CHAPTER XXIX.

DIES IRÆ I--GLOAMING

Long, long it was that I lay tossing in fever or shaking in chill, till one day I came forth feeble and white, the very shadow of myself. And during these weeks and months many things had been happening.

Without, the woodlands of Carlinwark had grown russet. The birches, struck with sudden frost, flamed among them like bale-fires on St. John’s Eve. After that, the trees, the lakeside bushes, and marish greenery had all grown stark and leafless in the grip of the frosts. Then, through the bitter spring winds and the hurl of the March snowstorm, milder days had come again, and these, when they arrived, found me still like a babe under Maud’s hands.

Meantime, of the Douglas, what? Of the fate of our great house, what? James had fled (so they said), and was reputed on English soil. The king had taken certain of his great castles, but on the other hand, Archibald, Hugh, and little John (now little no longer, but a man of his inches) had convened men and taken other fortresses belonging to the king, so that all was a convulsed hither-and-thither within the bounds of Scotland.

This all came to me in bits and snatches as Maud sat by my bedside and I posed her with question upon question. But there were some which she put aside and would give me no answer to--as when I asked where _he_ was, and whether he would ever return to his own again--I meant to Thrieve.

To that she answered nothing, nor would for all my fleeching.

“And Malise and his sons?” I asked.

Again she bowed her head and was silent.

“I understand they are with the king,” I answered. “I do not blame them. But, Maud, why are you here, and why is Sholto not with his father--not with the king--against us?”

She took me in her arms and held me very close, as her wont had been ever since the day I rode Haifa back from the Three Thorns, and that which was to befall, befell.

“Little one,” she said, “now you will know Sholto as I have known him these many years. This was the answer he gave to his father when the old man called him to come out and help break down the Douglases in the name of a brother’s vengeance.

“‘My father,’ he answered him, speaking as ever, gently and yet in fear of no man, ‘vengeance shall be done on the head of the transgressor. Go, if you will, and do your part!’

“‘That will I,’ cried the smith, ‘and, hear you this, Sholto M‘Kim, if you stay behind, a curse that shall not lift be on your head and on your children’s heads to the third and fourth generation!’

“Then Sholto, my husband, being of his nature noble and strong as a man, and yet gentle as any woman, bowed his head and made him this answer: ‘For myself I take your curse, my father. But as for my little children, that is not in your power to lift or lay. Yet hearken, when I came to Thrieve to put upon me the cap of the earl’s guard, I was but a lad, and there was given to me and to the girl I loved the care of a little maid--even of her who is now Princess of Galloway, and hath twice been Countess of Douglas. That her second husband, James, has done us the bitterest wrong and dishonour is good reason for your fighting against him, but is no reason for my forsaking of my charge--one who hath done no wrong, but rather suffered much and long!’

“‘Then, Sholto M‘Kim,’ cried his father, ‘you will not come with me and the lads? You will abide by the Douglas? Quick, make your choice--it is once and for all!’

“‘The choice was made from the first, father,’ said Sholto; ‘I can no other. I will not help a murderer like the king even against James Douglas. I will abide by my Lady Margaret, in the place where she abides. I will fight for her to the death!’

“‘Know you that the king has proclaimed her also rebel and outlaw?’ cried Malise, yet more bitterly; ‘he has made accursed all of that family. Think of that, Sir Sholto!’

“‘I have stood your curse, my father,’ answered Sholto, ‘for the sake of her who was the Little Maid. At the king’s I snap my fingers!’

“‘I also had a little maid,’ moaned Malise, the great smith, ‘and as a reward for half a century’s service, my master that was took her from me. Shall I stay and thank him, make brave his breastplate for the tourney, hold his stirrup when he dismounts at Thrieve? By God, not so! My sword to his rather--the sword I made for him I can shatter. The armour I forged I can pierce. Who if not I can search the joints thereof, and drive home the steel to the dividing of soul and marrow?’

“‘It is well,’ answered Sholto, ‘well for you--well for the lads! Let the M‘Kims stand together for their sister’s sake’--

“‘And will you, who claim to be a knight and a soldier, be found recreant in that day?’ cried the armourer, and it seemed as if indeed he would slay his first-born. (“If he had,” interjected the tale-teller, “he would have had to kill me also.”)

“‘I fight not for James, Earl of Douglas, whom, in His good time, God shall judge,’ said Sholto, ‘but for the woman, my lady mistress, who hath none but me to stand by her. Where she abides I will abide. Her cause shall be mine, her quarrel mine so long as I can strike a blow or lift a spear as you my father taught me.’

“‘And if he, the evil-doer, returns hither,’ the armourer went on, ‘here to Thrieve, and if (like a woman) she forgive him, where will you stand? Will you fight against your own folk--against me, your father--against these, your brethren?’

“‘Ay,’ said Sholto, very gravely, ‘if she, my lady, who hath no other hand to draw sword for her, remains, I too shall remain by her side to the last--I and mine. She has been left by one brother--deceived by another! She shall have at least one friend--nay, Maud’ (here he turned towards me), ‘she shall have two! And if it so come about as you have said,--which God forbid,--in her cause, the cause of the unfriended, I will even fight against you, my father, and against you, the sons of my mother!’

“The old man stood for a while regarding him stonily. Then all swiftly he shot out his huge hairy hand, grimed with a lifetime’s handling of armour-iron. Sholto took it, his face also steady as an anvil.

“It was a great thing, little one, to see two such men front one another, neither yielding a jot. Then Malise spoke.

“‘By the Holy name,’ he cried, ‘but you are a man, Sholto! I lift the curse I laid. You are your father’s own son. But mind, if in the shock of battle I meet you face to face, I will strike and spare not--because that you fight for the betrayer’s cause!’

“‘I expect no other,’ said Sholto, ‘and though I know the death in it, I would rather take your blow than your curse. I thank you for lifting that.’

“Yet a moment longer father and son stood eye to eye, no feature of either quivering. There was no yielding anywhere. Deep called to deep, and was answered.

“‘Till we meet!’ said Malise the smith, suddenly dropping his son’s hand. But Sholto said nothing. For indeed it was noways in his heart to raise a hand against the father who begat him!”

Here it was that, had she been permitted, Maud would have ended her narrative. I clasped and kissed her hand and said, “There is no one like Sholto, Maud--none so brave and loyal and true.”

But she only smiled as who would say, “Of course! It is so written in the Scriptures. The stars have declared it. It is a law of the Mede and of the Persian. I am noways surprised. I have known that and more these many years! How could any think that man born of woman could think or speak or act like my Sholto?”

But I had a question yet to ask which concerned another than Sholto--yet a M‘Kim.

“What of Laurence?” I whispered. For indeed in my dreams I had seen him oftentimes of late, and plucked with him the green birk to wind about my head, and placed therein the red berries of the rowan, and set whole wildernesses a-bickering with water-wheels and the jolly flap of windmill sails.

“What should there be of Laurence?” said Maud, instantly altering her voice to the hollow-sounding and querulous intonation wherewith straightforward women strive to put off a question. But, being also a woman, I detected her in a moment.

“The truth with me, Maud,” I said, “in this as in all else! On whose side stands Laurence in this quarrel?”

“I think,” she answered, not looking at me, “that after the things you were witness of in the kirk-close of Balmaghie, you have no need to ask that question.”

“But just for that reason I do ask it,” I said, pressing her; “tell me, Maud, I beseech you!”

“Certes, Margaret,” she made answer, “for a sick woman you have many askings. I will tell you that which I do know. Laurence has given his adhesion to the pact against James, Earl of Douglas, but he bides at Sweetheart to keep sanctuary for you there in time of need. That done, or out of need, he will shed his monkish robes like the husk of a hazel-nut and fight against his house’s enemy by his father’s side!”

“Then Laurence is against us?” I could not help saying with tears. “I had not thought it of him. Yet now I remember, he never had any true liking for me. He would not even come to Thrieve to see me but once or twice during these long years. If he had cared at all, he would, being so near!”

Then Maud gave me a curious look--long and piercing, as if doubting whether I was not less innocent than my words implied. I understand it all now. I did not then. I had so much else to think of.

“You mistake,” she answered slowly. “Laurence is with you as truly and as fully as Sholto. And for that reason he is against James Douglas, even as his father and his brethren are--of that let there be no doubt!”

“But why--why?” I urged. “Tell me, why is not Laurence even as Sholto? These two have the same reasons for hating my--for hating James Douglas. Stands it not so? If otherwise, surely I ought to be told!”

Again Maud smiled slowly and subtly.

“No,” she said, shaking her head, “not the same!”

“What? is not--_she_ as much the sister of Sholto, even as she is of Laurence M‘Kim?”

“Of a certainty,” she said, “but”--

“But what? Speak the truth to me, Maud, I bid you!”

“Well, little one,” said Maud, caressing and quieting me, “do you not understand that Sholto has had me to love and to be loved by any time these fifteen years? As to Laurence--well, it is not the same!”

She paused, and I snatched at her gown, begging and commanding her to go on. But she would not, fearing that she had said too much, or mayhap had overtaxed my strength. Nor could I get another word out of her, though I tried time and again, but only a sleeping draught to compose me, and the quiet of the north-looking room with the curtains drawn all about the bed.

But ere Maud left me to my sleep she murmured in my ear, “Rest and grow strong, little one; there are more who love you to their heart’s last pulse-beat than you wot of. And as for Sholto and this poor Maud Lindsay of yours, they will hold you safe through the Day of Wrath which evil-doing is bringing upon the house of Douglas, or, if God wills it, they will die with you!”

Then, greatly comforted, I scarce know why or how, I slept with Maudie’s hand in mine, and the little Marcelle on guard at the door to see that none approached to disturb me with so much as the ring of a halbert or a hasty footstep on the stone corridor.

For blessed indeed are they on whom God bestows the love of even one friend. And, as for me, had I not two? But I wished--oh, how I wished--I could have said _three_!