But with Laurence all was otherwise. He had his moments of something like pettishness. He would keep aloof from Birnam for weeks, judging that I had not used him well enough, or with some light word of mine rankling in his heart, like a thorn in the flesh.
Thus one day I asked how he could bring himself to aid in the breaking down of Thrieve by great bolts of cannon, knowing what he knew—that not only was I there, but another woman, the wife of his brother, and with her five little children.
Right sharply he answered me—
“Whether or not I had assisted, the bolt would have been launched just the same. The castle would have fallen. All that I did was to make the blow sharp and sure. Moreover, my brother Sholto was captain of Thrieve, had been so for many years, and I judged that he could find means to protect his own!”
Then I asked him another question.
“And in all this, did you never once think of me? Or had you already become a Stewart?”
He answered me with a sudden flash of anger, such as Sholto would never have showed to any woman—
“I thought a great deal of the man, your husband!”
“Ah,” I asked again, “and pray, Laurence Stewart, what did you think concerning him?”
“This,” he cried the words fiercely, “each time I pointed the cannon, I prayed that the ball might strike him dead!”
“Ah,” I answered provokingly, “I knew you were a man powerful in prayer! Give me your blessing, holy man!”
At last there came for me a certain glad day when the ploughs on all the open straths were blithely upturning the fallow, and the whole world was filled with the swirling of white gulls and the smell of fresh red earth—a heartsome day it was and a heartsome thing its morning hours brought me.
For several weeks Laurence had appeared and disappeared at intervals, saying no more than that he was upon the king’s business. And I, thinking in my heart that he might have told me more, and doubtless somedeal nettled at his silence, had held my tongue and refrained from questioning him—which (I confess) was far from being my habit.
But this one day, by the grace of the Lady Agneta, he entered into my chamber, and with a serious face asked me to come to the door, for there were certain poor persons there, begging for my assistance. But I believed him not. For at this time it was his delight to take me in and cheat me into believing absurdities, rejoicing thereat afterwards, like a very schoolboy. The which was foolish of him, yet nevertheless a cheerful, likeable trait after all, speaking of a light heart and easeful within.
So for a while I would not go forth, fearing ridicule. Because in his eye, for all his grave mien, there abode a certain lurking twinkle which aforetime had betrayed his evil intents to me more than once. But at long and last I did go to the little wicket-gate of the convent. Laurence threw it wide open.
And there, before my eyes stood Maud, my Maud, with all the five children about her, and behind, halting a little upon a staff and greatly paler than was his wont, I saw Sholto! I kissed them all—yes, even Sholto, who blushed and stammered that he was not worthy—that I was his liege lady and—other things which I forget.
Whereat, so glad was I, that I kissed him again, having ever a greedy tooth for kissing and nothing to wear it on of late.
Which observing, Laurence looked so fain that I drew myself apart with Maud, and bade her tell me all there was to tell of her journey, and where she meant to abide. Then it came out that Master Laurence had interceded with the king for the pardon of Sholto. And he, anticipating in the future a need of such knights, as he had said before, was easy to be entreated. So he had given the little tower called the Larg of Kenmore upon Tayside to Sholto to dwell in, and (said he) “If your Lady Margaret is waxen weary of her nunneries and mummeries, let her also go thither and keep the bairnies’ frocks in order. It will be better work than a Douglas hath set hand to in this realm for some while!”
So, adieus being said, through the pleasant fields and fringing woods we betook us to Kenmore, Maud keeping close to Sholto that she might watch his face, causing him to get off and rest as often as she discovered a trace of fatigue. In time, however, we reached our goal, and lo! this thoughtful Laurence of ours had the house all fitted and arranged. (It was, as to its building, a small farm-fortalice, not a great castle like Thrieve.) And whenever I had been ill-natured with him, he had hugged himself, thinking, “Ah, wait, Mistress Margaret, till that which is coming, comes! Then will you not be sorry for these hard speeches and averted eyes!”
And I was sorry, but not so sorry as he thought or expected. Because I was glad that Laurence should have the heart within him to care so much of making others happy. The men I had dealt with hitherto had not the like much in mind—no, not even William Douglas.
The Larg of Kenmore was a place in which one might well be content to grow old. Also, none could wish for better and more loving company than that of Maud and Sholto. It had but one drawback: it was farther from the king’s palace at Stirling, and so, of consequence, we saw less of Laurence, or, at least, he came seldomer. Yet, abiding in the house, where his bed was made down every night and his platter laid for every meal, it was happiness of a better kind than when I saw him but for an hour or two at the nunnery overlooking the towers of Dunkeld.
Yet, because in the course of this history I have had much to tell of these still places, where the crying of a bird or a change in the wind is a subject for an hour’s converse, and the new moon seen over the right shoulder an occasion of festival, I shall say little about the Larg of Kenmore.
It was not by my choice that I spent so great part of my time in such quietnesses. I did not make my life—no, nor any part of it, saving perhaps when, in ignorance and perversity, having to choose between two brothers, like a woman I preferred the less worthy. But the rest of my life has been what men’s power and men’s ambitions have made it. God is over all. I doubt it not. He is great; but He seems to me so great that He interferes but little in the things of yesterday and to-day and to-morrow.
Yet, mayhap, I do not see fairly or judge aright. Had I been a common woman, without a groat, living in a better time, belike I had not had this to say, as I do say it from my heart; but with Galloway and the Borderlands, Ettrick Forest and Carrick, for my dower, I was, as I have said, little better than a hand-ball propelled by the players, William and James of Douglas, James Stewart the king, and Crichton the Chancellor.
And as for God, doubtless He watched from behind the window-lattice of His heaven; but, alas! He did nothing.
So at least I thought at the time. True, afterwards I came to see better of it when, despoiled, mine estate and quality made worth no man’s while, I tasted at last the grave and dulcet securities of poverty.
But was I not speaking of the Larg of Kenmore, round which the heather ringed itself, and at whose very doorstep the whaups and wild moor-fowl cried suddenly in, making the bairns laugh at their meals.
Sholto grew slowly better, his wounds healing, like those of a child, by the first intention. But one day there came, sudden as the inbursting of one of the granite bolts of Mons Meg—Malise himself!
I was in the little hardly won garden sitting by myself in a sheltered summer-house. I could see the house-door. It stood open, and in the dusk of the chamber on a couch lay Sholto, with Maud Lindsay cherishing him—sometimes with gentle touches that were not quite caresses, but more often with lifted finger and the same chidings and forbidding with which in time of sickness she entreated her children.
The bairns themselves were without the gate with Donald, the herd of the Larg, no doubt tumbling and wrestling among the heather like young dogs at play.
I heard the click of the yett, with which at night Donald barred in Sholto’s scanty stock of bestial—for there were still wolves a-many in the fastnesses of Kenmore. I sat frozen dumb with apprehension. There stood Malise M‘Kim, looking dourly at the little white house sleeping in the sun. Surely never grimmer wolf glared at sheepfold, than the brain-clouded smith of Carlinwark upon the Larg of Kenmore.
Before I could move or cry out, he advanced with half a dozen great strides across the yard and paused at the door, his bulk blocking the entrance. I think he could see his son lying on his couch, and at the sight his hand instinctively sought his dagger.
Had not this, his first-born son, separated himself from all his family? Had not he and he alone balked the M‘Kims of their revenge? For what purpose had Malise M‘Kim come hither, save that he might take a second and surer vengeance upon the son unfaithful who had stood in the breach till James Douglas escaped?
But the hand of Malise had not so much as reached the inlaid handle of his dagger before Maud stood in the doorway. As she came she snatched up the great household carving-knife from the top of the salt-box, where of habitude it lay. And now she met the armourer-smith in the doorway.
I could see her clearly—Maud—but what a Maud! A lioness defending her whelps, a she-wolf at the den’s mouth on the side of Briariach—these looked somewhat less fierce than she. She spoke no word. She only stood there, her arm a little drawn together as if to strike, her body half crouched for a spring, her fingers twitching on the haft. And this was Maud—my Maud, the mother who heard the babes their prayers in the gloaming, and every day taught them from Holy Writ lessons of love and sacrifice.
“Go back!” she cried, her voice hoarse as that of a man in passion. “Go back, Malise M‘Kim. You shall not lay hand on him till after you have slain me. And I will slay you first. God’s help, I will!”
The smith looked at her a little bewildered. Then he drew his hand across his broad, deeply scarred brow with the gesture which had become habitual to him. His eye, no longer lurid or dangerous, seemed rather trying to arrange facts he did not comprehend, to make something clear to himself.
“You are Sholto’s wife,” he said, looking at her; “yes—yes—I mind. He married young, over young. I passed the children on the moor.” (Here Maud drew a long breath of apprehension—divided between desire to run out to see that all was well with Marcelle, with the twins, with Ulric and little David, and the yet more pressing need of abiding where she was to defend her husband.)
But the attitude of the smith was reassuring, even humble.
He looked past Maud to where his son lay on his couch. He smiled a little wistfully at him.
“Speak for me, lad,” he said. “This Highland wife of thine takes me for a caird, a catheran, one that would rieve her of thee or carry away the bairns. Ye have a snod bit housie here, Sholto! Bid the mistress let your auld faither come his ways ben and rest him a while. For he has had a lang, lang road to travel, and never a friend to cheer him by the way!”
He looked so pitiful that Maud, impulsive at times, though mostly since her marriage demure as a puss, dropped the knife and caught the old man about the neck.
“Indeed and indeed,” she cried, “I am heart-sorry for my ill-bred temper. Yet am I of Highland blood, and I do not forget either good or evil! Come ben, our father, and speak peaceable things to us—for I feared—I feared”—
She did not continue the subject, and perhaps it was as well. For, as it soon appeared, one dangerous locker of the armourer’s mind was closed—for the time, at least.
Malise clapped her gently on the shoulder.
“Feared?”—he murmured caressingly, as to a child; “foolish lass, what was there to fear? Is not Sholto the eldest of my bairns? Are not you another? Wherefore should I hurt mine own? I have been at the Court and I am tired—tired of being grand—of having lackeys to wait on me, old Malise M‘Kim! And they told me lies—lies—lies! Indeed—they do naught else all day long that I can see—these courtiers that go attired in scarlet and blue, and wear devices upon their mantles. But I see through their lies!”
By this time he stood quite close to his son’s couch.
“Ah,” he said, touching the white cloth about his head, “what is this? Hast fallen, lad? Who hath dealt thee that dooms lounder on the crown? He that did it had some skill in cudgel play, I warrant him. For even when thou wast a lad, there were not many that could give thee better—let alone the breaking of thy head!”
The two stared at him in astonishment. Sholto was about to speak, but over his father’s shoulder Maud made a sign to her husband to be silent.
Was it possible he had wholly forgotten Thrieve and all that had been done there? It seemed like it.
The old man bent over his son. He had the aspect of one about to communicate a weighty secret.
“Sholto,” he said in a low voice, “I came because they told me that you dwelt in a little house among the heather, and underlay the king’s displeasure! Laurence told me so—but (this a whisper) Sholto, lad, they—are—teaching—him—to—lie—at—the—Court, like the others!”
Sholto shook his head, but took his father gently by the hand.
“Care naught for ‘says he’ or ‘says she,’ ” he answered soothingly, “Laurence is your own son. A M‘Kim does not lie!”
The smith responded nothing for a while, passing his other hand to and fro across his brow a little wearily.
“Ah,” he said at length, “my own son, is he? A M‘Kim is he? Why then does he call himself a Stewart? And why then does he compel me to help him to forge cannon for a murderer?”
“For a murderer?” cried Sholto and Maud simultaneously, in the greatness of their astonishment.
The old man tip-toed to the door and looked out. The heather spread twenty leagues. The moor birds cried. Then very carefully he shut it and came back to the side of Sholto’s couch.
“Listen,” he whispered, “they think I forget—that I am an old done man. But I do not forget. How should I forget that once I had a master—like to none the world hath seen! What of him? Who enticed him to his death? One, James Stewart by name! Who sat down to dine with my master? James Stewart! Who rose up with him and led him apart, his arm about his neck, as friend doth with friend when the heart is full and free! Who but James Stewart?”
He struck one hand hard into the palm of the other with a sound like the crack of a musket.
“But the jest’s cream is that in the king’s house they talk of naught but Thrieve and Mons Meg and a great victory gained over the Douglas! I keep a serious face, for I know that victory. The victory was gained by the traitor’s dagger in the little back-room where they put my Lady Margaret to sleep the night she came to Stirling. There they gained their great victory—these Stewarts, and he the chief of all, the murderer king who struck his friend to the heart, his hand yet warm from being about my master’s neck.”
Then with a pleased expression Maud nodded at Sholto. The armourer had forgotten all that had happened after the death of William Douglas. At that moment the sound of the voices of the children, as they raced homeward athwart the heather, came sharply in at the open window. Malise started up.
“What is that?” he demanded. “Hath the king sent for me? Am I to have no peace in this world?”
“They are but the voices of the bairns, father,” said Maud softly, caressing the old gnarled hand which lay on the smith’s knee, the fingers gathering themselves up, and again being thrust out tense and hard. “You shall have peace here with us, our father—so long as it pleases you to bide!”
“Peace—peace!” he repeated, with a hard intonation, as if something displeased him in the word. “Ah, Sholto, lad, you are here under the king’s displeasure, and it is well. But James Stewart shall have no peace! No!”
Then with extraordinary fierceness of energy, almost the snarl of a wild beast, he added these words, “Had Zimri peace that slew his master?”
It was on the third day of the stay of Malise the smith at the house of the Larg of Kenmore that there came a message from the king, at Stirling, commanding with all urgence the armourers presence at Carron straths, where the great new cannons were being made, under Laurence’s care.
This seemed greatly to excite Malise M‘Kim, and with much roughness of speech he bade the messenger begone, lest a worse thing should befall him. But Sholto and Maud, knowing that much depended on the complaisance of the old man, laid it upon him to obey. And I also, following the hint given me by Maud, commanded him to go and do the king’s will.
He took a strange, lingering look at me, as if to make sure that I had spoken in good faith.
“I understand your ladyship,” he said. “Ye shall be richtit. By God’s ain grace ye shall be richtit. Ye shall be avenged for the man ye lost by the bluidy hand o’ the Stewart. Bide ye! bide ye! There shall be news to send! On a day—ay, on a day there shall be news that shall gar the heart o’ ilka Stewart stand still frae Appin to the king’s pailace o’ Stirling!”
So, with no more said, Malise the smith took his mighty piked staff in his hand, and, without so much as a fair-good-day to any in the house, he set his bonnet on his head, and strode away over the moor as he had come, disdaining the help of any four-footed creature; the which was, indeed, as well, for there were no more than a pair of Highland shelties in the stables of the Larg, either of whom had been foundered at the first bog by the weight of the armourer of Carlinwark.
When he was gone, we spoke with more ease of the strange forgetfulness of Malise M‘Kim, and what it boded. For me I saw in it naught but good. He had forgotten Magdalen, James Douglas, and all that had since befallen. He had gotten what many pray for, more than for the forgiving of their sins—that is, Forgetfulness.
But Sholto was not so sure. He foresaw a danger. In time of flood the water will rise behind the dam, and the sluices were shut. The anger was yet hot in his heart. With Maud or with the little children, even with me, it vanished. The old nut-sweet nature came forth and sat in the sun. But with his son, once or twice, a certain dangerous madness, latent and essential, showed itself plainly. Added to this, Sholto perceived a power of concealment altogether unlike the Malise we had known, whose thought was a spoken word, and the word as like as not a blow.
At anyrate we were all greatly relieved when the smith obeyed the king’s mandate and strode away across the heather towards Carron.
Then on the fourth day thereafter came Laurence with news. His father had arrived safely at Carron straths, where the new cannons were in the making. He had looked with his usual contempt at the work which had been done during his absence at the Larg of Kenmore. Without saying a word to any as to his purpose, he had set off again for Stirling. Then, on his return, he declared that in the new task the king had set him, he would have none save his sons to help him, and not even all of these. Laurence (who called himself Stewart) might, he said, go and set up a forge for himself! Likewise Herries, who had in a manner been Laurence’s favourite, might depart with him. There was no room for Stewarts or Gordons in Malise M‘Kim’s forge!
The sudden ill-will with which Malise dismissed Laurence was easily enough understood by us who had seen with pain the old man’s lapses of memory. But it was easy to see that both Laurence and young Herries, who had stood the burden and heat of the day at Thrieve, and especially in the making of Mons Meg, were much discountenanced by the armourer’s treatment of them.
But Laurence, at least, was not long so affected. He had the manifest favour of the king, and for his fidelity and intelligence had been promised the barony of Balveny—on condition that he should choose a wife pleasing the king.
Concerning this Maud in especial loved to tease him, alleging that the king had scores of Highland cousins, great and gaunt as pike staves, all stalled like cows in a byre, and all to be pensioned off with a man apiece and a forfeited forty-merk Douglas holding. And when, for some reason, Laurence grew restive under these words of his good-sister, Sholto, ever kind of heart, would cry from his resting-chair, “Heed her not, Larry! I thought ye had more sense, man! What is it to thee to bear that for an hour, which it hath been my lot to hear ding-donging for years fifteen!”
Then would Maud toss her head and declare that she would go to her own folk, taking the bairns with her. But at this Sholto would only laugh the more and say, “Ay, Maud, will ye so?” As if he knew better—which indeed he did.
And to his brothers Laurence and Herries, Sholto said kindly, “There is little enough for you to get here, lads, on the rough side o’ the Larg o’ Kenmore. These are not the fat lands of the Borel and of Balmaghie. But there are at least twice twenty score o’ black-faced sheep and routh o’ deer on the hills, and as for sport—the wild birds o’ the lochs and the red grouse o’ the heather come clockin’ about the very door!”
So for a time Herries accompanied the Kenmore herds to the hills, helping them to make safe and commodious folds with closures of iron, such as would prevent the wolves and foxes from entering. For it was again the lambing-time, when was need of special care, the flocks being of necessity abroad all through the night watches.
But being thus exiled, Laurence bode for the most part about the house. And it is not strange that, Maud being much taken up with the care of Sholto and with the learning of the bairns, it fell to him once more to be much in my company.
Yet, among other things, I noted a curious shyness in all his intercourse with me, almost something of apology and humility, as if he were conscious of having done me some secret wrong. Though what that could be it was not within my mind’s scope to imagine. At this time also he would call me, “My Lady” and “My Lady Countess,” till I had perforce to laugh at him and tell him that there was no “Lady Countess” under the fell of the Larg—adding that I had now lost my greatness and must be well content to be a sorner on the kindness of my good friends Sholto and Maud. “But,” said I, “if so be that upon occasion you have time to remember an old friend, one of a fallen house—I pray you send us some of the beef and greens from the rich pastures of Balveny to eat with our small ale. For ’tis you, Larry, that are to be the great man now—carrying a king’s name and all the rest of it!” So I continued, vexing him for my pleasure. “And then your learning! Why, Laurence, lad, they will make a fighting archbishop of you! For the vows of holiness, as I read them, though stiff as to the shedding of blood, give a man every liberty to knock out his adversary’s brains!”
“I thank you,” he said softly; “I have left all that behind me for ever!” For some reason he loved not to be reminded of his monkish life.
I can see him yet as he lay outstretched on the heather that day, his eyes downcast, and his whole mien troubled. I knew by instinct that there was something coming—something that he was ashamed to tell me. But I was equally resolved that I would do nothing to aid him, or to make his task easier. It was high on the side of the Larg Fell in a favourite nook of mine. All my life I have loved falls of water—the white foam plunging into the brown deeps of the pools, shaded with the greenest of leaves, whispering and rustling. The love of such-like hath worked into my soul—perhaps because I was born on the wide flats of Dee, which the Douglases chose because they loved not to have aught within sight to overtop their great arrogant selves, an it were not their own castle of Thrieve.
Here, then, in a little linn were a few green birks about a rock on which I could sit quite dry, and yet so near the water that, by holding out my hand, I could feel the spray strike cool upon it, while at my feet there was a smooth of turf for one of the bairns, or, as it might be, Laurence to lie upon. I had chosen it so. A woman who hath been twice wedded, and made as little out of it as I, may surely be permitted to do something for herself ere she begins to grow old.
Laurence might still have been called the Young Man in Black, even as at the taking of Thrieve. And I do think that ever after he conserved, perhaps from his training of ecclesiast, a certain gentle austerity—which to my eyes, at least, appeared very becoming. Slender he was, but strong, a little pale, and with a deep line of thought trenched between his brows. Beside him I felt very ignorant. Yet he would never correct me nor directly counter me in the wildest or most foolish things which I asserted. Only at some future time he would lead the talk to the same subject, and with a certain instinct of nobility which was natural to him, would in a breath lay the whole clear and plain, without in the least appearing to reflect upon my lack of knowledge.
Ah, what a pair of brothers were these two, Sholto and Laurence M‘Kim—if only William and James Douglas had been like them! That is what I was thinking as I sat there, holding out my hand fitfully, and letting the spray of the waterfall drip between my fingers. Between whiles I looked at Laurence. Then suddenly, to hide the sob that rose in my throat, I took a handful of water and cast it laughingly upon him. For of the brothers Sholto was Maud’s from the first, and as to this Laurence—who would claim him? Had I not as mickle right as any?
Then the devil entering into me, I put a question to him, swiftly, without taking time to count the cost, as, indeed, I always did such things.
“Laurence,” said I, “were you ever in love?”
He lifted his head as if to reproach me. Then, thinking better of it, he only shook his head.
“And yet, willy-nilly, you must marry?” I went on to tempt him. “The king has given you Balveny and its barony on such and such conditions. Only I advise you not to marry for love. That is the easiest way to make shipwreck of the king’s favour. Stick to one of Maud’s Highland Stewarts—the king’s kin, with a pedigree as long as her nose, and rank high as her cheek-bones!”
“I shall not marry,” he answered, slowly picking the fronds from a bracken one by one and throwing them into the linn. “I shall not bide longer in Scotland than is necessary! I will e’en go and take service with the King of France. He hath made me advances already, hearing doubtless some bruit of the battering of Thrieve with the great cannon”—
He stopped short, doubtless seeing some pain on my face.
“Leave Scotland,” I cried, “leave me! I had—never—thought—it of—you, Laurence! Though why, I know not. You are free. None can say but you are free to come and go. But—but—then I shall have none to think of me—care for me! I thought you did, Laurence!”
In a moment he had thrown himself again at my feet. He had stood up while I was speaking, as if against his will erected and elated by my words. Now he was kneeling at my knees, his hands clasped as before an altar and all the soul of him in his eyes.
“Margaret,” he said, “do not say that. It is wrong to say that. I love you—God knows—I who have no right to love you! I have loved you ever since I was a lad in the smithy, and saw you over the shoulders of the men-at-arms sitting beside the Queen of Beauty at the great tourney. Yet I who love you thus am as a dog, a mean thing before you. You will spurn me when you know. And justly. I have here with me a letter from your husband in England. I have brought it three times to the Larg. Thrice I have carried it away again. I feared—ah, how I feared—that he summoned you to him in England—and—that you would go!”
He paused, all shaking with the vehemence of his emotion. His hair clung dankly about his brow.
“God’s grace!” he murmured, “I could not do it. I could not give it. But I am stronger now. There is your letter, Lady Margaret. And try to forgive the man who goes from you wretched and heartbroken. As God is in His heaven, I will aid you to return to your husband. I will make it my sacrifice so to do. Then after that”—
He stopped, with the mere force of putting restraint upon his emotion. For to Laurence M‘Kim these things came hard, being by nature reticent and of few words—that is, in the things nearest his heart, though light enough in other matters.
But I laughed, knowing James Douglas.
“Open and read the letter,” I bade him. “He that was my husband is little likely to send across the Border any such invitation to Margaret Douglas. Open—read! Why, man, wherefore do you shake? Can you not read? Are you not a clerk? Have you forgotten your letters? Open, I say!”
Yet, for all that, he would not. So at the last I snatched the letter from his hand, broke the seal, and bade him read.
I knew James Douglas’s scrawl. He ever wrote as if with the point of his dagger, or, rather, with a wooden skewer picked from a butcher’s stall in the market-place.
Then Laurence read aloud the words which I append hereto.
“Dear Cozin Marget,—I write to tell you that I am marriet to poor Jack Neville’s Anne, she that was Anne Holland. I ken weel that ye will mak no wry nor scurvy faces over this news, but, contrarywise, be heart-glad no longer to be tied to one who is for ever tripping and stumbling towards the left hand.
“Cozin Marget, I wish ye weel. I wad that it had been in my wig-wagging nature to be a better man to you. But now I must e’en do the best I can for poor Jack Neville’s Anne. She is bonnie for a widow woman, and young also—but hath brocht me no portion. If you have aught that you can spare in your stocking-foot, pray remember your loving Cozin James. For in truth I am in hard case for two or three hunder pound. The king hath given me his Order of the Garter for a bit battle I focht for him near to Shrewsbury, and for cutting aff a Welshman’s head. But I had rather he had given me the five hunder rose nobles he promised me than a hale cart-load of Garters.
“But this one I did give to poor Jack Neville’s Anne to bind up her stockings withal. And, indeed, it was from certain giff-gaff and merriment we had between us anent the matter in poor Jack Neville’s sometime rose garden that Anne and I came to be marriet.
“I hope, dear cozin, you will not go into a nunnery. To my mind there is no sense in such places—but instead, I prithee, go find a better man than me! All the same, fair day or foul day, I am resolvit to do the best I can for poor Jack Neville’s Anne.
“Whilk Receive from Your Loving Cozin,
“James of Douglas.“Above all do not forget the siller. John Tweedie, a merchant of barkit skins in the Wellgate at Carlisle town, is a safe man to send it by, and kens me weel. If it is a maitter of a thousand merks, so mickle the better.
“Written from my lodgings in Southwark Borough Town, where Anne and I would do not ill, an it were not for our poverty. Aprile the 30th.”
* * * * * * *
Never did changes more curious come over any man’s face in the same space of time than those which passed over Laurence M‘Kim’s as he stood before me reading and re-reading James Douglas’s letter. I admit that I watched him somedeal mischievously, and at the end I fairly broke into a tempest of laughter.
But Laurence did not laugh. He took the matter with great seriousness, not knowing my husband James as I did, nor comprehending his nature.
“Then you are a free woman!” he said, folding up the letter with an exceeding attention to the folds.
“I am, or I shall be soon!” answered I, without taking my eyes off his face. Then all at once I remembered the phrase in James Douglas’s letter, twice repeated, how he must try now to do his best for poor Jack Neville’s Anne!
At that there came a wicked thought into my head.
“Laurence,” I said, going up to him softly and looking into his eyes, somewhere in the middle way betwixt tears and laughter, “if I ask you a question, will you give me a true answer?”
“That I will!” he said. “What is it?”
“But it is a favour I have to ask!” I continued. “Will you grant it?”
“An it involved the damnation of my soul!” he said, with the same convincing quiet.
“Then will you, too, do the best you can for poor Jack Neville’s Anne?”
Well, after a time and a time Laurence and I went back to the Larg together, for the present determined to say naught about the matter, till I should have gone with my letter and petition to the king and the archbishop. For though divorce was not at any time the canon law of Holy Church, yet in these outland realms of Scotland and England men heeded that but little when interest or inclination drove them. Moreover, the pope, his cardinals and bishops, were ready enough to give absolution. For, be he priest or cardinal, ’twixt Caithness and Kirkmaiden all were in the king’s hands, or, worse yet, in those of the great houses. And, mostly, a cardinal ettled at the saving of his life just like another man, save Thomas à Becket only. But in my time, at least, there was never another like him in any kirk that I heard tell of. So that which lay before me to perform was just this—that I should go to the king and ask his leave to marry Laurence, and live retired and peaceably thereafter: the which permission I was certain of obtaining—that is, for a price.
So Laurence and I went in together, and I showed Sholto and Maud the letter. I gave it to them laughing, though there was a kind of shame in my heart, too, that ever I should have shared bed and board with such a man. Yet for all—I own it—I could not hate or even greatly dislike James Douglas. As he said, he had always done his best for the “poor Jack Neville’s Anne” of the moment. Pity was that his best proved never very good, and never very lasting.
But when Sholto M‘Kim read the letter, his countenance changed. He had never any great sense of the humours of life. And such an one as James Douglas was clean out of his ken.
“If I had but known in time that I was serving such a man,” he said slowly with darkened brows, “I had slain him with my hand!”
Then I took his wounded right hand and kissed it tenderly, so that his face flushed with pleasure. For even now—nay more than ever now I was to him his liege lady.
“You did better work with this your hand,” I said, “when you kept the breach of Thrieve with naught but the edge of your broadaxe.”
And as for Maud, she also came and stood beside me, glancing from one to the other of us, but not laughing as I expected. Then I saw a strange thing.
Maud cared nothing for that which made me laugh, not for that which made her husband hot with anger—in itself naught for the letter of James Douglas, save—that it made me a free woman.
She kept looking from one to the other of us—troubled and uncertain. Under her summer gown I could see her bosom heave.
Then Maud went to the door, and turning made a sign to me.
“Shall we go look for the children?” she said. But I knew she had other things to say to me than that. We were silent till we had put the house of Larg a hundred feet or so beneath our feet and were out on the open fell.
Then she spoke.
“Why will you not tell your Maud?” she said sadly.
“What am I to tell?” I answered, fencing with words.
“My Lady Margaret,” she said with dignity, “if you do not deign to tell me, I will ask no more. But I think—I think—that after these many years I had not deserved this from you!”
And she began to sob.
“Maud—my Maud!” I cried with sudden contriteness, “I will tell you all that you wish to know—all there is to tell. You gave me a home with you when I had none other friends. You have loved me all my life! What is there I would not tell you?”
“And now you hide from me—you will not tell me”—
“Tell you what, dear Maud?”
“What Laurence hath said to you!”
At this I laughed outright. For somehow I seemed in a mood to laugh that day. The air was lighter, rarer, of a more intoxicating charm. It scented of the spring, and I seemed sharply to regain my youth again—the youth that had never been mine. Nay, I seemed to win it rather for the first time, savouring its sweetness in the very wind that blew off the hills of heather.
“Laurence say aught to me, dear innocent!” I cried to her laughing. “Ah, but it is our own dear Maud Lindsay who is the matchmaker! Would Laurence ever have had the assurance to speak of love to Margaret Douglas?”
Then Maud jerked her Highland head in the air.
“I know not,” she said. “His brother had a Lindsay for the asking!”
“Ah, yes,” said I, “the third time of asking, but Laurence would never have had the courage to ask even once!”
“Do not tell me,” she said, turning suddenly upon me as she used to do at Thrieve when I was a little girl and had been misbehaving, “I see wickedness and deceit in your eye—in that of Laurence too. There is something between you two. You need not deny it—not to me. You never could deceive me, even when you were a little kilted hempie that had been in the orchard stealing of the sugar plums. What is it?”
“Well”—I began, pouting and hesitating.
Then I believe verily that in another moment Maud Lindsay might have done even as she was used to do in those ancientest days I can remember—when on one occasion she greatly surprised a certain spoilt child the morning after she came out of the north to be her tutrix and companion.
“Nay,” I said hastily, “Laurence said naught to me. But—I had something to say to him.”
“What was it?” she demanded fiercely. “Tell me all!”
“I know—but I promised not to tell! Ask himself!” I cried over my shoulder and ran back quickly into the house.
She called one sentence after me.
“I might have thought!” she said, “I knew all the time why he stayed away from Thrieve!”
* * * * * * *
So I went to see the king, Laurence and Herries going with me to be my squires in time of need. We rode poorly and unattended, both because that would be better pleasing to the king, who loved not arrays of folk riding hither and thither athwart his kingdom, and also because unless we had taken the herds from the hills, there were no other retinue about the Larg of Kenmore save only Sholto hirpling on his crutch.
First we went to Stirling, and the King of Scots was not there. He had gone to Carron. We would find him on the straths, they said, watching the forging of the great cannon. Quoth another, “The king hath gone to Edinburgh to make him ready for the siege of Roxburgh Castle—the sole strength still held by the English north of Berwick bound. He cannot abide it, and is making ready to batter it down.”
From Carron to Edinburgh we followed on, and there at last we found the king marshalling his forces upon the Borough Muir.
“Ah,” he cried, catching sight of me first, “what do you here, my little lady of Galloway? Is this biding within your bounds? Are you come to fight for us or against us? Or aiblins, would you lead a partizan revolt in your own pretty person? And what doth my bold Sir Laurence of the Black Plaid in your company, and this young M‘Kim? Wherefore are not you two at Carron with the engines of war?”
Then I smiled at him and said, “These be too many questions for one to answer all at once even to pleasure a king. But as for me, I have come to show your Majesty this! And not for that alone!”
So with that I drew from my pocket the letter of James Douglas.
And then and there before all his men the king read the letter aloud, from “Dear Cozin Margaret,” all the way through to “Written at our lodging in Southwark!”
Then he laughed very loud, as was his custom, slapping his hand upon his thigh hard and often.
“Faith, I was wrong,” he cried, “I should have kept such a man within my kingdom. I shall never find another! He is salt enough, this husband of yours, to keep all the butchers meat in Scotland fresh through the dog days. He puts off and on a wife as I would a glove—then eke writes to the last to send him the plenishing siller for the new. And a good lance too he was! None drave a better. And, Lord! he had need—he had need! Ho! Ho! A rare salt fellow, brined through and through like a barrel-kept herring—this James of Douglas! I take pleasure in him. I take great pleasure in him—now that it is too late!”
For after his kind he was a hearty man—this king who could murder a friend with a dagger-stroke, who found his way about among the Commandments Ten, much as Alexander solved the Gordian knot. A hot-headed, fiery-faced butcher-man, by nature a fighter, was this Stewart king—in some ways not unlike our own James, though his iniquities were rather those of the red hand and the blow struck in anger than the good-natured cavalier wantonnesses of my “Dear Cozin.”
Then with the letter still between his fingers, the king cast the slantwise Stewart eye upon me sometime before he spoke.
“And now I suppose ye will consider yourself a free woman and a wanter,” he said, “so ye’ll e’en be comin’ to me to seek ye a man!”
“Nay, King James,” I made him answer, “that I have already done for myself. Two I have had chosen for me—I will e’en be content to pick the other without the royal bounty! Beside, the king has mickle on his mind, and God forbid I should set him a task so thankless!”
“And wha is the lad? Tell us,” cried the king; “mind this though—he gets neither a foot o’ Gallowa’ nor o’ Ettrick, never an inch south o’ the Forth. But I willna say that gin he be a decent lad, I will not maybe gie ye a park or twa to sow your oats somewhere at the back of beyont!”
Then all at once he seemed to forget, returning to James Douglas’s letter, which he rolled like a morsel under his tongue, savoury and sweet.
“ ‘Poor Jack Neville’s Anne!’ ” he cried, blattering again on his thigh; “I must e’en tell that to the bishop! Yes, by the saints, Kennedy will taste that, I warrant him! Sly old dog that he is!”
I stood before him waiting his reply.
“Your Majesty has not yet heard the name of the man I ask your permission to marry!” I said quietly.
“Well,” he laughed, “ ’tis somewhat early days yet to be thinking o’ that, when ye hae gotten never a line frae holy kirk nor ony permit ecclesiastical to stand afore the altar. But you Douglases were aye forehandit. Wha is the loon?”
“He is of your Majesty’s name,” said I, “and like all the Stewarts, blate to speak for themselves in such a matter. So I am sent to do it. This is he!”
“What?” cried King James, “the Lad in Black, the Nameless Master of Enginery, the Deevil-Bishop, the Armourer-Clerk—doubtless some Douglas loon in disguise? Him that made the plans for the cannon! Why, I have already given him the barony of Balveny. I ken not how that will do, little lady. That was yince Douglas ground, and if you set up your banner there you might trench upon my Majesty even yet!”
Seeing I did not answer, he went on, getting rid of his surprise in a cloud of words.
“Na, na—let him stick to his cannon-making and his fortifying! That will be better than taking to himself a little rebel wife like yoursel’, wha will keep him in het water all the days o’ his life! Let him choose again and choose better!”
“Better he could not choose,” said I, “as, if he hath eyes in his head, his Majesty must see for himself! Moreover, if Laurence gets me not, he will go to France to the service of Louis the king, from whom already he has had great offers!”
“Ah, will he—will he? We will see to that,” cried King James. “We may be poor, but we know how to recompense our lieges as well as how to punish our enemies. There is old Malise now, the master armourer. He will not last long. At times madness looks out of the eye of him. But, Lord! what a hammerman! What a mighty smith! None like him since Tubal. If only he were younger and had the head—faith, I would sit on the throne of Westminster with the Two Roses, red and white, doing homage to me.”
He stopped suddenly as if thinking deeply.
“But there, lass,” he cried, “I have wearied enough of my good time on your fule marrying and gie’in’ in marriage. Go ye forthwith to Bishop Kennedy, and he will put ye in the way of being even with ‘Poor Jack Neville’s Anne!’ But I trust that your chances of keeping your clerk-lad to yourself are better than poor Anne’s. Ah, the rogue—what a villain! Troth, I would give him the Cross of St. Andrew to come back to be my court-jester!”
“My lord,” I made the king answer with some dignity, “I pray recall it to yourself that there was a time when a certain jest of James Douglas’s well-nigh made your Majesty smile on the wry side of your face. The chance of those few hours at Stirling when Ormond and Murray and this same Lord James entered it with a thousand Douglases—I trow such a man is no safe court-fool!”
“I ken, I ken,” he cried, waving me down with his hand, “James Stewart is no unfriend to plain speech, and takes no offence at what you say. But for all that thou art a little rebel, and if this your Lad in Black is to keep the upper hand of you, he must be of good council and have the ready hand. I will take him with me to the siege of Roxburgh to teach him his A, B—Buff! Meantime, go thou to the bishop. Get a warranty from him. Here, Morton, my seal! I will write a line on the back of Jamie Douglas’s letter. ‘On the day that Roxburgh is taken, this Laurence of the king’s name is to have Margaret Douglas in wedlock!’ There!”
Whereupon he signed, sealing the missive with the signet royal, which Morton carried for him in a little silver box. Ere he gave it back to me, he turned over the letter, laughing afresh at every line. It seemed to have taken him greatly.
“Salt as the sea!” he shouted, “a rare one, by Saint Andrew! Let him have his two hundred pounds in rose nobles sent to John Tweedie, that eident leather-seller in the Carlisle watergate. See to it, Morton. He deserves the like and more. I warrant him—he will of a surety buy woman’s falderals with it in the Chepe—if he can for poor Jack Neville’s Anne—if not, at least, for some other Anne!”
Accordingly I betook me to Bishop Kennedy, who was at Edinburgh Castle, having wholly supplanted Crichton with the king. A kindly, pawky, common-looking man he was, most like a country meal miller, and with the same way of puckering up his eyes when he spoke to you, as if he feared that you would throw dust in them.
A thing which, according to the popular mouth, it was by no means easy to do with this same Bishop Kennedy.
But I soon found that he had heard of me, and that he was no stranger to the repute of Sholto and Maud Lindsay. He was acquainted also with the young engineer-clerk—to whom, for his services in Galloway, the king had given his name and the barony of Balveny which aforetime had been little John’s. Indeed, there seemed to be nothing in the realm of Scots of which someone had not properly advised my Lord Bishop, and when he saw the king’s letter he gave me what I most desired—right good encouragement that all should be to my desire. But he did it in his own way and took much time about it.
“All laws are full of quaintness,” he said with his head to the side, and making a scratching on a piece of parchment with the side of a pen, a noise to me very disagreeable. But I minded not that, the intent and purport of his words being good. “And in none is this quaintness so patent as in canon law. For the holy Kirk is bound to dwell in some state, under Something or Somewhat as Overlord, and men are but men with neck-banes, the most part of them fearing (and most reasonably) sharp swords and the tow rope! Also it is commanded in Scripture that we should all fear and obey in all things the King’s Most Excellent Majesty. All which, together with the sign and seal upon the back of this most remarkable letter from the sometime James, Earl of Douglas, dispose me to be of good hope that your affair may find a speedy and a hoped-for termination.”
With that he went to the door and called to him one Gilbert A’Taggart, which surname, as I understand, signifies the son of a priest. But this Gilbert was some sort of nephew or relative to my Lord Bishop, though, of course, not by marriage. He was a young man, most maiden-like and comely, and he bowed to me after the Italian fashion, for his uncle had had him educated at Rome, whence he had brought back with him a knowledge of other things besides canon law.
“Seek me my great book on the law of the Church, the volume having regard to marriage,” said the bishop to young A’Taggart. “This is the case. Listen, Gilbert. You, who are well read upon the subject, fresh from the schools of Rome, can, perhaps, give us light!”
The young man bowed obsequiously, as one who would say, “What your honour pleases!”
So presently the secretary brought a great book of yellow vellum, and the bishop opened it at a place.
“ ‘Marriage is one of the blessed sacraments of the Church apostolic and catholic!’ Hum—hum—! That is not it. ‘In the event of a man marrying his grandmother’— No, nor does that exactly meet the case in hand!”
“These are the facts, Gilbert”— (Here he