The Black Douglas Part 20

"False loon!" cried Sholto, shaking his axe at him in the extremity of his anger, "we have beaten them fairly. Would that I could get at thee! Come down and fight an encounter to the end. I will take any Maxwell here in my s.h.i.+rt!"

"Hold your tongue!" commanded his father, briefly, "what else can ye expect of a border man but broken faith?"

The archers of the guard rushed in, as was their duty, and separated the remaining combatants. Hugh and his brother William fought it to the last, the younger with all his vigour and with a fierce energy born of his brother James's taunts, William with the calm courtesy and forbearance of an old and a.s.sured knight towards one who has yet his spurs to win.

The stunned knights and squires were conveyed to their several pavilions, where the Earl's apothecaries were at once in attendance.

William of Douglas was the first to revive, which he did almost as soon as the laces of his helm had been undone and water dashed upon his face. His head still sang, he declared, like a hive of bees, but that was all.

He bent with the anxiety of a generous enemy over the unconscious form of the Marshal de Retz, from whom they were stripping his armour. At the removal of the helmet, the strange parchment face with its blue-black stubbly beard was seen to be more than usually pale and drawn. The upper lip was retracted, and a set of long white teeth gleamed like those of a wild beast.

The apothecary was just commencing to strip off the leathern under-doublet from the amba.s.sador's body to search for a wound, when Poitou, his squire, happened to open his eyes. He had been laid upon the floor, as the most seriously wounded of the combatants, though being the least in honour he fell to be attended last.

Instantly he cried out a strange Breton word, unintelligible to all present, and, leaping from the floor, he flung himself across the body of his master, das.h.i.+ng aside the astonished apothecary, who had only time to discern on the marshal's shoulder the scar of a recent cautery before Poitou had restored the leathern under-doublet to its place.

"Hands off! Do not touch my master. I alone can bring him to. Leave the room, all of you."

"Sirrah!" cried the Earl, sternly, striding towards him, "I will teach you to speak humbly to more honourable men."

"My lord," cried Poitou, instantly recalled to himself, "believe me, I meant no ill. But true it is that I only can recover him. I have often seen him taken thus. But I must be left alone. My master hath a blemish upon him, and one great gentleman does not humiliate another in the presence of underlings. My Lord Douglas, as you love honour, bid all to leave me alone for a brief s.p.a.ce."

"Much cared he for honour, when he threw the lance at my master!"

growled Sholto. "Had I known, I would have driven my bill-point six inches lower, and then would there have been a most satisfactory blemish in the joining of his neck-bone."

CHAPTER XXIII

SHOLTO WINS KNIGHTHOOD

The amba.s.sador recovered quickly after he had been left with his servant Poitou, according to the latter's request. The Lady Sybilla manifested the most tender concern in the matter of the accident of judgment which had been the means of diverting her kinsman from his own opponent and bringing him into collision with the Earl Douglas.

"Often have I striven with my lord that he should ride no more in the lists," she said, "for since he received the lance-thrust in the eye by the side of La Pucelle before the walls of Orleans, he sees no more aright, but bears ever in the direction of the eye which sees and away from that wherein he had his wound."

"Indeed, I knew not that the Marshal de Retz had been wounded in the eye, or I should not have permitted him to ride in the tourney,"

returned the Earl, gravely. "The fault was mine alone."

The Lady Sybilla smiled upon him very sweetly and graciously.

"You are great soldiers--you Douglases. Six knights are chosen from the muster of half a kingdom to ride a _melee_. Four are Douglases, and, moreover, cousins germain in blood."

"Indeed, we might well have compa.s.sed the sword-play," said the Earl William, "for in our twenty generations we never learned aught else.

Our arms are strong enough and our skulls thick enough, for even mine uncle, the Abbot, hath his Latin by the ear. And one Semple, a plain burgher of Dumfries, did best him at it--or at least would have shamed him, but that he desired not to lose the custom of the Abbey."

"When you come to France," replied the girl, smiling on him, "it will indeed be stirring to see you ride a bout with young Messire Lalain, the champion of Burgundy, or with that Miriadet of Dijon, whose arm is like that of a giant and can fell an ox at a blow."

"Truly," said the young Earl, modestly, "you do me overmuch honour. My cousin James there, he is the champion among us, and alone could easily have over-borne me to-day, without the aid of your uncle's blind eye. Even William of Avondale is a better lance than I, and young Hugh will be when his time comes."

"Your squire fought a good fight," she went on, "though his countenance does not commend itself to me, being full of all self-sufficience."

"Sholto--yes; he is his father's son and fought well. He is a MacKim, and cannot do otherwise. He will make a good knight, and, by Saint Bride, I will dub him one, ere this sun set, for his valiant laying on of the axe this day."

The great muster was now over. The tents which had been dotted thickly athwart the castle island were already mostly struck, and the ground was littered with miscellaneous debris, soon to be carried off in trail carts with square wooden bodies set on boughs of trees, and flung into the river, by the Earl's varlets and stablemen.

The mult.i.tudinous liegemen of the Douglas were by this time streaming homewards along every mountain pa.s.s. Over the heather and through the abounding mora.s.ses horse and foot took their way, no longer marching in military order, as when they came, but each lance taking the route which appeared the shortest to himself. North, east, and west spear-heads glinted and armour flashed against the brown of the heather and the green of the little vales, wherein the horses bent their heads to pull at the meadow hay as their riders sought the nearest way back again to their peel-towers and forty-s.h.i.+lling lands.

It was at the great gate of Thrieve that the Earl called aloud for Sholto. He had been speaking to his cousin William, a strong, silent man, whose repute was highest for good counsel among all the branches of the house of Douglas.

Sholto came forward from the head of his archer guard with a haste which betrayed his anxiety lest in some manner he had exceeded his duty. The Earl bade him kneel down. A little behind, the young Douglases of Avondale, William, James, and Hugh, sat their horses, while the boy David, who had been left at home to keep the castle, looked forth disconsolately from the window of the great hall. On the steps stood the little Maid Margaret and her companion, Maud Lindesay, who had come down to meet the returning train of riders. And, truth to tell, that was what Sholto cared most about. He did not wish to be disgraced before them all.

So as he knelt with an anxious countenance before his lord, the Earl took his cousin William's sword out of his hand, and, laying it on the shoulder of Sholto MacKim, he said, "Great occasions bring forth good men, and even one battle tries the temper of the sword. You, Sholto, have been quickly tried, but thy father hath been long tempering you.

Three days agone you were but one of the archer guard, yesterday you were made its captain, to-day I dub you knight for the strong courage of the heart that is within, and the valiant service which this day you did your lord. Rise, Sir Sholto!"

But for all that he rose not immediately, for the head of the young man whirled, and little drumming pulses beat in his temples. His heart cried within him like the overword of a song, "Does she hear? Will she care? Will this bring me nearer to her?" So that, in spite of his lord's command, he continued to kneel, till l.u.s.ty James of Avondale came and caught him by the elbow. "Up, Sir Knight, and give grace and good thank to your lord. Not your head but mine hath a right to be muzzy with the coup I gat this day on the green meadow of the Boat Croft."

And practical William of Avondale whispered in his cousin's ear, "And the lands for the youth that we spoke of."

"Moreover," said the Earl, "that you may suitably support the knighthood which your sword has won, I freely bestow on you the forty-s.h.i.+lling lands of Aireland and Lincolns with Screel and Ben Gairn, on condition that you and yours shall keep the watch-fires laid ready for the lighting, and that in time you rear you st.u.r.dy yeomen to bear in the Douglas train the banneret of MacKim of Aireland."

Sholto stood before his generous lord trembling and speechless, while James Douglas shook him by the elbow and encouraged him roughly, "Say thy say, man; hast lost thy tongue?"

But William Douglas nodded approval of the youth.

"Nay," he said, "let alone, James! I like the lad the better that he hath no ready tongue. 'Tis not the praters that fight as this youth hath fought this day!"

So all that Sholto found himself able to do, was no more than to kneel on one knee and kiss his master's hand.

"I am too young," he muttered. "I am not worthy."

"Nay," said his master, "but you have fairly won your spurs. They made me a knight when I was but two years of my age, and I cried all the time for my nurse, your good mother, who, when she came, comforted me with pap. Surely it was right that I should make a place for my foster-brother within the goodly circle of the Douglas knights."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I AM TOO YOUNG," HE MUTTERED; "I AM NOT WORTHY."]

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SECOND FLOUTING OF MAUD LINDESAY

Sholto MacKim stood on the lowest step of the ascent into the n.o.ble gateway of Thrieve, hardly able to believe in his own good fortune.

But these were the days when no man awaked without having the possibility of either a knighthood or the gallows tree to encourage him to do his duty between dawn and dark.

The lords of Douglas had gone within, and were now drinking the Cup of Appet.i.te as their armour was being unbraced by the servitors, and the chafed limbs rubbed with oil and vinegar after the toils of the tourney. But still Sholto stood where his master had left him, looking at the green sc.u.m of duckweed which floated on the surface of the moat of Thrieve, yet of a truth seeing nothing whatever, till a low voice pierced the abstraction of his reverie.

"Sir Sholto!" said Mistress Maud Lindesay, "I bid you a long good-by, Sir Sholto MacKim! Say farewell to him, Margaret, as you hear me do!"