CHAPTER XXIX
CASTLE CRICHTON
Crichton Castle was much more a defenced chateau and less a feudalstronghold than Thrieve. It stood on a rising ground above the littleWater of Tyne, which flowed clear and swift beneath from the blind"hopes" and bare valleys of the Moorfoot Hills. But the site was wellchosen both for pleasure and defence. The ground fell away on threesides. Birch, alder, ash, girt it round and made pleasant summerbowers everywhere.
The fox-faced Chancellor had spent much money on beautifying it, andthe kitchens and larders were reported to be the best equipped inScotland. On the green braes of Crichton, therefore, in due time theyoung Douglases arrived with their sparse train of thirty riders. SirWilliam Crichton had ridden out to meet them across the innumerablelittle valleys which lie around Temple and Borthwick to the brow ofthat great heathy tableland which runs back from the Moorfoots clearto the Solway.
With him were only the Marshal de Retz and his niece, the LadySybilla.
Not a single squire or man-at-arms accompanied these three, for, asthe Chancellor well judged, there was no way more likely effectuallyto lull the suspicions of a gallant man like the Douglas than toforestall him in generous confidence.
The three sat their horses and looked to the south for their guests atthat delightsome hour of the summer gloaming when the last bees arereluctantly disengaging themselves from the dewy heather bells and thecircling beetles begin their booming curfew.
"There they come!" cried de Retz, suddenly, pointing to a few specksof light which danced and dimpled between them and the low horizon ofthe south, against which, like a spacious armada, leaned a drift ofprimrose sunset clouds.
"There they come--I see them also!" said the Lady Sybilla, andsuddenly sighed heavily and without cause.
"Where, and how many?" cried the Chancellor, in a shrill pipe usuallyassociated with the physically deformed, but which from him meant nomore than anxious discomposure.
The marshal pointed with the steady hand of the practised commander tothe spot at which his keen eye had detected the cavalcade.
"Yonder," he said, "where the pine tree stands up against the sky."
"And how many? I cannot see them, my eyesight fails. I bid you tell mehow many," gasped the Chancellor.
The ambassador looked long.
"There are, as I think, no more than twenty or thirty riders."
Instantly the Chancellor turned and held out his hand.
"We have him," he muttered, withdrawing it again as soon as he sawthat the ambassador did not take it, being occupied gazing under hispalm at the approaching train of riders.
The Lady Sybilla sat silent and watched the company which rode towardsthem--with what thoughts in her heart, who shall venture to guess? Shekept her head studiously averted from the Marshal de Retz, and oncewhen he touched her arm to call attention to something, she shudderedand moved a little nearer to the Chancellor. Nevertheless, she obeyedher companion implicitly and without question when he bade her rideforward with them to receive the Chancellor's guests.
Crichton took it on himself to rally the girl on her silence.
"Of what may you be thinking so seriously?" he said.
"Of thirty pieces of silver," she replied instantly.
And at these words the marshal turned upon the girl a regard so blackand relentless that the Chancellor, happening to encounter it, shrankback abashed, even as some devilkin caught in a fault might shrinkfrom the angry eyes of the Master of Evil.
But the Lady Sybilla looked calmly at her kinsman.
"Of what do you complain?" he asked her.
"I complain of nothing," she made him answer. "I am that which I am,and I am that which you have made me, my Lord of Retz. Fear not, Iwill do my part."
Right handsome looked the young Earl of Douglas, as with a flush ofexpectation and pleasure on his face he rode up to the party of threewho had come out to meet him. He made his obeisance to Sybilla first,with a look of supremest happiness in his eyes which many women wouldhave given their all to see there. As he came close he leaped from hishorse, and advancing to his lady he bent and kissed her hand.
"My Lady Sybilla," he said, "I am as ever your loyal servant."
The Chancellor and the ambassador had both dismounted, not to beoutdone in courtesy, and one after the other they greeted him withwhat cordiality they could muster. The narrow, thin-bearded face ofthe Chancellor and the pallid death-mask of de Retz, out of whichglittered orbs like no eyes of human being, furnished a singularcontrast to the uncovered head, crisp black curls, slight moustache,and fresh olive complexion of the young Earl of Douglas.
And as often as he was not looking at her, the eyes of the LadySybilla rested on Lord Douglas with a strange expression in theirdeeps. The colour in her cheek came and went. The vermeil of her lipflushed and paled alternate, from the pink of the wild rose-leaf tothe red of its autumnal berry.
But presently, at a glance from her kinsman, Sybilla de Thouars seemedto recall herself with difficulty from a land of dreams, and with anobvious effort began to talk to William Douglas.
"Whom have you brought to see me?" she said.
"Only a few men-at-arms, besides Sholto my squire, and my brotherDavid," he made answer. "I did not wait for more. But let me bring thelad to you. Sholto you did not like when he was a plain archer of theguard, and I fear that he will not have risen in your grace since Idubbed him knight."
David Douglas willingly obeyed the summons of his brother, and cameforward to kiss the hand of the Lady Sybilla.
"Here, Sholto," cried his lord, "come hither, man. It will do yourpride good to see a lady who avers that conceit hath eaten you up."
Sholto came at the word and bowed before the French damosel as he wascommanded, meekly enough to all outward aspect. But in his heart hewas saying over and over to himself words that consoled him mightily:"A murrain on her! The cozening madam, she will never be worth namingon the same day as Maud Lindesay!"
"Nay," cried the Lady Sybilla, laughing; "indeed, I said not that Idisliked this your squire. What woman thinks the worse of a lad ofmettle that he does not walk with his head between his feet. But 'tispity that there is no fair cruel maid to bind his heart in chains, andmake him fetch and carry to break his pride. He thinks overmuch of hissword-play and arrow skill."
"He must go to France for that humbling," said the Earl, gaily, "orelse mayhap some day a maid may come from France to break his heartfor him. The like hath been and may be again."
"I would that I had known there were such gallant blades as you three,my Lords of Douglas and their knight, sighing here in Scotland to haveyour hearts broke for the good of your souls. I had then brought withme a tierce of damsels fair as cruel, who had done it in the flashingof a swallow's wing. But 'tis a contract too great for one poor maid."
"Yet you yourself ventured all alone into this realm of forlorn anddesperate men," answered the Earl, scarcely recking what he said, norindeed caring so that her dark eyes should continue to rest on himwith the look he had seen in them at his first coming.
"All alone--yes, much, much alone," she answered with a strangeglance about her. "My kinsman loves not womankind, and neither in hiscastles nor yet in his company does he permit any of the sex long toabide."
The men now mounted again, and the three rode back in the midst of thecavalcade of Douglas spears, the Chancellor talking as freely andconfidently to the Earl as if he had been his friend for years, whilethe Earl of Douglas kept up the converse right willingly so long as,looking past the Chancellor, his eyes could rest also upon thedelicately poised head and graceful form of the Lady Sybilla.
And behind them a horse's length the Marshal de Retz rode, smiling inthe depths of his blue-black beard, and looking at them out of thewicks of his triangular eyes.
Presently the towers of the Castle of Crichton rose before them on itsgreen jutting spur. The Tyne Valley sank beneath into level meads andrich pastures, while behind the Moorfoots spread brown and barewithout promine
nt peaks or distinguished glens, but nevertheless witha certain large vagueness and solemnity peculiarly their own.
The _fetes_ with which the Chancellor welcomed his guests were manyand splendid. But in one respect they differed from those which havebeen described at Castle Thrieve. There was no military pomp of anykind connected with them. The Chancellor studiously avoided allpretence of any other distinction than that belonging to a plain manwhom circumstances have raised against his will to a position ofresponsibility.
The thirty spears of the Earl's guard, indeed, constituted the wholemilitary force within or about the Castle of Crichton.
"I am a lawyer, my lord, a plain lawyer," he said; "all Scots lawyersare plain. And I must ask you to garrison my bit peel-tower ofCrichton in a manner more befitting your own greatness, and the honourdue to the ambassador of France, than a humble knight is able to do."
So Sholto was put into command of the court and battlements of thecastle, and posted and changed guard as though he had been at Thrieve,while the Chancellor bustled about, affecting more the style of a richand comfortable burgess than that of a feudal baron.
"'Tis a snug bit hoose," he would say, dropping into the countrysidespeech; "there's nocht fine within it from cellar to roof tree, saveonly the provend and the jolly Malmsey. And though I be but a pooreater myself, I love that my betters, who do me the honour ofsojourning within my gates, should have the wherewithal to be merry."
And it was even as he said, for the tables were weighted withdelicacies such as were never seen upon the boards of Thrieve orCastle Douglas.