“Maud—Maud!”
She made as if to go in, but he held her to him.
“No,” said Sholto, “you mistake. All I said was that these poor five bairnies would be the better of either you or me to care for them!”
“Oh yes,” said Maud scornfully; “and it is evident that you must often have been thinking of this before, to have your answer so ready!”
“I swear to you, Maud,” said Sholto, “never before to-night”—
Maud pointed solemnly upwards to where a star was beginning to shine, sole and lonely amid the purpling deeps of heaven.
“Do not be profane,” she said. “There is One yonder who hears!”
“I care not if the four corners of heaven heard,” cried Sholto passionately. “I will swear”—
Maud laid her hands together with a sweet smile.
“Swear what?” she said, suddenly becoming gentle.
Sholto scratched his head in some perplexity.
“Upon my faith and word,” he said, “I have not an idea what it is all about!”
Maud burst into a peal of merry laughter, and clasped her husband in her arms.
“You great gowk,” she said. “Silly boy, will you never learn? I love you. Only I was fretted. I have been vexed and fretted all day, and you would not attend to me, but thought only of your stupid armouries. But I made you. Now let us make up. There, there! Will that do? Come, let us go in!”
* * * * * * *
William Douglas, constrained by my hand, silently
protesting rather than obedient, had sat till now. He rose, and we went back into the little chamber of reception which adjoined my bedchamber.
“Are all people who love each other incurably insane?” he asked, with some heat. “Does love make of Maud Lindsay, that incomparable housewife and good mother, a puling, yammering fool? Of Sholto M‘Kim, the best lance and stoutest heart in Scotland, a reed blown by the wind, a withe twined round a woman’s fingers?”
“Even so,” I answered, “but you will never know it!”
“For that, thank God,” he said. “There are quarrellings enough, and argle-barglings to spare in broad Scotland, without domesticating them at your own hearth-stone, and having the house you live in turned into a bear-pit.”
“William,” I said, “there are some things hid from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes. Maud and Sholto have never quarrelled once since they were married.”
He snatched his hand from mine hastily—why, I know not.
“I am not a babe,” he said, “but I can believe my ears! If words mean anything, these two have been at open enmity for an hour by the clock. And you—you—their friend, have made an eavesdropper of William Douglas!”
At this I laughed, serenely content.
“My dear husband,” I said, “shall we go down and ask them if they regret their quarrel? For me, I judge”—
“Well, what do you judge?”
“That it would be better and happier for you and me if we quarrelled oftener after the manner of Sholto and Maud!”
This time I was not prepared for him.
“Child,” he cried, gripping me by the arm so hard that he hurt it, “you torment me past bearing. Either you mean a thing or you do not. Which is it to be—all or nothing?”
I thought him noble. I had no other thought. I felt a strange numbness, at once lax and faint, steal over my limbs. My husband held me in his arms. There was a fierce energy in his action. He hurt me, so strong he was.
Then from the chamber beneath there came, deep, throbbing, and somehow infinitely moving, the laugh of Maud Lindsay—suddenly cut in the midst as if a hand had been laid across her mouth.
The sound seemed to break the spell that was on him.
“No,” he cried, loosing me abruptly—almost, indeed, thrusting me from him. “Shall William Douglas break his word, sworn and plighted? Shall James keep the oath which I have broken?”
And with no further word he turned and strode out of the chamber. I was left alone. There was silence underneath, save that a little while after a charger neighed, and, looking from my window, I saw William Douglas, my husband, halt his horse on a little knoll outside the walls, and stand a long while looking back—the beast, fresh from the stables, meantime tossing his head and chafing visibly at the restraint.
Then he rode out of sight, and I was alone indeed—which was my loss.
The days went by at Thrieve—some few, like my Arab, galloping; most like a funeral train, as is the wont of days all over the world. Some the pigeons in the court would shorten, flying down in windy, whistling crowds to peck the grain, with which, in spite of Sholto’s teeth, Magdalen and I persisted in feeding them. With Maud at our back we could do much.
Larry came from Sweetheart, but not for a long season, and, indeed, not till I had sent for him a full score of times. There was something most unmonkishly manful about Laurence, and now, when Will came no more to Thrieve, and I was shut off from James, my heart desired to see the lad. For, though I could not help caring for James when he was with me (being so great and strong, and, as it were, encompassing), and though I wished to be a good wife to my husband, yet, it is no shame to confess it, as a friend and comrade Laurence was more to my mind than either of them.
I am not even now sure that Laurence would have come to Thrieve even for a day, in spite of all our entreaties, had it not been that his father sent him ill news of Magdalen. It was not that the child was stricken by any disease, but she languished, and failed to win back the strength she had lost.
It was then, for the first time, that I saw her father appear perturbed; for the armourer was bound up in the maid, as, indeed, were all her brothers. But Laurence, I think, she loved best of all, and he her.
At all events, swift upon that summons Laurence came, first to the Three Thorns, and afterwards to Thrieve. I found him paler than of old, and more quiet, while his face lacked its bold, fresh boyishness. I could also clearly see that he was passing anxious about his sister.
“There is something I cannot understand!” he said, and then forthwith was silent.
“We cannot even get her to come to Thrieve, can we, Maud?” I said. “Perhaps she will accompany you.”
But Magdalen, though she would visit us with Larry for a day, would not remain. She loved (she said) to take long solitary walks among the pine forests which lie betwixt the Mollance and Crossmichael. There was, as William Douglas had said truly, none to do her wrong. For not only did the fear of the earl lie heavy upon the land, but still more mediately the fear of Brawny Kim, that strong smith of Carlinwark, and his seven sons, who would follow an ill-doer to the gallows or the stake—as indeed they had done with the Marshal de Retz in the country of Brittany.
So Laurence came and went amongst us once more—sweet, loving, and gracious always. But somehow, it was not now as it had been in the days of Cour Cheverney. My wedding, which was no marriage, separated us. He had, as I guessed, some inkling of how James had come between William Douglas and his full heritage.
At all events, there was no more making of boats to sail on the broad peat-brown Dee Water. No little mills were set birling in the burns of Glentochar and Boreland. But it was “Yes, my lady countess!” and “No, my Lady of Douglas,” instead, as of old, “My princess” and (at least once) “Margaret of Margarets!” But of all that no trace.
Yet, knowing that Laurence was right, I liked the lad none the worse because of his carefulness for me.
Still these were good days at Thrieve, set in between, as it were—when we would wean Magdalen from her lonely haunts and Maud from her Martha-housewifery, and set off all together to cull the flower or pull the nut. Any excuse or none served us—so that we could win away for a long day on the hills of Balmaghie or in the woods of Kelton.
Yet I loved the hills best, and chiefly, I think, because I could stay a little apart from the others, and look away to the north where lay Edinburgh and Stirling. James Douglas and William Douglas were there, and lo! I was shut off from them by the blue hills of Carsphairn and the dun muirs of the Windy Standard.
Now Magdalen had wandered so far and constantly that she knew every haunt of the sweet rough-rinded hazel-nuts, the dark purple blackberries (which in their season the birds ate so freely that every grey rock and boulder was spotted as though a whole army of scriveners had jerked their pens this way and that). She found also with ease the creeping cranberry, the whortleberry, and the rare, pale, deep-hidden strawberry.
Not only so, but when fruits were lacking, Magdalen could discern the Grass of Parnassus long ere the rest of us had sighted it. She knew where to find the St. John’s wort, the Great Bluebell and the Herb-Paris. Yet there was nothing enthusiastic about her search. With all her wondrous beauty, Magdalen moved rather like one in a dream, going to the flower she sought directly, like a scent-dog when the coneys crouch among the heather.
Then, when we came back tired from the hills, Magdalen would make straight for the Three Thorns, moving easily and swiftly over the knolls like a young deer, while, all gravely and sedately, Laurence would return by my side.
Thus went the months, Laurence going back all too soon to his abbacy, till it was another spring and another fruit-time—then another and yet another, so that it seemed as if nothing would ever change. The world must stay for ever thus. And then I could have cried out for the castle to crash in upon our heads, or Michael’s trump to break up the grey firmament of clouds into the flaming fires which shall consume the world—anything, if only all things would not be so eternally the same.
And I think I prayed, though indeed at this time I confess I troubled the saints not much—the convent and the Bald Cat, together with Sister Eulalie, having put me out of kilter with a too frequent clicking of beads—which, indeed, I judged to be chiefly work for priests and such-like, who had but little to do. And so thought Laurence also, at least for many years.
But as it happens mostly, in such cases, the days were not far off when I was to long for one short day of the peace of Thrieve, the kine flicking their tails on the verges of the water meadows, the swaying pull of the laden hazel branches as Laurence held them down on the Airieland braes—even the skirl of the whaup or the flap of the heron seeking their nests out on the moorland or down among the reed-beds of the Dee. Yes, I longed for them all—all that world of peace—and had it not.
But of that anon.
* * * * * * *
It was Malise who first put into my heart the fear which ever after sat heavily upon me.
“Little lady,” the armourer of Thrieve began one day, as he stood examining the bolts of the great door of Thrieve, “have you never given to your husband that advice of the wise king of auld time, the which Laurence read me out of his learned books in the Latin tongue—or the Greek, I mind not which.”
“And what might that be, Malise?”
“To switch aff the heads o’ the mucklest poppies!” he answered gravely, “an’ that richt early. For if he winna, of a surety there shall fall a head so high that it touches the stars!”
“You mean my Lord the Earl William’s,” I answered. “Fear not for him, Malise. He holds them all in the hollow of his hand!”
“That may be sae,” persisted the smith, “I doot it not. But, mind ye, I have seen ere this a hundred yelpin’ curs pu’ doon a stag-o’-ten-tines!”
And the advice was good. For at this period William Douglas was like to none in all the land, and when he went forth the Crichtons were as nothing before him, hiding away in holes and corners. Even Livingston the Tutor had made friends with him, or at least seemed to do so. The worst of the ancient abuses were stubbed down, digged up, or rooted out of the land. And all was done without cruelty or the least hardship to any, save only to those who did evil to their neighbours or to the poor at their gates. On such William Douglas had no pity.
Yet for all, so simple was he, he never guessed that when the king delivered to him all authority, and pretending to make much of him, sent him off on great embassies to London, to Paris, to Rome itself, it was always that he himself might escape from control and return to his favourites as a dog to his vomit. But, in spite of kings and favourites, William Douglas waxed ever greater and greater in the land—for a time.
Then came a time of cooling in the ardour of the king’s good-will. But of this also William took no heed, continuing to make treaties with England and France for the country’s advantage in trade and well-being. Also he banded the more sober parts of the north into one league with himself, so that even the barbarous and pagan isles (called of Skye and the Long Island) were made to obey and pay dues as regularly as the Lowdens and Fife. It was well said afterwards that the land made a greater advancement during these short years of William Douglas’s vice-regality than it had done since the Battle of the Standard.
But much of this came to us in our island-prison only in over-words and snatches. Save that which concerned itself, little gossip reached Thrieve. Packmen and carriers from Lanerick and Dumfries brought us most of our news. On important occasions a messenger for Sholto would come in with his beast all of a lather, or if it were night or winter, in a perfect breathing mist of steamy vapour.
One night in particular I remember. It was in the deep middle of winter—that is to say, in February. For mostly winter begins in Scotland with the inbringing of the Yule log. Sholto was at Douglas Castle on some business of the earl’s. Andro the Penman was in command at Thrieve, and, with his stick and hard words, scarce managed to secure that discipline which Sholto enforced with the mere glint of an eye or the indrawing of a resolute lip. But then Sholto was a knight and in full authority, and Andro the Penman only one of the guard—as it were, first among his peers.
It was a night of snow. The afternoon had fallen upon the face of the country greenish grey and dour, with a bitter nip in the air. Andro the Penman sniffed and said, “Snow!” Maud, with her nose to the wind, looked out on the terrace towards the north, in turn shook her head and said, “Snow! And I pray that goodman of mine may be somewhere snug in hold to-night.”
Then she went and saw to it that the bairns’ window-shutters were properly fastened inside the shot bars which kept them from falling out ten times a day.
Then, softly at first, small dampish snow began to fall drizzlingly, drifting on the ledges, forming into little piles behind the gargoyles, and making long lines with waving crests in the roof gutters. The men on guard on the towers and about the fortifications had an ill time of it. The storm seemed to take them every way at once.
“God help all such as are abroad to-night!” I said, as I drew my furs close about me. For even in the great hall, with fires blazing at either end, piled high with beech-logs and crackling bog-oak, hissing birchen twigs and steady burning peat, it was bitter cold.
And so that February afternoon the twilight darkened early into the solid blackness of Egypt. Wrapped in shawls, Maud and I sat about the fire, after we had supped, the candles feeble behind us, and the tapestries on the walls moving in long regular waves, that seemed to go from one end of the room to the other, giving boars and hunters and steeds a wonderful appearance of life.
It was creepy and eerie enough sitting there in the leaping firelight. And Maud did not help matters, with her Highland tales of second-sight and death warnings, added to my own reminiscences of the wicked Lord Soulis, with his familiar spirit, Red Cap. More than once we looked fearfully over our shoulders, expecting to see that famous imp leaping out of the old charter-chest to ask for new labours and to remind his master of his promised wages.
Such tales, told in the flicker of the firelight, in a castle full of dark deeds and memories, might well try the strongest nerves, and it is small wonder that presently Maud murmured, “Oh, I wish that Sholto were here!”
But it was not Sholto who was to visit Thrieve that night. Red Cap had, indeed, been at his tricks, and, at any moment, we might expect his head out of the chest with a demand for his wages.
Long time we sat thus, Maud and I, listening to the varying roll of the tempest without, discerning at intervals a shriller note as the wind, halting as if to catch its breath upon the outer walls, leaped with a fierce hoot upon the huge square keep of Thrieve, whistled through its window bars, clanged every unpinned door, and almost tore from its staff the banner that flapped and lunged noisily above the highest battlements.
At intervals Maud would raise her head as if listening for Sholto’s return. But it was really toward the children’s chamber that her ear inclined. Then after three or four hearkenings, her anxiety would compel her to rise and steal up on tiptoe into that place of sweet children’s breathings, with the shutters closed upon the windows and the peat fire smouldering red upon the hearth. From bed to bed she would steal, laying a kiss on that tress of flax and yonder dark head of crispy black, all the while with her mother’s adoring look plain in her eyes.
At which point, if I accompanied her, I was wont to betake me down with a little jealous pain pinching shrewdly at my heart. But that night, whether from wistful feeling akin to the storm, or in sympathy with the poor houseless knaves and gangrel wenches abroad in the snow, I sat still where I was, wae and silent, by the fire in the great hall of Thrieve. The snow was not the ordinary snow of Galloway, broad, moist, and flaked, but had changed into small, bitter, east-land snow, more like powdered ice. I could hear it patter against the closed windows, and fall with a hushing sound on the wooden roof of the balcony above.
Silently Syneton, the French boy William had brought with him to be groom to my Arab, would enter and heap fresh logs on the fire. As silently he would disappear. A Galloway lad of his years would have clanked in with a pair of wooden clogs all too scantly wiped on a bass of straw brought from the barn. But Syneton came and went like a shadow—clean, swift, and biddable—a treasure save in this, that the truth was not in him.
Above, Maud Lindsay tarried long, and I grew weary and a little afraid. I think Maud forgot herself when she gat among her babes. At least, she would promise solemnly to descend in one short quarter of an hour, and then look aggrieved and hurt when it was pointed out to her that her absence had extended over an hour and a half! Then it was that she would say, as if that explained all, “Ah, you are not a mother, Margaret!”
And I would reply, “Nor you, Mistress Maud, a maid that should be none!”
Which (though truth) did not greatly mend matters.
And indeed, to be just, Maud did not boast of her brave bairns, though I knew her heart stirred within her with pride.
At any rate, I was long alone—left with my thoughts in the uncertain flicker of the firelight, while the wind down the wide chimney scattered the grey wood ashes abroad over the oaken floor, and over William’s great rug of Turkey red.
Then through a pause of the storm I heard a far-off sound, clear and piercing, but so distant that I started as if from a dream. It was like a trumpet blown in the lists before the bars are let down, and the champions bid fall to. I smiled. Certainly I had been dreaming. So anew I began to watch the clear blue flames licking and hissing upwards about the new wood, the equal orange of the seasoned billets, and the rich red glow of the black log, half eaten into by the long afternoon’s fire.
Again it seemed that I dreamed. But nearer, clearer, more insistent, the notes came to my ear, blown as Laurence used to blow them when he was ready to convey me across to the flower-gathering, in the boat which he had stolen from old grumble-pate A’Cormack, at the gate-house by the drawbridge.
Eagerly I lifted my head, and listened with long and strained attention. But I heard only the hurl of the tempest overhead among the high roof-spaces of Thrieve, the steady “brool” of the wind all about the four corners of grim, impassive masonry, the spirting sound of the snow—small, like hail—on the windows. I had been mistaken. None could possibly be abroad on such a night; at any rate, so much the worse for them if they were! Thrieve was a shut gate, a fortress barred. None could enter there. Only Sholto had the word—Sholto, and his master.
But yet a third time, and very near, I heard the trumpet blow—clarion clear, net as thunder-clap when thunder follows flash swifter than thought succeeds to thought. Something struck the window at that moment; it might have been only the icy fingers of the storm, save that it sounded somewhat more solid. It struck again, and yet again. I was affrighted, and I cried aloud for Maud; but she was above, effaced among the tangles of blonde and dark that were scattered on the nursery pillows.
The noise came again, with a crying that was like the soul of a man in pain.
But, mastering myself, I went to the window and flung it open. Something huge and black, which might have been a raven or a great bird of prey, fluttered away into the half-luminous mist of the courtyard.
I looked down in amazement. There were torches beneath, awakening voices, apparent through the enveloping snow. The window I had opened slammed to in one of the fierce gusts, and I caught my hand in the sill.
I stood sucking at the hurt like a baby, half crying, and in the intervals of pain calling for Maud almost like one of her own bairns, when suddenly the door of the great hall was flung open, and the tapestry parted itself as with the wrench of a strong hand.
It was my husband who stood before me, with such an expression on his face as I had never seen there
before. Mired and slimed he was with the bogs and morasses of his long travel, the snow lying white in the links of his armour and along the verges of his breastplate. He held only a plain steel cap in his hand, without plume or ensign. For he had ridden light like a moss-trooper, with only a single attendant at his heels.
“Where is James Douglas, my brother?” he panted rather than spoke.
And the anger, cold and bitter, on his face almost deprived me of the power of reply.
“Come,” he said roughly, “where have you hidden him? Tell me quickly!”
“James”—I stammered, with that surprise which is so often mistaken for the signs of guilt, “James Douglas? I have not seen him since my wedding-day!”
William stood staring at me for a long moment, and then dropping his head between his wet hands, he cried, “Great God, have I wronged him?”
There came a new voice from the doorway.
“As to that I know nothing, and as little care, my Lord of Douglas!” cried Maud Lindsay, “but this I do know, right bitterly and right grievously have you wronged your wife.”
I looked up and saw Maud stand in the doorway, left open by the tumultuous entrance of my husband. She held back the tapestry with her hand. No Numidian lioness at the entrance of her den, her cublings mouthing behind her, could have appeared more fierce. To look at Maud’s mouth upon ordinary occasions, you would never believe she could have snarled. But she did. I saw her. She stood for a moment without speech while my husband hid his face between his hands. Yet she did not relax or relent. I could not have believed my Maud so impitiable. But I knew afterwards that she was mindful of the time when I had been to her as a babe between her hands, and she was heartsore to see me fallen (as she said) between the stools of men’s love and their lust for power. A motherly woman can never understand (or forgive) that last, save in her own sons. Then it becomes a “proper ambition.” Besides, another woman has to bear the brunt of it—not she.
Thus it was that, in spite of her husband, Maud never truly appreciated William Douglas. But then, too, that was natural enough—her test of all men, gentle and simple, being merely, “Would Sholto have done this? Would Sholto have said that?”
As for me, I said nothing. Truly I did not understand this sudden irruption, or why William Douglas had thus burst in upon our quiet.
But Maud needed no instruction; she was ripe enough and ready enough with her interpretations, and they erred not on the side of charity. Of that small danger where William was concerned.
“There,” she said, waving her hand abroad, with something of her old mocking vixenry, “go—search the castle. It is yours—by marriage. You will not even find my husband here. He is doing your errands at Douglas Castle. So neither one of us has ever a man to defend our repute, or speak a word in our favour. Go search Thrieve from dungeon to battlements if you will! Question the scullions! Send for the pantlers! Mayhap we have your brother hid in the cellarage”—
“Maud,” I said, “be silent, I bid you. You forget to whom you speak!”
But William Douglas waved me with his hand to let her go on.
“She is right. I deserve this and more,” he said, in a broken voice (that ever I should have lived to hear the like from so noble a man!). “But James left me at Edinburgh, riding southward, knowing that I was summoned in haste to meet the king at Stirling. So, the fit being on me, I let the king wait, and followed James. Yes, I followed till I lost him upon the Flowe of Lochenkit. It was just when this accursed storm broke. I saw him before me not half a mile, my brother James or his ghost. Where is he, if not here?”
Maud Lindsay came over to me and laid her hand gently on my arm. “Go up to your chamber, bairnie,” she said; “when right is, and I have spoken my mind, I will come to thee.”
Then to William she said, “This child knows nothing of evil things—scarcely of evil thoughts. Speak the things you have to say to me, and I will tell her that which must be told. Remember, she is a maid, walking in the midst of marvels not half understood. Go, Margaret! I will follow!”
And for a moment I think she thought of me as no more than her own Marcelle—grown a little older, but no whit the wiser, or the twins, Cuthbert and Bride (anything but saints!), or sturdy Ulric, or even little piping David with the castle Bubbly Jock goldering at his tail. At any rate, one she loved was being harassed, and so Maud ruffled her feathers, dropped her wings, and made ready beak and claw. So that woe betide the intruder, be he Earl of Douglas or, as aforesaid, merely the turkey cock from the stables.
What passed at that interview I do not know—that is, not such a version as can be set down in this place. For women talk differently to each other when men are out of hearing, and I suppose it is the same with writing.
But at all events it ended in this, that William would stay at Thrieve only so long as behoved him to change his wet under-garments, and take such refreshment as could be got ready by young cook A’Cormack, the son of our ancient porter of the gatehouse.
“Then,” said Maud, “Earl William will ride on to the Three Thorns, where he has somewhat to say to my father. One or two of the M‘Kim lads will guide him to Sweetheart Abbey. There he will rest what time he may before rendering himself to the king at Stirling. But, before departing, he asks that he may have the honour of bidding you good-bye! You will find him humble and of a good spirit. Certes, I have laboured your ground right faithfully for you. Go now and sow well therein!”
“I think you were overly hard upon him, Maud!” I said. For, indeed, so it had seemed to me.
Maud pouted her lips a little, and set her hands on her thighs with a defiant action she had.
“Is there aught the matter with Sholto?” she said.
“No,” I answered, “but why do you ask that?”
“What I have said to-night to William Douglas is very milk diet to what I have reared Sholto upon!” she answered. “But if you think barley water is better, try it!” The which was very well, but then Maud was like no one else in the world. Though but the wife of the Captain of Thrieve, she moved as a queen among those about her, and the power was given her to sway men and women alike.
So upon this occasion it turned out even as Maud had predicted. William Douglas met me with a chastened humility which set my heart beating with pity for him. I hated to see him brought so low by any woman, even in my own cause.
“Must you go to-night?” I said. “You know the earl’s room is always ready at Thrieve. ’Tis but seldom the sheets have been fresh-laid during these years. Stay to-night! I will serve you with mine own hands!”
But some hidden reason—the instancy of his business, his need to see the king, or that which he had to say to Sholto’s father at the Three Thorns or his brother at Sweetheart, held him firm to his purpose!
“I have asked to bid you farewell, Margaret,” he said, “because I may not have the chance of seeing you again or of saying that which must be said between us before I go hence!”
“Hush, William,” I answered, a little tremulously; “there is a God behind these things. This is not the end between us! You have gone away before, and after this time you will return again!”
“No,” he said, with a kind of smile, curiously memorable and wistful to me, making the heart wae, “not the end. For I leave you as a legacy—the best of my heritage, intact and intangible, to my brother—my brother whom you love!”
He dropped his voice at the last words, not with anger or any appeal for pity, but only with a certain grave wistfulness, like one who, having a great cellar of rare vintages, may not drink of them, being vowed a Nazarene.
“What is this you say, William?” I said, “that you will not come back? You are surely not afraid—you, the greatest man in the kingdom—you, the Earl of Douglas—you, my husband—?”
“Ah!” he said, almost as if he had groaned, “yes—I am your husband—and it is on that account that I am afraid.”
I only looked softly and inquiringly at him, to give him time. For, indeed, after the gloaming on which we sat listening to Sholto and Maud, there was no self-reproach in my mind with regard to William Douglas.
“Yes,” he repeated after me, “I am the greatest man in the kingdom. That is true. But there are many who strive for the second place. The king loves me not. I scorn him. He is but a headstrong boy with the strength of arm wherewith his great-greatest-grandsire killed Comyn. Yet, to be a Bruce, he lacks the head that knew how to win Bannockburn. Notwithstanding, he has resolved to make garden-mould of the Douglases, whereon to grow the maggots of his poor unripe brain!”
“But yet, has he not made you the Governor of Edinburgh and Lieutenant-General of Scotland?”
“Assuredly,” he smiled; “but his favour is more unstable than the swing of the sea among tide-covered rocks—rising and falling, but always deadly.”
“Then why go to Stirling at all?” I asked.
Will drew a paper from his bosom.
“There,” he said, “is a safe-conduct, under the king’s own hand and seal, with the names of all his new councillors attached as witnesses. Will you have it to curl your love-locks withal? Or, perchance, to light the kitchen fire of Thrieve? It is worth no more; no, nor the word of any Stewart! Yet go I must and will, if all that I have done is not to be undone—all the Good to fall back to the Ill, all the ancient ramping misery set its foot again on the poor folk of Scotland—those honest burghers, those hynds of the broad ploughland, those herds of the hills, whose burdens I have lightened. They look to me as their helper, their deliverer. I cannot leave them to perish.”
“And for me?” I murmured, questioning him with mine eyes.
Here William Douglas bent gently over toward me, lifted my hand and touched it with his lips, yet all reverently, as one who in church takes holy bread.
“Yes, Margaret, you,” he said; “have I not thought of you? Ever since that day my thoughts of you have been many and sore. I have come to Thrieve but seldom. For in our hearts the tides of life somehow run crossways, as in that Strait of Ireland that looks towards St. Patrick’s Port!
“Yet, all the same, according to my possible, I have loved you, Margaret—yes, and held you sacred. If it be so that I go to my death, being bound by my duty and the name we both bear—think not too unkindly of me. And if it may be, sometimes when you are happiest, stand a moment by his grave and muse of William Douglas. He has not done so ill by you.”
“Dear Will—dear cousin,” I cried, “of course I cannot choose but keep you in my heart. You are the best man in the world. There is no one like you!”
He smiled sadly, and made a little motion with his hands in the French manner as if that mattered little. For which indeed he had some excuse.
“No,” he said, “James was in the right—I wrong. I have not taken the way to get the pleasure of a man. The love of woman is not for me. I might grow old without ever having known it. But I thank God I shall never grow old. I leave to James to enter into that which I have kept for him, and to rejoice in possessing what has never been mine!”
“See, Will,” I said gently, “you are sick, and need rest. Speak no hard things to-night. Think none either of me or of yourself, and by the morning the dark spectres of your fears shall have vanished. What is it that Sir Harry says at mess?—
“ ‘Sorrow endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning!’ ”
“That may be so for you, little one,” he said softly. “God send it! But for the men of the Douglases, they are doomed—even as the Stewarts are doomed, but we of the southern house to better deaths in nobler causes!”
“Do not care for that—rest to-night, dear Will!” I pled with him. Because I had no anger against him on account of his errand, at that time knowing nothing of jealousies or unbeliefs. And besides (in his long absence) I had grown to think seldomer of James.
But William shook his head, smiling, however, to soften his denial.
“I must bear it through alone, little woman,” he said, as if to a child. “You are good to forgive—not to be angry with me,” he continued softly. “What shall be thought of the man who had an orchard enclosed, and hath not eaten the fruit of it—a garden of pleasant fruits, and hath not walked therein? And now—it is too late—it is too late!”
He walked to the door and, holding it open, shouted, “Without there!” and Andro the Penman appeared, prompt at his master’s call.
“Saddle me the grey,” he said sharply, “the Spanish stallion which the Agnew sent me from Lochnaw!”
“My lord, the snow is deepening!” said Andro pleadingly. Will Douglas made the stern little movement with his hand which, with him, signified the finality of his will. Andro bent his head and was going out. He turned, however, at the door.
“At least let me go with you,” he pleaded. “It is a terrible night. I know the ways. There may be unseen foes!”
“The more reason,” answered Will Douglas, “why you should stay and keep the castle where—my—wife—abides alone.”
The Penman went out without another word.
Then William turned to me. For the first time the eyes of the man looked into my soul. Dimly I began to see what I had lost, yet even then my soul within me would not take blame to itself. He had kept his heart from me in a locked coffer. What if, of a truth, it stood open now? But in another moment I knew that, as he had said, it was indeed too late.
I did not any more try to detain him. Yet, for all that, he did not go. He stood, shifting uncertainly from one foot to another, awkward as a village lover at a country dance—he, the master of a kingdom, the Earl of Douglas, the Lord of Galloway—my husband!
Yet even for that my heart leaped within me. For there came over me that mysterious sixth sense that is given to all women, who, from princesses to kitchen-wenches, know when it is in the heart of a man to kiss them. And this man so desired. Only—believe it who can—he knew not how to begin.
So, since I possessed neither his awkwardness nor—his simplicity, presently taking pity upon the man, kissed him of mine own accord. Lightly it was and somewhat laughingly.
That little act seemed to overturn all his calm—to send a turmoil through the strong man’s soul.
“Margaret!” he whispered hoarsely, and then again, “Margaret!”
Whereat, with a sudden anger, half at himself and half perhaps at Fate, he gripped me fiercely in his arms, holding me hard and tight, kissing me the while on hair and brow, on eyes and cheeks. Last of all he kissed me on the lips—once, twice, thrice—and was gone, without word, leaving me alone and dizzy, maintaining myself, one hand on the table of the great hall, as I listened swayingly to the clatter of his way-going.
But I heard nothing. The snow had deadened the hoof-irons of the horse, and only the blast blattered and raved more and more wildly about the towers of Thrieve—now for me grown more desolate than ever.
They brought me word. It was Laurence who came. James had sent him—not, I think, knowing—or perhaps, in his insolence of security, not caring. And what it was, I must strive to tell drily and plainly, if at all.
My husband, William Douglas, had ridden forth that night by the Three Thorns to have speech with Malise, and to ask that some of the lads should accompany him to Sweetheart.
But the ancient armourer of the Douglas house, having had his own way ever since he came into the world (or having taken it), bade saddle his own beast, saying that he alone could and would guide his lord to the abbey of Sweetheart. So to Dulce Cor they had gone both of them together, through the deadliest hurl of the storm, taking the coast road, which, though more difficult, was less likely to be blocked, because in these parts the wind blows the snow behind the boulders and out into the sea. Strange, but so it is in our Galloway.
Thence, after some secret speech with Laurence, and a rest of several hours, Will Douglas had ridden away northward to meet the king at Stirling, Malise accompanying him as far as Clyde Water, having refused to be sooner parted from his master.
And after ten days, in which I heard nothing, this was the tale which Laurence had come to tell.
“I speak in the proper name of the Lord James,” he said. “For, being little better than a monk, I am counted a safe go-between in these matters.”
Then, drily enough, as is common at such times, he told his tale.
“The Earl William rode to Stirling under the king’s safe-conduct,” so he began. “He was received with joy and feasting. After dinner, in a little private chamber apart, it chanced that there was no one with the Lord William save the king, when suddenly James Stewart drew a dagger, and having still one hand round William Douglas’s shoulder in loving fashion, struck—struck his friend to the heart, calling on his hired butchers to assist. Among them they killed him, striking long after he was dead. Sixty-seven wounds there were on the body of our dear master and lord!”
Then there seemed to rise up before me the image, erect and noble, of the husband whom I had lost. The man who was to claim me, the first being dead, had been long away. I felt his power only in presence.
But Will was dead—my dear Cousin Will. I thought of him as no other. Never would life be the same. Yet somehow I was noways surprised. It seemed now as if he had been doomed from the first. Even at Cour Cheverney and Amboise I had seen the line of death trench his brow. He had said it of himself. He was not made for life and love and pleasure—it bode that he should die young.
But to die by the hand of his king, his friend. It seemed a thing marvellous, save that I knew all the Bruces to be murderers, and all the Stewarts traitors to their own best friends. It was some time before strength was given me to ask how it happened.
“Little is known,” said Laurence, “and that only from the report of the royal spick-and-span favourites and bully butchermen of the palace. But as the story goes, the king asked the Earl William (being alone with him after dinner) to break his treaty with my Lord of Ross. Then when he would not,
showing cause, he struck at him suddenly with his dagger. This much only is vouched for. But those who speak are all the very hangman’s company, and there is no truth in them. Black and ever blacker are the lies they tell!”
“And is our lord the earl—my Cousin William—surely dead?”
“Ay, truly,” Laurence answered softly. “The Lord James sent me to tell you!”
“Had he no message?”
“None, save that after vengeance taken, he would come himself to you!”
* * * * * * *
“And now,” continued Laurence, “since my errand is done, permit me to take my leave. It is not yet the time appointed. But one day there may befall the need of a refuge for you. And then—why, the door of Sweetheart will open, and the women of God, with their sweet, pale faces, be ready to welcome you in!”
“And you, Laurence?”
“I shall not see you,” he said, almost in a whisper, “but I shall know you are there. And that will be more to me than the New Jerusalem and all the stones of its Twelve Foundations!”
Then, indeed, there were threads to draw together. Sholto came back to put the castle in its final state of defence in case of need, and to raise the folk of Galloway—also, doubtless, to be near Maud and the babes. Nor did I blame him for that.
As to what James and the Douglas brothers did in and about Stirling, that needs a page to itself. And through all Scotland ever as the bruit spread, so did also the horror! The murder of a friend by a friend—both young men—the royal safe-conduct stained with innocent blood—the unarmed guest slain by the hand of his host and despatched by his myrmidons—never was such a thing heard tell of in Scotland, or indeed scarce in the world.
And as for the things which in these latter days the king’s chronicle-makers assert against our Lord William—as anent the death of the Tutor of Bombie and the rest—I can refute all these in a word. They are but Highland lies, sired by the Stewarts and damed by their lick-spittle clerks—nothing more.
The Tutor of Bombie (hear the truth!) would have taken that poor heritage and crumbling fortalice on the sea-edge from his brother’s son, its rightful heir, a lad of ten. William Douglas being the feudal lord of both, saw that right was done and wrong put under. That is the fact, which is known to all south of St. Mary’s Loch, whose mind upon the matter was that a month in the cell of Archibald the Grim, and afterwards a stall in the abbey of Dulce Cor, were all too good for a despoiler of the widow and the orphan, like the well-served Tutor of Bombie.
And as to the gallow knob of Thrieve never wanting its tassel for fifty years, did ever mortal hear or speak such arrant lies?
Were not the Douglases noble gentlemen, dukes of the realm of France, as well as the greatest lords in Scotland? Had they not been ambassadors to Paris, to London, to Rome? Would they, then, think you, have come home to set so much carrion swinging under their own nostrils and those of their ladies in their mansion of Thrieve?
Assuredly no! The Douglas did justice; yea, and verily. But it was at the gallows’ slot of the Furbar that the scaffold was set up and the pit digged. Not within sight or sound of Thrieve, where Will Douglas conserved me like a rare Provençal rose. Only madmen and king’s witlings could conceive and pen such manifest lies. But the time came, and that soon, when to speak evil (or to invent it for others to speak) concerning a Douglas of the Black was the surest passport to the king’s favour.
But these things assuredly did William Douglas neither ill nor good, though in after time they have caused many, perhaps unwittingly, both to speak and to write the thing that was not. In the beginning, however, the story was set a-going by evil-contriving men, anxious to buy that unstable and unsatisfying mess of pottage, a king’s goodwill, with falsehoods and jealousies.
But of this, no more! All the world, which knew him, knows the man William Douglas was—the one lion among a pack of manged and verminous curs.
And in the things which befell at this time also, James Douglas bore himself stoutly and like the head of his family—though perhaps with some little of the levity which continually showed itself on grave occasions.
Instead of gathering the forces of the Douglas, as Sholto had done on a former day of trouble, and marching directly upon the traitor-king and his councillors, he must needs, with his younger brothers, spend time in taking the town of Stirling by escalade—whence, however, the King of the Bloody Hand had fled to shelter himself more safely in the castle of Edinburgh. Once established in Stirling, James Douglas extricated the hangman’s garron, the worst and most unseemly piece of living horse-flesh in the town-royal, out of its tumble-down hovel, and tying the king’s safe-conduct to its tail, dragged the seals and the royal signature of the Stewart through the mud of the streets, to be trodden on and bemired of men and beasts.
And ever as they marched, James called aloud, “Burgesses and lieges of Stirling, behold the sworn promise of your king! Who will come forth and defend it? It is the word of a liar, the word of a traitor, the word of a murderer! I, James Douglas, proclaim it so, and give the lie and defiance to every man among you!”
But instead, the wise burghers either stayed indoors, seeing as many fierce and well-armed Douglases in and about their town as there were stones in the causeway; or some (the wilder rabble of them) came forth, hooting, and voiding of gardyloo vessels upon the promise of their forsworn king, written, signed, and sealed by his own hand. Such shame was never seen in a royal city!
Yet, nevertheless, it came to pass that the weeks went by, and, though there was great indignation and many thousands of true Douglases asked no better than to be led to battle against the traitorous Stewart and his low-born crew of Crichtons and Livingstons, there was none to be a head to them. The lads, Archibald and Hugh and little John, were sent to their earldoms and dependencies in the north, thus dividing the name and clan, at a time when every Douglas should have been clambering at the feeble defences of Edinburgh town, and breaking down that castle wa’, wherein so mickle ill had been contrived and wrought upon the Douglases of the Black.
William, had he been alive, would have had the topmost tower of the foul nest about their ears in a week. Indeed, not so long before, he had taken the castle with the Crichton in it. But James, though as to his courage personal no man could doubt (for, indeed, he was ever ready and eager to prove it at all times upon any that would cross weapons with him), had yet a calculating and selfish province within his heart, though well hidden and undreamed of even by me at that time.
Nay, so much so that, mewed up in Thrieve, I longed for him to come and give me liberty. I had been a cage-bird so long—yes, let the cage be as sweetly gilded as Thrieve, and though I had with me Maud and the children, yet being born to sway the hearts of men, I longed to take again my power to me. I had proven my weapons at Cour Cheverney. I had walked unshamed at Amboise, by the side of the Dame de Beauté herself. Yet here, at Thrieve, somehow, with Maud and Sholto, and with the sight of their happiness ever before my eyes, there grew up within me a need. At first it was no more than an ache, vague, dull, and seldom-coming. Then as time went on, it grew more frequent and more acute. There was sometimes in my heart of hearts an anger and almost a malice against these wedded lovers. I grew to hate the little bairns that played upon the green (so wicked I was!)—because they were not mine. For though I pulled flowers and wove rush-baskets for them all day long, they would run like hares at the first clatter of their father’s armour or the faintest flutter of Maud’s sun-bonnet coming towards us through the trees of the wood.
I wanted—well, something I wanted. I knew not what. Perhaps to be all that to someone—to have no rival near my throne, not even a young child. To know the love of men as it is when man loves once and for all—to hear (after a time) the sweet noise of children’s voices far off, cool and pleasant in the summer silences as the sound of waters falling—to hear and to know them mine also—not Maud’s or Sholto’s, but mine. God has put these desires deep in the heart of a woman, and in comparison with such things princessdoms and dignities and successes and triumphings and the queening of it as Damosels of Beauty and chiefest among the Fair—all are as nothing. That is, for a woman who is a woman. She may learn it late, or she may learn it never. But if, unhappily, the last—then there is an ache and a pain. Something unassuaged, abiding hungry and unsatisfied in her heart, which she will carry to her grave.
Was that to be my fate? I feared it. I believed it. William Douglas was dead. Sincerely I mourned him. A friend of the graver sort, he had been to me—a councillor, faithful, just, fearless, truth-speaking even at the cost of pain, my cousin, a staff of staunchness upon my way of life—as all these I mourned him, but not as my husband. A husband—I never had a husband. I never would have one.
The ache redoubled, grew more eager, mordant, angry against all the world. I was scarce to be spoken to. And Maud, dear, sweet soul, left me to myself, dreaming that it was because of the death of my husband, and perchance some remorse that I had loved him so little. The truth was, I was wearied out. I could not be sorry any more. I longed for change—anything to take me out of myself.
It was his hour, and prompt at the hour which was his, James Douglas rode in through the gate of Thrieve.
A girl confined for years in a great house, eager of heart, rebellious against binding and prisoning Fate, seeing all about her the sort of happiness her heart craved—the very birds under the eaves an offence to her as each spring-time came round. Or, more human, Sholto and his wife with their hourly looks, facile to be interpreted, their faith in each other, their love and content, together with the wealth of children who should one day speak with the enemy in the gate! And then on the other side I, the lady of all—widow and no wife, a maid with a woman’s name—none save Maud to direct me, and I oftentimes too proud and too jealous of her happiness to be directed—surely James Douglas came in the dead ripeness of the time.
William would have ridden alone, coming in unexpectedly with white froth on his bridle reins at the close of a long day. But James, according to his nature, must needs gather his knights, lie all night at Kenmore-on-Deuch, and make a short journey to Thrieve that he might enter it for the first time as Earl of Douglas with curveting chargers and the gay flap of pennons.
He took me in that first moment (strange as death’s first certainty it seems now!). I rejoiced, as one might say, helplessly that there had come this new thing into my life, this hope which made to thrill and palpitate all my heart within me. No longer was I to be a state prisoner, with the isle of Thrieve for my prison, shut in by the drumly Dee and hidden by the green far-off Cairnsmore and the purple hills of Balmaghie—the Dornal, Lochenbreck, Barstobrick, and the rest. Pah, how I had grown to hate them!
So I ran down to meet him, forgetting (alas, that it should be so!) even my mourning for the man who was dead. James had just leaped down from his beast, turning the next moment to cry a jolly word of cheer to his men to fill themselves well with good Mistress Sholto’s best cakes and ale. Then, quite suddenly, he caught sight of me.
I was standing, somewhat affrayed, on the upper steps of the great entrance. I think, too, I shrank a little back into the gloom of the arch—for I had been so long alone and felt it strange to be in presence of so many men.
I shall never forget what James Douglas did, thus seeing me stand uncertain. He dropped bridle rein on the instant—cast his loosened helmet on the ground, to be picked up by any that wished—and with one bound I was in his arms. He held me as if I had been a little girl he had gone to the Pays du Retz to save, lifting me clear off the ground, light as a feather, and before them all kissing me cheek and chin. No wonder he fairly dazed my heart within me.
Yet when he had set me down, I drew away from him, saying in reproach, “James, that is but ill done of you—so soon!”
But James Douglas would none of my niceties as to times and seasons.
“God!” he cried, “do you think I have waited ten years for only that?—Another!”
And this time he kissed me almost fiercely and with greed. This was indeed a man of another sort from William, my cousin. But then—women are very ready to forgive this manner of love-making. Or, at least I was; and so, without a word passed or an apology to his men, we went in together.
I thought to find Maud above, but on some pretext of housewifery, and the coming of so many men to Thrieve, she had made shift to absent herself. The great hall was empty, and as soon as the arras fell over the door, and we were alone, James caught me to him again.
“At last!” he cried, with a kind of sob. And I submitted to his embrace with the same dizzy yet triumphant happiness as in the Lady’s Bower. I do not remember that I thought at all of William or of Laurence, or indeed of aught, save that I wished James Douglas to go on holding me in his arms. They were so strong and firm. Also, I did not wish to be left alone any more.
Thus it was that James Douglas came home for the first time as Earl of Douglas to his own castle of Thrieve. Or rather, to my castle; for, with William’s death, the princessdom of Galloway had returned to me, with all its dangers and all its powers.
Then again I was to experience the difference between my cousins. In such a case Will would have wearied me with talk of duties and responsibilities, “deaving” me concerning the great part I was called on to play in the world.
But James said only, over and over again, “I love you, Margaret. I have loved you all my life, and—sore against my will—I have waited these years for you. I will wait no longer.”
“But how can we be married?” I asked, holding him, as it were, for form’s sake, some time at arm’s length. It was only for a moment, and so did not alter things greatly. “We are cousins, and besides, I have been your brother’s wife. It is forbidden by the Church!”
He laughed one of his own laughs, great and boisterous. Then (a trick of his) he lifted me up by the elbows, easily as a child’s puppet, bending to kiss me at the same time.
“You have been my Lady of Douglas, have you?” he cried. “Well, if you think so, I will show you other of it, little one, and that quickly. We shall be married, never fear—good and sound—ay, and have benefit of clergy, too, archbishops, and such-like cattle. Why, there has gone already to Rome a messenger to crave a second dispensation from His Popeship, and the king himself hath signed the request, praying that you and I should graciously be permitted to wed!”
“But,” I cried, thrusting James away, “is he not a murderer, this king, the slayer of your brother? Will you have aught to say to him, save at the spear’s point?—surely never!”
And James Douglas laughed again, so that the fine glass on the corner armoire rattled.
“Ah, little Margaret,” he said, “for your sake I will e’en use James Stewart whilst I have need of him, and no longer. He is, at any rate, nothing more than a puppet that is worked with strings, and if he will help me to wed with you, shall I not pull the cord? Ay, till it breaks!”
Then I went on to speak sharply to him, still in remonstrance. “Your brother is dead,” so I told him, “slain by the hand of the man Stewart. I am but a girl, but I am a right Douglas. And rather than ask the hand and seal of one so murderous and man-sworn, I would—!”
“What would you do, little spitfire?” he said, holding me and smiling in plain masculine admiration, very disconcerting.
“I would be drowned in the castle moat!” I cried fiercely. “And hear you this, James of Douglas, I think but little of the man who takes his brother’s death so little to heart, and who, instead of rousing the Marches and putting the traitor’s head on the traitor’s chopping-block, comes hither—to—!”
“Well, little Margaret,” he said, “what is it I come to Thrieve to do?”
“To make love to your brother’s widow, instead of avenging his death!”
I meant the words to be bitterly winged, but there was something about James Douglas that took the bite out of the bitterest saying—a certain bluff, careless heartiness, which, I fear it, often veiled a very real heartlessness.
“Nay,” he answered me, not in the least put out “it was so convened betwixt us, Will and I, that day down in the meadow yonder. And I have held to it and, God knows, never seen you since—!”
“And William,” I said, “is it you think he has suffered nothing?”
James waved his hand, carelessly as ever.
“Contrariwise, much and nobly,” he said, more soberly; “fear not, I will avenge him—or I, and all my house, shall die the death! But first of all I am bound to you. To Will my brother, the house was all—you nothing. Ye have to deal with another man this day, Maid Margaret. You are first with me, who love you and shall wed you. Then by our twain loves made one, we will send the Douglas name across the world. These things are my whole soul and body. Plots, plans, dominations, pacts, my lord of this, and his majesty of that, bulk no more than my little finger when laid in the balance against the dearest woman in the world and the sweetness of her love.”
This was good talk for a girl to hear who had been so long alone and so greatly athirst for love.
And indeed, I deny it not—I asked no better than to believe him!
So for certain enchanted weeks James Douglas abode at Thrieve, as it might be written, expecting with impatience the return of the ambassador from Rome. So that to me, more and more every morning, the life of William Douglas seemed as something which had never been—the ruffle of summer airs which grip for a moment the blue waters of Dee when the wind blows blithely from the north, as the flecked cloudlets of sunrise that melt into the wide blue of the highest heavens and are seen no more.