The Black Douglas, Samuel Rutherford Crockett [best books under 200 pages .TXT] 📗

imagine. Go and put it on."
Sholto kneeled down and kissed the hand of his liege lady. Then when he had risen she gave him down the armour piece by piece, dusting each with her kerchief with a sort of reverent action, as one might touch the face of the dead. In Sholto's hands it proved indeed light almost as woven cloth of homespun from Dame Barbara's loom, and flexible as the spun silk of Lyons which the great wear next their bodies.
With it there went an under-suit of finest and softest leather, that the skin should not be chafed by the cunning links as they worked smoothly over one another at each movement of the body within.
Sholto buckled on his lady's gift with a swelling heart. It was his dead master's armour. And as piece by piece fitted him as a glove fits the hand, the spirit of William Douglas seemed to enter more and more into the lad.
Then Sholto covered this most valuable gift with his own clothing which he had brought from the house of Carlinwark, and presently emerged, a well-looking but still slim squire of decent family.
Then the Countess belted on him the sword of price which went therewith, a blade of matchless Toledan steel, but covered with a plain scabbard of black pigskin.
"Draw and thrust," commanded the lady, pointing at the rough stone of the wall at the end of the passage.
Sholto looked ruefully at the glittering blade which he held in his hand, flashing blue from point to double guard.
"Thrust and fear not," said the Countess of Douglas the second time.
Sholto lunged out at the stone with all his might. Fire flew from the smitten blue whinstone where the point, with all the weight of his young body behind it, impinged on the wall. A tingling shock of acutest agony ran up the striker's wrist to the shoulder blade. The sword dropped ringing on the pavement, and Sholto's arm fell numb and useless to his side.
"Lift the sword and look," commanded the Lady Douglas.
Sholto did as he was bidden, with his left hand, and lo, the point which had bent like a hoop was sharp and straight as if just from the armourer's. "Can you strike with your left hand?" asked the lady.
"As with my right," answered the son of Malise the Brawny.
There was a bar at a window in the wall bending outward in shape like the letter U.
"Then strike a cutting stroke with your left hand."
Sholto took the sword. It seemed to him short-sighted policy that in the hour of his departure on a perilous quest he should disable himself in both arms. But Sholto MacKim was not the youth to question an order. He lifted the sword in his left hand, and with a strong ungraceful motion struck with all his might.
At first he thought that he had missed altogether. There was no tingling in his arm, no jar when the blade should have encountered the iron. But the Countess was examining the centre of the hoop.
"I have missed," said Sholto.
"Come hither and look," she said, without turning round.
And when he looked, lo, the thick iron had been cut through almost without bending. The sides of the break were fresh, bright, and true.
"Now look at the edge of your sword," she said.
There was no slightest dint anywhere upon it, so that Sholto, armourer's son as he was, turned about the blade to see if by any chance he could have smitten with the reverse.
Failing in this, he could only kneel to his lady and say, "This is a great gift--I am not worthy."
For in these times of peril jewels and lands were as nothing to the value of such a suit of armour, which kings and princes might well have made war to obtain.
The faintest disembodied ghost of a smile passed over the face of the Countess of Douglas.
"It is the best I can do with it now," she said, "and at least no one of the Avondales shall ever possess it."
After the Lady Douglas had armed the young knight and sped him upon his quest, Sholto departed over the bridge where the surly custodian still grumbled at his horse's feet trampling his clean wooden flooring. The young man rode a Spanish jennet of good stock, a plain beast to look upon, neither likely to attract attention nor yet to stir cupidity.
His father and Laurence were already on their way. Sholto had arranged that whether they found any trace of the lost ones or no, they were all to meet on the third day at the little town of Kirkcudbright. For Sholto, warned by the Lady Sybilla, even at this time had his idea, which, because of the very horror of it, he had as yet communicated to no one.
It chanced that as the youth rode southward along the banks of the Dee, glancing this way and that for traces of the missing maids, but seeing only the grass trampled by hundreds of feet and the boats in the stream dragging every pool with grapnels and ropes, two horsemen on rough ponies ambled along some distance in front of him. By their robes of decent brown they seemed merchants on a journey, portly of figure, and consequential of bearing.
As Sholto rapidly made up to them, with his better horse and lighter weight, he perceived that the travellers were those two admirable and noteworthy magistrates of Dumfries, Robert Semple and his own uncle Ninian Halliburton of the Vennel.
Hearing the clatter of the jennet's hoofs, they turned about suddenly with mighty serious countenances. For in such times when the wayfarer heard steps behind him, whether of man or beast, it repaid him to give immediate attention thereto.
So at the sound of hoofs Ninian and his friend set their hands to their thighs and looked over their shoulders more quickly than seemed possible to men of their build.
"Ha, nephew Sholto," cried Ninian, exceedingly relieved, "blithe am I to see you, lad. You will tell us the truth of this ill news that has upturned the auld province. By your gloomy face I see that the major part is overtrue. The Earl is dead, and he awes me for twenty-four peck of wheaten meal, forbye ten firlots of malt and other sundries, whilk siller, if these hungry Avondale Douglases come into possession, I am little likely ever to see. Surely I have more cause to mourn him--a fine lad and free with his having. If ye gat not settlement this day, why then ye gat it the neist, with never a word of drawback nor craving for batement."
Sholto told them briefly concerning the tragedy of Edinburgh. He had no will for any waste of words, and as briefly thereafter of the loss of the little maid and her companion.
The Bailie of Dumfries lifted up his hands in consternation.
"'Tis surely a plot o' thae Avondales. Stra'ven folk are never to lippen to. And they hae made a clean sweep. No a Gallowa' Douglas left, if they hae speerited awa' the bonny bit lass. Man, Robert, she was heir general to the province, baith the Lordship o' Gallowa' and the Earldom o' Wigton, for thae twa can gang to a lassie. But as soon as the twa laddies were oot o' the road, Fat Jamie o' Avondale cam' into the Yerldom o' Douglas and a' the Douglasdale estates, forbye the Borders and the land in the Hielands. Wae's me for Ninian Halliburton, merchant and indweller in Dumfries, he'll never see hilt or hair o' his guid siller gin that wee lassie be lost. Man, Sholto, is't no an awfu' peety?"
During this lamentation, to which his nephew paid little attention, looking only from side to side as they three rode among the willows by the waterside, the other merchant, Robert Semple, had been pondering deeply.
"How could she be lost in this country of Galloway?" he said, "a land where there are naught but Douglases and men bound body and soul to the Douglas, from Solway even to the Back Shore o' Leswalt? 'Tis just no possible--I'll wager that it is that Hieland gipsy Mistress Lindesay that has some love ploy on hand, and has gane aff and aiblins ta'en the lass wi' her for company."
At these words Sholto twisted about in his saddle, as if a wasp had stung him suddenly.
"Master Semple," he said, "I would have you speak more carefully. Mistress Lindesay is a baron's daughter and has no love ploys, as you are pleased to call them."
The two burgesses shook with jolly significant laughter, which angered Sholto exceedingly.
"Your mirth, sirs, I take leave to tell you, is most mightily ill timed," he said, "and I shall consider myself well rid of your company."
He was riding away when his uncle set his hand upon the bridle of Sholto's jennet.
"Bide ye, wild laddie," he said, "there is nae service in gaun aff like a fuff o' tow. My freend here meaned to speak nae ill o' the lass. But at least I ken o' ae love ploy that Mistress Lindesay is engaged in, or your birses wadna be so ready to stand on end, my bonny man. But guid luck to ye. Ye hae the mair chance o' finding the flown birdies, that ye maybes think mair o' the bonny norland quey than ye think o' the bit Gallowa' calf. But God speed ye, I say, for gin ye bringna back the wee lass that's heir to the braid lands o' Thrieve, it's an ill chance Ninian Halliburton has ever to fill his loof wi' the bonny gowden 'angels' that (next to high heeven) are a man's best freends in an evil and adulterous generation."


CHAPTER XL
THE MISSION OF JAMES THE GROSS
From all sides the Douglases were marching upon Edinburgh. After the murder of the young lords the city gates had been closed by order of the Chancellor. The castle was put into a thorough state of defence. The camp of the Avondale Douglases, William and James, was already on the Boroughmuir, and the affrighted citizens looked in terror upon the thickening banners with the bloody Douglas heart upon them, and upon the array of stalwart and determined men of the south. Curses both loud and deep were hurled from the besiegers' lines at every head seen above the walls, together with promises to burn Edinburgh, castle and burgh alike, and to slocken the ashes with the blood of every living thing within, all for the cause of the Black Dinner and the Bull's Head set before the brothers of Douglas.
But at midnoon of a glorious day in the late September, a man rode out from the west port of the city, a fat man flaccid of body, pale and tallowy of complexion. A couple of serving-men went behind him, with the Douglas arms broidered on their coats. They looked no little terrified, and shook upon their horses, as indeed well they might. This little cavalcade rode directly out of the city gates towards the pavilion of the young Douglases of Avondale. As they went two running footmen kept them company, one on either side of their leader, and as that unwieldy horseman swayed this way and that in the saddle, first one and then the other applied with his open palm the force requisite to keep the rider erect upon his horse.
It was the new Earl of Douglas, James the Gross, on his way to visit the camp of his sons. As he approached the sentries who stood on guard upon the broomy braes betwixt Merchiston and Bruntsfield, he was challenged in a fierce southland shout by one of the Carsphairn levies who knew him not.
"Stand back there,