It seemed strange that after these things we yet lived—yea, and breakfasted, and dined, and supped. It was as if we had within the castle of Thrieve one dead. Up in the chamber lay James Douglas—tended, ministered to, watched, the strength coming back slowly to his great frame and the manly beauty to his countenance.
Yet to each of us the man was dead. I think there were none who saw him but in their hearts despised him—Sholto, who had seen him ride forth as champion of Scotland against France, the bravest of the brave; Maud and I, who had seen him come home through the gloaming, red from the battlefield, tragic and desperate.
But the soul of the man was in none of these—grown small instead, cradled contentedly in luxury and the gratifying of self.
Yet even so, and knowing all these things, there was nevertheless something of the salt of humour and kindly intent about James of Douglas which kept any one of us from altogether hating him. Of all at Thrieve I was perhaps the most pitiful, though I spent least time beside his bed.
He mended fast—his clear, well-exercised flesh healing and throwing off disease with the same large careless ease with which he did everything. But there were yet many storm-clouds on the horizon. The enemies of the house of Douglas, the false and fickle friends and waiting indifferents alike hastened to take up arms by thousands for the cause of the king after the fatal day of Arkinholm, so that a few months found him at the head of such an army as no Scottish monarch had ever led against a subject.
And to oppose that array which marched up the long strath of Clyde, struck to the right over by Leadhills, and so down the windings of the Mennoch to Sanquhar and finally Dumfries, what appertained to the Douglas?
Only that one tall castle of Thrieve, the strongest in Scotland, certainly for weight and mass of masonry, the strongest for position also, set on its island with the Dee water deep all about it, and such a labyrinth of fosses and ramparts, outworks and guarding towers as was possessed by no castle in the northland. Indeed, it is little likely that out of France there was any in the world that would match it.
Then the island itself, though counted impregnable, was alive with cattle, all the herds safely lodged behind stone walls, every horn and hoof under cover, and yet with twenty acres of excellent pasturage wherefrom to draw their fodder. The country-folk, too, were for us, and it was little likely that for a long time the king would be able to make his blockade of Thrieve perfect, especially to the south.
“The castle could stand a siege of two years,” Sholto said, with pride in his voice, “and there are many things which may happen in Scotland within two years.”
Our garrison, small though it was in numbers, was composed of such men as the Douglases had never yet brought to battle—no raw levies, but the Douglas Guard itself—each man enlisted and drilled by the captain himself, loyal to the name and the place, faithful to the noble traditions of the Douglases of the Black, to their mighty castle of Thrieve, both of which they believed destined to an eternity of safety and renown.
Yet all told, we counted only five hundred men as against the growing thousands of the king. And this of Sholto’s set purpose. Indeed, he was daily pestered with offers of service by stout young fellows of the neighbouring parishes who heard of the advent of royal troops, and who desired to fight for the Douglases.
It was yet early on the morning of the tenth of July, when the watchers on the topmost towers of Thrieve saw the sunshine on the pennants and guidons of the King of Scots his army. They were yet far away to the north-east, following the ridge of heights called Clairbrand, which, under the guidance of some expert person (of a surety Malise M‘Kim and his sons), they had kept all the way from Dumfries, thus escaping the swamps and marshy wildernesses of bog and peat-hag which extended to the south of Thrieve.
In an hour the vanguard was clearly to be seen, keeping closely to the highest ground and throwing out skirmishers in order to feel for any possible enemy.
James Douglas was by this time able to sit up a little each day. And in spite of the galling of his green wounds, at the first sight of the glitter of the spear-heads, the fighting spirit, which indeed he never lacked, returned upon him.
“Bring me forth my war-gear,” he cried. “I will go to the fords of Glenlochar and counter them there. Quick, Andro! Quick, John—the black armour with the silver work of Damascus in which I fought the Frenchman at Stirling!”
But on the pretence of searching for the arms, Andro the Penman ran quickly up to Sholto, who was on the topmost tower, watching the progress of the king’s host.
“Sir Sholto,” he gasped hastily, “my lord is up on his feet, demanding arms and armour that he may lead a force to block the fords of Glenlochar against the king!”
Sholto descended precipitately to the chamber, where he found James already trussing his points, and swearing because there was no squire at hand to aid a man in his own house!
“My lord earl,” said Sholto, bowing gravely, “this is not a venture for you that are still sore wounded. Moreover, we cannot fight in the open. There they are too many for us. There be ten thousand men in sight—in Castle Thrieve are just five hundred—and quite enough, too, seeing that each of them hath a mouth that must be filled twice a day with porridge and beef and broth. Get to bed, my lord earl, and trust to me. The castle can be kept without the fords of Glenlochar. We would only throw away our men uselessly in such sallies. Let me be your assistant to disrobe!”
And he proceeded to put him back into his great carven bed of oak as if he had been a child. And James submitted, murmuring only, with that saving humour which did not forsake him in the darkest hours—nay, which was most clearly apparent then, “ ’Tis pretty, i’ faith, to suckle and put to bed-a-bye a ninth Earl of Douglas in his own castle of Thrieve! Pray, who counts himself the master here?”
“I know not who counts,” said Sholto; “I am the Captain of Thrieve!”
And James of Douglas actually laughed, either at the conceit or at Sholto’s grim-set mouth, I know not which.
Maud and I went and stood with Sholto on the balcony that ran round the top of the castle. Here were none but ourselves and the four sentinels placed as usual. All beneath was quiet, as everything from January to December had perforce to be quiet where Sholto commanded. It was a clear summer day with a north-blowing wind. We could see distinctly each company of spearmen, each group of knights and men-at-arms. Even the colour of their standards we could faintly distinguish, though they were too far off to note the various devices upon them.
Soon the tents and pavilions began to be pitched by the camp followers and sutlers. A white forest, crowned with a multitude of flapping devices, arose on the ridges, between the crossing of the road which leads to the Kirk of Michael and that turning to the left towards the fords of Lochar. These lines, following the crown of the country to the north and east, were well-nigh five miles in length, from the ridge of Carlinwark to the little hill that overlooks the woodlands of Balmaghie, a hill which in after times and under a new name was to cost us so dear.
But meantime by the Three Thorns and just out of sight of the castle there arose in the westering sun of afternoon the silken pavilions of the court. For the King of Scots, murderer and traitor as he was, had come to conduct in person the siege of the last remaining strength of his rebel vassal, and so finish with some éclat the work which had been begun in dishonour and treachery at Edinburgh and Stirling.
Now, since I that have writ so far am but a woman, and at that time, indeed, little more than a girl, therefore unskilled in the art of war, in blockade, breach, and escalade, I judge it right to insert in this place the descriptions of another, who saw that we could not from the ramparts of Thrieve—that is, the preparations which were made by the king’s engineers to reduce our famous fortalice.
Now there was at the time, under the shade of the Three Thorns of Carlinwark, and looking with curious eyes at the opening up of the long-abandoned armourer’s smithy and the white cottage all overgrown with untended creeping plants, a certain young man, in the plain dark dress of an esquire, to whom, as it soon appeared, the king had taken a fancy. He had remarked him as he rode by his favourites, Crichton and the two recreant Douglases by his side.
“What is your name, sir?” he asked him. “You have not the look of a soldier.” (It was at half a mile from Dumfries, after one has crossed over Devogill’s bridge, going westward, that the king noticed the young man.)
“Your Majesty,” said the youth, “choose you out a captain or a man of war. Let me try a bout with him at his own weapons, and (save it be Malise M‘Kim, the smith) I will stand by the result, soldier or no!”
The king laughed.
“You do shrewdly well to make the exception,” he cried. “But I have some skill myself in the lighter weapons. We might do worse than fall to. You are of slender build. The broad-axe is not for gentlemen. You can, I think, speak French”—
“Like a clerk!” said one of his favourites sneeringly—Douglas younger of Dalkeith he was, he whom they called the Master of Morton.
“Ah,” said King James, “mayhap Latin too, and all too like a clerk, Morton! But what care I, so long as he will help me against yonder Earl of Douglas, who defies and keeps the realm in a turmoil.”
“That he doth!” said young Morton, with a fury somewhat affected. “I would I had him by the thrapple!”
“His estates, you mean!” commented the youth in black, giving back the sneer. “I warrant you that you would think twice before you stood up to James Douglas with the steel points bare!”
“Ha, well said, young sirrah,” cried the king, who in truth loved to see his favourites put down; “that took you fair in the wind, Morton. And true it is. Myself saw him fight with the French Champion at Stirling when I was a lad, and a better lance was never pushed than that which James of Douglas held that day!”
“Save that of Sir Sholto M‘Kim!” said the young man, “he who is now Captain of Thrieve!”
At this the king’s brow darkened somewhat.
“What know you of Sholto M‘Kim?” he demanded. “Is it that you are a spy, or disloyal, thus to praise one in arms against his king? Canst tell me why is it that he, sole among all that family, is not with the king’s colours? He follows his lord, and so stands to lose his head with him!”
“Nay,” answered the young man in black, with gentle persistence, “he also hath his private griefs against James Douglas, and would gladly meet him point to point. But he stands for his mistress, the châtelaine of Thrieve, the Lady Margaret, whom it was your Majesty’s will and pleasure to cause marry with James Douglas, being his brothers widow. She was committed to Sholto M‘Kim as a child, and now he would gladly die for her sake, though he is a man with young children.”
“But the Countess Margaret is also in rebellion!” cried young Morton.
“What, the estates again, Morton!” laughed the king, turning sharp upon him. “The corn must be cut before you butter the bread, my lad!”
Then he mused some time upon the young man in black.
“From whom had you these things?” he demanded. “You do not speak like one of this neighbourhood. These are no countryside manners. Whence come you?”
“My name I cannot tell, at this present,” the young man answered, “but Malise M‘Kim and his sons will vouch for me that I am no spy. Your Archbishop of Sant Andro’s or my Lord of Dunkeld will do the same that I am no runaway priest. And for the rest, I have been much abroad—in France more than once. I have ridden in the lists at Paris and Amboise. I have been at Rome. But, being all the loyaler a Scot for these things, if it please you to employ me without a name, I shall e’en render your Majesty such service that he will give me a name—be it the meanest in his kingdom. For as Malise the smith will tell you, I have a blood-feud against James of Douglas, and for that I have come with a squire and twenty well-trained men-at-arms to the king’s muster.”
“I’ faith,” cried the king, “clerk or English renegade, or what not, you speak right well. A blood-feud against James Douglas! Why, man, such appear to have been rife about here. He must have been a man of parts, this same James Douglas, And a good drinker, too, they tell me. ’Tis a pity, but Doom’s dues maun be paid, they say. Yet I would it had been another than Earl James who has to pay them. His brother, of whom they prate so mickle, was but a wizened pippin to him!”
At this the young man in black looked up with a glance like the point of a spear.
“Ah, you knew him,” he said softly; “you entertained him at Stirling, did you not? I think some such report came to my ears, though I was far away and in retreat at the time!”
The fiery face of the king grew purple. There came a red light also into his eyes, lurid and angry almost as the birth-mark on his cheek.
“You are either a very bold, or, on the other hand, a very foolish and ignorant young man,” he said, “thus to play with your neck-jointings. Did you ever hear of the Gallows Slot of Thrieve?”
The youth bowed.
“I have heard of it, your Majesty.”
“Then,” quoth the king fiercely, “I advise you to keep a guard upon your tongue, or in that very spot your head may chance to go one way while that slender body of yours goes another!”
“Your Majesty,” the young man answered quietly, “I am indeed little fit for a court, where nothing is heard from morn till night but that which shall be pleasing to the king. Call on my Lord of Morton, and my Lord Crichton, and my Lord Huntly, and the Laird of Drum for such-like; they will supply you. All that I ask is permission to stand in the forefront of the battle with the men I have fetched to the muster. And at the end, if I live and avenge my feud, let His Majesty call me by what name he will, so it be neither Gordon nor Hamilton; for I love neither traitors nor false swearers!”
Half a score of swords leaped from their scabbards at the words, and the young man in black, as perhaps he had counted on, found himself with a ring of adversaries—handsome Hamiltons and Gordons, possibly gay, but for the time being certainly exceeding wrathful.
“Hold there,” cried the king, holding up his hand, palm outward. “I forbid you to fight—anon—anon! This is neither time nor place. I, James Stewart, am of this young man’s faction” (here he cocked his bonnet), “and if any of you bauld young men object to a plain word for a plain thing” (here he laid his hand upon his sword hilt), “well, he shall have yet another adversary to reckon with! Your whittles in their sheaths, gentlemen!”
Amid half-concealed growls and murmurs they obeyed.
“French lick-the-dish! Monkish runagate! Scented civet-cat! Nameless lown!”
These were a few of the choicest of their epithets for the youth in whom their jealousy feared a new favourite. The last came to the king’s ear, who happened to be in a mood to run counter to those who for ordinary dandled and daintied him with their tongues, half to his pleasure and half to his contempt.
“ ‘Nameless lown!’ said ye, George of Douglas?” he cried aloud. “I tell you, Angus, my man, your own name is in no such good odour this day in Scotland that ye can afford to cast dirt on others. And as for this young man—faith, an he wants a name, for any odd reason of his own, such as may happen to any gentleman—why, he shall have mine own! And I, the king, desire the man to stand forth from among you who hath aught to say against that!”
This is the written story of the Young Man in Black to whom the king (chiefly because he desired to cross-buttock his sometime favourites, in order that he might show them that he and not they had the mastery) promised on the braes above the Brigend of Dumfries the dower of his own royal name.
He hath put the script, carefully written, into my hands, so that those things of which I, Margaret Douglas, could not have knowledge, looking out from the ramparts of Thrieve, might yet duly be set down—first, for the satisfaction of those who in their time were part of these things (now, alas, but few!), and, secondly, for the information of generations yet to come—for all histories that have ever been writ do lie to the detriment of the Douglases, save only this of mine.
THE STORY OF THE YOUNG MAN IN BLACK.
Writ at length so that it might be prentit.
As I walked into the smithy of the Three Thorns nigh the king’s camp, I found some four young men or thereby blowing up the fire and clinking on red iron. Right sulkily they regarded me upon my entrance. For it was long time since they had seen me, and never in such a garb.
“The king hath given orders that none are to enter here,” cried the eldest, “saving those who have care of his armouries, and of these only such as are
fit to be deacons of the guild of hammermen. We want no fine gentlemen here, God wot—there is room and to spare for such elsewhere!”
And the second said, “The smiddy door stands wide! Go out by it, I pray you, and that quickly, or I will break thy head with a pair of cleps!”
“Nay, keep him,” cried a third; “we will make of him a whipcord to bind a brace withal!”
For I had pulled my cap low over mine eyes, and in my altered habiliments it fell out easily that they knew me not. Indeed, for all their rough words, they kept steadily to their work at the forge.
“I am no fine gentleman,” I made answer, very quietly, “but of your own guild, and if it please you, not wholly unfit to be a deacon therein!”
“You are a hammerman—of the king’s armourers! Let us see your palms!”
And at that they laughed, setting their own hands on their hips and laughing. For, indeed, my finger pads were fine and unhardened.
“Canst put shoes on war-horse?” cried one, “or so much as tell the hind foot from the fore?”
“Ay, of a jimp court filly, mayhap!” shouted another. “Get thee gone!—Thou lookest more fit to lace a jupe, like a woman’s tailor—wide at the flounce, narrow at the gathers—than to rivet a brigantine or to forge the chainwork bandolier for a king’s sword. There is one in the fire now—try thy hand at it, boaster, if thou darest!”
Now this task was, and with justice, accounted one of the most difficult of all the practices of armoury, and one which commonly only the chief armourer himself undertook. But I had been taught by one that was a master of masters in the craft, and feared nothing.
So with the pincers I pulled the rivet bolt which was to close the main ring out of the fire, and looking with apparent carelessness (but really most carefully) to the degree of heat, I thrust it in again, and bade the elder of the youth be ready to strike for me when the colour of the steel pleased me. Then he, having a certain fear before his eyes, would have drawn back, seeing me so determined.
“Our father is no easy man to deal with,” he grumbled; “why, he would not think the cracking of a pouce on his finger nail of breaking the back of you—ay, or a dozen like you—if you should spoil the ring-grip of the king’s bandolier, which is to hold up his royal sword.”
“Strike,” said I, “and hold your tongue. Ye tempted me to it by your mocks. That ye well know. Now I will make good my word!”
And with that I took my small moulding hammer in hand—one, indeed, which I knew very well—and getting the colour of the metal right to my mind, I held it ready for the striker on the beak of the anvil. But he, being afraid in his soul (perhaps in his body also), struck ill. So that, with words contumelious, I bade him forthwith go sweep the shoeing rank, as being all he was good for, and gave the hammer to his brother. He, seeing his elder’s fall, did well enough—and afterwards better than well. So I thrust in and took out, tempered and arroded, as I had seen them do in France, not making a plain ring (which indeed in Scotland was thought a good enough piece of work), but all in facets and dimples, cunningly set, and each exactly of the same size, like the cutting of a Venice glass.
And the lads stood and watched, saying no word after they had seen me once at it.
So intent were they on the finishing that when I had at last given the master stroke and laid the bandolier ring aside to cool, no one of us had noticed that a certain huge man, who walked lightly on tiptoe, had been observing us from the doorway.
“St. Bride,” he cried, “if that be not my son Larry’s stroke, may my steel never do more than cut withes to make baskets withal!”
And with that he walked up to me, and, putting forth his hand, he took off the squire’s cap which I had pulled low over mine eyes, and, in spite of the walnut juice which I had used to tan my collegiate blanching, he knew me at once.
“Faith, Larry,” he cried, “a rare good smith was spoiled in thee to make a bad Mess John! But what will thy mother say, lad? Art run off from thine abbacy?”
“Nay,” said I, “the archbishop and my Lord of Dunkeld both know my reasons. Fear not, father. I have never been a monk at heart any more than thyself, and now I have come to follow my star—glad as one who hath been over long in the jingle-jangle of bells, the murmuring of prayers, and the scent of incense, for all which he had little heart, to escape to tented field and his king’s service!”
“What!” cried Malise M‘Kim, “are you then with us in this matter? Why, Larry lad, I thought within me that you would have been even as Sholto—he who commands over yonder.”
And he pointed with his hand in the direction of Thrieve.
“Nay,” I answered, “I am with you heart and soul!”
“But somehow,” he said, rubbing his brow in some perplexity, “it was borne in upon me that there was in your heart a liking—more than a liking, indeed (St. Bride, that an old man should speak of love and the follies of youth at this time of day!)—for the little Lady Margaret yonder—the Earl James’s wife!”
“Well,” I answered him, “and what of that, my father?”
“Why,” said he, still perplexed, for he was of a nature essentially simple and no little moidered in his head by his troubles, “then I would have thought that you would have gone to her and not to her enemies!”
“By what name did you call the lady just now, my father?”
“Why—why,”—he searched about,—“what should I call her, an it were not the Lady Margaret—Earl James’s well-favoured, ill-fortuned wife?”
“And think you, father,” I made him answer (for with Malise M‘Kim it was best to use plain words), “that I would love the Lady Margaret the less if she were, by chance, my lord earl’s widow instead of my lord earl’s wife?”
“U—m—m—m!” he said, slowly taking it in. Then he shook his head gravely.
“Such thoughts are not for a blacksmith’s sons,” he grumbled in his throat; “but I will admit that ye are worthy to be a deacon among hammermen! Ye have noways forgotten your trade, Larry, my lad!”
Then my brothers crowded about me, welcoming me, and asking pardon for their rough words.
“Out o’ that,” cried Malise, raising his hand; “go, forge pike points, Corra. And you, Herries M‘Kim, come hither, lift this ring, and see how the metal is run in the direction of the strength. Ye alone are fit for something better than to clink ploughshares. But as for the rest of you—Dun, Roger, and Malise, get the other forges a-going; for there is work before us other than the making of springes to take coneys. And now, son Laurence, let us talk!”
Never was Scottish siege so picturesque as this all in the broad summer weather—the wide, pleasant strath of Dee glowing under the August sun, and the knights of the king’s court riding forth every morning decked as for a tourney.
Nevertheless, day followed day, and Malise fretted in his smithy, or used words in the broadest Galloway to the king himself—which, had they been understood of the monarch, might have damaged the good intent there was between king and smith. For they were both fiery by nature, and Malise cared just as little for what James Stewart thought as James Stewart did for what was the opinion of his new ally and master armourer.
But as for the effect of all they let loose upon the castle—the great bolts that were shot from the slings and catapults, the crackings of the new powder engines, and the firing of tow-headed arrows, sent blazing across the river—the besiegers might all just as well have blown their noses or sneezed once or twice in the direction of Thrieve, for all the progress they made in the taking of it.
For Sholto, having had his times to make ready, had used them as none knew better than he how to do. He had fortified the whole area of the island with a wall, adding at the weaker places one wall behind another, and leaving a trench between, which at pleasure he could fill with water. More than that, all the ground opposite, on the other side of the river of Dee, had been cleared of cover and made bare as the palm of one’s hand. So that at any moment Sholto, holding as it was the short inner lines, and having the breadth of the water of Dee on all sides of him, could, by drawing his men together, stop any rush that was made closer to the water’s side. So that the defenders, firing from perfect cover, and with rests for their bronze culverins and little iron fusils, did infinite damage to the king’s men without receiving so much as a single scratch themselves.
The king, following the advice of his chief nobles, was all for the slow advancement of the works by parallels and cross trenches to the waterside—and then, a dash through and a rush with ladders for the escalade!
But when my father heard this he was very angry, or rather, in a state betwixt laughter and anger.
“Why, let them,” he cried (and you might have heard him on Cairnsmore), “let them gather all the bairns from the burgh schools of Scotland, all the lads the monks are teaching to put frocks about their hurdies, also all the cow-herds and all the swine-herds and all the goose-herds. For these are exceedingly expert in the use of the ‘billit-gun,’ that deadly weapon made of the bark of the bore tree. Then with wads of tow, well chewed, let them practise upon the fortress of Thrieve! After that, like Jericho, the walls thereof may have a better chance of falling down. But as to this folly of the king’s, there are no words which he will understand to tell him how foolish it is! Nevertheless, I will try. But, ah!—if I could speak to him in the Gallowa’! Then he wad think but little o’ himsel’!”
So Malise M‘Kim went to the king.
It was, they say, a stormy time. For the king, a man of wrath from his youth up, could listen peaceably to no man. And as for Malise, my father—well, by this time the world kens Malise the smith even better than James of the Fiery Face.
“I tell you, King of Scots,” said Malise, clasping his hands tightly about the axe-pike he had been in act to make—broad-bladed, and was beaked like a falcon—“I tell you plainly that you may take up your tents and kitchen cullenders, remove your blazons and shields hung on spear-shafts. Stands Thrieve ever a whit the less staunch for these? Months you have been here, and never the nearer by a yard. Also James of Douglas is on foot again! My son Herries, who hath the long sight, saw him yesterday (no further gone) directing the archers to mark down your cannoniers upon the brae opposite the ford to the south, and in ten minutes there was not a man upright upon his legs among the little pivot guns, also the oxen that drew them were all dead too.”
“Good, my master armourer,” said the king; “there is matter in what you say, as well as some insolence, which for this time I pardon in you seeing whom ye have been serving all your life—!”
“Bide there, King James,” cried Malise. “I have, it is true, a death quarrel with the man yonder—James of Douglas. But I was born under another Douglas—ay, in the year of Otterburn—he at whose funeral they led Percy captive. Under six earls have I served. Good men and true men were they all—bucklers to their king, barriers against England. These have I served all my life, and now at the end this man hath cut me off from mine own loyalty as with a deadly blow! But, hark ye, King of Scots, my quarrel is with the man and not with the house of Douglas, though in my rage I may have said other of it. Nevertheless, I will aid you to bring yonder castle to the ground, and the man in it to the rope’s-end or the edge of the sword for that which he hath wrought to me and mine. Almost at Arkinholm my right arm had saved you the trouble, but someone—I remember not well who—came between me and my vengeance—!”
The old smith drew his hand slowly over his face, as if to clear his brain from some encompassing cloud—possibly the same reek of hate and vengeance which had so nearly turned another brain—as I read in the chronicle which hath been written by the Lady Margaret herself.
There was—I saw it not always, but chiefly when he sat brooding and thinking over his wrongs—a certain glowing madness or capacity for madness in my father, ordinarily covered up, indeed, but ready to break forth at the least mention of the name of James Douglas. As to his daughter, it was otherwise. For he would start up suddenly from his chair, or perhaps from a day-dream on a cool hearth in the smithy, his back against the wall and his head deep sunk in his beard.
“Where is Magdalen?” was ever his cry; “good wife, where is our Magdalen? I bid you tell me! ’Tis some time since she went out. She bides over late on the hills!”
But there was none to answer as to where Magdalen might be found.
Meanwhile, all unwitting of this, the king and his suite stood watching. James Stewart, having a certain curious sympathy for the sorrow of the smith, quieted those behind him with a turn of the hand—the which, perhaps because it was the same that had treacherously slain his best friend and greatest subject, was not to be regarded without a certain awe.
“Why, master armourer,” said the king, more gently, “ ’tis very well in a proven man of war like Malise of Carlinwark and Mollance to commend us young men to return to our wives’ petticoat tails and the surcots and pearled veils of our sweethearts. He hath done his day’s darg. Six great lords hath he served—better, perhaps, than they served the Crown—!”
At this Malise interrupted once more.
“Yet did not your gran’ther, young man, bestow one of his daughters upon an Earl Douglas, and never thought himself or her the worse? Nay, by what other means doth the crown of the Bruces sit upon your own head, James Stewart, an the first o’ your race had not fand it pinned to the bolsters of a bride-bed?”
The king frowned and then laughed.
“True,” he said, “true indeed!—And so did we all come from Eve the wife of a gardener, who had never a bolster at all, nor pillow whereon to lay her head. Yet for the life of me, master armourer, I cannot see that such talk as thine brings down the walls of Thrieve any faster than our poor arbalests and bombards!”
Before answering, the smith passed his hand across his brow as if to clear his mind. In these latter days this had become a fashion with him. He seemed to get bogged in his own words, and then after a while to return with a sudden start to the gloomy vengeance to which he had vowed his days.
“Give me till to-morrow, my lord the king,” he said, with more gentleness. “I have somewhat in my head here if only I can disentangle it. Ravelled it is, and knotted, but it will lead us somewhither. But first I would speak with my seven sons—nay” (he added quickly, correcting himself), “with six only—Sholto, the best of all, is over yonder! Yet” (he added), “it is strange; I have tried, and I cannot curse Sholto!”
He turned gently about, a milder mood being upon him.
“Your Majesty and gentlemen,” he said, “I pray your pardon if one to whom God has left more brawn than brain, more weight than wit, more choler than courtesy, hath used words to hurt your gentrice. It was far from his intent. But by long usage, old Malise M‘Kim is grown rough as his own smith’s apron. Yet if he can hammer out the thought that is in his head, yon high tower of Thrieve shall fall! And, if God leave strength to this right arm and enough good hemp with the realm of Scots, James Douglas shall die a dog’s death—for what he hath done—for what he hath done—what was it that he did? I forget, gentlemen! Truly, I forget. But it was something he shall die for—yes, die for! I am an old man, and everything goes from me. But to-morrow we M‘Kims shall have this thought of mine hammered out and welded and tempered—ready to be put before your Majesty. By the head of my little wench Magdalen, it shall be so! She was so beautiful, gentlemen, and innocent—and sat long upon my knees with her arms about my neck. But she is dead, gentlemen. She is dead, and the angels took her. I am an old man, a very old man, gentlemen all—I pray you forgive me!”
And saluting with his bonnet brought as low as the knee in the palm of his right hand, which was the courteous fashion of the ancient time, Malise of the Strong Thews, my good father, withdrew him, his great hand upon the shoulder of Herries, his son, not for support, but rather as one might walk with a staff.
And they say that the king gently laid his finger on his own brow, saying, “Be gentle in speech with him, my lords. God hath touched the old man, or his trouble of mind, mayhap. He is strong as Samson. His bodily strength is not abated. Only at times, as ye see, there is a lack. Therefore provoke him not. For whoso doth, it is at his own peril. His wife shall be a widow, his soul go to its own place, and that without benefit of clergy—of which, to my ripe knowledge, the feck of you stand in sore need!”
In the smithy of the Three Thorns, Malise M‘Kim drew his sons together. It was the morning after his interview with the king, very early. All night the old man had walked about by the loch-side, and I had kept him in sight till the dawning of the day. The sky of midnight had been clear with faint pearl-grey clouds, high and rare in the zenith. The loch gleamed at our feet like half-polished steel, flat and without ripple to the dark woods of Gelston. Meantime, my mother, Dame Barbara—her hair, that had been raven black with scarce a grey hair, now flaxen white—watched stealthily from the cottage door the steadfast tramp-tramp of her husband’s feet along the narrow shingle and over the green knolls. She too had followed the camp, and had arrived at the Three Thorns the third day after the pitching of the tents. She spoke nothing of Magdalen, and seemed altogether occupied in watching the changes in Malise M‘Kim.
During the night his wife had only been prevented from following him by my urgent entreaties and the repeated assurance that I was always behind him, ready to prevent anything desperate which might suggest itself to his troubled brain.
So I stole through the wood a little above him, silent as a moon shadow drifting over the hills. But though my father muttered much to himself and drove his great piked shepherd’s crook deep into the clattering shingle of the little lakeside beaches, he did himself no harm—nor, I think, dreamed of it.
In the later morning, when the light had begun to spread upwards from the east, he caught sight of Corra (who for a while had come to replace me) creeping through some underbrush, rather clumsily, let it be said. He was upon him in a moment, with his staff upraised.
“Dare you spy upon me, spawn of evil?” he cried. “I will e’en break thy back for thee with my clickie!”
And he would have done it, too, had it not been that I ran upon them from the cottage door, with my mother behind me, and each of us seized an arm.
“Let Corra be,” she cried. “Malise, my man, do you not understand? We were in a fever about you—the lad did no more than he was bid!”
He stood leaning on his staff, his chin upon the crook.
“What might ye have been afraid of?” he queried, slowly and gravely; “that I would do myself an injury?”
He turned about and pointed over the trees upon the ridge, ink black against the brightening west.
“Do myself an injury?” he said, with a laugh which I loved not to hear; “nay, be at rest—not till my work is done!”
Then to his wife, our mother, he said, “Go thy ways, goodwife. Make the lads’ porridge and stir them weel. Let a driblet or two of meal slip between thy fingers. For the lumps in a bowl of porridge are the strength thereof. They make the bones of men. Now I would speak to the lads—yea, while there is time and the clearness of the morning in my head.”
And with that he led the way to the smithy.
Eastward, day was just beginning to break across the little group of huts at the end of King Edward’s Causeway, that ancient paved road which he made through the moss of Cuill and across the shallows of Carlinwark. My father began to speak.
“Over yonder,” he said, jerking his thumb behind his shoulder towards the camp of the king, “there be a many fine gentlemen and well-attired lords, and, chief of all, His Majesty of the Fiery Face, Bloody Hand, and—brain of a poll parrot—to whom, in the meantime, I wish long life and much success! Lads, I serve him and them till the time appointed—then I serve no more!”
Then he laughed again; but this time silently, and to himself.
“But that which we wait for we must work for. And it is not in the possible of siccan grand lads, with their changes of apparel three times a day, their pennons and gonfalons going before, to bring doon yon auld prood castle o’ Thrieve, fenced aboot wi’ Dee water, drumly after flood, or crystal-clear after spate!
“Na, nor is there a man in a’ the hosts of the king, frae the Bennan to Carlinwark Hill, that can match Sholto M‘Kim, my son and your brither. Nevertheless, it is laid upon me that yonder castle must fall. And as to that I have a thought here!”
He paused a long while after this, so that the sun, throwing a sudden beam in at the smiddy door, caused the shadow of an anvil, with a forehammer leaning against it, to start across the floor of beaten earth and iron filings.
“Lads,” he said, “we maun make a cannon, like to nane that hath heretofore been upon the earth—a bombard that shall throw a great ball, such as no man can lift, miles and miles across land and water!”
The lads (who, for all their being called “boys,” “lads,” and so forth, were all well over their twenty-first year) looked at one another with sudden glances, full of meaning, which I could interpret right well. They thought that the want in the mind had come upon him once again. But I knew better.
“Yes, my father,” I answered him, “I have heard of such as being forged in the realm of Germany. They are made of great gauds of iron, each separately forged and welded together, bound about with iron bands, and finally compacted with wedges thrust within the rings!”
“Of what size are these German cannon?” demanded Malise the smith.
“Of the greatness that a man may knit his fingers and thrust his hand within!” I answered.
My father rose and took a turn within the narrow limits of the smithy, which he did of habitude, turning and walking, avoiding all the time, without any observance, the pieces of armour and stands of arms scattered about. For, though he was in all ways a man so great in stature and thickness, he moved lightly as a cat, and that even to his latest days.
“Laurence, you say well,” he answered; “but what is an engine like that? Thrieve Castle is no iron broth-pot, nor a basin of red baked clay to be battered with cobble stones over Dee water. The cannon we shall fashion must be of a greatness so that twelve strong horses shall have hard work to drag it over a made road. And instead of a man’s fist, or even his joined nieves, he shall be able to thrust his whole body therein with his sark upon his back and his hose on his feet!”
The lads looked on in silent amazement. Malise turned to them.
“Ay, ay, we M‘Kims shall do it! Seven great forge fires shall there be on the shore of Carlinwark—to each of us one. With our arms shall we work at the metal, but the king’s men shall make a high fence—John Johnstone the joiner and his loons clacking and hammering nails, so that all shall keep their distance—ay, even the king’s own majesty—till the work be finished and complete. Also the camp followers shall bring us fuel, and we will work till we die—or the work be done!”
“But—but—but,” began the lads, “we have never made or even seen any powder guns greater than these culverins of bronze”—
Malise M‘Kim seized a hammer, and swung it in his hand.
“Hear ye, Corra, Dun, Herries, and the rest,” he shouted, “do as I bid you, or, by St. Bride, I will make a row of herring heads of you nailed against the smiddy wa’! Have I spent my labour in vain—in the begetting of windle-straws, in rearing a cleckan of peeping pullets, fit only to pick corn-seed about a barn-door? Am I not the master smith? Am I not Malise M‘Kim? And shall a crew of lowns, scarce breeched and scantily bearded, dare to crake and craw at me when I set them their tasks and piece-work? To your day’s darg like good hammermen! Strike hard! Say naught! Laurence and I will to the king!”
And to the king we went.
It was not far. Upon the ridge of Carlinwark, to the right, behind the great beech trees which broke the westerly wind from the cottage of the Three Tudors, rose the royal pavilion, with the Lion of Scotland in front. Those of his chief lords, Angus, Morton, Crichton, Huntly, with their several ensigns, were disposed irregularly about.
James of the Fiery Face was early astir. Indeed, so far as I ken, none of the Stewarts were long liers a-bed. He met us in the doorway of his tent, and at once bade all men go forth from him, save Crichton only.
This last proved to be a little wizened, cunning man with the visage of a monkey, but he looked at us with a pair of the brightest eyes that ever were seen in the realm of Scotland.
At the sight of him, and the king’s ardent commendation of his qualities, I could see the dull red fires glow up in my father’s eyes.
“A cup of wine with you, Malise,” said the king, “and you, young slip of lear, wha for your misdeeds wants a name to your tail—what do you with our master armourer?”
“What do you with that?” said my father, somewhat truculently and a great deal insolently, pointing his finger at Crichton, who sat at a table turning over some papers diligently.
“Why, man, he is in some sort a headpiece to me,” said the king, humouring the old man; “ ’tis well kenned that mine own is no great things!”
“And even so is this youth mine,” answered my father swiftly, “though” (he added more slowly) “I do admit he is a master craftsman also, having studied the art of iron in France and other countries.”
For I had bound over my father and brothers not to reveal who I was.
The king called a pantler of the household train, and bade him fetch a flagon of wine, of which he poured out a full cup.
But Malise put it away from him.
“Give such-like to the young,” he said; “I will drink no wine and eat only such meat as is necessary for the sustaining of my body till the castle yonder is in our hands.”
“And have you gotten that troublesome thought safely out of your head, ingoted, and laid on anvil, eh, master smith?” demanded the king, smiling.
“Ye shall hear, King James Stewart!” he answered. “ ’Tis ingoted, barred, and ready for fire and hammer-stroke. Listen! I have much good iron in the shed of the smithy under the trees. I expected that it would serve my lifetime. In the town of Kirkcudbright there is much more. Only, I pray you, give us men to build an enclosure about our forge-hearth, for we would not be fashed in our labour.”
“And what,” said the king, “is this your labour of which you speak?”
“King James,” said the smith, “I have promised to serve you and to be your man till the castle of Thrieve fall and the lord thereof comes by his deserts. I will make you a cannon greater than any in the world. This young man, having travelled far and near, hath seen the like—only in little—in the German camps in the Low Countries! But I will make a cannon which shall send a ball from where we stand to the battering down of yon high towers of Thrieve—ay, farther an ye will”—
“Malise, Malise,” said the king reproachfully, “I had expected more and better than this mad ploy. The thing is clean impossible. The like was never seen in this realm or in any other.”
My father erected himself, squaring his great shoulders till they seemed almost to reach across the breadth of the pavilion.
“King of Scots,” he said, with solemnity, “you are a man, I am a man. Your name is James Stewart, mine Malise M‘Kim! Have ye seen or heard aught to gar ye think your royal word better than the word of Malise, the smith of Carlinwark?”
“Methinks the comparison would lean somewhat heavily to your side of the balance, good master armourer!” said the king good-humouredly. “Not at all times can a king keep his word. He hath those about him, like my excellent Chancellor at the table there, who will not let him!”
And I thought that a dry smile passed over the face of Crichton, who nevertheless continued to occupy himself with parchments and various writings. As for me, I was in an agony of fear lest my father should say something to the king about the safe-conduct which he had given, writ with his own hand, signed with his name and seal, to William of Douglas, when he brought him to Stirling to meet his death. But Malise the smith was appeased by King James’s answer, and, after brooding a little, laid the whole plan and design of the great cannon before him.
“I have here at the Carlinwark seven sons,” he said in conclusion, “and that we will forge you the cannon I put their heads and mine own in the balance. Let your headsman sharpen his blade for us if we fail!”
“And if you succeed?” asked Crichton, looking up with a sudden brightening of his countenance, “you seven will all need an earldom at least. It is the fashion nowadays!”
“Nay,” answered Malise M‘Kim slowly, “not an earldom, nor yet a chancellorship, my Lord of Crichton—nor any reward in lands or siller. But only—five minutes alone with James Douglas!”
“That you shall have and welcome!” said the king. “But why do you not ask for the life of your son who is in rebellion?”
“That will I not,” said Malise M‘Kim. “I have told you before, King of Scots, the young man serves not James Douglas but the Lady Margaret, his true mistress. He will serve you as well. Had he been in rebellion, would he have been lacking at Arkinholm?”
“Malise,” cried the king, laughing, “I had not thought thee so subtle in thy reasons. This lad in black must have quickened thee, as Crichton doth my own sluggish harn-pan. But all the same, may the saints confound that Sholto of thine—rebel or no rebel, traitor or loyal subject—I wot well that he is giving us a huge through-other of trouble in the midst of this wild Galloway. And, spite of thy cannon, no man yet sees how it will end!”
* * * * * * *
So that very night on the shores of Carlinwark seven great forges were set up. In the woods of Buittle and Borgue men black to the eyeholes made charcoal for the fires that burned night and day. And we seven M‘Kims shut ourselves out from the world—by day in a hot and panting purgatory of burning sun and blowing fires. At night it was a little better. The deep glow of the forges was reflected on the still waters of the loch, and the clang of the fore-hammers was heard afar. Mostly we seven were stripped and blackened to the waist with coal and grime, and I warrant well that mine own almoner at Sweetheart abbey would not have known his sometime Abbot had he met him these days ’twixt vespers and prime.
Above on the slope, it was the nightly amusement of the soldiers, and even of many young scions of the nobility, to cluster along the ridge and look down upon us at our travail—now black against the firelight, anon our faces and swart naked limbs lit up with the leaping flames. Demons of the nether pit could have looked little otherwise, as, escaping for a moment, we ran to the white cottage, demanding drink from our mother, who, on her part, poor woman, slept little, watching my father, and, like him, wearing herself out. But she for love even as he for hate.
So the great iron gauds to make the body of the bombard were forged in such a turmoil as never before or since have mine eyes beheld or mine ears been deaved withal. We began to put the great cannon together, and not till then did the mighty proportions of the monster appear, taking shape dimly through the swelter.
Then came a period of yet fiercer excitement. So long as we were merely working at the forging bars, each man had to heat and hammer by himself, or, at most, with only one associate. But when at last the monster began to take actual shape, and we saw before us the mighty maw which should soon begin to vomit destruction, and the vast of the cavern which would hold (as my father had truly said) the body of a man, we could scarce stay ourselves from shouting aloud.
“Bide,” said my father grimly, “there is the pick and flower of the work yet to do. The iron rings are yet to be shrunk upon her, and many a stiff back and many a wet ringing brow shall ye hae afore that be through with, lads of mine!”
I mind the night yet when the last band was fitted. It chanced that, without our observing it, the wood and charcoal had gotten dangerously near to the bottom of the pile. Also, though my father knew it not (and we dared not tell him), the Borgue men had not arrived with fresh loads—being more than two days behind, drinking of aquavit at some dyke-back belike, after their kind. And so when the master band of all was to be put about the cavernous muzzle, where the force of the powder would spend itself most fiercely—lo! the fires were in danger of falling low!
Then my father, who throughout had scarce spoken at all, save only to give his orders, went like a man demented, and bade pull down the ancient smithy of Carlinwark, and burn the beams for fuel. And as he stood there with naught upon him save the great leathern apron twisted about his middle to serve for a breech-clout, black from top to toe with the forge sweat and charcoal grime, I doubt if even James Stewart himself would have hesitated about obeying him, if he had bidden tear down and burn Holyrood House itself.
At anyrate, we who underlay his wrath did not lose a moment, and were a-tearing an’ a-scrambling at the roof before the words were well out of his mouth. Yet for all I could not help thinking how much happier I was, astride upon one beam and hacking at another, than ever I had been sitting in my chair in the abbey of Sweetheart with the chanted psalms and the incense going up about me in clouds of holy scent and sound.
Well, we fetched it down with a run, and clumsy Corra, tramping bullock-like along the rigging, well-nigh broke his neck by falling through. So we brought the rafters, tinder-dry and brown with many generations of smithy fires, and thrust them into the furnace.
“More and more!” shouted my father, lifting and feeding as if the house beams had been but so much kitchen firewood.
“He will have the cottage itself about our heads in another moment,” quoth my mother. “Laurence, go get him wood, or he will tear down the house of the Three Thorns as he hath done the smiddy. And even when I am deep under sod, I want to think o’ the gable of the bonny house, where we two used to sit and talk, cleeked close on the bench he made, the first year we were marriet! Find him wood, Laurence. Bring it to him! Haste ye, Laurence, haste ye!”
So I gat hold of Herries and a strong country lad or two from without the barriers, and tore down the fences which the king’s carpenters had put up. There was a great crowd of the curious all about. But when I made my choice of helpers, they pressed forward. But I made them go back at the peril of their lives, for that Malise M‘Kim would crack a man’s skull that night, as it were an egg-shell, if he found him where he had no business to be.
And one behind them, wrapped in a great cloak, cried out for all to stand back, and that he would help us himself. Which, being evidently of some authority among them, he did, tearing down the boards and pales of the enclosure and carrying them on his back to the door of the cannon shed, but no farther.
“I have desire to look once,” he said, when at last we had finished. “Let that be my reward!”
So I told him to keep well behind Herries, and he looked within. It was indeed a ferlie worth seeing that he saw—Malise the great smith leaping and striking with six attendant demons all pulling and thrusting, and, as it seemed, passing their bodies through the fires of hell ten times in a minute. The sparks flew great as crown pieces. The flames danced upward in coils and spikes. And in the background the great black monster stood waiting her last neckband.
“Here, Corra—Herries! All is ready!” shouted my father. “Come, Laurence, and the rest of you—seven M‘Kims, all working as one, to avenge the shame of our house! Would to God there had been eight!”
He called us seven, and spoke to me as if I had been there.
And lo! when I looked, with eyes dazzled by the light, it is true, I could count seven M‘Kims in the forge, where, wanting me, there should only have been six!
“Laurence, Laurence, strike with me, lad, for the last welding!” cried my father, evidently believing that I was by his side.
I could not understand it. Nevertheless, I had perforce to shuffle our helper away to the gap in the fence out of my father’s eye-shot, as well as to get back to do my part. But as we reached the place a crowd of curious had entered, and stood gaping and gazing, whom our helper hotly ordered back.
But one, being of the insolent, ignorant sort, common in camps, called out, “Well for you, crane’s neck, hook nose—you have seen! We saw you peep within. We will not go back, nor take our orders from you! Who are you to make good soldiers of my Lord Angus jump hither and thither at your orders, and tumble somersaults like puppy dogs?”
“That I will show you!” said the man, and dropped his cloak. And it was the king!
Then every man gat him behind his neighbour, all trying to appear as if they had come out solely to gaze upon the stars. At another time I would have laughed, but then I had other most unhumorous business to my hand.
“Provost Marshal,” cried the king, “take that man, and make him discover how easy it is to jump hither and thither—ay, and for a good soldier of my Lord Angus’s to tumble somersaults like a puppy dog!”
And so, with red flame and clangour infinite, the great cannon was cast. It is the same which is called Mons or Mollance Meg, after my father’s landed property, and stands in the castle of Edinburgh to this day to witness if I lie.
* * * * * * *
The End of the Portion of History writ by the Young Man in Black.
Wherein Margaret Douglas again takes up the tale.
And in the meantime, how passed the days and weeks and months on the high bastions and in the higher keep of Thrieve?
I will try to tell.
Every morn Maud and I went up to the roof to see the muster of the king’s troops, which was like a pageant. There were trumpets that blew, and banners that waved, and knights and horses all covered with cloth of red and gold—a gallant sight, and one which Maud and I (being as much children as any) were never tired of watching, so long, that is, as Sholto assured us that there was no danger.
At times James Douglas would come up to the roof battlements; but, like one outcasted and desolate, he would abide in a place by himself, speaking with none, or only with the officers and soldiery of the garrison. Sometimes one of the children would run to take his hand and talk, of which he seemed glad.
When he met Sholto, the Captain of the Guard of Thrieve saluted gravely, and stood listening. Then, if the earl put a question, Sholto answered it in so many words; but if not, he would salute again, and betake himself to the outposts or to the dungeon of Archibald the Grim, which, with purposes of his own, he was wholly refitting, strengthening even the walls, doubling the thickness of the top in solid stone and lime, and providing for view and air by narrow slits, through which one could scarce thrust one’s hand edgewise.
One day, to try him, I asked Sholto if he meant to shut up the King of Scots in Archibald the Grim.
“Nay,” he answered me at once, “but some few things far more precious!”
One day, being in my ancient south-looking chamber, of which the fear had gradually grown away (though I admit that even then I liked not to sleep there), I heard the noise of voices beneath, on the balcony. The window was open, and I seated idly with my hands in my lap. I could not help but hear.
* * * * * * *
The men proved to be Sholto M‘Kim and James Douglas, my husband, who spoke on the platform of stone beneath my windows.
“What think you, Sir Sholto,” said the earl, “shall we hold it or no? They make no progress. Their trumpetings, their shooting of arrow flights, their cracking of pop-guns—what are these as against the solid walls of Thrieve and the strong virgin defences of the isle?”
For an instant Sholto did not answer, and I could clearly hear the soothing hush of the Dee over its shallows at the bridge-end. Then he spoke.
“My lord,” he said, “we have seen, as you say, many useless marches and counter-marches! We have repelled feints of attack, and hearkened to many summonses to surrender in the name of our lord the king. Yet no man in the garrison is grievously hurt, while those of us who have been smitten owe their wounds mostly to their own recklessness. But there is one thing concerning which my mind is not easy.”
“And that?” said the earl, idly chipping little bits of the plaster and skimming them over the wall.
“It is,” said Sholto, “that in all these things we see naught of Malise M‘Kim, my father, nor yet of his sons, my brothers!”
“Oh, there is small need to concern oneself with that,” said the earl; “they have gone afield to raise more troops. Or mayhap, there lies a sorrow upon their minds to help in breaking down that which they have built up—I mean because the M‘Kims have been master armourers at Thrieve, in a manner of speaking, since the world began.”
Sholto gazed long at James Douglas. I could not see his face, but I knew well the way he would look. About this time his master was a constant surprise to him—his unconscious brutality of selfishness, the crassness of his judgment in all that concerned others—in especial, the fatal lightness of his mind, habiting a body so strong and so fair, joined to a nature so truly courageous as between man and man, yet so self-seeking and contracted towards women and God! All this joined in one person might well make Sholto M‘Kim marvel. True, I knew James Douglas over well. I had long gotten over my wondering.
“You think that my father will come back to you—that after a time he will forgive—let all be as it was?” Sholto stammered, scarce knowing what to say.
James Douglas moved uneasily, I knew exactly how. I could feel him, though see him I could not.
“No, not that,” he said; “so much no man could expect. But some token of forgiving—some kindly remembrance, some returning loyalty toward the house his father served—so much seems to me by no means unreasonable!”
Sholto nodded, with what of grim countenance I could guess. Even by leaning out I could see no more than the peak of the plain steel cap in which he made his rounds.
“No, it is not impossible,” he said slowly; “there is, however, one condition.”
“And what might that condition be?” cried James Douglas. (As he spoke I could hear the returning hope in his voice. It hurt him that men should not approve him.)
“That he should see One Man lie dead!”
I felt the question tremble on James Douglas’s lips. But it was not put. The prophet’s “Thou art the man!” was not an answer which he desired to hear from the lips of his truth-speaking Captain of the Guard.
Abruptly he turned on his heel and walked away. Sholto M‘Kim was left behind, leaning one elbow on the stone baluster and gazing pensively across the water-meadows towards the ridge of Carlinwark, where, through the pale purple of the gloaming, certain red bursts of flame sent a ruddy “skarrow” vibrating aloft to the lower clouds.
Long and carefully Sholto watched. The night grew rapidly darker—chiller also. The light in the east waxed more and more lurid. There came a noise of shouting on the breeze.
“That is my father!” said Sholto, aloud; “I must go and see what he is about!”
All the same he went his rounds with a little more than his usual care. Then he came up by the turret stairs, kissed the babes who were asleep in their cots, sat a while by Marcelle’s trundle-bed to talk over the events of the day as was his wont—how a new blazon had been seen in front of a troop which rode past the castle on the Balmaghie shore; how a certain bullock in the byres, Red Jock by name, had gotten an arrow wound in his heel, which she had helped to bind, in spite of the unthankful and ill-behaved kicking and plunging of the patient.
Then descending, Sholto said a quiet courtly word to me in the great hall, kissed Maud his wife, and (here all we knew at the time finishes) dressed himself in countryman’s garb, crossed the Dee water to the southward, where, among the marshes the enemy’s watch-huts were few and ill-tended—only some few folk of Solway moss abiding there, and even they having mostly removed themselves over to the Carlinwark on the chance of picking the king’s supper bones, and getting a peep at the works of Malise the smith over the palisades of the Three Thorns.
So Sholto, to whom all the bogs and marshes, with their green “quaas” slimy and mysterious, their humpy islands of crumbling peat, their blind leads of ink-black water, stagnant and oily, were familiar—who knew them as a man that rises in the night knows his way back to his bed—found little difficulty in outwitting and outstripping the guards to the south of the isle of Thrieve. An arrow whistled in his wake once or twice. A cur barked as he crossed its wind within a few yards of a Lochar men’s post, striding onward, contemptuous of such soldiering. Brief, in less than an hour, Sholto, his face blackened with grime which he knew where to seek on the rubbish heaps of the old smithy, stood among the crowd outside the barriers, elbowing and cursing with the best, while they watched the roaring of the flames and marvelled at the fierce pulling down of the ancient smithy for the sake of the beams.
But the shed over the great cannon balked his curiosity, through every crevice of which the flames seemed to dart from an interior filled to bursting with the glow of red-hot metal and the clank of hammers.
“I am the Captain of Thrieve—I must see,” growled Sholto. “I am a M‘Kim—God’s grace, see I will!”
And while the youths were still scrambling on the rigging of the smithy, and while the Young Man in Black (whose narrative has been entered before) was tearing at the palisades to keep up the fire, Sholto M‘Kim, unseen of any, stole along the dark waterside, and in a moment paused at the door of that Vulcan’s cavern of noise and heat and flame. A while he stood, stricken dumb and motionless with amazement.
Then, seeing that certain of his brothers were a-missing, and that there needed someone to deal stroke-and-stroke about with his father, something suddenly pricked in his heart. He thought of James Douglas as he had never done before. He muttered, “ ’Fore God, am not I also a M‘Kim? I will do my part!” And with that he rushed within, picked up a forehammer, and was at his ancient task, as of yore, in the unroofed smithy a little lower down by the waterside of Carlinwark.
He it was of whom the Young Man in Black caught a glimpse ere he returned from hearing the king order his Provost Marshal to impress a respect for kingcraft upon the insolent back of that “good soldier of my Lord of Angus”—the which (the fellow being a Douglas fighting against the head of his house) I trust the Provost Marshal achieved in due time and with a stout right arm.
And long ere the morning light, Sholto M‘Kim, with full information as to what the castle of Thrieve might expect when the monster cannon was completed, lay stretched out sound asleep beside his Maud. Yet when she waked, with the thought of her ailing babes on her mind, her husband said nothing to her of his night adventures—nothing, indeed, to any of us. But from that time forth, the strengthening of the dungeon place, called Archibald the Grim, and the due provisioning of it with light and food and air, were pushed forward with tenfold speed.
And though I was the first to know of Sholto’s night work, it was not till long afterwards that he told even me anything.
Nevertheless, from the cessation of the customary attacks upon the outworks of the isle, from the drawing away of men for purposes to us unseen, there fell an uneasy consciousness upon Thrieve that something serious was impending. The men no longer sang behind the fortifications, but conferred in whispers. And every night you might see a group of them on the castle roof, eagerly looking towards the red flicker in the sky which told of some notable work to our disadvantage going on behind the hill of Carlinwark.
We know now what that work was. It was the making of the carriage for the huge cannon, called afterward Mons Meg’s cradle, and the vast chariot whereon to drag her to a hill just beyond the fords of Glenlochar—a round hill, called at that time the Byne of Camp Douglas, because the shape of it was like an upturned basin—but afterwards, and to this day, “Knockcannon,” or the mount of the cannon.
At last one day we heard a great shouting and affray to the northward, and Sholto, looking out, made out a long procession keeping well in the rear of the line of tents upon the Clairbrand heights. But they could by no possibility keep themselves hidden at the fords of Lochar. For they were bound to cross that way, the water being deep above, and the castle too near and dangerous below. So that we on the topmost towers of Thrieve could see plainly, as it were, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men, convoying, with pain and travail, what seemed a great long cask or barrel across the shallows of the Dee.
Then it was that Sholto spoke, but in few words.
“It behoves that we keep good watch,” he said.
“They have made a great cannon at Carlinwark. I have seen it with these eyes. It may well be that before it the walls of the castle will be as paper. But as yet no man knows whether the shot will strike us, or whether the piece may not burst at the first discharge. But be these things as they may, I have caused make a place of refuge in the dungeon, which no cannon shot, an it were three times as huge, could possibly break into. Thither, my Lady Margaret, you will retire with Maud and the babes when I give the word. But there is yet enough of time. Much remains for them to do, and of warning, ere the danger arrives, there will be enough and to spare. They are now on a hill, and cannot be hid.”