CHAPTER XXI.

DOUGLAS RIDES LATE

The days went by at Thrieve--some few, like my Arab, galloping; most like a funeral train, as is the wont of days all over the world. Some the pigeons in the court would shorten, flying down in windy, whistling crowds to peck the grain, with which, in spite of Sholto’s teeth, Magdalen and I persisted in feeding them. With Maud at our back we could do much.

Larry came from Sweetheart, but not for a long season, and, indeed, not till I had sent for him a full score of times. There was something most unmonkishly manful about Laurence, and now, when Will came no more to Thrieve, and I was shut off from James, my heart desired to see the lad. For, though I could not help caring for James when he was with me (being so great and strong, and, as it were, encompassing), and though I wished to be a good wife to my husband, yet, it is no shame to confess it, as a friend and comrade Laurence was more to my mind than either of them.

I am not even now sure that Laurence would have come to Thrieve even for a day, in spite of all our entreaties, had it not been that his father sent him ill news of Magdalen. It was not that the child was stricken by any disease, but she languished, and failed to win back the strength she had lost.

It was then, for the first time, that I saw her father appear perturbed; for the armourer was bound up in the maid, as, indeed, were all her brothers. But Laurence, I think, she loved best of all, and he her.

At all events, swift upon that summons Laurence came, first to the Three Thorns, and afterwards to Thrieve. I found him paler than of old, and more quiet, while his face lacked its bold, fresh boyishness. I could also clearly see that he was passing anxious about his sister.

“There is something I cannot understand!” he said, and then forthwith was silent.

“We cannot even get her to come to Thrieve, can we, Maud?” I said. “Perhaps she will accompany you.”

But Magdalen, though she would visit us with Larry for a day, would not remain. She loved (she said) to take long solitary walks among the pine forests which lie betwixt the Mollance and Crossmichael. There was, as William Douglas had said truly, none to do her wrong. For not only did the fear of the earl lie heavy upon the land, but still more mediately the fear of Brawny Kim, that strong smith of Carlinwark, and his seven sons, who would follow an ill-doer to the gallows or the stake--as indeed they had done with the Marshal de Retz in the country of Brittany.

So Laurence came and went amongst us once more--sweet, loving, and gracious always. But somehow, it was not now as it had been in the days of Cour Cheverney. My wedding, which was no marriage, separated us. He had, as I guessed, some inkling of how James had come between William Douglas and his full heritage.

At all events, there was no more making of boats to sail on the broad peat-brown Dee Water. No little mills were set birling in the burns of Glentochar and Boreland. But it was “Yes, my lady countess!” and “No, my Lady of Douglas,” instead, as of old, “My princess” and (at least once) “Margaret of Margarets!” But of all that no trace.

Yet, knowing that Laurence was right, I liked the lad none the worse because of his carefulness for me.

Still these were good days at Thrieve, set in between, as it were--when we would wean Magdalen from her lonely haunts and Maud from her Martha-housewifery, and set off all together to cull the flower or pull the nut. Any excuse or none served us--so that we could win away for a long day on the hills of Balmaghie or in the woods of Kelton.

Yet I loved the hills best, and chiefly, I think, because I could stay a little apart from the others, and look away to the north where lay Edinburgh and Stirling. James Douglas and William Douglas were there, and lo! I was shut off from them by the blue hills of Carsphairn and the dun muirs of the Windy Standard.

Now Magdalen had wandered so far and constantly that she knew every haunt of the sweet rough-rinded hazel-nuts, the dark purple blackberries (which in their season the birds ate so freely that every grey rock and boulder was spotted as though a whole army of scriveners had jerked their pens this way and that). She found also with ease the creeping cranberry, the whortleberry, and the rare, pale, deep-hidden strawberry.

Not only so, but when fruits were lacking, Magdalen could discern the Grass of Parnassus long ere the rest of us had sighted it. She knew where to find the St. John’s wort, the Great Bluebell and the Herb-Paris. Yet there was nothing enthusiastic about her search. With all her wondrous beauty, Magdalen moved rather like one in a dream, going to the flower she sought directly, like a scent-dog when the coneys crouch among the heather.

Then, when we came back tired from the hills, Magdalen would make straight for the Three Thorns, moving easily and swiftly over the knolls like a young deer, while, all gravely and sedately, Laurence would return by my side.

Thus went the months, Laurence going back all too soon to his abbacy, till it was another spring and another fruit-time--then another and yet another, so that it seemed as if nothing would ever change. The world must stay for ever thus. And then I could have cried out for the castle to crash in upon our heads, or Michael’s trump to break up the grey firmament of clouds into the flaming fires which shall consume the world--anything, if only all things would not be so eternally the same.

And I think I prayed, though indeed at this time I confess I troubled the saints not much--the convent and the Bald Cat, together with Sister Eulalie, having put me out of kilter with a too frequent clicking of beads--which, indeed, I judged to be chiefly work for priests and such-like, who had but little to do. And so thought Laurence also, at least for many years.

But as it happens mostly, in such cases, the days were not far off when I was to long for one short day of the peace of Thrieve, the kine flicking their tails on the verges of the water meadows, the swaying pull of the laden hazel branches as Laurence held them down on the Airieland braes--even the skirl of the whaup or the flap of the heron seeking their nests out on the moorland or down among the reed-beds of the Dee. Yes, I longed for them all--all that world of peace--and had it not.

But of that anon.

* * * * * * *

It was Malise who first put into my heart the fear which ever after sat heavily upon me.

“Little lady,” the armourer of Thrieve began one day, as he stood examining the bolts of the great door of Thrieve, “have you never given to your husband that advice of the wise king of auld time, the which Laurence read me out of his learned books in the Latin tongue--or the Greek, I mind not which.”

“And what might that be, Malise?”

“To switch aff the heads o’ the mucklest poppies!” he answered gravely, “an’ that richt early. For if he winna, of a surety there shall fall a head so high that it touches the stars!”

“You mean my Lord the Earl William’s,” I answered. “Fear not for him, Malise. He holds them all in the hollow of his hand!”

“That may be sae,” persisted the smith, “I doot it not. But, mind ye, I have seen ere this a hundred yelpin’ curs pu’ doon a stag-o’-ten-tines!”

And the advice was good. For at this period William Douglas was like to none in all the land, and when he went forth the Crichtons were as nothing before him, hiding away in holes and corners. Even Livingston the Tutor had made friends with him, or at least seemed to do so. The worst of the ancient abuses were stubbed down, digged up, or rooted out of the land. And all was done without cruelty or the least hardship to any, save only to those who did evil to their neighbours or to the poor at their gates. On such William Douglas had no pity.

Yet for all, so simple was he, he never guessed that when the king delivered to him all authority, and pretending to make much of him, sent him off on great embassies to London, to Paris, to Rome itself, it was always that he himself might escape from control and return to his favourites as a dog to his vomit. But, in spite of kings and favourites, William Douglas waxed ever greater and greater in the land--for a time.

Then came a time of cooling in the ardour of the king’s good-will. But of this also William took no heed, continuing to make treaties with England and France for the country’s advantage in trade and well-being. Also he banded the more sober parts of the north into one league with himself, so that even the barbarous and pagan isles (called of Skye and the Long Island) were made to obey and pay dues as regularly as the Lowdens and Fife. It was well said afterwards that the land made a greater advancement during these short years of William Douglas’s vice-regality than it had done since the Battle of the Standard.

But much of this came to us in our island-prison only in over-words and snatches. Save that which concerned itself, little gossip reached Thrieve. Packmen and carriers from Lanerick and Dumfries brought us most of our news. On important occasions a messenger for Sholto would come in with his beast all of a lather, or if it were night or winter, in a perfect breathing mist of steamy vapour.

One night in particular I remember. It was in the deep middle of winter--that is to say, in February. For mostly winter begins in Scotland with the inbringing of the Yule log. Sholto was at Douglas Castle on some business of the earl’s. Andro the Penman was in command at Thrieve, and, with his stick and hard words, scarce managed to secure that discipline which Sholto enforced with the mere glint of an eye or the indrawing of a resolute lip. But then Sholto was a knight and in full authority, and Andro the Penman only one of the guard--as it were, first among his peers.

It was a night of snow. The afternoon had fallen upon the face of the country greenish grey and dour, with a bitter nip in the air. Andro the Penman sniffed and said, “Snow!” Maud, with her nose to the wind, looked out on the terrace towards the north, in turn shook her head and said, “Snow! And I pray that goodman of mine may be somewhere snug in hold to-night.”

Then she went and saw to it that the bairns’ window-shutters were properly fastened inside the shot bars which kept them from falling out ten times a day.

Then, softly at first, small dampish snow began to fall drizzlingly, drifting on the ledges, forming into little piles behind the gargoyles, and making long lines with waving crests in the roof gutters. The men on guard on the towers and about the fortifications had an ill time of it. The storm seemed to take them every way at once.

“God help all such as are abroad to-night!” I said, as I drew my furs close about me. For even in the great hall, with fires blazing at either end, piled high with beech-logs and crackling bog-oak, hissing birchen twigs and steady burning peat, it was bitter cold.

And so that February afternoon the twilight darkened early into the solid blackness of Egypt. Wrapped in shawls, Maud and I sat about the fire, after we had supped, the candles feeble behind us, and the tapestries on the walls moving in long regular waves, that seemed to go from one end of the room to the other, giving boars and hunters and steeds a wonderful appearance of life.

It was creepy and eerie enough sitting there in the leaping firelight. And Maud did not help matters, with her Highland tales of second-sight and death warnings, added to my own reminiscences of the wicked Lord Soulis, with his familiar spirit, Red Cap. More than once we looked fearfully over our shoulders, expecting to see that famous imp leaping out of the old charter-chest to ask for new labours and to remind his master of his promised wages.

Such tales, told in the flicker of the firelight, in a castle full of dark deeds and memories, might well try the strongest nerves, and it is small wonder that presently Maud murmured, “Oh, I wish that Sholto were here!”

But it was not Sholto who was to visit Thrieve that night. Red Cap had, indeed, been at his tricks, and, at any moment, we might expect his head out of the chest with a demand for his wages.

Long time we sat thus, Maud and I, listening to the varying roll of the tempest without, discerning at intervals a shriller note as the wind, halting as if to catch its breath upon the outer walls, leaped with a fierce hoot upon the huge square keep of Thrieve, whistled through its window bars, clanged every unpinned door, and almost tore from its staff the banner that flapped and lunged noisily above the highest battlements.

At intervals Maud would raise her head as if listening for Sholto’s return. But it was really toward the children’s chamber that her ear inclined. Then after three or four hearkenings, her anxiety would compel her to rise and steal up on tiptoe into that place of sweet children’s breathings, with the shutters closed upon the windows and the peat fire smouldering red upon the hearth. From bed to bed she would steal, laying a kiss on that tress of flax and yonder dark head of crispy black, all the while with her mother’s adoring look plain in her eyes.

At which point, if I accompanied her, I was wont to betake me down with a little jealous pain pinching shrewdly at my heart. But that night, whether from wistful feeling akin to the storm, or in sympathy with the poor houseless knaves and gangrel wenches abroad in the snow, I sat still where I was, wae and silent, by the fire in the great hall of Thrieve. The snow was not the ordinary snow of Galloway, broad, moist, and flaked, but had changed into small, bitter, east-land snow, more like powdered ice. I could hear it patter against the closed windows, and fall with a hushing sound on the wooden roof of the balcony above.

Silently Syneton, the French boy William had brought with him to be groom to my Arab, would enter and heap fresh logs on the fire. As silently he would disappear. A Galloway lad of his years would have clanked in with a pair of wooden clogs all too scantly wiped on a bass of straw brought from the barn. But Syneton came and went like a shadow--clean, swift, and biddable--a treasure save in this, that the truth was not in him.

Above, Maud Lindsay tarried long, and I grew weary and a little afraid. I think Maud forgot herself when she gat among her babes. At least, she would promise solemnly to descend in one short quarter of an hour, and then look aggrieved and hurt when it was pointed out to her that her absence had extended over an hour and a half! Then it was that she would say, as if that explained all, “Ah, you are not a mother, Margaret!”

And I would reply, “Nor you, Mistress Maud, a maid that should be none!”

Which (though truth) did not greatly mend matters.

And indeed, to be just, Maud did not boast of her brave bairns, though I knew her heart stirred within her with pride.

At any rate, I was long alone--left with my thoughts in the uncertain flicker of the firelight, while the wind down the wide chimney scattered the grey wood ashes abroad over the oaken floor, and over William’s great rug of Turkey red.

Then through a pause of the storm I heard a far-off sound, clear and piercing, but so distant that I started as if from a dream. It was like a trumpet blown in the lists before the bars are let down, and the champions bid fall to. I smiled. Certainly I had been dreaming. So anew I began to watch the clear blue flames licking and hissing upwards about the new wood, the equal orange of the seasoned billets, and the rich red glow of the black log, half eaten into by the long afternoon’s fire.

Again it seemed that I dreamed. But nearer, clearer, more insistent, the notes came to my ear, blown as Laurence used to blow them when he was ready to convey me across to the flower-gathering, in the boat which he had stolen from old grumble-pate A’Cormack, at the gate-house by the drawbridge.

Eagerly I lifted my head, and listened with long and strained attention. But I heard only the hurl of the tempest overhead among the high roof-spaces of Thrieve, the steady “brool” of the wind all about the four corners of grim, impassive masonry, the spirting sound of the snow--small, like hail--on the windows. I had been mistaken. None could possibly be abroad on such a night; at any rate, so much the worse for them if they were! Thrieve was a shut gate, a fortress barred. None could enter there. Only Sholto had the word--Sholto, and his master.

But yet a third time, and very near, I heard the trumpet blow--clarion clear, net as thunder-clap when thunder follows flash swifter than thought succeeds to thought. Something struck the window at that moment; it might have been only the icy fingers of the storm, save that it sounded somewhat more solid. It struck again, and yet again. I was affrighted, and I cried aloud for Maud; but she was above, effaced among the tangles of blonde and dark that were scattered on the nursery pillows.

The noise came again, with a crying that was like the soul of a man in pain.

But, mastering myself, I went to the window and flung it open. Something huge and black, which might have been a raven or a great bird of prey, fluttered away into the half-luminous mist of the courtyard.

I looked down in amazement. There were torches beneath, awakening voices, apparent through the enveloping snow. The window I had opened slammed to in one of the fierce gusts, and I caught my hand in the sill.

I stood sucking at the hurt like a baby, half crying, and in the intervals of pain calling for Maud almost like one of her own bairns, when suddenly the door of the great hall was flung open, and the tapestry parted itself as with the wrench of a strong hand.

It was my husband who stood before me, with such an expression on his face as I had never seen there

[Illustration: IT WAS MY HUSBAND WHO STOOD BEFORE ME, WITH SUCH AN EXPRESSION ON HIS FACE AS I HAD NEVER SEEN THERE BEFORE.]

before. Mired and slimed he was with the bogs and morasses of his long travel, the snow lying white in the links of his armour and along the verges of his breastplate. He held only a plain steel cap in his hand, without plume or ensign. For he had ridden light like a moss-trooper, with only a single attendant at his heels.

“Where is James Douglas, my brother?” he panted rather than spoke.

And the anger, cold and bitter, on his face almost deprived me of the power of reply.

“Come,” he said roughly, “where have you hidden him? Tell me quickly!”

“James”--I stammered, with that surprise which is so often mistaken for the signs of guilt, “James Douglas? I have not seen him since my wedding-day!”

William stood staring at me for a long moment, and then dropping his head between his wet hands, he cried, “Great God, have I wronged him?”

There came a new voice from the doorway.

“As to that I know nothing, and as little care, my Lord of Douglas!” cried Maud Lindsay, “but this I do know, right bitterly and right grievously have you wronged your wife.”