CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE YOUNG MAN IN BLACK

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

[Illustration: 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.]

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!”