep, slumberous, volcanic, like the red pale-fires that look down of nights upon the fishers in the Bay of Naples when the lavas are out among the vineyards of Vesuvius.
As for Laurence himself, his father took not the least notice of him. Once he had ventured to address his father, but Malise gazed blankly at him for a moment.
“Steward of a Stewart,” he muttered, “keep not too near thy master, the murderer, an thou wouldst escape his doom! Also keep far from me! I have neither art nor part in thee! I do the king’s work, it is true, but for a time and for a price. Go thou and serve at thine own anvil, and the king recompense thee according to thy desert!”
But when I came across the old man at the black door of the cavernous smithy, where he was ending his work, he saluted graciously as of old. I was his lady—as he said, his true master’s wife. I inquired of him if he had nothing to ask of me concerning Sholto and Maud and the folk at the Larg of Kenmore, where he had been so happy.
But at this he passed his hand across his brow with the same weary gesture of having forgotten something. Then gradually a part of his memory returned to him.
“Ah, Sholto—yes, I mind now,” he murmured. “A good lad, Sholto—good to me, as was also his wife, the daft Hielant lass. But (I deny it not) she has grown wise with time. Naething tames thae licht-heeled hizzies like a raft o’ bairns. I mind now—I mind. I was wi’ them at the Larg o’ Kenmore. There Sholto is underlyin’ the king’s displeasure—even as I mysel’ did yesterday. He, the Stewart, strack me that hae served sax o’ his betters, and been to them even as an honoured councillor and a friend. That was what my maister, the Earl William, your honoured husband, yince caa’d auld Malise. I thocht on it yesterday wi’ the print o’ the Stewart’s hand on my cheek. But I said nocht! Na, it didna become auld Malise to be speakin’!”
“It was doubtless but the king’s hot temper,” I said, not wishing the old man to fall into any trouble on my account, or that he should bring himself within the king’s vengeance; “think no more of the matter. Let me see you work! You are, as of old, the master craftsman! None denies that throughout all the camp!”
“Ay, do they indeed say that?” he cried, with a leap of something like pleasure to his face. “Hath the old hand not yet wholly lost its cunning?”
I stood admiring the great iron monster which on the following day, being the third of August, was to vomit forth its thunderbolts upon the fortress of Roxburgh.
“Ay,” said he, “ye are right, my Leddy of Douglas, it is indeed a great work! But” (here he put his hand gently on my sleeve) “I will show you a greater yet.”
And forthwith he took me to the farther end of the forge, where on a shelf stood a row of dark pails of a square shape, full of a dark liquid that looked like oil.
“I will show you a greater—a greater,” he repeated. “The Royal Stewart—bah! I turn the back o’ my hand on her. But here”— (He put his fingers into the dense liquid and drew forth something that shone ebon-black in the red flicker of the forges.) “None hath seen these but you, my lady. None hath the right to see them save the widow of the man they murdered untimely. This,” he continued, with a caressing motion of his fingers over the polished surface of the wood, “is the life of a man done up in little. I call this ‘James Stewart, Second of the name, King of Scots.’ And this is e’en a kinsman o’ your ain—‘George Douglas, Earl of Angus,’ the name o’ him; and this” (taking a third from a further vessel of the same black oil) “is your cousin of Morton. Then there is eke yin caa’d after mysel’—Auld Malise (to whom his Maker be gracious!)—Auld Malise the smith, whom the wise folk hold to be perturbed in his mind. But believe them not, my leddy dear! Bide still the morn’s mornin’, and be late in putting on your claes, my bonny. There shall mair come forth to see the show than shall gang hame frae auld Malise’s last morrice-dance upon their feet!”
* * * * * * *
But since he had spoken thus at the Larg of Kenmore, and nothing had come of it, I confess that I paid no great heed to his words. Besides, I was covenanted to meet Laurence that night, to go with him to the king for his last signatures and permissions. So after we had come forth from the pavilion royal, meeting with Herries and several of the M‘Kim brothers who had slipped away from the forges after the gloaming, we made together the round of the camp.
And Corra made plaint to his brothers of the dumb, desperate silences of his father—also, what appalled them more, telling of his curious gentlenesses. It was more than a month since he had corrected or even threatened any of them with a gaud of iron!
“For all that, I like it not,” said Corra. “Such womanliness is not like our father. He will bide at the forge half the night working at his own ploys, snecking the door upon us, and daring us to come within a hundred paces of the smiddy. No, it is maist dooms unlike my faither!”
And so said they all of them.
But, I confess it with shame, I paid small heed to their words. For I, who had been shut up in great chambers all my days, yet with no goo for them—who had seen life (in all that concerned master and man, lord and lackey) only from the upper side, was pleased beyond words to hear the crackling of the lighted camp fires, to watch the press of men about the ration tents, to touch the covered guns waiting the morrow’s morn to speak their word, sheeted down to keep out the dews of the hot season. Yea, even, wrapped in Laurence’s cloak, it tasted good to me to listen to the rough talk of certain Galloway lads about the fires. Some of them were lying toasting strips of ox-flesh on pointed sticks and tearing off morsels as they were ready, burning their fingers amid their own imprecations and the mocking laughter of their comrades.
All was gay, and made for gaiety in others. And I, who had lived these many years retired and set apart, rejoiced beyond words to be thus abroad after dark in the midst of such a moving jolly world of men and things, the great English fortress looming dark behind all, as if it leaned against the highest stars.
* * * * * * *
The next morning showed fair and clear. The camp was early astir, for this day the great bombard, Malise’s masterpiece, was to speak for the first time. The “Royal Stewart” was set out on a knoll facing the castle, which would offer a fair enough mark in the sunshine of the morning. From the walls, dark with English archers and culverin-men, a fire was kept up upon all who showed themselves near enough to be reached, and also, for the honour of the thing, as it were, powder was wasted upon many others who were far out of reach.
For me, the night adventure in the camp, the sense of wandering at liberty where I had never been permitted to go before, under the protection of the man I loved, the night air, the freshness—all conspired to make me sleep far beyond my ordinary hour.
When I sat up in my bed, there grew conscious an unwonted sense of emptiness and loneliness all about. No noise of merry voices in the queen’s pavilion, at one end of which I lay—the everyday clash of arms, the bray of trumpets, the brawling “kyangle” of voices, equally sunk into an uncanny silence.
Actually, there was a lark singing up somewhere in the lift.
I leaped from bed, and, swiftly as I could, did my gown and shoes upon me. The moment I looked out of the tent door all was explained. There, on a little green hill away to the left of the camp, was the great bombard, the Royal Stewart, plain to be seen. The king’s artificers in wood had, during the night, run a little fence about it to keep at a distance the crowd of sightseers. But within I could see a few figures moving about—Malise himself, the king, one or two of his lords, the royal favourites, and—Laurence.
All at once there leaped up in my mind the warnings of Malise to me to bide in my bed that morning. A kind of wild terror laid hold on me. Laurence was there—it might be in sore and instant danger. What were the strange and ebon-black wedges in their baths of oil? They carried each of them, Malise had said, the life of a man. He had even named them—the king, Angus, Morton, himself!
Why had he told me this?
Was it only part of that sombre, threatening madness which for months had looked out of his eyes, or some sudden desperate vengeance he was planning to take upon the murderer of the master he had loved? Strange it was that, as soon as James Douglas escaped from his revenge, all memory of Thrieve and his daughter Magdalen went from his mind clean as a wiped slate. And in its place, imminent, instant, overwhelming, as if it had happened yesterday, stood forth the figure of his true master demanding vengeance—William Douglas, murdered at Stirling by the king’s own hand. Others may explain this. I only set down the facts. It may be that through her great sacrifice, the spirit of Magdalen had found rest, but that that of William Douglas, sent unsained to its doom, troubled Malise with purposes of vengeance.
Be this as it may, seeing Laurence there among the others, fear took me, and I ran for the hill-top with all the speed of which I was capable—no great thing perhaps, but sufficient to bring me there in time before the last preparations were finished.
“I have a message for the king!” I cried; “let me pass.”
The soldier at the barrier, knowing me of the party of the queen, saluted and caused open a way for me. I ran straight up the gentle slope towards the great bombard, which, huge as the trunk of the greatest oak in Cadzow forest, hung threateningly above my head on its cradle of iron.
The mouth was pointed in my direction, but, of course, elevated for the range of the castle. I ran straight upon the group. Malise was busy about the great iron monster, and, for all his weight and his years, running hither and thither like a cat. He had a wooden mallet in his hand, and I could see him firming and loosening the wooden wedges of the great rings, striking here on the broad butt, and anon with a broad-faced chisel easing the pressure again till he had gotten the whole to his mind. The king and several lords watched him with interest, the king even mounting on the cradle in order to see better.
Laurence, who had pointed the gun for the bomb to strike the middle of the castle wall, stood a little behind, and at first, as I came from the front, was hidden from my sight by the black mass of the gun and her carriage.
I stopped short, not knowing what to do or say. All seemed as it should be, every man absorbed in the great occasion. Yet, perhaps for that reason, it was left to me, a woman, to see something which had escaped all the others.
The wedges were those which I had seen in the oil-tanks—black, dripping, polished like glass.
“Stop!” I cried; “I beseech you all to go away. There is danger here—perhaps death!”
The king looked over and saw me. He had been standing on the carriage pillar.
“What would you?” he cried angrily. “This is no place for girls. Get you to the queen!”
Then I saw the slumberous red eyes of Malise as he erected himself from his wedge-tapping. They were not malignant, more kindly and pleasant, indeed, than usual.
“Let her bide—let her bide,” he cried. “She hath lost her good liege lord! What wants she more with this world?”
“But there is danger,” said the king, motioning with his hand. “Go—I command you. We are about to fire!”
At the word Malise moved to the touch-vent, standing a moment high above all with the lighted match in his hand. His face, which had been lurid and dark even in the light of the high blue day, suddenly and inexplicably cleared.
“King of Scots,” he cried, “there is one thing I would say before we try the bombard. Its name shall not be the ‘Royal Stewart,’ but the ‘Royal Douglas,’ in memory of him whom ye slew because he was the greater. His voice shall speak to-day!”
I could see the lords draw together and touch each other knowingly with hand and elbow.
“The mad smith is worse than usual to-day!” That is what they meant to say, with a sneer and a laugh.
But the king, with an imperturbable face, held his ground. Certainly no coward was this James Stewart, called of the Fiery Face.
“Christen it what you will, only go on—do your work, Malise M‘Kim,” he cried. “Come hither, Angus! Hither to me, Morton! This is a sight ye shall not see twice!”
“Nay, not twice!” cried the old smith mockingly. “Hither, Angus! Hither, Morton—traitor Douglases both! Ye too have slain your master—learn how to die!”
By this time I had my hand upon the collar of
Laurence’s blouse, of the strong rough stuff which he wore at his enginery. Suddenly leaning all my weight upon it, I brought us both to the ground at the very moment when I saw Malise set his blazing match to the touch-hole!
The roar of the bombard was followed by a cry more great and terrible still. For an instant it seemed as if all who a moment before had stood about were lying in their blood. The great cannon had burst at the first trial. The wedges had slipped like glass. Morton was fallen on his face with his arms outspread. Angus, pale as parchment, lay wounded to the death. The king, when they went to lift him up, was dead. And as to Malise the smith, after that great explosion, in plain words—he was not!
* * * * * * *
Thus was avenged the Great Treachery of the antechamber of Stirling. Only Laurence and I came through scathless, of all that watched the first firing of the mighty bombard the Royal Stewart, the masterpiece of the armourer-smith, Malise M‘Kim. Yet none knew that the old man had given his life to avenge his master. None, that is, save I, Margaret Douglas, who had seen the wedges asteep in the black oil, and the man whom God had given me. It was an accident, said all men. And Laurence and I let them think so. For that was best.
Even as Malise had foretold, so it came to pass. The very wedge which he had called by the name of “James, King of Scots” slew the king, striking him swift and sudden, even as he had slain William, Earl of Douglas, his friend and guest.
Thus, and not otherwise, did Malise the smith finish his work.
CHAPTER L.
THE WORN PATH
I am an old woman, and wearied with much writing; yet, like any young girl, I have my dreams of love, and may be permitted to tell them. Late have I sat, and long; early have I risen, and oft, through the stars of midnight, I have seen the daylight break upon the world as I sat at my task. And now that it is done, though I had thought that I would rejoice, my heart is no little sore; for the days are long without Laurence, and the bairns also gone forth from me, though only to homes of their own, houses, and husbands, and children.
Yet why should I complain? Few are the women who have known a longer or a happier life with the man of their heart than I had with Laurence. Two children were given to us, and now remain to me—that is, as often as their husbands will let them.
But, better than the great places they inhabit, I love the little house of Balveny, where Laurence and I tried the day of mean things, and found it right pleasant. Yet as well, or better almost, do I love the Larg of Kenmore, where still dwell, in their green age and unseared leaf, Sholto and Maud together. I grudge them not their untouched happiness. Maud is dearer to me than ever. She it was helped me to close my husband’s eyes, each of us holding a hand, and Sholto standing at the feet.
Then she came and kissed me.
“We are old women, you and I, Margaret,” she whispered; “but it is good to have known love once, and life once, ay, and also death once, when it breaks not love!”
And, indeed, she was right, and Kennedy, the great bishop, was right. All these forty years of my wedded life with him, scarce once did I think that thrice I had stood at the altar. I had, as said the canon law, been wedded but once. I was the wife of one husband, even Laurence—who alone taught me the sweetness of poverty when it is shared betwixt two, and the steadfast gladness of that pavilion of love—which to us was a quiet habitation, a tabernacle not to be taken down, nor the stakes removed, nor so much as one of the cords thereof broken. For the rest there remains little to tell, save that which shall sufficiently serve to round my tale.
Duly James Douglas gat his two hundred rose nobles from the king’s treasury. Whether “Poor Jack Neville’s Anne” profited by them or no I will not swear. Like the wild ass he was, James abode in London, snuffing up the air of hostels and taverns, of palaces and call-houses, with an equal relish. Upon occasion he would lead an army into Wales or head a foray upon Scotland with the cheerful readiness of the mercenary.
Happy and well he lived (I doubt it not), his sword on his thigh, his damoiselle by his side—Jack Neville’s Anne or another—little it mattered to hard-living, hard-fighting Lord James, last Earl of Douglas and first Scots Knight of the Garter.
But at the utmost end of his life, by one of those twists of fortune which advertise a Providence with a certain sense of the humour of things, it was his lot to die a monk of Lindores—he who had taken life with both hands and said, “This and this shall be mine, because it is good!” And the word he spake upon his ill fortune is worth setting down. For, being captured on a raid into Scotland fighting with the English against his own country-folk, they asked him whether he was content to save his life by becoming a brother of the monastery of Lindores.
“Ow ay,” quoth James Douglas; “he that can no better do, maun e’en be a monk!”
* * * * * * *
And now, not unhappy—nay, often strangely filled with joy—when Maud and Sholto are not with me, I, Margaret Douglas, called Stewart, sit by the window and read what of Laurence’s books my dim old eyes can make out. They were bonny to look into once (so they told me). And mostly I think on the things that were. On William Douglas whom I never loved—on James that never loved me—on the last of the Douglases of the Black laid aneath the parsoun’s lilac bushes in the quiet kirk acre of Balmaghie. Upon the slow beeking up of the vengeance fires in the heart of Malise, I also make my meditation. But most I think upon the marvellous long arm of God, the Maker of all, and how and why He permitted the ill-doer, even James of Douglas, to flourish till his green bay tree grew sear and old—nay, to die at the last a holy man.
And then I wonder, high and sore I wonder—as to repentance and punishment—kirk law and canon law—the law of the sowing and the law of reaping that which a man hath sown—of Him too of whom the Douglases, Black and Red alike, thought not mickle—yet who came (so I read) to teach forgiveness to men. As to that, I was as my forebears till Laurence taught me. For my husband was great and wise, and learned the spirit of Joseph’s Son—practised it too, which is more.
So now in these last days I can think of Lindores and of James Douglas mumbling litanies in his stall—yea, and even hope (I have not yet made it a prayer) that after all he died forgiven. That he would never ask it, I know. He never dreamed he had done aught to need forgiveness.
But most of all, and that which brings the strange suffusing joy to eyes that have looked on the world for over seventy years, is to sit with the window open upon the fell, watching the little path which his feet wore—the way Laurence used to come home to me for forty years.
Then, while I sit long and con over the Book, which he taught me to read in our long years together, till I am a-weary, lo! the gloaming comes up the glen, and there goes a thrilling through me that is not of this earth. The age evanishes from my limbs. The sight returns to my dim eyes. The clear heaven opens above, and I come out upon a place where there is no night.
But even then the path his feet trod remains on the hillside yonder. I can see it sitting here—yes, sitting and waiting—an old woman, but with a young heart in my breast.
Also I know, and rejoice that the time is not far off when I shall see him come down that path, my Laurence, whom I loved.
Then, from the old worn chair where I have watched and waited for him so long, I shall rise to my feet and say, “Beloved!” And behold, after that, the chair, the house, and the world shall know me no more for ever!
Because he and I shall have gone up that worn path together, hand in hand, silent—but not afraid.
THE END
ENDNOTES
[1] There is a pithy note here inserted by Le Sieur Philip Herault, which, however, need not impede the Fair Maid’s narrative.
[2] Let none go to look for them! The present Château of Cheverney is altogether modern—Versailles in a nutshell—while every trace of the ancient strength has passed away.
[3] I am told that it is indeed different, as seafaring men and suchlike know. Well, let them. For me I neither know nor care. Venus is the sole star that ever I knew, and her I loved chiefly because she had an excellent habit of going early to bed.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Sydney Seymour Lucas provided the illustrations.
This book was published as May Margaret, called “the fair maid of Galloway” the same year in the US.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. contrarywise/contrariwise, homecoming/home-coming, water-meadows/water meadows, etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Convert footnotes to endnotes.
Punctuation: fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings, and add a few missing periods.
[End of text]