CHAPTER XX
ANDRO THE PENMAN GIVES AN ACCOUNT OF HIS STEWARDSHIP
In the fighting of that day James Douglas, the second son of the fatEarl of Avondale, won the prize, worsting his elder brother William inthe final encounter. The victor was a nobly formed youth, of strengthand stature greater than those of his brother, but without William ofAvondale's haughty spirit and stern self-discipline.
For James Douglas had the easy popular virtues which would drink withany drawer or pricker at a tavern board, and made him ready to claphis last gold Lion on the platter to pay for the draught--telling, aslike as not, the good gossip of the inn to keep the change, and (ifwell favoured) give him a kiss therefor. The Douglas _cortege_ rodehome amid the shoutings of the holiday makers who thronged all theapproaches to the ford in order to see the great nobles and theirtrains ride by, and Sholto and his men had much trouble to keep thesespectators as far back as was decent and seemly.
The Earl summoned his victorious cousins, William and James, to ridewith him and the tourney's Queen of Beauty. But William proved evenmore silent than usual, and his dark face and upright carriage causedhim to sit his charger as if carved in iron. Jolly James, on the otherhand, attempted a jest or two which savoured rustically enough.Nevertheless, he received the compliments of the Lady Sybilla on hiscourage and address with the equanimity of a practised soldier. He wasalready, indeed, the best knight in Scotland, even as he was twelveyears after when in the lists of Stirling he fought with the famousMessire Lalain, the Burgundian champion.
Earl William dropped behind to speak a moment with Sholto, and to givehim the orders which he was to convey to the provost of the games withregard to the encounter of the morrow.
La Joyeuse took the opportunity of addressing her nearer and moresilent companion.
"You are, I think, the head of the other Douglas House," said the LadySybilla, glancing up at the stern and unbending Master of Avondale.
"There is but one house of Douglas, and but one head thereof," repliedLord William, with a certain severity, and without looking at her. Thelady had the grace to blush, either with shame or with annoyance atthe rebuff.
"Pardon," she said, "you must remember that I am a foreigner. I do notunderstand your genealogies. I thought that even in France I had heardof the Black Douglas and the Red."
"The Red and the Black alike are the liegemen of William of Douglas,whom Angus and Avondale both have the honour of serving," answered he,still more uncompromisingly.
"Aye," cried the jovial James, "cousin Will is the only chief, andwill make a rare lance when he hath eaten a score or two more bolls ofmeal."
The Earl William returned even as James was speaking.
"What is that I hear about bolls of meal?" he said; "what wots thisfair damosel of our rude Scots measures for oats and bear? You talklike the holder of a twenty-shilling land, James."
"I was saying," answered James Douglas, "that you would be a properman of your lance when you had laid a score or two bolls of goodGalloway meal to your ribs. English beef and beer are excellent, anddrive a lance home into an unarmed foe; but it needs good Scots oatsat the back of the spear-haft to make the sparks fly when knight meetswith knight and iron rings on iron."
"Indeed, cousin Jamie," said the Earl, "you have some right to yourporridge, for this day you have overturned well nigh a score of goodknights and come off unhurt and unashamed. Cousin William, how likedyou the whammel you got from James' lance in your final course?"
"Not that ill," said the silent Master; "I am indeed better at takingthan at giving. James is a stouter lance than I shall ever be--"
"Not so," cried jolly James. "Our Will never doth himself justice. Heis for ever reading Deyrolles and John Froissard in order to learn newways and tricks of fence, which he practises on the tilting ground,instead of riding with a tight knee and the weight of his body behindthe shaft of ash. That is what drives the tree home, and so he getsmany a coup. Yet to fall, and to be up and at it again, is by far thetruer courage."
The Lady Sybilla laughed, as it seemed, heartily, yet with some littlebitterness in the sound of it.
"I declare you Douglases stick together like crabs in a basket.Cousins in France do not often love each other so well. You arefortunate in your relations, my Lord Duke."
"Indeed, and that I am," cried the young man, joyously. "Here be mycousins, William and James--Will ever ready to read me out of wisebooks and advise me better than any clerk, Jamie aching to drive lancethrough any man's midriff in my quarrel."
"Lord, I would that I had the chance!" cried James. "Saint Bride! butI would make a hole clean through him and out at the back, though myelbuck should dinnle for a week after."
So talking together, but with the lady riding more silent and somewhatconstrainedly in their midst, the three cousins of Douglas passed thedrawbridge and came again to the precincts of the noble towers ofThrieve.
* * * * *
In an hour Sholto followed them, having ridden fast and furious acrossthe long broomy braes of Boreland, and wet the fringes of hischarger's silken coverture by vaingloriously swimming the Dee at thecastle pool instead of going round by the fords. This he did in thehope that Maud Lindesay might see him. And so she did; for as he cameround by the outside of the moat, making his horse caracole andthinking no little of himself, he heard a voice from an upper windowcall out: "Sholto MacKim, Maudie says that you look like a draggledcrow. No, I will not be silent."
Then the words were shut off as if a hand had been set over the mouthwhich spoke. But presently the voice out of the unseen came again:"And I hate you, Sholto MacKim. For we have had to keep in our chamberthis livelong day, because of the two men you have placed over us, asif we had been prisoners in Black Archibald.[1] This very day I amgoing to ask my brother to hang Black Andro and John his brother onthe dule tree of Carlinwark."
[Footnote 1: The pet name of the deepest dungeon of Castle Thrieve,yet extant and plain to be seen by all.]
"Yes, indeed, and most properly," cried another voice, which made hisvery heart flutter, "and set his new captain of the guard a-dangle inthe midst, decked out from head to foot in peacocks' feathers."
Sholto was very angry, for like a boy he took not chaffing lightly,and had neither the harshness of hide which can endure the rasping ofa woman's tongue, nor the quickness of speech to give her the counterretort.
So he cast the reins of his horse to a stable varlet and stampedindoors, carrying his master's helmet to the armoury. Then stillwithout speech to any he brushed hastily up the stairs towards theupper floor, which he had set Andro the Penman and his brother toguard.
At the turning of the staircase David Douglas, the Earl's brother,stopped him. Sholto moved in salute and would have passed by.
But David detained him with an impetuous hand.
"What is this?" he said; "you have set two archers on the stairs whohave shot and almost killed the ambassador's two servants, Poitou theman-at-arms, and Henriet the clerk, just because they wished to takethe air upon the roof. Nay, even when I would have visited my sister,I was not permitted--'None passes here save the Earl himself, tillour captain takes his orders off us!' That was the word they spoke.Was ever the like done in the castle of Thrieve to a Master of Douglasbefore?"
"I am sorry, my Lord David," said Sholto, respectfully, "but therewere matters within the knowledge of the Earl which caused him to laythis heavy charge upon me."
"Well," said the lad, quickly relenting, "let us go and see Margaretnow. She must have been lonely all this fair day of summer."
But Sholto smiled, well pleased, thinking of Maud Lindesay.
"I would that I had a lifetime of such loneliness as Margaret's hathbeen this day," he said to himself.
At the turning of the stair they were stayed, for there, his footadvanced, his bow ready to deliver its steel bolt at the clicking of atrigger, stood Andro the Swarthy.
From his stance he commanded the stair and could see alo
ng thecorridor as well.
David Douglas caught his elbow on something which stood a few inchesout of the oaken panelling of the turnpike wall. He tried to pull itout. It was the steel quarrel of a cross-bow wedged firmly into thewood and masonry. He cried: "Whence came this? Have you been murderingany other honest men?"
The archer stood silent, glancing this way and that like a sentinel onduty. The two young men went on up the stair.
As their feet were approaching the sixth step, a sudden word came fromthe Penman like a bolt from his bow.
"Halt!" he cried, and they heard the _gur-r-r-r_ of his steel ratchet.
Sholto smiled, for he knew the nature of the man.
"It is I, your captain," he said. "You have done your duty well, Androthe Penman. Now get down to your dinner. But first give an account ofyour adventures."
"Do you relieve us from our charge?" said the archer, with his bowstill at the ready.
"Certainly," quoth Sholto.
"Come, Jock, we are eased," cried Andro the Swarthy up the stair, andhe slid the steel bolt out of its grip with a little click; "faith, mybelly is toom as a last year's beef barrel."
"Did any come hither to vex you?" asked Sholto.
"Not to speak of," said the archer; "there were, indeed, two varletsof the Frenchmen, and as they would not take a bidding to stand, I hadperforce to send a quarrel buzzing past their lugs into the wall. Youcan see it there behind you."
"Rascal," cried David Douglas, indignantly, "you do not say that firstof all you shot it through the arm of the poor clerk Henriet."
"It is like enough," said Andro, coolly, "if his arm were in the way."
Then came a voice down the stairs from above.
"And the wretches would neither let any come to visit us nor yetpermit us to go into the hall that we might speak with our gossips."
"How should we be responsible with our lives for the lasses if we hadlet them gad about?" said Andro, preparing to salute and take himselfoff.
At this moment the little maid and her elder companion came forwardmeekly and kneeled down before Sholto.
"We are your humble prisoners," said Maud Lindesay, "and we know thatour offences against your highness are most heinous; but why shouldyou starve us to death? Burn us or hang us,--we will bear the extremepenalty of the law gladly,--but torture is not for women. For dearpity's sake, a bite of bread. We have had nothing to eat all day,except two lace kerchiefs and a neck riband."
"Lord of Heaven," cried Sholto, swinging on his heel and darting downtowards the kitchen, "what a fool unutterable I am!"