The Black Douglas by Samuel Rutherford Crockett (digital ebook reader .txt) 📕

caused him to grin with wicked sidelong smiles of hate and envy.
Then amid the shouting of the people there appeared, on a milk-white palfrey, Margaret, the Earl's only sister, already famous over all Scotland as "The Fair Maid of Galloway." With her rode one who, in the esteem of most who saw the pair that day, was a yet rarer flower, even Maud Lindesay, who had come out of the bleak North to keep the lonely little maid company. For Margaret of Douglas was yet no more than a child, but Maud Lindesay was nineteen years of age and in the first perfect bloom of her beauty.
Behind these two came the whole array of the knights and barons who owned allegiance to the Douglas,--Herons and Maxwells, Ardwell Macullochs, Gordons from the Glen of Kells, with Agnews and MacDowalls from the Shireside. But above all, and outnumbering all, there were the lesser chiefs of the mighty name--Douglases of the North, the future Moray and Ormond among them, the noble young sons of James the Gross of Avondale, who rode nearest their cousin, the head of the clan. Then came Douglases of the Border, Douglases of the Hermitage, of Renfrew, of Douglasdale. Every third man in that great company which splashed and caracoled through the fords of Lochar, was a William, a James, or an Archibald Douglas. The King himself could not have raised in all Scotland such a following, and it is small wonder if the heart of the young man expanded within him.
Presently, soon after the arrival of the cavalcade, the great wappenshaw was set in array, and forming up company by company the long double line extended as far as the eye could reach from north to south along the side of the broad and sluggish-moving river.
Sholto, who in virtue of his courage and good marksmanship had been placed over the archer company which waited on the right of the ford, fell in immediately behind the _cortege_ of the Earl. He was first man of all to have his equipment examined, and his weapons obtained, as they deserved, the commendation of his liege lord, and the grim unwilling approval of Malise, the master armourer, whose unerring eye could not detect so much as a speck on the shirt of mail, or a grain of rust on the waist brace of shining steel.
Then the Earl rode down the lines, and Sholto, remembering the encounter amidst the dust of the roadway, breathed more freely when he saw his father's back.
And surely that day the heart of the Douglas must have beat proud and high within him, for there they stood, company behind ordered company, the men on whom he could count to the death. And truly the lad of eighteen, who in Scotland was greater than the King, looked upon their steadfast thousands with a swelling heart.
The Abbot had made particular inquiries where Laurence was stationed, which was in the archer company of the Laird of Kelton. Most of the monkish band had been made too happy by the deception practised on their Abbot concerning "Mary Quean," and were too desirous to have such a rogue to play his pranks in the dull abbey, to tell any tales on Laurence MacKim. But one, Berguet, a Belgian priest who had begged his way to Scotland, and whose nature was that of the spy and sycophant, approached and volunteered the information to the Abbot that this lad to whom he was desirous of showing favour, was a ribald and hypocritical youth.
"Eh, what?" said the Abbot, "a bodle for thy ill-set tongue, false loon, dost think I did not hear him sing his fair and seemly orisons? I tell thee, rude out-land jabberer, that I am a Douglas, and have ears better than those of any Frenchman that ever breathed. For this thou shalt kneel six nights on the cold stone of the holy chapel house, and say of paternosters ten thousand and of misereres thou shall sing three hundred. And this shall chance to teach thee to be scanter with thy foul breath when thou speakest to the Abbot of the Foundation of Devorgill concerning better men than thyself."
The Belgian priest gasped and fell back, and none other was found to say aught against Master Laurence, which, considering the ten thousand paternosters and the three hundred misereres, was not unnatural.
As the Earl passed along the line he was annoyed by the iterated requests of his uncle to be informed when they should come to the company of the Laird of Kelton. And the good Abbot, being like all deaf men apt to speak a little loud, did not improve matters by constantly making remarks behind his hand, upon the appearance or character (as known to him) of the various dependents of the Douglas House who had come out to show their loyalty and exhibit their preparedness for battle.
As thus it was. The young Earl would come in his inspection to a company of Solway-side men--stiff-jointed fishers of salmon nets out of the parishes of Rerrick or Borgue--or, as it might be, rough colts from the rock scarps of Colvend, scramblers after wild birds' nests on perilous heuchs, and poachers on the deer preserves of Cloak Moss, as often as they had a chance. Then the Earl, having zealously commended the particular Barnbacle or Munches who led them, all would be peace and concord, till out of the crowd behind would issue the growling comment of his uncle, the Abbot of Dulce Cor.
"A close-fisted old thief! The saints pity him not! He will surely fry in Hell! Last Shrovetide did he not drive off five of our best milch cows, and hath steadfastly refused to restore them? _Anathema maranatha_ to his vile body and condemned be his huckstering soul!"
Needless to add, every word of this comment and addition was heard by the person most concerned.
Or it might be, "Henry A'milligan--his mother's son, God wot. And his father's, too, doubtless--if only one could know who his father was. The devil dwell in his fat belly! _Exorciso te_--"
So it went on till the temper of the young lord of Galloway was strained almost to the breaking point, for he wished not to cause a disturbance among so great a company and on a day of such renown.
At last they came to the muster of the clean-run limber lads of Kelton, artificers mostly, and stated retainers of the castle and its various adjacent bourgs of Carlinwark, Rhonehouse, Gelston, and Mains of Thrieve.
Some one at this point took the Abbot by the elbow and shouted in his ear that this was the company he desired to see. Then he rode forward to the left hand of his nephew, as Malise and he passed slowly down the line examining the weapons.
"Laurence MacKim, I would see Laurence MacKim!" cried the Abbot, holding up his hand as if in the chapel of his monastery. The Earl stopped, and Malise turned right about on his heel in great astonishment.
"What wants old marrowbones with our Laurie?" he muttered; "surely he cannot have gotten into mischief with the lasses already. But I kenna--I kenna. When I was sixteen I can mind--I can mind. And the loon may well be his father's own son."
And Malise, the man of brawn, watched out of his quiet grey eyes the face of the Abbot William, wondering what was to come next.
Laurence stood forth at a word of command from the Earl. He saluted, and then dropped the point of his sword meekly upon the ground. His white-and-rose cherub's face expressed the utmost goodness and innocence.
"Dear kinsman," said the Abbot to his nephew, "I have a request to prefer which I hope you will grant, though it deprive you of one retainer. This sweet youth is not fit company for rude soldiers and ill-bred rufflers of the camp. His mind is already on higher things. He hath good clerkly Latin also, being skilled in the humanities, as I have heard proven with mine own ears. His grace of language and deportment is manifest, and he can sing the sweetest and most spiritual songs in praise of Mary and the saints. I would have him in our choir at Sweetheart Abbey, where we have much need both of a voice such as his, and also of a youth whose sanctity and innocence cannot fail to leaven with the grace of the spirit the neophytes of our college, and the consideration of whom may even bring repentance into older and more hardened hearts."
Malise MacKim could not believe his ears as he listened to the Abbot's rounded periods. But all the same his grey eyes twinkled, his mouth slowly drew itself together into the shape of an O, from which issued a long low whistle, perfectly audible to all about him except the Abbot. "Lord have mercy on the innocence and cloistered quiet of the neophytes if they get our Laurie for an example!" muttered Malise to himself as he turned away.
Even the young Earl smiled, perhaps remembering the last time he had seen the youth beside him, clutching and tearing like a wild cat at his brother's throat in the smithy of Carlinwark.
"You desire the life of a clerk?" said Lord William pleasantly to Laurence. He would gladly have purchased his uncle's silence at even greater price.
"If your lordship pleases," said Laurence, meekly, adding to himself, "it cannot be such hard work as hammering at the forge, and if I like it not, why then I can always run away."
"You think you have a call to become a holy clerk?"
"I feel it here," quoth Master Laurence, hypocritically, indicating correctly, however, the organ whose wants have made clerks of so many--that is, the stomach.
Earl William smiled yet more broadly, but anxious to be gone he said: "Mine Uncle, here is the lad's father, Malise MacKim, my master armourer and right good servant. Ask him concerning his son."
"'Tis all up a rotten tree now," muttered Laurence to himself; "my father will reveal all."
Malise MacKim smiled grimly, but with a salutation to the dignitary of the church and near relative of his chief, he said: "Truly, I had never thought of this my son as worthy to be a holy clerk. But I will not stand in the way of his advancement nor thwart your favour. Take him for a year on trial, and if you can make a monk of him, do so and welcome. I recommend a leathern strap, well hardened in the fire, for the purpose of encouraging him to make a beginning in the holy life."
"He shall indeed have penance if he need it. For the good of the soul must the body suffer!" said Abbot William, sententiously.
"Saints' bones and cracklings," muttered Laurence, "this is none so cheerful! But I can always run away if the strap grows overlimber, and then let them catch me if they can. Sholto will help me."
"Fall out!" commanded the Earl, sharply, "and join yourself to the company of the Abbot William. Come, Malise, we lose our time."
Thus was one of our heroes brought into the way of becoming a learned and holy clerk. But all those who knew him best agreed that he had a far road to travel.


CHAPTER XI
THE AMBASSADOR OF FRANCE
The Earl had almost arrived at the pavilion erected at the southern end of the jousting meadow, when a gust of cheering borne along the lines announced the arrival of a belated company. The young man glanced northward with intent to discover, by their pennons, who his visitors might be. But the distance was too great, and identification was made more difficult by the swarming of the populace round the newcomers. So, being unable to make the matter out, Earl William despatched