The Black Douglas Part 37

And, even as she spoke, there pa.s.sed a quick strange pang through the heart of Sholto. He remembered the warning of the Lady Sybilla. Had he once more come too late?

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

THE GIFT OF THE COUNTESS

It was the Countess of Douglas who commanded that night in the Castle of Thrieve. Sholto wished to start at once upon the search for the lost maidens. But the lady forbade him.

"There are a thousand searchers who during the night will do all that you could do--and better. To-morrow we shall surely want you. You have been three nights without sleep. Take your rest. I order you in your master's name."

And on the bare stone, outside Maud Lindesay's empty room, Sholto threw himself down and slept as sleep the dead.

But that night, save about the chamber where abode the mother of the Douglases, the hum of life never ceased in the great Castle of Thrieve. Whether my lady slept or not, G.o.d knows. At any rate the door was closed and there was silence within.

Sholto awoke smiling in the early dawn. He had been dreaming that he and Maud Lindesay were walking on the sh.o.r.e together. It was a lonely beach with great driftwood logs whereon they sat and rested ere they took hands again and walked forth on their way. In his dream Maud was kind, her teasing, disdainful mood quite gone. So Sholto awoke smiling, but in a moment he wished that he had slept on.

He lay a s.p.a.ce, becoming conscious of a pain in his heart--the overnight pain of a great disaster not yet realised. For a little he knew not what it was. Then he saw himself lying at Maud's open door, and he remembered--first the death of his masters, then the loss of the little maid, and lastly that of Maud, his own winsome sweetheart Maud. In another moment he had leaped to his feet, buckled his sword-belt tighter, slung his cloak into a corner, and run downstairs.

The house guard which had ridden to Crichton and Edinburgh had been replaced from the younger yeomen of the Kelton and Balmaghie levies, even as the Earl had arranged before his departure. But of these only a score remained on duty. All who could be spared had gone to join the march on Edinburgh, for Galloway was set on having vengeance on the Chancellor and had sworn to lay the capital itself in ashes in revenge for the Black Dinner of the castle banqueting-hall.

The rest of the guard was out searching for the bonny maids of Thrieve, as through all the countryside Margaret Douglas and Maud Lindesay were named.

Eager as Sholto was to accompany the searchers, and though he knew well that no foe was south of the Forth to a.s.sault such a strong place as Thrieve, he did not leave the castle till he had set all in order so far as he could. He appointed Andro the Penman and his brother John officers of the garrison during his absence.

Then, having seen to his accoutrement and providing, for he did not mean to return till he had found the maids, he went lastly to the chamber door of the Lady of Douglas to ask her leave to depart.

At the first knock he heard a foot come slowly across the floor. It was my lady, who opened the latch herself and stood before Sholto in the habit she had worn when at the castle gateway Malise had told his news. Her couch was unpressed. Her window stood open towards the south. A candle still glimmered upon a little altar in an angle of the wall. She had been kneeling all night before the image of the Virgin, with her lips upon the feet of her who also was a woman, and who by treachery had lost a son.

"I would have your permission to depart, my Lady Countess," said Sholto, bowing his head upon his breast that he might not intrude upon her eyes of grief; "the castle is safe, and I can be well spared. By G.o.d's grace I shall not return till I bring either the maids themselves or settled news of them. Have I your leave to go?"

The Lady of Douglas looked at him a moment without speech.

"Surely you are not the same who rode away behind my son William. You went out light and gay as David, my other young son. There is now a look of Earl William himself in your face--his mother tells you so.

Well, you were suckled at the same breast as he. May a double portion of his spirit rest on you! That lowering regard is the Douglas mark.

Follow on and turn not back till you find. Strike and cease not, till all be avenged. I have now no son left to save or to strike. Go, Sholto MacKim. He who is dead loved you and made you knight. I said at the time that you were too young and would have dissuaded him. But when did a Douglas listen to woman's advice--his mother's or his wife's? Foster brother you are--brother you shall be. By this kiss I make you even as my son."

She bent and laid her lips on the young man's brow. They were hot as iron uncooled from the smithy anvil.

"Come with me," she added, and with a vehemence strangely at odds with her calm of the night before, she took Sholto by the hand and drew him after her into the room that had been Earl William's.

From the bundle of keys at her side she took a small one of French design. With this she unlocked a tall cabinet which stood in a corner.

She threw the folding doors open, and there in the recess hung a wonderful suit of armour, of the sort called at that time "secret."

"This," said the Lady of Douglas, "I had designed for my son. Ten years was it in the making. His father trysted it from a cunning artificer in Italy. All these years has it been perfecting for him. It comes too late. His eyes shall never see it, nor his body wear it. But I give it to you. No Avondale shall ever do it upon him. It will fit you, for you and he were of a bigness. No sword can cut through these links, were it steel of Damascus forged for a Sultan. No spear-thrust can pierce it, though I leave you to avenge the bruise. Yet it will lie soft as silk, concealed and unsuspected under the rags of a beggar or the robes of a king. The cap will turn the edge of an axe, even when swung by a giant's hand, yet it will fit into the lining of a Spanish hat or velvet bonnet. This your present errand may prove more dangerous than you 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 pa.s.sage.

Sholto looked ruefully at the glittering blade which he held in his hand, flas.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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.