CHAPTER XXXIX
THE GIFT OF THE COUNTESS
It was the Countess of Douglas who commanded that night in the Castleof Thrieve. Sholto wished to start at once upon the search for thelost maidens. But the lady forbade him.
"There are a thousand searchers who during the night will do all thatyou could do--and better. To-morrow we shall surely want you. You havebeen three nights without sleep. Take your rest. I order you in yourmaster's name."
And on the bare stone, outside Maud Lindesay's empty room, Sholtothrew himself down and slept as sleep the dead.
But that night, save about the chamber where abode the mother of theDouglases, the hum of life never ceased in the great Castle ofThrieve. Whether my lady slept or not, God knows. At any rate the doorwas closed and there was silence within.
Sholto awoke smiling in the early dawn. He had been dreaming that heand Maud Lindesay were walking on the shore together. It was a lonelybeach with great driftwood logs whereon they sat and rested ere theytook hands again and walked forth on their way. In his dream Maud waskind, her teasing, disdainful mood quite gone. So Sholto awokesmiling, but in a moment he wished that he had slept on.
He lay a space, becoming conscious of a pain in his heart--theovernight pain of a great disaster not yet realised. For a little heknew 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 ofthe little maid, and lastly that of Maud, his own winsome sweetheartMaud. In another moment he had leaped to his feet, buckled hissword-belt tighter, slung his cloak into a corner, and run downstairs.
The house guard which had ridden to Crichton and Edinburgh had beenreplaced from the younger yeomen of the Kelton and Balmaghie levies,even as the Earl had arranged before his departure. But of these onlya score remained on duty. All who could be spared had gone to join themarch on Edinburgh, for Galloway was set on having vengeance on theChancellor and had sworn to lay the capital itself in ashes in revengefor the Black Dinner of the castle banqueting-hall.
The rest of the guard was out searching for the bonny maids ofThrieve, as through all the countryside Margaret Douglas and MaudLindesay were named.
Eager as Sholto was to accompany the searchers, and though he knewwell that no foe was south of the Forth to assault such a strong placeas Thrieve, he did not leave the castle till he had set all in orderso far as he could. He appointed Andro the Penman and his brother Johnofficers of the garrison during his absence.
Then, having seen to his accoutrement and providing, for he did notmean to return till he had found the maids, he went lastly to thechamber 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. Itwas my lady, who opened the latch herself and stood before Sholto inthe habit she had worn when at the castle gateway Malise had told hisnews. Her couch was unpressed. Her window stood open towards thesouth. A candle still glimmered upon a little altar in an angle of thewall. 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 bytreachery had lost a son.
"I would have your permission to depart, my Lady Countess," saidSholto, bowing his head upon his breast that he might not intrude uponher eyes of grief; "the castle is safe, and I can be well spared. ByGod's grace I shall not return till I bring either the maidsthemselves 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. Youwent out light and gay as David, my other young son. There is now alook 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 portionof 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, tillall 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 atthe time that you were too young and would have dissuaded him. Butwhen did a Douglas listen to woman's advice--his mother's or hiswife's? Foster brother you are--brother you shall be. By this kiss Imake you even as my son."
She bent and laid her lips on the young man's brow. They were hot asiron uncooled from the smithy anvil.
"Come with me," she added, and with a vehemence strangely at odds withher calm of the night before, she took Sholto by the hand and drew himafter her into the room that had been Earl William's.
From the bundle of keys at her side she took a small one of Frenchdesign. With this she unlocked a tall cabinet which stood in a corner.She threw the folding doors open, and there in the recess hung awonderful suit of armour, of the sort called at that time "secret."
"This," said the Lady of Douglas, "I had designed for my son. Tenyears was it in the making. His father trysted it from a cunningartificer in Italy. All these years has it been perfecting for him. Itcomes too late. His eyes shall never see it, nor his body wear it. ButI give it to you. No Avondale shall ever do it upon him. It will fityou, for you and he were of a bigness. No sword can cut through theselinks, were it steel of Damascus forged for a Sultan. No spear-thrustcan pierce it, though I leave you to avenge the bruise. Yet it willlie soft as silk, concealed and unsuspected under the rags of a beggaror the robes of a king. The cap will turn the edge of an axe, evenwhen swung by a giant's hand, yet it will fit into the lining of aSpanish hat or velvet bonnet. This your present errand may prove moredangerous than you imagine. Go and put it on."
Sholto kneeled down and kissed the hand of his liege lady. Then whenhe had risen she gave him down the armour piece by piece, dustingeach with her kerchief with a sort of reverent action, as one mighttouch the face of the dead. In Sholto's hands it proved indeed lightalmost as woven cloth of homespun from Dame Barbara's loom, andflexible as the spun silk of Lyons which the great wear next theirbodies.
With it there went an under-suit of finest and softest leather, thatthe skin should not be chafed by the cunning links as they workedsmoothly over one another at each movement of the body within.
Sholto buckled on his lady's gift with a swelling heart. It was hisdead master's armour. And as piece by piece fitted him as a glove fitsthe hand, the spirit of William Douglas seemed to enter more and moreinto the lad.
Then Sholto covered this most valuable gift with his own clothingwhich he had brought from the house of Carlinwark, and presentlyemerged, a well-looking but still slim squire of decent family.
Then the Countess belted on him the sword of price which wenttherewith, a blade of matchless Toledan steel, but covered with aplain scabbard of black pigskin.
"Draw and thrust," commanded the lady, pointing at the rough stone ofthe wall at the end of the passage.
Sholto looked ruefully at the glittering blade which he held in hishand, flashing 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 thesmitten blue whinstone where the point, with all the weight of hisyoung body behind it, impinged on the wall. A tingling shock ofacutest agony ran up the striker's wrist to the shoulder blade. Thesword dropped ringing on the pavement, and Sholto's arm fell numb anduseless 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 pointwhich had bent like a hoop was sharp and straight as if just from thearmourer'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 likethe letter U.
"Then strike a cutting stroke with your left hand."
Sholto took the sword. It seemed to him short-sighted policy that inthe hour of his departure on a perilous quest he should disablehimself in both arms. But Sholto MacKim was not the youth to questionan order. He l
ifted the sword in his left hand, and with a strongungraceful motion struck with all his might.
At first he thought that he had missed altogether. There was notingling in his arm, no jar when the blade should have encountered theiron. 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 almostwithout 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 anychance he could have smitten with the reverse.
Failing in this, he could only kneel to his lady and say, "This is agreat gift--I am not worthy."
For in these times of peril jewels and lands were as nothing to thevalue of such a suit of armour, which kings and princes might wellhave made war to obtain.
The faintest disembodied ghost of a smile passed over the face of theCountess of Douglas.
"It is the best I can do with it now," she said, "and at least no oneof the Avondales shall ever possess it."
After the Lady Douglas had armed the young knight and sped him uponhis quest, Sholto departed over the bridge where the surly custodianstill grumbled at his horse's feet trampling his clean woodenflooring. The young man rode a Spanish jennet of good stock, a plainbeast to look upon, neither likely to attract attention nor yet tostir cupidity.
His father and Laurence were already on their way. Sholto had arrangedthat whether they found any trace of the lost ones or no, they wereall to meet on the third day at the little town of Kirkcudbright. ForSholto, warned by the Lady Sybilla, even at this time had his idea,which, because of the very horror of it, he had as yet communicated tono one.
It chanced that as the youth rode southward along the banks of theDee, glancing this way and that for traces of the missing maids, butseeing only the grass trampled by hundreds of feet and the boats inthe stream dragging every pool with grapnels and ropes, two horsemenon rough ponies ambled along some distance in front of him. By theirrobes of decent brown they seemed merchants on a journey, portly offigure, and consequential of bearing.
As Sholto rapidly made up to them, with his better horse and lighterweight, he perceived that the travellers were those two admirable andnoteworthy magistrates of Dumfries, Robert Semple and his own uncleNinian Halliburton of the Vennel.
Hearing the clatter of the jennet's hoofs, they turned about suddenlywith mighty serious countenances. For in such times when the wayfarerheard steps behind him, whether of man or beast, it repaid him to giveimmediate attention thereto.
So at the sound of hoofs Ninian and his friend set their hands totheir thighs and looked over their shoulders more quickly than seemedpossible to men of their build.
"Ha, nephew Sholto," cried Ninian, exceedingly relieved, "blithe am Ito see you, lad. You will tell us the truth of this ill news that hasupturned the auld province. By your gloomy face I see that the majorpart is overtrue. The Earl is dead, and he awes me for twenty-fourpeck of wheaten meal, forbye ten firlots of malt and other sundries,whilk siller, if these hungry Avondale Douglases come into possession,I am little likely ever to see. Surely I have more cause to mournhim--a fine lad and free with his having. If ye gat not settlementthis day, why then ye gat it the neist, with never a word of drawbacknor craving for batement."
Sholto told them briefly concerning the tragedy of Edinburgh. He hadno will for any waste of words, and as briefly thereafter of the lossof the little maid and her companion.
The Bailie of Dumfries lifted up his hands in consternation.
"'Tis surely a plot o' thae Avondales. Stra'ven folk are never tolippen to. And they hae made a clean sweep. No a Gallowa' Douglasleft, if they hae speerited awa' the bonny bit lass. Man, Robert, shewas heir general to the province, baith the Lordship o' Gallowa' andthe Earldom o' Wigton, for thae twa can gang to a lassie. But as soonas the twa laddies were oot o' the road, Fat Jamie o' Avondale cam'into the Yerldom o' Douglas and a' the Douglasdale estates, forbye theBorders and the land in the Hielands. Wae's me for Ninian Halliburton,merchant and indweller in Dumfries, he'll never see hilt or hair o'his guid siller gin that wee lassie be lost. Man, Sholto, is't no anawfu' peety?"
During this lamentation, to which his nephew paid little attention,looking only from side to side as they three rode among the willows bythe waterside, the other merchant, Robert Semple, had been ponderingdeeply.
"How could she be lost in this country of Galloway?" he said, "a landwhere there are naught but Douglases and men bound body and soul tothe Douglas, from Solway even to the Back Shore o' Leswalt? 'Tis justno possible--I'll wager that it is that Hieland gipsy MistressLindesay that has some love ploy on hand, and has gane aff and aiblinsta'en the lass wi' her for company."
At these words Sholto twisted about in his saddle, as if a wasp hadstung him suddenly.
"Master Semple," he said, "I would have you speak more carefully.Mistress Lindesay is a baron's daughter and has no love ploys, as youare pleased to call them."
The two burgesses shook with jolly significant laughter, which angeredSholto exceedingly.
"Your mirth, sirs, I take leave to tell you, is most mightily illtimed," he said, "and I shall consider myself well rid of yourcompany."
He was riding away when his uncle set his hand upon the bridle ofSholto's jennet.
"Bide ye, wild laddie," he said, "there is nae service in gaun afflike a fuff o' tow. My freend here meaned to speak nae ill o' thelass. But at least I ken o' ae love ploy that Mistress Lindesay isengaged in, or your birses wadna be so ready to stand on end, my bonnyman. But guid luck to ye. Ye hae the mair chance o' finding the flownbirdies, that ye maybes think mair o' the bonny norland quey than yethink o' the bit Gallowa' calf. But God speed ye, I say, for gin yebringna back the wee lass that's heir to the braid lands o' Thrieve,it's an ill chance Ninian Halliburton has ever to fill his loof wi'the bonny gowden 'angels' that (next to high heeven) are a man's bestfreends in an evil and adulterous generation."