CHAPTER XIX.

THE SCENT OF THE WHITE THORN

Still I had not seen Magdalen M‘Kim.

I was resolved that no longer would I miss my mark. So that very afternoon I sent Andro the Penman, whose swarthy countenance and determinate bachelordom protected him from any misconceptions as to his purpose, on mission to the Three Thorns of Carlinwark.

With him I sent a jewel of price to Magdalen--a cross made of a great moonstone, set about with black diamonds, of Saracen work--brought, so they said, from the Holy Land by some crusading Douglas. And with it I sent the letter which follows:--

“Sweet Magdalen and my little Foster Sister,--I have heard speak of you, often and mickle. Yet has it never been my lot to see you. Will you bring your father and Dame Barbara, with as many of your brothers as can be spared, to the Thrieve to-morrow--that I may see you, and know you for, as they report of you, the fairest and honestest maid in Galloway? This I desire all the more, that, before I was wedded, and so in one day grew an old woman, folk were used to call me also ‘The Fair Maid of Galloway.’”

This I signed with the name which (at that time) I had resolved should never be changed--“Margaret Douglas.” And then I waited, expectant as a lover for the coming of this marvel and non-such--the Flower of all the White Thorns that ever grew by the shores of Carlinwark.

It chanced that I awoke very early and looked across the little garden, wherein, upon the moist and fertile soil washed by the river, flourished the flowering rush and bachelor’s button, with the wild vine of Touraine climbing up the twin ilex oaks, which had been brought all the way from Rome and planted against the warm south-looking wall of Thrieve. There were open spaces, too, where, kept in countenance by gillyflower and the royal brake, there were beginning to take root those pretty dainty bunches called the “Fair Maids of France” which the Sieur Paul had sent overseas to remind me of Cour Cheverney.

Only on the southern face, under my window, was there any green leafage about Castle Thrieve. On every other side the castle rose clear, grey, lonely--a strong tower for defence, a hold against the storms of war, as indeed it had already been for generations--square, bare, and upstanding as if in scorn of compromise.

But now I loved the little garden best of all, perhaps because my dear Lady’s Bower was deserted. I had no desire to go thither. Two men seemed to stand between me and it--the two whom I had seen ride away together, each watching the other, behind the fatal Hiding Hill.

It was very early when I looked out on the morning we were to see Magdalen at Thrieve. The river wimpled below, glimmering like the inside of a pearl shell--little flecks of rosy cloud driven up from the east being, however, smilingly reflected in the grey. I could see the water wander away between the dark meadows till it drew to a point and was lost in the distance. As I leaned from the window of my chamber I felt a damp chill strike suddenly through me. The dew-dropping trees in the little garden shivered, though there was no wind. I also shuddered, as if I had been one of them.

Over yonder was the Hill of Carlinwark, the clouds of dawn reddening behind it. Why should Fear haunt me, and the trees of my garden tremble as if someone were treading on my grave?

Could aught of evil be coming to me from Over Yonder?

Surely not--only the daintiest, the most innocent, and the sweetest maid in Galloway--Magdalen, the daughter of the armourer of Carlinwark, that rare blossom of the May and the flower of the white and scented Thorn.

She came punctually at ten o’clock of the day, her mother, Dame Barbara, and Malise her father being with her. I was startled at first. I remembered her as a little child with a floss of golden hair and eyes like the sun shining on a mountain lake--at once dark and bright. There was no doubt about it--little Magdalen M‘Kim had grown into a bewitching woman--yes, a woman, though, according to her years and to her cleading, she was yet no more than a child.

Of her complexion she was fair, dazzlingly fair, as blonde as I (being a Douglas) was dark. As to her _coif_, it was marvellous. Each individual hair stood out like a wire of gold, infinitely fine, waving and crisping to her waist. So light the fleece was, the wind blew it this way and that in wisps, as mist is blown about the hill-tops.

In Magdalen’s eyes there was the depth of water seen under the shade of great ancestral trees. What colour they were--green, blue, hazel, or violet, I could not tell. Chiefly, I think, they changed according to the thought that stirred behind. The girl’s skin was clear, and flushed easily to a dainty rose. Something innocent and appealing looked out from under her eyelashes at you, claiming protection even before the full and gracious smile of her mouth had said, “I trust you!”

And so at long and last, here before me was Magdalen of the Three Thorns.

I went down myself to meet her, but when I would have embraced her first, she directed me to her mother.

“She will be disappointed else!” she whispered, bending from her saddle.

And so I kissed my old nurse first of all, and then, holding the girl at arm’s length, examined her from head to foot. The time being summer, she was clad in plain white linen cloth, fresh from bleaching upon the green grass of the Carlinwark meadows, and her hair was kept from straying by a snood or band of blue ribbon, broader than usual, which passed about her small and shapely head.

With that came Maud out also, smiling sweetly and full of content with her life, her babes, her husband. Maud could think wisely and well for others--witness how she had thought for me; but really her soul abode within her, content, unfretted, sufficient to itself as that of a good mother should, the young birds abiding still in the nest.

So we went in, and afterwards Malise came and joined us in the great hall, refusing, however, to sit down in the presence of his mistress.

“The boys?” he grumbled, I might say rumbled, when I had asked him why they had not all come, “na, na--they are better at hame. Twa sons o’ mine are lost to the anvil and the hammer. If a’ o’ them gaed the way of Prior Laurence yonder, and Sir Sholto here, what would come o’ the armourership to the Douglases o’ Thrieve, whilk hath been in my family ever since there was a Douglas to go forth to battle, or a M‘Kim to fit him for it wi’ steel harness and sword o’ mettle?

“‘Na, na, guid lads, bide where ye are,’ says I. And guid lads they are. But spoil a M‘Kim, an’ ye mak’ a devil unpitted. So I e’en set them their tasks, and explained what wad happen gin they werena dune by the doon-lettin’ o’ the nicht!

“‘The Lord help ye!’ said I. But they kenned fu’ weel that He wadna!”

* * * * * * *

It was to me a day most memorable, that August noon and afternoon when from the Three Thorns of Carlinwark Magdalen M‘Kim came first into my house of Thrieve. At this distance of time, and after all that is come and gone, it is hard for me to detach myself, and convey to those who never set eye upon this girl any true idea of the wonderful charm of her girlhood.

There have been beautiful and gracious women not a few whom I have seen and known--chiefest, of course, Maud Lindsay and Mistress Agnes Sorel--la “Belle des Belles.” But the like of Magdalen M‘Kim as she was at fifteen have I never seen--child-woman and woman-child in one.

I cannot mind me of any great thing we either said or did. We went into the south garden, I know, under the shadow of the ilex or Lady’s Oak, where I had had seats placed. Maud Lindsay came to us time and again as the duties of her housekeeping and nursery permitted. But mostly she left us alone to make acquaintance, taking Dame Barbara off with her, to count baby linen and apprise napery, while Malise went the rounds of the armoury with his son Sholto, growling at specks of rust to other eyes invisible, and informing the Captain of the Guard for the hundredth time how differently things were managed when he was in residence at Thrieve--“in the Tineman’s time,” as he was careful to add.

“Doubtless,” answered Sholto, growing at last a little nettled, “but then, if our arms are not so clean, we do not lose so many battles with them!”

“But more heads!” growled the ancient armourer in his beard. “And there would have been less of that same if the young Earl William would have taken my advice. But ’tis not too late even yet. Yonder, to begin with, are Chancellor Crichton and Tutor Livingston, that carry on their shoulders a pair of bosses that would be none the worse of a snedding!”

Sholto laughed, placing his hand affectionately on his father’s arm.

“But did you ever hear of a right Douglas yet,” he said, “that would take advice?”

Malise shook his head, perhaps remembering my brothers. Then he sighed.

“Never if it were guid advice! Or frae a man!” he added softly, and as if recalling something to his mind woeful and heavy with Fate.

* * * * * * *

So in the south garden Magdalen and I sat, the white doves that swooped and circled about, plumping squably upon the scattered grains of corn, not more innocently happy. I asked her after a while concerning her lovers and the men who came to the Three Thorns to woo her--of whose number and varied qualifications I had heard so great an account.

Magdalen smiled softly, with a swiftly passing reminiscence of her father’s humour in her eyes. Then they took on again the misty look of hills seen through an April shower.

“Ay, ay,” she said, “there is a deal of work to be done about the armoury--work that takes time, work that has to be waited for. And there are lads, and brisk lads too, that ‘cook’ their heads out of the smithy door when my mother steps across to the bleaching green, or one of my brothers comes ben for a drink of water. But,” here she smiled softly, “since John the Penman did his watery penance on the stone cairn, there has been more of peace about the house-place of the Three Thorns!”

“Who are they that come?” I said--not, I think, out of curiosity, but just because I wanted to know. For the things which happen to one girl always interest another.

So, to encourage her, I told her of Cour Cheverney, of the gallant knights there, and of how I liked Laurence, her brother, best of all. At which she smiled, and had for a moment the same childish, all-forgetful look I had seen in Larry’s eyes when he was setting the little mill-wheels to running in the tumble of the Touranian brooks.

Then, very carefully, I spoke concerning William, my husband; of how wise he was, how brave in word and act, praising him at the expense of his brothers, to see what she would say. For women do these things the one to the other. Then, after a silence, my reward came. Magdalen flashed out--

“But was it not true--so, at least, I was told--that Lord James conquered in the tourney, even as, when he was but a boy, he did at Stirling against the Knights of Bargandis?”

So with that I turned and said to the girl, “Hath my cousin, James Douglas, by any chance been often over at the Three Thorns?”

But she answered me quite steadily, with her own sweet and constant humility--a reproof in itself.

“Nay,” she said, “he is over-great a lord to think of me; nevertheless, I have seen him ride by when I was gathering flowers--yes, ever since I was a little girl, whom he would take up on his saddle before him, being kind. But now that I am too old for such-like, he will, when he meets me, dismount and walk a little way, asking concernedly for my father and brothers, with whom he was in France, and for whom he cherishes love and affection past the common--!”

“Ah, yes,” said I, “such affection is more common than you suppose, sweet Magdalen!”

But even then the girl took no offence, nor dreamed of such a thing as irony, being simple and pure, and set about with strong brothers and a father that had a name upon the earth, whom no man--no, not even James Douglas--would care to cross in his angers. She did not even look up, but went on throwing corn to the doves, pile by pile. For the which Sholto, coming in, brother like, reproved her.

“Ye may do as ye like at the Three Thorns and welcome,” he said, “but here I am in charge of the larder of Thrieve. And since it has been prophesied that there shall be a siege of the place within three years, there are horses and men that may be glad of the grain you are flinging so freely to these fat squabs!”

And since it was our Douglas way never to interfere with any man in his jurisdiction and responsibility, I said nothing. Indeed, I would have said as little had he reproved me--such being his right and duty.

But Magdalen blushed crimson athwart the white of her cheeks.

“I am sorry, Sholto,” she murmured, and then she looked with a certain appeal at me.

“We are all his slaves here,” I whispered; “wait till he is gone!”

Then there came a voice from the window above.

“Come up thither and hold the babe while I see to the chambers. These lazy sluts leave half their work undone. This it is to live in a castle with a guard of men-folk in the hall beneath.”

We both knew the voice of Maud Lindsay, and very hurriedly and with long strides Sholto departed to do the duty of parent auxiliary.

I laughed aloud when he was fairly gone.

“Ah, little girl,” I cried, “it is well that there is something up yonder which can tame even a captain of the guard. Hearken!”

And clearly through the open lattice there came the sound of a babe’s crying.

“_That_ makes us all slaves!” I said. Then at the words I flushed hot as fire.

And swiftly, causelessly, as if also ashamed or affrayed, Magdalen nestled up against me.