It was on an evening mild and sweet as only (and rarely) late June affords, that Sholto and Maud had taken me out through the great gate of Thrieve, a little way across the isle, to breathe the fresh air, scented with the gorse and broom of the opposite Balmaghie shores and the more memorable fragrance of the white thorns. Which last struck my heart with a pang to think of the little house at Carlinwark, under its three sheltering thorns, all desolate—the love of generations turned to hate, honourable service to embattled enmity, even my Laurence biding his time to strike—only Sholto with me—and Maud. Yet I blessed God for these. Maud’s gentle arm it was which supported me as I tottered towards the ford, turning to watch the grey old castle of the Douglases stand up against the orange hand’s-breadth of evening light in the west, and to drink in the mild coolness of that midsummer season when in Scotland the sun stays out of bed till within three hours of midnight.
The three of us stood talking of this and that—of the fierce fighting about the castle of Abercorn, of which Sholto had gotten private word, of the Lindsays and the Crawfords, Maud’s highland kin, who were hard at it fighting for the Douglas in the north—chiefly, as she herself allowed, because their enemy Huntly was of the king’s party. And in especial we spoke of the tide of war that ever seemed to be driving nearer and nearer to us in our high and strong fortalice of Thrieve, the ultimate and natural stronghold of the Douglas race.
But, as always, Sholto and Maud strove to draw me from the subject, telling me of the children, of their sweet sayings and brave doings—how that Marcelle could read Latin as well as any Mess John—almost, indeed, as well as Laurence himself—how the twins fought fierce battles, for which their mother did soundly thwack them, but which she blamed their father with secretly encouraging—of gentle Ulric and David of the sturdy legs, just beginning to be a care as they carried him to the dangerous pool-edges of Dee and dark peaty deeps of the castle ditch.
But for me, though I knew their loving meaning, all would not do. It was the first time I had seen Thrieve thus, as it were from without—the place where I had loved and given myself without reserve, the place where I had been heartbroken! And there, beyond, clear upon its guarding ridge (on which the sun was spending his last beams), was the place where he lay, the son of one earl, the name-child of another greater and truer—yet (let me say it) one not easier to love.
And as I looked this way and that, it seemed as if the old dimming smoke began to rise out of the east, behind Carlinwark and Kelton, spreading south till the bold ridge of Ben Gairn melted behind it. Whirling and circling it came, like a dust-storm wind-driven along a road by which many horsemen have passed hasting to battle.
Yet was there one thing strange to me. The smoke was no longer, as formerly, black, like the reek of hell. But rather of a purplish colour, like the ascending incense of some sacred service in a great cathedral, such as I had seen in France, at Chartres, at Orleans, and in the long solemn aisles of Notre Dame.
All the same it was there without a doubt, whirling dun across the green fields, masking the clear compassing waters, and even (so it appeared to me) making my eyes smart with some bitter odour in the nostrils. Yet Sholto and Maud prattled on all unconscious, which, when I had observed, I knew that the appearance was solely for me, sent for my sake, perhaps because of the wickedness and lack of forgiveness I had been cherishing in my heart.
The sun sank swiftly, as if pulled under out of the way, like a child’s puppet of which its owner has grown tired. There was a fear on me, and I wished it to remain above the horizon, so that it might be day. Yet it would not bide a moment longer for all my wishing, but with one great seven-league bound the twilight strode across the earth. There was an after-glowing of sunset—I could see, but all made dim and misty for me by that strange upboiling of purple spume.
Nevertheless, I knew the thing existed not at all save in my own head. But all the same I saw it, and its acrid bite (as of fresh-spilt blood) stung my nostrils.
“God out of His quiet heaven help poor harassed, thrice-driven, tormented Margaret Douglas!” I prayed deep down in my heart’s heart. “Why are all these things heaped on a girl like me? Surely there are backs more stout for the burden? Surely sins more sinful than mine to be expiated? Why is this also laid on me?”
And yet in some wise it was merciful. The veiling mist was also on my spirit, whirling and benumbing. If I had been possessed of my old easy, careless sanity, I could not have borne that which was about to befall me.
“Come your ways home, Margaret. It grows late. The dews begin to fall!” said Maud gently. And on the other side her husband drew nearer me till he could touch my shoulder and waist. I know now that he only waited Maud’s signal to take me in his arms and carry me within, even as he would have done for Marcelle or little Ulric if they had gotten a hurt at play upon the leas.
For so was I cared for in those days—love striving vainly by easements of the body to minister to the deeper hurts of my soul.
But as I looked towards the fords of Dee there came upon me overwhelmingly the feeling that Something or Someone was approaching by way of the Hiding Hill—coming on my account, too. I could not see. The purple mist boiled and tossed tempestuously before my eyes, so that even Sholto and Maud seemed to dissolve and resolve, alternate, to pass and change even when I gripped them by the arms.
“There—there! It comes—yonder!” I whispered, “down the Hiding Hill! I can see it pass Earl William’s rock, where he used to turn and kiss his hand! Do you not see it, Maud? Do you not see it, Sholto?”
But Maud made answer only, “I see nothing, dearest. It is but your overwrought fancy. Come within! It waxes chill. Take her up, Sholto!”
But Sholto, with the soldier’s ear, quickened to catch far-off sounds, moved his hand slightly.
“Hush, Maud,” he murmured, “perhaps our dear lady is right. It seems that I do hear something; wait but one minute!”
But I, for whom IT came, could both hear and see clearly, in spite of that false boiling mist that was in my head, or behind the pupils of my eyes.
“It is coming,” I cried. “Yonder, Maud!”
I pointed with my hand.
“Do you not see it?” I almost screamed in terror. “Yonder—by the blasted thorn tree on the nether slope. It is shaped like a giant, all dark, and rides on a white horse tached with blood. Ah, let us go in now. I fear! I fear! Take me! Keep me! Let It not come near!”
Maud caught me in her arms; at the same moment, as if by instinct, Sholto drew his sword and advanced a pace in front of us.
“Stand back, Sholto!” I cried in yet deadlier terror, “out of the way, for Maudie’s sake and that of the babes! Why should you also die? It is no mortal born of mortal, I tell you, but Death riding on his pale horse! And he comes for me—for me. Let me go, Maud. Let me go! I am stronger now. I had fear—I own it—foolish fear. But it is past now. I am glad, glad! I shall see my babe—oh, let me go!”
And but for Maud’s strong arm thrown about me, I would have run forward to meet and welcome That which was coming toward me, through the dark waters of the ford.
As for Sholto, he stood still in the way, his sword ready in his hand. And the figure, looming huge and dark through the blinding smother of the reek and the gathering dark, came splashing through the ford. I strove to cry out, but my tongue clave instead, stick-dry, to the roof of my mouth.
But Sholto, duty making him strong, hailed the intruder like a sentinel on duty, “Who comes to Thrieve so late? Stand still, or reckon with Sholto M‘Kim!”
But the tall shape came on, wordless, making no answer—incognisant, as it were, of mortal speech, reckless of mortal threat, careless of life or death.
Through the gloom it loomed up like a man in dark armour—as, indeed, I had seen long ago—a man riding on a white horse, all splashed and furrowed with running blood, some dried and dark, some as if it had oozed fresh from between the joints of armour.
Figure liker unto Death on his pale horse with Hell following after, saw no man ever any. But even as on the night when I saw the Star I was miraculously sustained, so now in some measure the eddying mist surged less dense and dun, thinning out so that by turning my head I could see, as it were, a little to right and left, though not yet evenly before me.
Out of the river, up the steep and stony bank, climbed the vision. But not noiselessly—far otherwise indeed. At Thrieve they heard the horse snorting as it made the last spring to land, and the rattle of accoutrement as the driver swayed on the saddle.
The white horse, its red splatches but little cleansed by the water of the ford, now stood trembling in every limb. The Rider, helmless and pallid, sat silent as if dumb and unconscious—Death himself not more awful!
“Keep us, God in His heaven, lest our eyes be blasted!” I tried to murmur.
But the sword of Sholto M‘Kim clattered from his hand upon the shingle of the water edge.
“Help me,” he cried, “it is James Douglas—come home to Thrieve alone, wounded, stricken unto death!”
* * * * * * *
Ay, truly, it was James Douglas, all incarnadine with the blood of battle, his own and that which his right arm had shed. His splintered sword was glued to his hand, the finely netted reins were slashed and cut. His good horse had found its way to Thrieve wholly of its own accord, for its master was far past speech or guiding motion. How he had sustained himself through the dumb agonies of that ride God only knows; for James Douglas, who did the deed, could not tell, and, indeed, never knew.
Without a glance at me, without a moment of hesitation, Sholto received his master into his arms, laid him bareheaded in his hacked mail upon the grass, sprinkled the clear water of the river upon him, while Maud gently disengaged the englued hilt and shattered blade from his wounded right hand.
At the first sight of him the revolt of an intolerable disgust seemed to engulf my spirit. The reek swirled thicker, more blinding. Acrid, hateful odours swept across me in the dun, drifting spume. For one awful moment I felt that I could take his own knife and slay James Douglas as he lay there—that is, if he were not dead already.
The next, clear and lambent against the last vestige of the sunset, glowed the kirk-ridge so dear to me, that little kirk aboon Dee water where our baby lay. There leaped a prayer up into my heart—
“Forgive us our trespasses as we also forgive those who have trespassed against us!”
And, stooping, I kissed his brow, in token that I also was not outside the forgiveness of God. Ere, however, my lips touched his flesh, there came to me a pang of the old recoiling. I stopped, quivering. For a moment my heart hung uncertain. Then, seeing a lock of hair cling dankly to his broad white forehead, I kissed that hastily, and stood erect.
Then the very peace of God seemed to visit me. The pale gold of a saints aureole glowed behind the little kirk where the babe rested beneath the altar, under the coffer which holds the holy bread.
Then as they bore him in, speechless, gashed out of all cognisance, on the bier which Sholto had hastily caused them make out of bridge-spars and birchen branches, I walked beside. And a Voice seemed to cry in my ear, “Better than blood spilt—better than vengeance achieved—better than just hatred justly pursued, is the forgiving of sins—for love’s sake—for Christ’s sake!”
* * * * * * *
Yet James Douglas was not dead—no, nor yet even wounded to the death. He had fought a great fight somewhere or somehow. More than that there was none to us, as for ten hours he lay unconscious between death and life. But Sholto, who was, among other things, a cunning leech (so far at least as the wounds and contusions of battle were concerned), faithfully cared for his master with Maud at his elbow, holding lukewarm water in a bowl, and a bundle of seventeen-hundred linen torn into the finest shreds. Me they would not permit to do anything for James—though God knows they might with all safety. For I had overcome that which had been making a canker of my heart. Hatred should no more have dominion over me.
Still, Sholto could not be expected to know that, though Maud Lindsay ought. So I waited, still and patient, while they dressed the wounds. There was a terrible gash across his head, where his helmet had been broken by the blow of some mighty sword. When this was dressed Sholto turned his attention to the nobly formed white body of him, moistening and washing away the stains of battle in the clear, soft Dee water with the shredded bunch of fine linen. Then at the place where the gorget fits upon the shoulder blade, between that and the junction with the body armour, Sholto, gently softening and touching, came upon something hard, driven in forcefully against the shoulder blade.
With minute skill and caution he worked it out, when, lo! the point of a pike appeared, or perhaps the broken tip of a Lochaber axe.
Sholto looked at the fragment attentively.
“That is my father’s own weapon!” he said, gravely and softly.
“God help us all, what, then, hath befallen?” I cried.
He held in his hand the steel splinter, shaped to a point with a curious swirl like a half-filled spindle of yarn, quite distinctive and peculiar.
“I know my father’s forging and his private mark under the peak,” he answered me. “It was Malise M‘Kim who drave that stroke which came near to slay James Douglas!”
And, as if responsive to the power of the name of his adversary, the wounded man on the bed turned as if pain-twitched, opened his eyes without seeing any of us who were in the room, and equally without knowing where he was. He jerked his bandaged hand upwards stiffly.
“Come and fight with me, Malise M‘Kim,” he cried, “to the death—to the death-grip let it be! Let no man come between!”
Then, as he lay tossing, he cried again, “Lead her off the field, I tell you! Take her to sanctuary—Archie, Hugh, little John, do you hear? I am the Douglas! Do as I bid you!”
We looked at one another in wonderment. This was a riddle we could not unravel.
“Either the sword-stroke on the brain or the axe-point in his shoulder hath touched his reason,” whispered Sholto M‘Kim. “His mind wanders!”
“Not so,” said Maud Lindsay; “give him a sleeping draught, bind up his wounds with a plaister of healing herbs, and to-morrow we shall know.”
“Let me watch by his bedside,” I said beseechingly to Maud. But this they would not permit, saying that with so strong a man, and one so sore wounded, nursing was strong men’s work. However, being well aware that I would sleep none, I caused Sholto to promise that if there was any change, or any return to consciousness, he would call me. If he were yet alive, and the reason left in him, I had a question to ask of James Douglas.
* * * * * * *
He slept all that night, and (Sholto refraining from calling me) I slept also, though heavily and without refreshment. I was waiting, I suppose, and felt the suspense even in my dreams.
Late in the evening of the next day Sholto came to my room and knocked. I had stayed there all day behind closed bars. Maud and her husband in the sick chamber did not need me. The babes, with their innocent chatter, would have fretted me beyond bearing.
“My Lady Margaret,” said Sholto, “for a time at least the Earl James is returned to himself. His desire is to see you.”
The young captain of Thrieve spoke with much dignity, almost officially indeed, as if washing his hands of any responsibility in the matter.
“I will come to my lord!” I answered him, as curtly. And forthwith made me ready.
The chamber in which James Douglas lay, swathed white in manifold bandages, was darkened. As I entered, Maud rose to go out. But I stopped her.
“Abide, dear friends both,” I said. “Henceforth what my Lord James says to me, he says equally to you!”
But when James Douglas turned upon me his eyes, bright with fever, pain-stricken and pitiful, my heart, wavering, well-nigh melted within me. But there was my question to ask. He murmured something of which none of us could catch the meaning.
“He is just awaking!” whispered Sholto. “By and by it will come clearer.”
James Douglas motioned me to sit down beside him. The bandaged hand in fitful motion again looked wondrously pitiful. But there was the question. I bent towards him. His burning eyes dimmed as if the reek had drifted across them again.
“Where is she?” I whispered. These words and no more.
He did not affect to misunderstand. He knew.
“She is dead!” he murmured.
I stood erect with a strange buzzing in my ears. Behind me I could hear Maud’s sudden gasping moan. Then Sholto’s “Thank God!” half fierce, half heart-breaking.
But once more James was gone from us, his spirit again eclipsed. As a drowning man comes to the surface to wave a farewell, so his soul seemed to have floated up merely to give me this one signal. But Sholto knew better.
“A cup of that white wine, the Burgundian, Maud—quick, I tell you!” he said, in an agitated whisper.
His strong arm went about his master. It lifted him gradually till James was half raised from his couch. He moaned a little, the new position changing the set of his wounds.
“Drink, my lord, drink!” said Sholto, loud in his ear. And at the word the spirit, far-wandering, or perhaps lingering near, heard and returned. James Douglas drank. In a little while he opened his eyes and found me sitting by the bed, at the foot. For Maud and Sholto were to keep the head on either side, to be ready to render service, they said.
“I—have—come! I—alone of all!” he said, slowly and painfully. “We are broken, destroyed, we Douglases—swept from the face of the earth!”
As he went on to speak the wine began to put in its work. A faint flush dusked his cheek. He lifted his hand to give emphasis.
“The Red Douglas hath put down the Black!” he went on more forcibly. “Even as He hath dealt with me, may God deal with the traitor Douglases—George of Angus and his cousin Dalkeith, who have turned against their father’s house!”
Sholto bent over him, forcing him gently back on the pillow.
“Hush, my lord,” he whispered. “Who talks of the Douglas of the Black being put down while Thrieve Castle stands, and Sholto M‘Kim is the captain thereof?”
For the first time James seemed to recognise him. Again he started up on his elbow.
“God curse you, Sholto M‘Kim! What do you here?” he cried fiercely. “Am I then in the hands of yet more traitors? Have I come home to die, only to find Thrieve in the hands of mine enemy?”
At this came a look of his father upon the face of Sholto M‘Kim, the first I had ever seen there.
“My lord,” he said, “I am no traitor, neither am I a friend of James Douglas. But so long as the Lady Margaret remains in this her castle, I will remain to defend it. I am her servant. According to her sole word I will come and go.”
“Then you have separated yourself from your family in this matter, Sholto M‘Kim?” demanded James, wondering, perhaps, at something too high for him to comprehend.
Sholto bowed. It appeared no matter of credit to him. He did not wish to waste words; but James Douglas persisted.
“Are you then for me or against me?” he cried, again raising himself on his elbow. “I bid you tell me!”
“Neither for you nor yet against you,” answered Sholto, with swift decision. “I am for my liege lady, my dear mistress, in all things. In that in which she is for you, I and mine are for you. In that wherein she is against you, I am against you!”
“But when the besiegers come to Thrieve, as they surely will, on which side will you fight?”
“For whomsoever my lady wills,” answered Sholto. “I am her buckler, so long as she hath need of me. But if I go forth to battle, fear not any treachery. My father will smite me even as he hath smitten you—only more sure and to the death! He hath sworn, and I accepted his oath!”
The face of James Douglas darkened.
“Then you know?” he cried; “you have heard the tale of Arkinholm?”
We looked at one another, and James Douglas looked at us. It was the first time we had heard that name of fear and fate. Our countenances answered for us.
“No, you are true folk,” he said, “you have not heard.”
He heaved himself up with a certain pride.
“Now,” he said firmly, “I can sit up and tell you. There is no shame—in that!” He added the last words as if recollecting himself.
“I have the strength—give me another cup of wine. I am drained to the white like any calf. There! Now I can speak of Arkinholm, and tell how the Douglases of the Black can die!”
This is James Douglas’s story of the last stand made by the Douglases of the Black, on the green river crofts of Arkinholm, by the Esk water, in Annandale.
“No—I bid you not to touch me, Margaret. Not now—I am not worthy. I am a man of fibre too coarse for you or any woman like you. Maud Lindsay there should draw aside from me her garment’s hem. She should take away her little Marcelle from off the green down there, lest these eyes should light upon her unseemly, this breath of mine defile the pure air she breathes!
“But with men it is other. With men I can speak face to face, and, if need be, hand to hand. To them I am answerable. I have answered, and I will answer again!
“But it was of Arkinholm that I would speak. Not long time I have, lest my wounds break out afresh, or the wheels in my head whirl backwards again. You have heard, you must have heard, how we were beaten in the north—how Douglas Castle, Lochindorb, and Abercorn were taken one by one. The lads fought hard and well—ay, like Douglases and men—while I, in England, was striving to get the king to help me retake my castles and enter again upon that which was mine own.
“But Henry of Lancaster, being the man he is, could not be satisfied to render a gentleman service and take therefor the consideration of a gentleman.
“He sat niffering and argle-bargling with James Douglas as if he had been a Crichton or some other dyke-side vermin. I must, forsooth, so he said, give him the pick of my castles to set English garrisons in. I must surrender the Border peels, the Annandale holds, Avondale, Douglasdale, Eskdale—last, and chiefest, Thrieve… that they might be filled to the brim with English pock-puddings, drinking beer, twanging bows, and calling us no better than lowsy Scots and rough-footed rievers!
“ ‘Your Majesty,’ so I answered the poor silly Henry, who had Somerset standing behind to prompt him, ‘you mistake your man, my Lord of England. I am a Douglas, and though to go back to my own country alone is surely to die, I would rather die with all my house—I would rather see, of all my castles and fortresses, not one stone left upon another—than that any soldier of England should hold one foot of Scottish soil!’
“Then I saw Somerset smile meaningly, as one would say, ‘What do you here, then?’ And him I answered, ‘If my Lord of Somerset will come out with me into the fields for half an hour, I will better inform him as to the exactitude of my meaning.’
“So I came back to Annandale and summoned my brothers to meet me at the Johnstone’s Tower. They came from Douglasdale, from Straven, and the north—those that were true—my brothers, every man of them, Archibald of Murray, and Hugh of Ormond, and staunch little John. Not one was awanting!”
“And why?” said Sholto, his voice of a sudden net and dry, as the rattling of castanets, “why did not your lordship summon your men from Thrieve? Were any that came with your brothers better soldiers than the five hundred you have here?”
At this the face of James Douglas paled and flushed alternate. Sholto watched him closely, and not Sholto alone.
“Because,” he said at last, turning in his bed with a grimace of pain, “it was a far cry—and I knew not”—
“Nay,” said Sholto, “it was not so far as to Avondale—not so far as to Moray—not so far as to Wigton. Tell me why you sent not the gathering cry to Thrieve, my lord earl?”
But it was a man who questioned James Douglas, and at the anger in Sholto’s voice the sick man gathered himself, tossing his head like the war-horse that scents the battle from afar. I think for the moment he had quite forgotten me. He answered as he might have answered Malise M‘Kim. For of courage of that kind James Douglas had no lack.
“Your sister was with me!” he said briefly.
“I thought you said she was dead, and I thanked God, my lord earl,” returned Sholto, with further challenge in his voice.
James moved his hand feebly.
“Ah, for such speech betwixt you and me, my good Sir Sholto, you must e’en wait some while. I have discussed the matter with one of your house already. As he left me, I am not yet ready for the next!”
“But,” said Sholto, more gently, “as I understood your first spoken words—Magdalen, my sister, was dead.”
Again the unwounded left hand moved with a kind of deprecation, not unpitiful.
“Abide,” he said, with a sigh of weariness; “I will tell you all—Where was I when—when you garred me think—of—her?”
I sat at the bed-foot listening in a strange quiet. It seemed to be of another woman’s concerns that I was hearing. My heart, as it were, had grown numb and frozen, tingling too, but not with pain—more as if in sympathy with the pain of some other. I was listening to a tale such as I had heard when the troubadours came and sang to ladies at the broidery in dear sunny France, or in Scotland when a minstrel wandering to Thrieve stood below the salt, chanting his dolorous ditty and thawing the icicles out of his beard with the mulled wine.
“Ah,” said Sholto, “tell on, then, my lord—that is, when you can—when you will. We can await your pleasure.”
“A cup of Burgundy!” cried James again. “Nay, let me have it; it will do me no harm. I tell you, man, there is no blood left in me. Ah, that warms! Ill for the fever of the wounds, you say? Nay, Sir Sholto, and if it were—why, what great matter? The sooner under sod—where”—
Sholto poured another full tankard of the wine of Nuits. The earl drank it at a draught, as in old days, flinging his head up to take the strong vintage down, and dusting the drops from his short crisp beard with something of his old careless grace.
“Ah,” he said, “that finds its way to a man’s heart, even if it makes the blood to flow and the green wounds to pinch somewhat shrewdly. Now I can tell you all, and after I have told you, Sir Sholto, I will beseech you, as King Saul did his armour-bearer, that he might slay him with his own sword.”
“I was never your armour-bearer, my lord earl,” said Sholto, “but (as I think) already a knight when first we met. Yet it is recalled to me that when his armour-bearer refused, Saul did more and better!”
“As to that, we shall see,” said James. “They fought for me, these true brothers, and are dead! One by one they fell, and I—am alive in Thrieve! Yet I have never yet been called coward. Only, when all was lost, when Arkinholm was black with dead bodies scattered among the crushed daisies and dimpled among the green grass, when Esk water ran red, and the Douglases were broken—then, wending my way out of the press, my horse brought me hither knowing nothing. Tell me how I came, Sholto! I would know.”
“Why, like yourself, my lord earl,” said Sholto, who, being a man, liked a man to be manlike, “your sword broken in your hand, reeling in your saddle, wounded as it seemed unto the death, the steel point that smote you still in your shoulder. Thus did you come home to Thrieve!”
The Lord James sighed a sigh of content. It was his form of conscience, and so far he was satisfied. He lay for a while with his eyes closed. Then suddenly, and as if seeing a vision, he brake out, his voice stronger than before—
“They came as I tell you—Archibald from the north, and with him Hugh, who had threshed the Percies at Sark as corn is threshed in a barn. From Wigton came little John—all with their men behind them. As for me, I came from England, and brought with me but one—and she a woman!
“Nay, sit still, and hear it this once, Margaret! Perhaps after that you may be in better case to forgive. At any rate, hear it now!
“I would have left her in sanctuary in England, and did so at Carlisle. Yet stay behind she would not, but followed after—ay, even to Arkinholm, to the last muster of the Douglases of the Black. I begged of my brothers, Archie and Hughie and little John, to take her again to sanctuary. But she gat them on her side, being determined to abide with the host.
“In the strath of the Esk they closed upon us, trapping us on either side—Douglases to take Douglases—George of Angus on one flank and Dalkeith on the other. They had the king’s men with them too—Crichtons and Stewarts and men without name or holding, every cur that could yelp or snap—any jackal which, turning, could set his teeth in the lion at bay. Gordons, too, were there—Huntly’s men, come to avenge their defeat at the hands of Mistress Maud’s kinsfolk in the marsh of Dunkinty. And as we saw their highland plaids we sang this lilt—
‘Where left thou thy men, thou Gordon so gay?
In the Bog of Dunkinty, mowing the hay!’
“But they came more and more, like swarms of wasps from a thousand nests, from north and east and west. They hemmed us in. And when we went to count our array, lo! false Hamilton was off in the dusk of the evening, gone to make his peace with the king, taking with him a full third of our men!
“For that which followed I blame only myself. If I had been as good a general as I am a man of my hands in the day of battle, we might have burst through them all. But though Archie urged, and Hughie and little John added thereto, I would not budge. Because she was with us, and in the rough and tumble of the fray. Well, enough said! We abode where we were, and about us the ring of foes thickened every hour, waiting for the dawn and the trump of battle.
“The worst was that the pick of these men there were of our name and family, Douglases led on by Douglases. But I warrant you George of Angus strove for no occasions of converse with me that day. Dalkeith fought like a man, but Angus lurked behind the troops—because, forsooth, he was the general. Stratagem, you call it. When I fought in France by the side of the young Dunois we had another word for such generalship.
“Hand to hand, is James Douglas’s mind on’t. Lay on—no lack—the ringing steel and plenty of it—as indeed I gat that day a bellyful of from your father.
“So then we had to lay our arms on Arkinholm, with one you know of in the midst, chanting snatches of song and wild rattling catches of which Hughie had great store. But Magdal—she, that is, for whose sake we awaited our fates on those wide holms by the Esk, besought us with tears to get to our prayers instead of singing such words.
“But wild Hughie cried out that as the Douglases had lived so they had better die.
“ ‘What came after all of our own Will’s niceness with womankind?’ he cried, ‘his conscience fine as a threaded needle? Ask the little back window in Stirling that overlooks the ladies’ court. What was the end of Cousin Will’s devotion and single-heart service to his love and his lady? The Black Bull’s head on the board of Edinburgh Castle will answer you that.’
“ ‘Hush, Hughie,’ I bade him, under my breath; ‘mind whom we have with us, or I will break that addle-pate of thine!’
“ ‘Break it and welcome, Jamie,’ he retorted; ‘as well you as another. ’Tis you have broken us all. Up in the host yonder is one Malise M‘Kim and his seven sons with him’ (there were but six, but Hughie knew not that you, Sholto, abode in Thrieve). ‘And doubt not that he who has made the armour for generations of Douglases, who has tempered the steel we fight with, and hammered the armour that covers us, will to-morrow send us all four to gather the green birk and the yellow by the banks of Jordan’s river!’
[This, to a turn, was Hugh Douglas’s wild way of speaking. We could almost hear him as his brother spoke.]
“Then at these words she started up.
“ ‘I will go to him,’ she cried. ‘I will beg of Malise M‘Kim to slay me, me only, and to let James go free. In bitterness I will tell him my fault. Let me go. I will seek my father! You have no right to restrain me, Hugh of Ormond!’
“ ‘Lie you still, lassie,’ said Hughie, who, indeed, meant no unkindness, ‘lie you still where ye are. Jamie may chance to save you the morn’s morning, but ye will never save Jamie. He hath tripped us all up by this day’s wark.’
“Then, fearing to hurt me, his brother, he added quickly, ‘No’ that deil yin o’ us is fit to better anither—except only Will, and Will’s dead. Aweel, here we be four Douglases of us, brothers, sons of one father and of one mother. I fear we are but rough colts, and when we die we will go where they do not sing many psalms or play muckle upon instruments of ten strings. But this virtue at least we have. We blame Jamie no more than we blame oursels. We will stand to Jamie’s quarrel and die the death for Jamie—ay, and for the puir bit lass here! Nay, bide ye still, Magdalen; we will not let ye gang to your death, gin we can help it, my bairn. Stand up, Archie! Stand up, little John! Stand up, Jamie—that has the most need! Hands about—this lassie-bairn in the midst! There!’
“Even as he said, so we did. He went on—
“ ‘Now we hae nae priest. Nane o’ us hae tormented Him-Up-Yonder wi’ mony supplications. Therefore He is like to hear this last yin the readier. Join hands and say after me, “Tak’ pennyworths o’ us, guid Lord, but save an’ forgie the lassie. She is but a bairn.” What are ye greetin’ for, Jamie? Ye should hae ta’en thocht on that afore! Noo, after me, ilka yin o’ ye, say Hughie Douglas’s prayer—his first, last, and only—
“ ‘Tak’ ye pennyworths o’ us, guid Lord, but save the lassie, and oh, forgie her. For, kennin’ what is in man, brawly ye ken it’s no’ her faut!’ ”
“After that we chaunted no more wild songs, but lay still all the night till the greying of the day. Once we heard, as it were, the sound of a great voice on the heights cursing us, in words that carried far.
“We knew it for the voice of Malise M‘Kim, and looked at Magdalen. But she seemed in a kind of daze, as if she kenned not that or anything.
“It was in the earliest morning that they attacked. We were posted on a little hill, the top of it plain and clear, but the sloping sides overgrown and cumbered over with whin and broom. From the east the light had begun to ooze up grey and chill. It was no ground for the manœuvring of horses. Knowing our weakness in numbers, we had chosen it accordingly. So with her in the midst, and I know not what strange thoughts in our hearts, we waited.
“It was about the third hour when they came at us on all sides with a rush and much crying, shrill as are the east-country winds in Angus and the Lowdens. Our archers, all Border men, had good cover to shoot from, and thick and fast they sent their arrows into the swarm. Then arose shouts of encouragement and cries of pain.
“ ‘Aim at the horses of the knights!’ cried Hughie, who saw a chance.
“And so for a time they did, and brought many to the ground. So we held to it while the east pearled and we could see the faces of our neighbours.
“At first it seemed as if Hughie’s good advice might turn the day; because the horses of the Angus men and of the Guard Royal, refusing the hill and stung by the shafts from the long bows and the quarrels of the crossbowmen, turned tail from the attack. It was not the knights or mounted men who put us down at Arkinholm, but the lithe and swarming footmen who came leaping with pikes and leathern jacks to the hand-in-hand encounter.
“So blind were we on the hill-top that we set up a cheer, looking across the level straths and holms of the Esk water upon the retreating horsemen, and giving little attention to a great company of men on foot armed with pikes and swords who came to take us in the rear, by the way that is called the Way of the Sea.
“It was, indeed, Magdalen who first gave the warning that they were close upon us. Malise M‘Kim led them, and at the same moment, from every quarter of the heaven, the assailants swarmed about. They pushed through the green bracken of the brae-foot, up the side that looks toward the hill called Burnswark. They ascended swiftly, clambering through the tangle of birchen scrub and scroggy thorn. They leaped the prickled hedges of gorse, and raced across the last thirty yards of turf, men falling at every step, stricken by the bolts from our bows or transfixed by the clothyards shot by the men from the Marches. Another moment and they were upon us.
“Then a great misfortune befell. Our archers, who were men unskilled with the sword, and loving not at all to fight hand to hand, broke and fled down the hill, some flinging themselves headlong into the Esk, and some trying the wildernesses towards the swamps of Lochar.
“But all was not yet lost. As quickly as we fell, so quickly we closed the ranks. The gaps filled, and we Douglases of the Black stood steady shoulder to shoulder. Could I have been sure that she was safe behind me, and would be content to bide there, I had even known a sort of gladness. For ever since I was a boy I have loved the crash of steel on steel. But in leaving my charger tethered, I had foregone some part of my advantage. For, like Sholto there, I am ever best when the lances are in rest and the visors down. But at Arkinholm that could not be. We were too few, and, if anything, our position must fight for us. Save Hughie’s prayer that He might keep the lass, we prayed no prayers to God. Hard had we lived, we Douglases of the Black, we would die hard, asking no favours, making no whining at the last, but taking without complaining that which was served out.
“And we gat it. Ah, lads, we gat it that day! Yet strange are the ways of Fate. Here lie I with many wounds truly and a broken head, but still—alive, who alone deserved to die—the sin being mine own—the fault, the condemnation. There is, I wot, more at the back of God’s justice than the priests dream of. Perhaps it had been better if I had died.
“But at Arkinholm fierce and always fiercer waxed the fight. Ten times we sent them reeling down the hill, spite of Malise and his sons. The sun rose. It looked on a trampled swelter of whins, on grass meadows delved in the soft places as with spades. Black patches there were here and there on the green turf, almost a wall of them in front of our array. These were dead men.
“But still there was no break. We stood shoulder to shoulder about the little clump of trees on the uttermost top. Beneath, far as we could see, swarmed the hosts of the enemy. They debouched out of little ravines on the sides of barren hills. They appeared like so many wild fowl out of the marshes of Lochar. Over the ridge out of the vale of Annan water they climbed. There seemed to be no end to their coming.
“ ‘Lads, we are sped!’ cried Archie, after a while. He was not of a sounding witty speech like Hughie, but his heart was staunch, and (as they all did) he held his faith to the end.
“It was in a little breathing space when the foe stood still to gather strength and let their reserves come up. Ten-o’-the-knock it was, and we had been at it since three-and-a-bittock of the morning, hard as drums a-beating.
“We stood together a little apart, we four Douglases. None whom we had there could we trust—we who a year ago could have whistled up two thousand men, all belted knights with squires at their heels.
“ ‘Hearken to me,’ said Archie the silent (Earl of Murray he was, and a good man!), ‘we are to die. So much is clear, good lads all! Counter me, any of you, if you can make other of it!’
“But none answered, for indeed no better was to be made.
“ ‘So,’ he said, ‘you agree. Then the best we can do is to die like Douglases, for our house and our honour—what is left of it!’
“That was the one thing of bitter that he said, and then in a moment he made it up again, as was ever our fashion in quarrels between ourselves.
“ ‘See, lads,’ he continued, ‘you, Hughie—and you, little John—neither Murray, nor Ormond, nor Balveny shall see us any more. Our sweethearts shall not kiss us, nor we them. We shall never walk with them at morn or e’en, nor pluck the pink and the gillyflower to set in their waist-belts. But as for James, he is the head of the house—the Earl of Douglas. Moreover, he hath what we have not—another with him here. Well, give good ear—his beast is in the thicket there in the midst of the array. Let the charger be saddled and prepared. Let him ride light. Let him take the lass up behind him with her arms about his waist, that his hand may be free for the fighting, which shall be brisk. Then we, that are his brethren, will see him safe through the thickest of it. We there shall die. So much is sure. We may as well die doing the best for the house. When they come again, will you help me to save the chief? What say you, Hughie?’
“ ‘Ay to that!’ quoth Hughie.
“ ‘And ay!’ quoth little John.
“But I cried out that we should all die together. But Magdalen—she who had followed me there—said no word. For though (as you shall speedily know) she cared naught for her own life, she desired that I should be spared to win through.
“It was not, perhaps, the kindest wish—but that is the way of women.
“So they four overbore me, and the beast was saddled to be ready.
“Then Archie spoke to the Douglas men who were with me.
“ ‘The enemy will come again, and that speedily,’ he said. ‘We four will drive straight into the thickest of them, if so be we can save the chief. Bide you here. Give us five minutes’ grace to hold the pursuers in check. Then scatter, and every man for himself! Your best chances are the marches of Solway and the hags of Lochar. Will you do it?’
“ ‘Can we no’ thresh them yet, think ye, Maister Airchie?’ cried one from the ranks in the broad accent of Douglasdale.
“ ‘Nay,’ answered Archie, ‘it but behoves us to die like men. Yet will ye give us five minutes? Remember, it is for the chief.’
“ ‘Ay, ten—twenty, an ye will! Never fear! The dam-dyke will haud!’ cried the man from the Upper Ward—John Steel of Muirkirk the name of him. ‘If it pleasure the yerl, we will dee as we stand, every man o’ us, married an’ single, for the honour o’ the Douglas and the luve o’ the auld name!’
“And at this I was grievously ashamed—I who had thought so little of that of which these poor men thought so mickle.
“And it befell even so. For though the battle was thick and insolent about us, so long as consciousness and the knowledge of one man from another remained to me, the last stand of the Douglases on the broomy knowe of Arkinholm had not been broken. The dam-dyke was still holding when I came away.
“But for me, the end came so swiftly that, save for the heady din of arms, the crowding turmoil of the fight, I have but little to tell that is of any clearness.
“One thing, however, I remember, before I mounted—that is, little John leading my horse up to me ready saddled. For on all our campaigns together he would let none other perform the office, ever since the time that he had been my esquire.
“ ‘James,’ he whispered, ‘Airchie (I speak it as about to die) never liked ye ava, an’ Hughie no’ mickle. But I aye loved ye, Jamie—sairly I loved ye. So mind, if ye win awa’, that theirs is the greater deed! It is easy to die for them ye luve, brither mine. But juist for honour and that—no’ so easy! So gin ye leeve, dinna forget Hughie, Jamie—nor yet misjudge Airchie. For me, I ken ye will whiles gie a thocht to little John.’
“I had no more than time to take him by the hand for a moment—little said, I lifted myself into the saddle. Hughie and Archie set Her on the pillion behind me. I took sword in hand, and we waited.
“We had no long time to put off. They came soon, with stormy cryings and shouts, lashing all about us like waves about a sea-rock—as Ailsa or the Bass.
“ ‘There lies our way!’ said Archie, who had, what I have lacked, the general’s eye, ‘yonder, where they are spread out on account of the swamps. Take the left, where the gravel bank is more compact, that it may better bear the feet of the beast.’
“Then he distributed his men.
“ ‘In front with me, Hughie. Lead the horse, little John—that is, till it is time to let him have his head and the spur in his flank!’
“He reached up a hand.
“ ‘Fare ye well, Jamie!’ he said shortly, his eyes turned away from me.
“The other was kinder, though just as brief.
“ ‘Dinna forget Hughie’s prayer, gin ye win awa’!’ said Hugh of Ormond.
“But as for little John he said nothing, having already made his good-byes.
“And behind from the pillion I could feel arms that clasped me.
* * * * * * *
“We started, slowly at first, for we wished to let the assailants win near to the foot of the knowe, just far enough away to get the charger to his pace on the open holms. And then to it with a will!
“They came shouting on. We four abode silent, and behind us on the ridge the Douglases waited, few and desperate—those who were set to die for their house.
“We four went down the hill, Hughie on one side, Archie at the other, little John guiding the beast as carefully as if he had been foresman at a ploughing.
“Presently out of a little clump of alder and birch we emerged. As we descended, the wood had partly hidden us, but now, across a couple of hundred yards of green turf without an obstacle, all suddenly we fronted the enemy. They saw us, and shouted. The die was in the casting. All of us gripped our weapons.
“ ‘Stand wide for the axe-play!’ cried Hughie, and spat upon his hands.
“The rest of us had swords, save little John, who, for the nonce, trusted to a dagger, having to guide the beast and keep out of the way of my strokes.
“And so we drave at them.
“The crash came as quickly as ‘two’ comes after ‘one.’ We shore through them as doth a scythe through a harvest rig. But they were more and ever more, as it seemed behind and before us.
“Archie was the first to go down. We came on Malise M‘Kim and his sons (ay, your folk, Sholto, and they did the right! Never will I say other!). Malise struck at me with his lochaber, but Archie gat between and received the stroke. He fell, cloven. Then Hughie, left sole, with his axe hacked a way through the first engagement.
“But Malise had seen and known. It was enough. He turned, he and his sons with him. All on foot they were, one only in armour, a slight lad in black whom I knew not.
“ ‘This way,’ the smith cried; ‘kill—that is he on horseback! If ye let him escape, I will slay you with my hand.’
“So they turned to follow, all the seven of them. More there were also with them, many more. But them I considered not.
“Doubly laden as he was, and the way difficult, my good beast could make little progress. Moreover, the end was not far off. Malise came like a thunderbolt with the rush of an angry bull. Poor Hughie turned to guard himself, but went down, his helmet (the same the armourer had made him) cracked in twain like a nut. But the blow and the recovery had delayed Malise a moment. Little John and I reached better ground—out of the thickest turmoil of battle. Only Malise followed. All else were clear behind. He would have slain me easily, for I was sore wounded already in the unequal fray—half a dozen M‘Kims hammering about us like laddies at a wasps’ byke. My sword was broken in my hand. For I had given and taken great strokes.
“Yet once again mine enemy was upon me. I heard a scream. A weight shifted from the pillion to my shoulders. The blow of Malise the smith fell, but not first of all on me. Magdalen had done yet one thing the more for me. With her hand she had turned aside the point of the pike. It passed through her body into mine. So I did not die. But these all died for me—my brothers died, and She also!
“I know not how she fell. I knew no more. I mind only little John as he cut the lightened charger over the thigh to make him gallop, and turned upon the swarm of his foes with a smile on his face. Of Magdalen I saw no more. The beast had leaped across her body in his stride as he turned his head towards Thrieve and safety!”
* * * * * * *
The end of the narrative of the putting down of the Douglases at Arkinholm on the water of Esk, as told on his sickbed by James, ninth earl.
It is not, of course, to be supposed that a man so grievously wounded as James Douglas could at one time, and without repose, deliver himself of a narrative so prolonged and circumstantial as this. On the other hand, that repetitions may be avoided, I have chosen to set it in a place by itself.
And so, that being completed, it falls to be related what happened the afternoon of the day when James began the story of Arkinholm. It chanced that Sholto, in arranging the bandages of the wounded man, ripped off the shirt of soft doeskin he had worn under his body-armour. It was hard and drawn in places with the sweat and blood of the battle. But in a kind of double ply which had been recently sewn up, something crackled. Sholto, who had been about to throw the rags of doeskin into the fire, quickly ran the point of his knife along the line of unskilful stitches. A letter fell out, folded small and addressed in clear clerkly characters.
“To Sir Sholto M‘Kim at Thrieve, or in his absence to the Abbot Laurence of Sweetheart, in trust for Malise, Armourer-Smith of Mollance and Carlinwark.”
Sholto fell back, his face suddenly white and drawn.
“It comes—from—from our—little—Magdalen!” he said.
Till that moment I had never suspected how Sholto had suffered. But it is certain that he as well as Laurence had loved the maid, he as well as his father had felt the sting of pride, the thirst for vengeance. Yet, so devoted was he to his purpose, once taken, that he had made all else subordinate to the championing of my cause, because I had been committed to him and to Maud. And other friends I had none. It was a true word he had spoken.
But he had suffered, and not till that moment did I understand how much.
Maud went quickly to him, and looked over his shoulder. But before she had read the first word she came back to me.
“I think it is fitting,” she said, “that Sholto should first read this letter by himself. It may not be for any of our eyes.”
At this moment James Douglas, opening his eyes unexpectedly, saw Sholto stand with the open writing in his hand.
“Ah,” he said, “you have found—her letter. I had forgotten. I was to give it to you if I won through. Read it! She wrote it at the Nunnery of Our Lady near to Carlisle town, and rendered it to me ere we took our departure from the field.”
He was wondrously collected, and spake as of some trifle he had overlooked. It brought back some of the old bitterness to hear him. I did not then realise that it was his nature so easily to put behind him the past. He could not help it. And indeed that is one of the greatest gifts the gods can give to any mortal. The man who would bring up the waters of Lethe to the world, would deserve better of his fellow-men than Prometheus, who from heaven brought down only fire.
Sholto went to his own chamber in order to read Magdalen’s letter. James, who had tossed and murmured, was safely asleep by the time he came down. Sholto handed me the written sheet.
“Go,” he said to Maud, “read it together—you two women. I can do no more. It is for your eyes also!”
The writing began without date or preliminary.
* * * * * * *
“I, called Magdalen M‘Kim, believing and hoping that I am about to die, write for the last time to you, Malise M‘Kim, whom I have called father all my life, and to you, Sholto and Laurence—to such also of my younger brothers as are old enough to understand.
“I am presently in the convent of the Good Sisters, near to the town of Carlisle. But I cannot abide here, having chosen a road which I must follow to the end, wheresoever it may lead me.
“Having much to say, little time to say it in, I must needs be brief.
“But first let it be understood and agreed that I blame no one—not even greatly myself! What hath been, I could not help! The wind carries the feather—the river the fallen leaf. The burn follows the valley to the sea, through deep gorge, smiling dell, and gloomy cavern; through dark pool and over foaming precipice it must needs follow on, till it reaches the Sea—which is Oblivion. So, hoping for that sea, I follow my Lord of Douglas.
“Think a little, my father, before you cast your little Magdalen off—or disallow her utterly from the number of your children. Was she not younger born—left much to herself? The lads were in the smithy—Laurence and Sholto already grown men of their years. You loved me, my father. You also, my mother. But you dwelt apart. Your thoughts were not mine, nor indeed could they be.
“So I sought my friends on the mountains. Wild things loved me—even deer and shy-starting birds of the woods. On the moor the red grouse sat only the closer as I went by. I could put my hand on the head of the brooding mavis, and her speckled breast heaved no whit the faster for that.
“But I needed love. All my life I had loved, it is true, according to my knowledge. I gave love to all that were in the woods and the earth and in the air. But, after their kind, they gave me little in return. Perchance, even my Lady of Thrieve, reading this, will understand somewhat, and if forgive she cannot, at least she will remember me with a less unkindly heart.
“Slowly it came to me that I was growing old. I had grey hairs in my heart. Nevertheless, there came enough and to spare of men and lads from here and there to tell me I was fair and desirable. And I—I had not even the desire to laugh at them. I only wished them to begone, and if they stayed overlong, or troubled me, I bade my father see to it. This out of his love, fearing that he might lose me, he was all too willing to do.
“But now I see that I did wrong, for more than ever after that I was left alone. Yet I could not bear such-like wooers near me—these roystering soldiers of the guard, these holders of twenty shilling lands with the grease of the mid-noon dinner on their gowns, loutish lads from the farm towns of Kelton and Balmaghie, smelling of the stable—faugh!—I was glad to render myself again up to the clear air of the hills, the green shades of the woods, and the kindly beasts and birds that never taigled or wearied me, asking for what I could not give.
“But all the time I carried, unknowing, an empty heart.
“Till one gloaming I was going homeward, singing the song of an idle peace. A dove was perched upon my shoulder, and a young kid that had lost its mother followed bleating behind, desiring my hand between its soft lips. Then—all suddenly, I was stayed by the most glorious and goodly sight that the heart of woman could desire to see.
“A man came towards me on a white horse, his stature great and goodly as the cedars of Lebanon. His visor was up, and his face like that of a young bridegroom coming forth from his chamber, high and comely to see, yet noways proud. I had never seen any like him. He was clad in armour all lined and floreated with silver and gold, and his helmet shone upon his head like silver. It had wings, too, on either side, starting up as high as the crest. A light cloak of silk was thrown carelessly over his shoulders, blue lined with white, but the trappings of his horse were of a pale clear blue, lined with crimson. And he seemed to me like one of those great knights of old of whom the harpers sing on the village green when the good folk are gathered together—St. George of England or Sir Amadis of Gaul—one to rescue ladies and to kill great flaming dragons with a stroke of his lance.
“He spoke, and his voice was so sweet and moving that I could not but stop and listen. Nay, I was not affrighted at all. Only the dove that was on my shoulder took flight, and I saw it no more.
“And then the next evening, I passing by the same way, he came again. And this time he was no longer in armour, but clad in shot silk of a gorgeous web, and with an eagle’s feather in his bonnet. And from that day forth he began to speak sweet loving words to me, and I to listen. He told me that he was the Lord James Douglas, but that I must on no account reveal the matter to my father, or I should see him no more.
“And, knowing him unwedded (for so by artful questions of my mother I learned), I thought nothing amiss. Also he told me (what I loved to hear) of his love for me, and how he would surely own me so soon as they gave him a title and earldom of his own, as they had done to his three younger brothers, Murray and Ormond and Balveny.
“And when, after many days, I found that he was indeed on the eve of marriage, and that to his brother’s wife, lo, it was too late. I had no more any pride at all, and could not choose but obey him in all things—the which, indeed, the most part of women would have been glad and proud to do, as I have seen since in England many times to my inward hurt.
“Nor do I wish him to be blamed for concealing this and other things from me. For (this also I learned in England) it is the ordinary way of a man with a maid—at least, of such a man as my Lord of Douglas with such a girl as I.
“Now I should stop here, having, indeed, nothing more to add. I have written these things that you, my father, my mother, and my brethren, might know that it was no sudden-springing evil, nor wholly of his doing.
“But this there is laid heavily upon me, that where he goes I must follow. I cannot abide among this Good Sisterhood, all clad alike in black and white, who say their prayers and sing from morn to night, from night to morn. Once I used to sing also, but not now. They tell me that he is gone to fight a great battle—that it bodes me to stay quietly here, and that if he is killed they will cherish me here all the days of my life!
“It is of their loving heart. God reward them for the wish! They are good women, and I am not worthy of one tithe of all. But stay I cannot. If so be he goes to a field of death, I will go too, and help him to find it. That we may die together I do not wish, for in that case he would die unsained. But I—I have this day confessed and been absolved by the good priest-almoner, who dwells in a lodge near by. But I pray God that it may be given to me to save him from death, at least for a while—and lead him out, so that he may make a good end, and meet me in the presence of God a man shriven and cleansed from the sins of a man, a man as wholly forgiven as if I, the little Magdalen who loved him, had the forgiving of him. As, indeed, I do forgive him from my heart.
“Finally, pray for me, my father! Pray for me, my mother. Pray for me, Sholto, and you Maud, my sister. Sing a mass for me, Laurence, whom I loved perhaps the best of all, yet knew the least. Perhaps if you had been at home, my brother Laurence—but who knows? Well—God, perhaps. To Him I do commend and commit myself, being, as is my thought and esperance, very near to death, to Mary the Mother, and to her Son who brought into the world kindliness for sinful women. Neither will He condemn me—hath He not said it?
“Dear hearts, from my heart I do bid you all a fair good-night. I shall not see another, if God please.
“This last word receive right lovingly from the Magdalen who was yours.”
* * * * * * *
And when, all in tears, we gave the letter back to Sholto, who waited motionless by the bed of his master, he said, pointing to James Douglas, “Say nothing of this to him. He would not understand!”
And I also, being the man’s wife, knew within my heart that Sholto was right!