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

fact. But from this day no one of us will break bread, speak word, hold intimacy or converse with you. So far as in us lies we will renounce you as our father. We will not, because of the commandment, rise in rebellion against you. You are Earl of Douglas, and while you live must rule your own. But for me and my brothers we will never be your children to honour, your sons to succour, nor your liegemen to fight for you. We go to offer our services to our cousin Margaret, the little Maid of Galloway. We will keep her province with our swords as the last stronghold of the true Douglases of the Black. I have spoken. Fare you well, my lord!"
During his son's speech the countenance of the newly made Earl of Douglas grew white and mottled, tallowy white and dull red in turns showing upon it, like the flesh of a drained ox. He rose unsteadily to his feet, moving one hand deprecatingly before him, like a helpless man unexpectedly stricken. His nether lip quivered, pendulous and piteous, in the midst of his grey beard, and for a moment he strove in vain with his utterance.
His eyes fell abashed from the cold sternness of his eldest son's glance, and he seemed to scan the countenances of the younger four for any token of milder mood.
"James," he said, "ye hear William. Surely ye do not hold with him? Remember I am your father, and I was aye particular fond o' you, Jamie. I mind when ye wad rin to sit astride my shoulder. And ye used to like that fine!"
There were tears in the eyes of the weak, cunning, treacherous-hearted man. The lips of James Douglas quivered a little, and his voice failed him, as he strove to answer his father. What he would have said none knows, but ere he could voice a word, the eyes of his brother, stern as the law given to Moses on the mount, were bent upon him. He straightened himself up, and, with a look carefully averted from the palsied man before him, he said, in a steady tone, "What my brother William says, I say."
His father looked at him again, as if still hoping against hope for some kinder word. Then he turned to his younger sons.
"Archie, Hugh, little Jockie, ye willna take part against your ain faither?"
"We hold with our brothers!" said the three, speaking at once.
At this moment there came running in at the door of the tent a lad of ten--Henry, the youngest of the Avondale brothers. He stopped short in the midst, glancing wonderingly from one to the other. His little sword with which he had been playing dropped from his hand. James the Gross looked at him.
"Harry," he said, "thy brothers are a' for leavin' me. Will ye gang wi' them, or bide wi' your faither?"
"Father," said the boy, "I will go with you, if ye will let me help to kill Livingston and the Chancellor!"
"Come, laddie," said the Earl, "ye understand not these matters. I will explain to you when we gang back to the braw things in Edinbra' toon!"
"No, no," cried the boy, stooping to pick up his sword, "I will bide with my brothers, and help to kill the murderers of my cousins. What William says, I say."
Then the five young men went out and called for their horses, their youngest brother following them. And as the flap of the tent fell, and he was left alone, James the Gross sank his head between his soft, moist palms, and sobbed aloud.
For he was a weak, shifty, unstable man, loving approval, and a burden to himself in soul and body when left to bear the consequences of his acts.
"Oh, my bairns," he cried over and over, "why was I born? I am not sufficient for these things!"
And even as he sobbed and mourned, the hoofs of his sons' horses rang down the wind as they rode through the camp towards Galloway. And little Henry rode betwixt William and James.


CHAPTER XLI
THE WITHERED GARLAND
Meanwhile Sholto fared onwards down the side of the sullen water of Dee. The dwellers along the bank were all on the alert, and cried many questions to him about the death of the Earl, most thinking him a merchant travelling from Edinburgh to take ship at Kirkcudbright. Sholto answered shortly but civilly, for the inquirers were mostly decent folk well on in years, whose lads had gone to the levy, and who naturally desired to know wherefore their sons had been summoned.
In return he asked everywhere for news of any cavalcade which might have passed that way, but neither from the country folk, nor yet from hoof-marks upon the grassy banks, could he glean the least information pertinent to the purpose of his quest.
Not till he came within a few miles of the town did he meet with man or woman who could give him any material assistance. It was by the Fords of Tongland that he first met with one Tib MacLellan, who with much volubility and some sagacity retailed fresh fish to the burghers of Kirkcudbright and the whole countryside, giving a day to each district so long as the supply of her staple did not fail.
"Fair good day to ye, mistress!" said Sholto, taking off his bonnet to the sonsy upstanding fishwife.
"And to you, bonny lad," replied the complimented dame, dropping a courtesy, "may the corbie never cry at ye nor ill-faured pie juik at your left elbow. May candle creesh never fa' on ye, red fire burn ye, nor water scald ye."
Tib was reeling off her catalogue of blessings when Sholto cut her short.
"Can you tell me, good lady," he asked, in his most insinuating tones, "if there has been any vessel cleared from the port during these last weeks?"
"'Deed, sir, that I should ken, for is no my ain sister marriet on Jock Wabster, wha's cousin by marriage twice removed is the bailie officer o' the port? So I can advise ye that there was a boat frae the Isle o' Man wi' herrin's for the great houses, though never a fin o' them like the halesome fish I carry here in my creel. Wad ye like to see them, to buy a dozen for the bonny lass that's waiting for ye? That were a present to recommend ye, indeed--far mair than your gaudy flowers, fule ballads, and sic like trash!"
"You cannot remember any other ship of larger size than the Manx fishing-boat?" continued Sholto.
"Weel, no to ca' cleared frae the port," Tib went on, "but there was a pair o' uncanny-looking foreign ships that lay oot there by the Manxman's Lake for eight days, and the nicht afore yestreen they gaed oot with the tide. They were saying aboot the foreshore that they gaed west to some other port to tak' on board the French monzie that cam' to the Thrieve at the great tournaying! But I kenna what wad tak' him awa' to the Fleet or the Ferry Toon o' Cree, and leave a' the pleasures o' Kirkcudbright ahint him. Forbye sic herrin's as are supplied by me, Tib MacLellan, at less than cost price--as I houp your honour will no forget, when in the course o' natur' and the providence o' God you and her comes to hae a family atween ye."
Sholto promised that he would not forget when the time alluded to arrived. Then, turning his jennet off the direct road to Kirkcudbright town, and betaking him through the Ardendee fords, he made all speed towards a little port upon the water of Fleet, at the point where that fair moorland stream winds lazily through the water-meadows for a mile or two, after its brawling passage down from the hills of heather and before it commits itself to the mother sea.
But it was not until he had long crossed it and reached the lonely Cassencary shore that Sholto found his first trace of the lost maidens. For as he rode along the cliffs his keen eye noted a well-marked trail through the heather approaching the shore at right angles to his own line of march. The tracks, still perfectly evident in the grassy places, showed that as many as twenty horses had passed that way within the last two or three days. He stood awhile examining the marks, and then, leading his beast slowly by the bridle, he continued to follow them westward till they became confused and lost near a little jetty erected by the lairds of Cree and Cassencary for convenience of traffic with Cumberland and the Isle of Man. Here on the very edge of the foreshore, blown by some chance wind behind a stone and wonderfully preserved there, Sholto found a child's chain of woodbine entwined with daisies and autumnal pheasant's eye. He took it up and examined it. Some of the flowers were not yet withered. The inter-weaving was done after a fashion he had taught the little Maid of Galloway himself, one happy day when he had walked on air with the glamour of Maud Lindesay's smiles uplifting his heart. For that tricksome grace had asked him to teach her also, and he remembered the lingering touch of her fingers ere she could compass the quaint device of the pheasant's eye peeping out from the midst of each white festoon.
Then a deep despair settled down on Sholto's spirit. He knew that Maud Lindesay and the fair Maid of Galloway had undoubtedly fallen into the power of the terrible Marshal de Retz, Sieur of Machecoul, ambassador of the King of France, and also many things else which need not in this place be put on record.


CHAPTER XLII
ASTARTE THE SHE-WOLF
In a dark wainscoted room overlooking that branch of the Seine which divides the northern part of Paris from the Isle of the City, Gilles de Retz, lately Chamberlain of the King of France, sat writing. The hotel had recently been redecorated after the sojourn of the English. Wooden pavements had again been placed in the rooms where the barbarians had strewed their rushes and trampled upon their rotting fishbones. Noble furniture from the lathes of Poitiers, decorated with the royal ermines of Brittany, stood about the many alcoves. The table itself whereon the famous soldier wrote was closed in with drawers and shelves which descended to the floor and seemed to surround the occupant like a cell.
Before de Retz stood a curious inkstand, made by some cunning jeweller out of the upper half of a human skull of small size, cut across at the eye-holes, inverted, and set in silver with a rim of large rubies. This was filled with ink of a startling vermilion colour.
The document which Gilles de Retz was busy transcribing upon sheets of noble vellum in this strange ink was of an equally mysterious character. The upper part had the appearance of a charter engrossed by the hand of some deft legal scribe, but the words which followed were as startling as the vehicle by means of which they were made to stand out from the vellum.
"Unto Barran-Sathanas; Lord most glorious and puissant in hell beneath and in the earth above, I, his unworthy servitor Gilles de Retz, make my vows, hereby forever renouncing God, Christ, and the Blessed Saints."
To this appalling introduction succeeded many lines of close and delicate script, interspersed with curious cabalistic signs, in which that of the cross reversed could frequently be detected. Gilles de Retz wrote rapidly, rising only at intervals to throw a fresh log of wood across the vast iron dogs on either side of the wide fireplace, as the rain from the northwest beat more and more fiercely upon the small glazed