CHAPTER XXXVII
A STRANGE MEETING
It was approaching the evening of the third day after riding forthupon his mission when Sholto, sleepless yet quite unconscious ofweariness, approached the loch of Carlinwark and the cottage of BrawnyKim. West and south he had raised the Douglas country as it had neverbeen raised before. And now behind him every armiger and squire, everyspearman and light-foot archer, was hasting Edinburgh-ward, eager tobe first to succour the young and headstrong chief of his great house.
Sholto had ridden and cried the slogan as was his duty, withoutallowing his mind to dwell over much upon whether all might not arrivetoo late. And ever as he rode out of village or across the desolatemoors from castle to fortified farmhouse, it seemed that not he butsome other was upon this quest.
Something sterner and harder stirred in his breast. Light-heartedSholto MacKim, the careless lad of the jousting day, the proud youngcaptain of the Earl's guard, was dead with all his vanity. And in hisplace a man rode southward grim and determined, with vengeful angersa-smoulder in his bosom,--hunger, thirst, love, the joy of living andthe fear of death all being swallowed up by deadly hatred of those whohad betrayed his master.
Maud Lindesay was doubtless within a few miles of Sholto, yet hescarcely gave even his sweetheart a thought as he urged his weary greyover the purple Parton moors towards the loch of Carlinwark and thelittle hamlet nestling along its western side under the ancient thorntrees of the Carlin's hill.
He rode down over the green and empty Crossmichael braes on which thebroom pods were crackling in the afternoon sunshine, through hollowswhere the corn lingered as though unwilling to have done with such ascene of beauty, and find itself mewed in dusty barns, ground inmills, or close pressed in thatched rick. He breasted the long smoothrise and entered the woods which encircle the bright lakelet ofCarlinwark, the pearl of all southland Scottish lochs.
With a strange sense of detachment he looked down upon the green swardbetween him and his mother's gable end, upon which as a child he hadwandered from dawn to dusk. Then it was nearly as large as the world,and the grass was most comfortable to bare feet. There were childrenplaying upon it now, even as there had been of old, among them his ownlittle sister Magdalen, whose hair was spun gold, and her eyes blue asthe forget-me-not on the marshes of the Isle Wood. The children weredressed in white, five little girls in all, as for a festal day, andtheir voices came upward to Sholto's ear through the arches of thegreat beeches which studded the turf with pavilions of green shade,tenderly as they had done to that of William Douglas in thespring-time of the year.
The minor note, the dying fall of the innocent voices, tugged at hisheartstrings. He could hear little Magdalen leading the chorus:
_"Margaret Douglas, fresh and fair, A bunch of roses she shall wear, Gold and silver by her side, I know who's her bride."_
It was at "Fair Maid" they were playing, the mystic dance of Southlandmaidenhood, at whose vestal rites no male of any age was everpermitted to be present. The words broke in upon the gloom whichoppressed Sholto's heart. Momentarily he forgot his master and sawMaud Lindesay with the little Margaret Douglas of whom the childrensang, once again gathering the gowans on the brae sides of Thrieve orperilously reaching out for purple irises athwart the ditches of theIsle.
_"Take her by the lily-white hand, Lead her o'er the water; Give her kisses, one, two, three, For she's a lady's daughter."_
As Sholto MacKim listened to the quaint and moving lullaby, suddenlythere came into the field of his vision that which stiffened him intoa statue of breathing marble.
For without clatter of accoutrement or tramp of hoof, withoutcompanion or attendant, a white palfrey had appeared through the greenarches of the woodlands. A girl was seated upon the saddle, swayingwith gentle movement to the motion of her steed. At the sight of herfigure as she came nearer a low cry of horror and amazement broke fromSholto's lips.
It was the Lady Sybilla.
Yet he knew that he had left her behind him in Edinburgh, the sirentemptress of Earl Douglas, the woman who had led his master into thepower of the enemy, she for whose sake he had refused the certaintyof freedom and life. Anger against this smiling enchantress suddenlysurged up in Sholto's heart.
"Halt there--on your life!" he cried, and urged his wearied steedforward. Like dry leaves before a winter wind, the children weredispersed every way by the gust of his angry shout. But the maiden onthe palfrey either heeded not or did not hear.
Whereupon Sholto rode furiously crosswise to intercept her. He wouldlearn what had befallen his master. At least he would avenge him uponone--the chiefest and subtlest of his enemies. But not till he hadcome within ten paces did the Lady Sybilla turn upon him the fulnessof her regard. Then he saw her face. It broke upon him sudden as thesight of imminent hell to one sure of salvation. He had expected tofind there gratified ambition, sated lust, exultant pride, cruelestvengeance. He saw instead as it had been the face of an angel cast outof heaven, or perhaps, rather, of a martyr who has passed through thetorture chamber on her way to the place of burning.
The sight stopped Sholto stricken and wavering. His anger fell fromhim like a cloak shed when the sun shines in his strength.
The Lady Sybilla's face showed of no earthly paleness. Marble white itwas, the eyes heavy with weeping, purple rings beneath accentuatingthe horror that dwelt eternally in them. The lips that had been as thebow of Apollo were parted as though they had been singing the dirge ofone beloved, and ever as she rode the tears ran down her cheeks andfell on her white robe, and lower upon her palfrey's mane.
She looked at Sholto when he came near, but not as one who sees orrecognises. Rather, as it were, dumb, drunken, besotted with grief,looked forth the soul of the Lady Sybilla upon the captain of theDouglas guard. She heeded not his angry shout, for another voice rangin her ears, speaking the knightliest words ever uttered by a manabout to die. Sholto's sword was raised threateningly in his hand, butSybilla saw another blade gleam bright in the morning sun ere it fellto rise again dimmed and red. Therefore she checked not her steed, norturned aside, till Sholto laid his fingers upon her bridle-rein andleaped quickly to the ground, sword in hand, leaving his own beast towander where it would.
"What do you here?" he cried. "Where is my master? What have they doneto him? I bid you tell me on your life!"
Sholto's voice had no chivalrous courtesy in it now. The time for thathad gone by. He lowered his sword point and there was tense iron inthe muscles of his arm. He was ready to kill the temptress as he woulda beautiful viper.
The Lady Sybilla looked upon him, but in a dazed fashion, like one whorests between the turns of the rack. In a little while she appeared torecognise him. She noted the sword in his hand, the death in hiseye--and for the first time since the scene in the courtyard ofEdinburgh Castle, she smiled.
Then the fury in Sholto's heart broke suddenly forth.
"Woman," he cried, "show me cause why I should not slay you. For, byGod, I will, if aught of harm hath overtaken my master. Speak, I bidyou, speak quickly, if you have any wish to live."
But the Lady Sybilla continued to smile--the same dreadful, mockingsmile--and somehow Sholto, with his weapon bare and his arm nerved tothe thrust, felt himself grow weak and helpless under the stillnessand utter pitifulness of her look.
"You would kill me--kill _me_, you say--" the words came low andthrilling forth from lips which were as those of the dead whose chinhas not yet been bound about with a napkin, "ah, would that you could!But you cannot. Steel will not slay, poison will not destroy, norwater drown Sybilla de Thouars till her work be done!"
Sholto escaped from the power of her eye.
"My master--" he gasped, "my master--is he well? I pray you tell me."
Was it a laugh he heard in answer? Rather a sound, not of human mirthbut as of a condemned spirit laughing deep underground. Then again thelow even voice replied out of the expressionless face.
"Aye,
your master is well."
"Ah, thank God," burst forth Sholto, "he is alive."
The Lady Sybilla moved her hand this way and that with the gesture ofa blind man groping.
"Hush," she said, "I only said that he was well. And he is well. As Iam already in the place of torment, I know that there is a heaven forthose who die as William Douglas died."
Sholto's cry rang sudden, loud, despairing.
"Dead--dead--Earl William dead--my master dead!"
He dropped the palfrey's rein, which till now he had held. His swordfell unheeded on the turf, and he flung himself down in an agony ofboyish grief. But from her white palfrey, sitting still where she was,the maiden watched the paroxysms of his sorrow. She was dry eyed now,and her face was like a mask cut in snow.
Then as suddenly recalling himself, Sholto leaped from the ground,snatched up his sword, and again passionately advanced upon the LadySybilla.
"You it was who betrayed him," he cried, pointing the blade at herbreast; "answer if it were not so!"
"It is true I betrayed him," she answered calmly.
"You whom he loved--God knows how unworthily--"
"God knows," she said simply and calmly.
"You betrayed him to his death. Why then should not I kill you?"
Again she smiled upon him that disarming, hopeless, dreadful smile.
"Because you cannot kill me. Because it were too crowning a mercy tokill me. Because, for three inches of that blade in my heart, I wouldbless you through the eternities. Because I must do the work thatremains--"
"And that work is--?"
"Vengeance!!"
Sholto was silent, trying to piece things together. He found it hardto think. He was but a boy, and experience so strange as that of theLady Sybilla was outside him. Yet vaguely he felt that her emotion wasreal, more real perhaps than his own instinct of crude slaying--thedesire of the wasp whose nest has been harried to sting the firstcomer. This woman's hatred was something deadlier, surer, morepersistent.
"Vengeance--" he said at last, scarce knowing what he said, "whyshould you, who betrayed him, speak of avenging him?"
"Because," said the Lady Sybilla, "I loved him as I never thought tolove man born of woman. Because when the fiends of the pit tie me limbto limb, lip to lip, with Judas who sold his master with a kiss, whenthey burn me in the seventh hell, I shall remember and rejoice that tothe last he loved me, believed in me, gloried in his love for me. AndGod who has been cruel to me in all else, will yet do this thing forme. He will not let William Douglas know that I deceived him or thathe trusted me in vain."
"But the Vengeance that you spoke of--what of that?" said Sholto,dwelling upon that which was uppermost in his own thought.
"Aye," said the Lady Sybilla, "that alone can be compassed by me. ForI am bound by a chain, the snapping of which is my death. To him who,in a far land, devised all these things, to the man who plotted thefall of the Douglas house--to Gilles de Retz, Marshal of France, I ambound. But--I shall not die--even you cannot kill me, till I havebrought that head that is so high to the hempen cord, and deliveredthe foul fiend's body to the fires of both earth and hell."
"And the Chancellor Crichton--the tutor Livingston--what of them?"urged Sholto, like a Scot thinking of his native traitors.
The Lady Sybilla waved a contemptuous hand.
"These are but lesser rascals--they had been nothing without theirmaster and mine. You of the Douglas house must settle with them."
"And why have you returned to this country of Galloway?" said Sholto."And why are you thus alone?"
"I am here," said the Lady Sybilla, "because none can harm me with mywork undone. I travel alone because it suits my mood to be alone,because my master bade me join him at your town of Kirkcudbright,whence, this very night, he takes ship for his own country ofBrittany."
"And why do you, if as you say you hate him so, continue to followhim?"
"Ah, you are simple," she said; "I follow him because it is my fate,and who can escape his doom? Also, because, as I have said, my work isnot yet done."
She relapsed into her former listless, forth-looking, unconsciousregard, gazing through him as if the young man had no existence. Hedropped the rein and the point of his sword with one movement. Thewhite palfrey started forward with the reins loose on its neck. And asshe went the eyes of the Lady Sybilla were fixed on the distant hillswhich hid the sea.
So, leaving Sholto standing by the lakeside with bowed head and abasedsword, the strange woman went her way to work out her appointed task.
But ere the Lady Sybilla disappeared among the trees, she turned andspoke once more.
"I have but one counsel, Sir Knight. Think no more of your master. Letthe dead bury their dead. Ride to Thrieve and never once lose sight ofher whom you call your sweetheart, nor yet of her charge, MargaretDouglas, the Maid of Galloway, till the snow falls and winter comesupon the land."