The Black Douglas Page 8

  CHAPTER VII

  THE DOUGLAS MUSTER

  The day of the great weapon-showing broke fair and clear after thestorm of the night. The windows of heaven had had all their panescleaned, and even after it was daylight the brighter starsappeared--only, however, to wink out again when the sun arose andshone on the wet fields, coming forth rejoicing like a bridegroom fromhis chamber.

  And equally bright and strong came forth the young Earl, every traceof the anger and disappointment of the night having been removed fromhis face, if not from his mind, by the recreative and potent sleep ofyouth and health.

  In the hall he called for Sir John of Abernethy, nicknamed LandlessJock.

  "Conduct my uncle the Abbot from the chapel where he has been allnight at his devotions, to his chamber, and furnish him with what hemay require, and bring up Malise the Smith from the dungeon. Let himcome into my presence in the upper hall."

  William Douglas went into a large oak-ceiled chamber, wide and high,running across the castle from side to side, and with windows thatlooked every way over the broad and fertile strath of Dee.

  Presently, with a trampling of mailed feet and the double rattle whichdenoted the grounding of a pair of steel-hilted partisans, Malise wasbrought to the door by two soldiers of the Earl's outer guard.

  The huge bulk of Brawny Kim filled up the doorway almost completely,and he stood watching the Douglas with an unmoved gravity which, inthe dry wrinkles about his eyes, almost amounted to humorousappreciation of the situation.

  Yet it was Malise who spoke first. For at his appearance the Earl hadturned his back upon his retainer, and now stood at the window thatlooks towards the north, from which he could see, over the broad andplacid stretches of the river, the men putting up the pavilions andstriking spears into the ground to mark out the spaces for the tourneyof the next day.

  "A fair good morrow to you, my lord," said the smith. "Grievous as mysin has been, and just as is your resentment, give me leave to saythat I have suffered more than my deserts from the ill-made chains anduncouth manacles wherewith they confined me in the black dungeon downthere. I trow they must have been the workmanship of Ninian Lamont theHighlandman, who dares to call himself house-smith of Thrieve. I amready to die if it be your will, my lord; but if you are well advisedyou will hang Ninian beside me with a bracelet of his own rascalhandiwork about his neck. Then shall justice be satisfied, and MaliseMacKim will die happy."

  The Earl turned and looked at his ancient friend. The wrinkles aboutthe brow were deeply ironical now, and the grey eyes of the masterarmourer twinkled with appreciation of his jest.

  "Malise," cried his master, warningly, "do not play at cat's cradlewith the Douglas. You might tempt me to that I should afterwards besorry for. A man once dead comes not to life again, whatever monksprate. But tell me, how knew you whither I had gone yester-even? For,indeed, I knew not myself when I set out. And in any event, was it athing well done for my foster father to spy upon me the son who wasalso his lord?"

  The anger was mostly gone now out of the frank young face of the Earl,and only humiliation and resentment, with a touch of boyish curiosity,remained.

  "Indeed," answered the smith, "I watched you not save under my hand asyou rode away upon Black Darnaway, and then I turned me to the seat bythe wall to listen to the cavillings of Dame Barbara, the humming ofthe bees, and the other comfortable and composing sounds of nature."

  "How then did you come to follow me in the undesirable company of myuncle the Abbot?"

  "For that you are in the debt of my son Sholto, who, seeing a ladywait for you in the greenwood, climbed a tree, and there from amongstthe branches he was witness of your encounter."

  "So--" said the Douglas, grimly, "it is to Master Sholto that I amindebted somewhat."

  "Aye," said his father, "do not forget him. For he is a good lad and abold, as indeed he proved to the hilt yestreen."

  "In what consisted his boldness?" asked the Earl.

  "In that he dared come home to me with a cock-and-bull story of awitch lady, who appeared suddenly where none had been a moment before,and who had immediately enchanted my lord Earl. Well nigh did I twisthis neck, but he stuck to it. Then came riding by my lord Abbot on hisway to Thrieve, and I judged that the matter, as one of witchcraft,was more his affair than mine."

  "Now hearken," cried the Earl, in quick, high tones of anger, "letthere be no more of such folly, or on your life be it. The lady whomyou insulted was travelling with her company through Galloway fromFrance. She invited me to sup with her, and dared me to adventure toEdinburgh in her company. Answer me, wherein was the witchcraft ofthat, saving the witchery natural to all fair women?"

  "Did she not prophesy to you that to-day you would be Duke ofTouraine, and receive the ambassadors of the King of France?"

  "Well," said the Earl, "where is your wit that you give ear to suchbabblings? Did she not come from that country, as I tell you, and whoshould hear the latest news more readily than she?"

  The smith looked a little nonplussed, but stuck to it stoutly thatnone but a witch woman would ride alone at nightfall upon a Gallowaymoor, or unless by enchantment set up a pavilion of silk and strangedevices under the pines of Loch Roan.

  "Well," said Earl William, feeling his advantage and making the mostof it, "I see that in all my little love affairs I must needs take mymaster armourer with me to decide whether or no the lady be a witch.He shall resolve for me all spiritual questions with his forehammer.Malise MacKim a witch pricker! Ha--this is a change indeed. Malise theSmith will make the censor of his lord's love affairs, after whatcertain comrades of his have told me of his own ancient love-makings.Will he deign to come to the weapon-showing to-day, and instead ofexamining the swords and halberts, the French arbalasts and Germanfusils, demit that part of his office to Ninian the Highlandman, andgo peering into ladies' eyes for sorceries and scanning their lips forsuch signs of the devil as lurk in the dimples of their chins? In thishe will find much employment and that of a congenial sort."

  Malise was vanquished, less by the sarcasm of the Earl than by thefear that perhaps the Highlandman might indeed have his place ofhonour as chief military expert by his master's right hand at theexamination of weapons that day on the green holms of Balmaghie.

  "I may have been overhasty, my lord," he said hesitatingly, "but stilldo I think that the woman was far from canny."

  The Earl laughed and, turning him about by the shoulders, gave him apush down the stair, crying, "Oh, Malise, Malise, have you lived solong in the world without finding out that a beautiful woman is alwaysuncanny!"

  The levy that day of clansmen owning fealty to the Douglas was nohasty or local one. It was not, indeed, a "rising of the countryside,"such as took place when the English were reported to be over theborder, when the beacon fires were thrown west from Criffel to Screel,from Screel to Cairnharrow, and then tossed northward by the threeCairnsmuirs and topmost Merrick far over the uplands of Kyle, tillfrom the sullen brow of Brown Carrick the bale fire set the town drumof Ayr beating its alarming note. Still this muster was a day onwhich every Douglas vassal must ride in mail with all his spearsbehind him--or bide at home and take the consequences.

  All the night from distant parishes and outlying valleys horsemen hadbeen riding, clothed in complete panoply of mail. These were theknights, barons, freeholders, who owned allegiance to the house ofDouglas. Each lord was followed by his appointed tail of esquires andmen-at-arms; behind these dense clusters of heavily armed spearmenmarched steadily along the easiest paths by the waterside and over thelower hill passes. Light running footmen slung their swords over theirbacks by leathern bandoliers and pricked it briskly southwards overthe bent so brown. Archers there were from the border towards theSolway side--lithe men, accustomed to spring from tussock to tuft ofshaking grass, whose long strides and odd spasmodic side leapingsbetrayed even on the plain and unyielding pasture lands the place oftheir amphibious nativity.

  "The Jack herons of Lochar," these were named
by the men of Galloway.But there was no jeering to their faces, for not one of thoseMaxwells, Sims, Patersons, and Dicksons would have thought twice ofleaping behind a tree stump to wing a cloth-yard shaft into ascoffer's ribs at thirty yards, taking his chance of the dule tree andthe hempen cord thereafter for the honour of Lochar.