This was the letter which, along with the Chancellor's invitations, came to the hand of the Earl William as he rode forth to the deer-hunting one morning from his Castle of Thrieve:
"My lord, if it be not that you have wholly forgotten me and your promise, this comes to inform you that my uncle and I purpose to abide at the Castle of Crichton for ten days before finally departing forth of this land. It is known to me that the Chancellor, moved thereto by One who desires much to see you, hath invited the Earl of Douglas to come thither with what retinue is best beseeming so great a lord.
"But 'tis beyond hope that we should meet in this manner. My lord hath, doubtless, ere this forgot all that was between us, and hath already seen others fairer and more worthy of his courteous regard than the Lady Sybilla. This is as well beseems a mighty lord, who taketh up a cup full and setteth it down empty. But a woman hath naught to do, save only to remember the things that have been, and to think upon them. Grace be to you, my dear lord. And so for this time and it may be for ever, fare you well!"
When the Earl had read this letter from the Lady Sybilla, he turned himself in his saddle without delay and said to his hunt-master:
"Take back the hounds, we will not hunt the stag this day."
The messenger stood respectfully before him waiting to take back an answer.
"Come you from the town of Edinburgh?" asked the Earl, quickly.
"Nay," said the youth, "let it please your greatness, I am a servant of my Lord of Crichton, and come from his new castle in the Lothians."
"Doth the Chancellor abide there at this present?" asked the Earl.
"He came two noons ago with but one attendant, and bade us make ready for a great company who were to arrive there this very day. Then he gave me these two letters and set my head on the safe delivery of them."
"Sholto," cried the young lord, "summon the guard and men-at-arms. Take all that can be spared from the defence of the castle and make ready to follow me. I ride immediately to visit the Chancellor of Scotland at his castle in the Lothians."
It was Sholto's duty to obey, but his heart sank within him, both at the thought of the Earl thus venturing among his enemies, and also because he must needs leave behind him Maud Lindesay, on whose wilful and wayward beauty his heart was set.
"My lord," he stammered, "permit me one word. Were it not better to wait till a following of knights and gentlemen beseeming the Earl of Douglas should be brought together to accompany you on so perilous a journey?"
"Do as I bid you, Sir Captain," was the Earl's short rejoinder; "you have my orders."
"O that the Abbot were here—" thought Sholto, as he moved heavily to do his master's will; "he might reason with the Earl with some hope of success."
On his way to summon the guard Sholto met Maud Lindesay going out to twine gowans with the Maid on the meadows about the Mains of Kelton. For, as Margaret Douglas complained, "All ours on the isle were trodden down by the men who came to the tourney, and they have not grown up again."
"Whither away so gloomy, Sir Knight?" cried Maud, all her winsome face alight with pleasure in the bright day, and because of the excellent joy of living.
"On a most gloomy errand, indeed," said Sholto. "My lord rides with a small company into the very stronghold of his enemy, and will hear no word from any!"
"And do you go with him?" cried Maud, her bright colour leaving her face.
"Not only I, but all that can be spared of the men-at-arms and of the archer guard," answered Sholto.
Maud Lindesay turned about and took the little girl's hand.
"Margaret," she said, "let us go to my lady. Perhaps she will be able to keep my Lord William at home."
So they went back to the chamber of my Lady of Douglas. Now the Countess had never been of great influence with her son, even during her husband's lifetime, and had certainly none with him since. Still it was possible that William Douglas might, for a time at least, listen to advice and delay his setting out till a suitable retinue could be brought together to protect him. Maud and Margaret found the Lady of Douglas busily embroidering a vestment of silk and gold for the Abbot of Sweetheart. She laid aside her work and listened with gentle patience to the hasty tale told by Maud Lindesay.
"I will speak with William," she answered, with a certain hopelessness in her voice, "but I know well he will go his own gait for aught that his mother can say. He is his father's son, and the men of the house of Douglas, they come and they go, recking no will but their own. And even so will my son William."
"But he is taking David with him also!" cried Margaret. "I met him even now on the stair, wild in haste to put on his shirt of mail and the sword with the golden hilt which the ambassador of France gave him."
A quick flush coloured the pale countenance of the Lady Countess.
"Nay, but one is surely enough to meet the Chancellor. David shall not go. He is but a lad and knows nothing of these things."
For this boy was ever his mother's favourite, far more than either her elder son or her little daughter, whom indeed she left entirely to the care and companionship of Maud Lindesay.
My Lady of Douglas went slowly downstairs. The Earl, with Sholto by his side, was ordering the accoutrement of the mounted men-at-arms in the courtyard.
"William," she called, in a soft voice which would not have reached him, busied as he was with his work, but that little Margaret raised her childish treble and called out: "William, our mother desires to speak with you. Do you not hear her?"
The Earl turned about, and, seeing his mother, came quickly to her and stood bareheaded before her.
"You are not going to run into danger, William?" she said, still softly.
"Nay, mother mine," he answered, smiling, "do not fear, I do but ride to visit the Chancellor Crichton in his castle, and also to bid farewell to the French ambassador, who abode here as our guest."
A sudden light shone in upon the mind of Maud Lindesay.
"'Tis all that French minx!" she whispered in Sholto's ear, "she hath bewitched him. No one need try to stop him now."
His mother went on, with an added anxiety in her voice.
"But you will not take my little David with you? You will leave me one son here to comfort me in my loneliness and old age?"
The Earl seemed about to yield, being, indeed, careless whether David went with him or no.
"Mother," cried David, coming running forth from the castle, "you must not persuade William to make me stay at home. I shall never be a man if I am kept among women. There is Sholto MacKim, he is little older than I, and already he hath won the archery prize and the sword-play, and hath fought in a tourney and been knighted—while I have done nothing except pull gowans with Maud Lindesay and play chuckie stones with Margaret there."
And at that moment Sholto wished that this fate had been his, and the honours David's. He told himself that he would willingly have given up his very knighthood that he might abide near that dainty form and witching face. He tortured himself with the thought that Maudwould listen to others as she had listened to him; that she would practise on others that heart-breaking slow droop and quick uplift of the eyelashes which he knew so well. Who might not be at hand to aid her to blow out her lamp when the guards were set of new in the corridors of Thrieve?
"Mother," the Earl answered, "David speaks good sense. He will never make a man or a Douglas if he is to bide here within this warded isle. He must venture forth into the world of men and women, and taste a man's pleasures and chance a man's dangers like the rest."
"But are you certain that you will bring him safe back again to me?" said his mother, wistfully. "Remember, he is so young and eke so reckless."
"Nay," cried David, eagerly, "I am no younger than my cousin James was when he fought the strongest man in Scotland, and I warrant I could ride a course as well as Hughie Douglas of Avondale, though William chose him for the tourney and left me to bite my thumbs at home."
The lady sighed and looked at her sons, one of them but a youth and the other no more than a boy.
"Was there ever a Douglas yet who would take any advice but from his own desire?" she said, looking down at them like a douce barn-door fowl who by chance has reared a pair of eaglets. "Lads, ye are over strong for your mother. But I will not sleep nor eat aright till I have my David back again, and can see him riding his horse homeward through the ford."
Maud Lindesay parted from Sholto upon the roof of the keep. She had gone up thither to watch the cavalcade ride off where none could spy upon her, and Sholto, noting the flutter of white by the battlements, ran up thither also, pretending that he had forgotten something, though he was indeed fully armed and ready to mount and ride.
Maud Lindesay was leaning over the battlements of the castle, and, hearing a step behind her, she looked about with a start of apparent surprise.
The after dew of recent tears still glorified her eyes.
"Oh, Sholto," she cried, "I thought you were gone; I was watching for you to ride away. I thought—"
But Sholto, seeing her disorder, and having little time to waste, came quickly forward and took her in his arms without apology or prelude, as is (they say) wisest in such cases.
"Maud," he said, his utterance quick and hoarse, "we go into the house of our enemies. Thirty knights and no more accompany my lord, who might have ridden out with three thousand in his train."
"'Tis all that witch woman," cried the girl; "can you not advise him?"
"The Earl of Douglas did not ask my advice," saidSholto, a little dryly, being eager to turn the conversation upon his own matters and to his own advantage. "And, moreover, if he rides into danger for the sake of love—why, I for one think the more of him for it."
"But for such a creature," objected Maud Lindesay. "For any true maid it were most right and proper! Where is there a noble lady in Scotland who would not have been proud to listen to him? But he must needs run after this mongrel French woman!"
"Even Mistress Maud Lindesay would accept him, would she?" said Sholto, somewhat bitterly, releasing her a little.
"Maud Lindesay is no great lady, only the daughter of a poor baron of the North, and much bound to my Lord Douglas by gratitude for that which he hath done for her family. As you right well know, Maud Lindesay is little better than a tiremaiden in the house of my lord."
"Nay," said Sholto, "I crave your pardon. I meant it not. I am hasty of words, and the time is short. Will you pardon me and bid me farewell, for the horses are being led from stall, and I cannot keep my lord waiting?"
"You are glad to go," she said reproachfully; "you will forget us whom you leave behind you here. Indeed, you care not even now, so that you are free to wander over the world and taste new pleasures. That is to be a man, indeed. Would that I had been born one!"
"Nay, Maud," said Sholto, trying to draw the girl again near him, because she kept him at arm's length by the unyielding strength of her wrist, "none shall ever come near my heart save Maud Lindesay alone! I wouldthat I could ride away as sure of you as you are of Sholto MacKim!"
"Indeed," cried the girl, with some show of returning spirit, "to that you have no claim. Never have I said that I loved you, nor indeed that I thought about you at all."
"It is true," answered Sholto, "and yet—I think you will remember me when the lamps are blown out. God speed, belovedst, I hear the trumpet blow, and the horses trampling."
For out on the green before the castle the Earl's guard was mustering, and Fergus MacCulloch, the Earl's trumpeter, blew an impatient blast. It seemed to speak to this effect:
"Hasten ye, hasten ye, come to the riding,Hasten ye, hasten ye, lads of the Dee—Douglasdale come, come Galloway, Annandale,Galloway blades are the best of the three!"
"Hasten ye, hasten ye, come to the riding,Hasten ye, hasten ye, lads of the Dee—Douglasdale come, come Galloway, Annandale,Galloway blades are the best of the three!"
Sholto held out his arms at the first burst of the stirring sound, and the girl, all her wayward pride falling from her in a moment, came straight into them.
"Good-by, my sweetheart," he said, stooping to kiss the lips that now said him not nay, but which quivered pitifully as he touched them, "God knows whether these eyes shall rest again on the desire of my heart."
Maud looked into his face steadily and searchingly.
"You are sure you will not forget me, Sholto?" she said; "you will love me as much to-morrow when you are far away, and think me as fair as you do when you hold me thus in your arms upon the battlements of Thrieve?"
Before Sholto had time to answer, the trumpet rangout again, with a call more instant and imperious than before.
"But there cometh a night when every one of us watches the grey shallows to the east for those that shall return no more!""But there cometh a night when every one of us watches the grey shallows to the east for those that shall return no more!"
Sholto clasped her close to him as the second summons shrilled up into the air.
"God keep my little lass!" he said; "fear not, Maud, I have never loved any but you!"
He was gone. And through her tears Maud Lindesay watched him from the top of the great square keep, as he rode off gallantly behind the Earl and his brother.
"In time past I have dreamed," she thought to herself, "that I loved this one and that; but it was not at all like this. I cannot put him out of my mind for a moment, even when I would!"
As the brothers William and David Douglas crossed the rough bridge of pine thrown over the narrows of the Dee, they looked back simultaneously. Their mother stood on the green moat platform of Thrieve, with their little sister Margaret holding up her train with a pretty modesty. She waved not a hand, fluttered no kerchief of farewell, only stood sadly watching the sons with whom she had travailed, like one who watches the dear dead borne to their last resting-place.
"So," she communed, "even thus do the women of the Douglas House watch their beloveds ride out of sight. And so for many times they return through the ford at dawn or dusk. But there cometh a night when every one of us watches the grey shallows to the east for those that shall return no more!"
"See, see!" cried the little Margaret, "look, dear mother, they have taken off their caps, and even Sholto hath his steel bonnet in his hand. They are bidding us farewell. I wish Maudie had been here to see. I wonderwhere she has hidden herself. How surprised she will be to find that they are gone!"
It was a true word that the little Maid of Galloway spoke, for, according to the pretty custom of the young Earl, the cavalcade had halted ere they plunged into the woods of Kelton. The Douglas lads took their bonnets in their hands. Their dark hair was stirred by the breeze. Sholto also bared his head and looked towards the speck of white which he could just discern on the summit of the frowning keep.
"Shall ever her eyelashes rise and fall again for me, and shall I see the smile waver alternately petulant and tender upon her lips?"
This was his meditation. For, being a young man in love, these things were more to him than matins and evensong, king or chancellor, heaven or hell—as indeed it was right and wholesome that they should be.
Crichton Castle was much more a defenced château and less a feudal stronghold than Thrieve. It stood on a rising ground above the little Water of Tyne, which flowed clear and swift beneath from the blind "hopes" and bare valleys of the Moorfoot Hills. But the site was well chosen both for pleasure and defence. The ground fell away on three sides. Birch, alder, ash, girt it round and made pleasant summer bowers everywhere.
The fox-faced Chancellor had spent much money on beautifying it, and the kitchens and larders were reported to be the best equipped in Scotland. On the green braes of Crichton, therefore, in due time the young Douglases arrived with their sparse train of thirty riders. Sir William Crichton had ridden out to meet them across the innumerable little valleys which lie around Temple and Borthwick to the brow of that great heathy tableland which runs back from the Moorfoots clear to the Solway.
With him were only the Marshal de Retz and his niece, the Lady Sybilla.
Not a single squire or man-at-arms accompanied these three, for, as the Chancellor well judged, there was no way more likely effectually to lull the suspicions of a gallant man like the Douglas than to forestall him in generous confidence.
The three sat their horses and looked to the south for their guests at that delightsome hour of the summer gloaming when the last bees are reluctantly disengaging themselves from the dewy heather bells and the circling beetles begin their booming curfew.
"There they come!" cried de Retz, suddenly, pointing to a few specks of light which danced and dimpled between them and the low horizon of the south, against which, like a spacious armada, leaned a drift of primrose sunset clouds.
"There they come—I see them also!" said the Lady Sybilla, and suddenly sighed heavily and without cause.
"Where, and how many?" cried the Chancellor, in a shrill pipe usually associated with the physically deformed, but which from him meant no more than anxious discomposure.
The marshal pointed with the steady hand of the practised commander to the 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 me how 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 saw that the ambassador did not take it, being occupied gazing under his palm at the approaching train of riders.
The Lady Sybilla sat silent and watched the company which rode towards them—with what thoughts in her heart, who shall venture to guess? She kept her head studiously averted from the Marshal de Retz, and once when he touched her arm to call attention to something, she shuddered and moved a little nearer to the Chancellor. Nevertheless, she obeyed her companion implicitly and without question when he bade her ride forward 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 black and relentless that the Chancellor, happening to encounter it, shrank back abashed, even as some devilkin caught in a fault might shrink from 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, I will do my part."
Right handsome looked the young Earl of Douglas, as with a flush of expectation and pleasure on his face he rode up to the party of three who 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 would have given their all to see there. As he came close he leaped from his horse, 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 be outdone in courtesy, and one after the other they greeted him with what cordiality they could muster. The narrow, thin-bearded face of the Chancellor and the pallid death-mask of de Retz, out of which glittered orbs like no eyes of human being, furnished a singular contrast 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 Lady Sybilla rested on Lord Douglas with a strange expression in their deeps. The colour in her cheek came and went. The vermeil of her lip flushed and paled alternate, from the pink of the wild rose-leaf to the red of its autumnal berry.
But presently, at a glance from her kinsman, Sybilla de Thouars seemed to recall herself with difficulty from a land of dreams, and with an obvious 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 brother David," he made answer. "I did not wait for more. But let me bring the lad to you. Sholto you did not like when he was a plain archer of the guard, and I fear that he will not have risen in your grace since I dubbed him knight."
David Douglas willingly obeyed the summons of his brother, and came forward to kiss the hand of the Lady Sybilla.
"Here, Sholto," cried his lord, "come hither, man. Itwill do your pride 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 was commanded, meekly enough to all outward aspect. But in his heart he was saying over and over to himself words that consoled him mightily: "A murrain on her! The cozening madam, she will never be worth naming on the same day as Maud Lindesay!"
"Nay," cried the Lady Sybilla, laughing; "indeed, I said not that I disliked this your squire. What woman thinks the worse of a lad of mettle that he does not walk with his head between his feet. But 'tis pity that there is no fair cruel maid to bind his heart in chains, and make him fetch and carry to break his pride. He thinks overmuch of his sword-play and arrow skill."
"He must go to France for that humbling," said the Earl, gaily, "or else mayhap some day a maid may come from France to break his heart for 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 have your hearts broke for the good of your souls. I had then brought with me a tierce of damsels fair as cruel, who had done it in the flashing of 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 and desperate men," answered the Earl, scarcely recking what he said, nor indeed caring so that her dark eyes should continue to rest on him with the look he had seen in them at his first coming.
"All alone—yes, much, much alone," she answeredwith a strange glance about her. "My kinsman loves not womankind, and neither in his castles nor yet in his company does he permit any of the sex long to abide."
The men now mounted again, and the three rode back in the midst of the cavalcade of Douglas spears, the Chancellor talking as freely and confidently to the Earl as if he had been his friend for years, while the Earl of Douglas kept up the converse right willingly so long as, looking past the Chancellor, his eyes could rest also upon the delicately poised head and graceful form of the Lady Sybilla.
And behind them a horse's length the Marshal de Retz rode, smiling in the depths of his blue-black beard, and looking at them out of the wicks of his triangular eyes.
Presently the towers of the Castle of Crichton rose before them on its green jutting spur. The Tyne Valley sank beneath into level meads and rich pastures, while behind the Moorfoots spread brown and bare without prominent peaks or distinguished glens, but nevertheless with a certain large vagueness and solemnity peculiarly their own.
Thefêteswith which the Chancellor welcomed his guests were many and splendid. But in one respect they differed from those which have been described at Castle Thrieve. There was no military pomp of any kind connected with them. The Chancellor studiously avoided all pretence of any other distinction than that belonging to a plain man whom circumstances have raised against his will to a position of responsibility.
The thirty spears of the Earl's guard, indeed, constituted the whole military force within or about the Castle of Crichton.
"I am a lawyer, my lord, a plain lawyer," he said; "all Scots lawyers are plain. And I must ask you to garrison my bit peel-tower of Crichton in a manner more befitting your own greatness, and the honour due 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 the castle, and posted and changed guard as though he had been at Thrieve, while the Chancellor bustled about, affecting more the style of a rich and comfortable burgess than that of a feudal baron.
"'Tis a snug bit hoose," he would say, dropping into the countryside speech; "there's nocht fine within it from cellar to roof tree, save only the provend and the jolly Malmsey. And though I be but a poor eater myself, I love that my betters, who do me the honour of sojourning within my gates, should have the wherewithal to be merry."
And it was even as he said, for the tables were weighted with delicacies such as were never seen upon the boards of Thrieve or Castle Douglas.
And ever as he gazed at her the Earl of Douglas grew more and more in love with the Lady Sybilla. There was no covert side through which a burn plunged downward from the steep side of Moorfoot, but they wandered it alone together. Early and late they might have been met, he with his face turned upon her, and she looking straight forward with the same inscrutable calm. And all who saw left them alone as they took their way to gather flowers like children, or, as it might be, stood still and silent like a pair of lovers under the evening star. For in these summer days and nights bloomed untiringly the brief passion-flower of William Douglas's life.
Meanwhile Sholto gritted his teeth in impotent rage, but had nothing to do save change guard and keep a wary eye upon the Chancellor, who went about rubbing his hands and glancing sidelong as the copses closed behind the Earl of Douglas and the Lady Sybilla. As for the ambassador of France, he was, as was usual with him, much occupied in his own chamber with his servants Poitou and Henriet, and save when dinner was served in hall appeared little at the festivities.
Sholto wished at times for the presence of his father; but at others, when he saw William Douglas and Sybillareturn with a light on their faces, and their eyes large and vague, he bethought him of Maud Lindesay, and was glad that, for a little at least, the sun of love should shine upon his lord.
It was in the gracious fulness of the early autumn, when the sheaves were set up in many a park and little warded holt about the Moorfoot braes, that William Douglas and Sybilla de Thouars stood together upon a crest of hill, crowned with dwarf birch and thick foliaged alder—a place in the retirement of whose sylvan bower they had already spent many tranced hours.
The Lady Sybilla sat down on a worn grey rock which thrust itself through the green turf. William Douglas stood beside her pulling a blade of bracken to pieces. The girl had been wearing a broad flat cap of velvet, which in the coolness of the twilight she had removed and now swung gently to and fro in her hand as she looked to the north, where small as a toy and backed by the orange glow of sunset, the Castle of Edinburgh could be seen black upon its wind-swept ridge. The girl was speaking slowly and softly.
"Nay, Earl Douglas," she said, "marriage must not be named to Sybilla de Thouars, certainly never by an Earl of Douglas and Duke of Touraine. He must wed for riches and fair provinces. His house is regal already. He is better born than the King, more powerful also. The daughter of a Breton squire, of a forlorn and deserted mother, the kinswoman of Gilles de Retz of Machecoul and Champtocé, is not for him."
"A Douglas makes many sacrifices," said the young man with earnestness; "but this is not demanded ofhim. Four generations of us have wedded for power. It is surely time that one did so for love."
The girl reached him her hand, saying softly: "Ah, William, would that it had been so. Too late I begin to think on those things which might have been, had Sybilla de Thouars been born under a more fortunate star. As it is I can only go on—a terror to myself and a bane to others."
The young man, absorbed in his own thoughts, did not hear her words.
"The world itself were little to give in order that in exchange I might possess you," he answered.
The girl laughed a strange laugh, and drew back her hand from his.
"Possess me, well—but marry me—no. Honest men and honourable like Earl Douglas do not wed with the niece of Gilles de Retz. I had thought my heart within me to be as flint in the chalk, yet now I pray you on my knees to leave me. Take your thirty lances and your young brother and ride home. Then, safe in your island fortress of Thrieve, blot out of your heart all memory that ever you found pleasure in a creature so miserable as Sybilla de Thouars."
"But," said the young Earl, passionately, "tell me why so, my lady. I do not understand. What obstacle can there be? You tell me that you love me, that you are not betrothed. Your kinsman is an honourable man, a marshal and an ambassador of France, a cousin of the Duke of Brittany, a reigning sovereign. Moreover, am not I the Douglas? I am responsible to no man. William Douglas may wed whom he will—king's daughter or beggar wench. Why should he not join with thehonourable daughter of an honourable house, and the one woman he has ever loved?"
The girl let her velvet cap fall on the ground, and sank her face between her hands. Her whole body was shaken with emotion.
"Go—go," she cried, starting to her feet and standing before him, "call out your lances and ride home this night. Never look more upon the face of such a thing as Sybilla de Thouars. I bid you! I warn you! I command you! I thought I had been of stone, but now when I see you, and hear your words, I cannot do that which is laid upon me to do."
William of Douglas smiled.
"I cannot go," he said simply, "I love you. Moreover, I will not go—I am Earl of Douglas."
The girl clasped her hands helplessly.
"Not if I tell you that I have deceived you, led you on?" she said. "Not if I swear that I am the slave of a power so terrible that there are no words in any language to tell the least of the things I have suffered?"
The Earl shook his head. The girl suddenly stamped her foot in anger. "Go—go, I tell you," she cried; "stay not a day in this accursed place, wherein no true word is spoken and no loyal deed done, save those which come forth from your own true heart."
"Nay," said William Douglas, with his eyes on hers, "it is too late, Sybil. I have kissed the red of your lips. Your head hath lain on my breast. My whole soul is yours. I cannot now go back, even if I would. The boy I have been, I can be no more for ever."
The girl rose from the stone on which she had been sitting. There was a new smile in her eyes. She heldout her hands to the youth who stood so erect and proud before her. "Well, at the worst, William Douglas," she said, "you may never live to wear a white head, but at least you shall touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, taste the fruitage and smell the blossoms thereof more than a hundred greybeards. I had not thought that earth held anywhere such a man, or that aught but blackness and darkness remained this side of hell for one so desolate as I. I have bid you leave me. I have told you that which, were it known, would cost me my life. But since you will not go,—since you are strong enough to stand unblenching in the face of doom,—you shall not lose all without a price."
She opened her arms wide, and her eyes were glorious.
"I love you," she said, her lips thrilling towards him, "I love you, love you, as I never thought to love any man upon this earth."
The next morning the Chancellor came down early from his chamber, and finding Earl Douglas already waiting in the courtyard, he rubbed his hands and called out cheerfully: "We shall be more lonely to-day, but perhaps even more gay. For there are many things men delight in which even the fairest ladies care not for, fearing mayhap some invasion of their dominions."
"What mean you, my Lord Chancellor?" said the Douglas to his host, eagerly scanning the upper windows meanwhile.
"I mean," said the Chancellor, fawningly, "that his Excellency, the ambassador of France, hath ridden away under cloud of night, and hath taken his fair ward with him."
The Earl turned pale and stood glowering at the obsequious Chancellor as if unable to comprehend the purport of his words. At last he commanded himself sufficiently to speak.
"Was this resolution sudden, or did the Lady Sybilla know of it yesternight?"
"Nay, of a surety it was quite sudden," replied the Chancellor. "A message arrived from the Queen Mother to the Marshal de Retz requesting an immediate meeting on business of state, whereupon I offered my Castle ofEdinburgh for the purpose as being more convenient than Stirling. So I doubt not that they are all met there, the young King being of the party. It is, indeed, a quaint falling out, for of late, as you may have heard, the Tutor and the Queen have scarce been of the number of my intimates."
The Earl of Douglas appeared strangely disturbed. He paid no further attention to his host, but strode to and fro in the courtyard with his thumbs in his belt, in an attitude of the deepest meditation.
The Chancellor watched him from under his eyebrows with alternate apprehension and satisfaction, like a timid hunter who sees the lion half in and half out of the snare.
"I have a letter for you, my Lord Douglas," he said, after a long pause.
"Ah," cried Douglas, with obvious relief, "why did you not tell me so at first. Pray give it me."
"I knew not whether it might afford you pleasure or no," answered the Chancellor.
"Give it me!" cried Douglas, imperiously, as though he spoke to an underling.
Sir William Crichton drew a square parcel from beneath his long-furred gown, and handed it to William Douglas, who, without stepping back, instantly broke the seal.
"Pshaw," cried he, contemptuously, "it is from the Queen Mother and Alexander Livingston!"
He thought it had been from another, and his disappointment was written clear upon his face.
"Even so," said the Chancellor, suavely; "it was delivered by the same servant who brought the messagewhich called away the ambassador and his companion."
The Earl read it from beginning to end. After the customary greetings and good wishes the letter ran as follows:
"The King greatly desires to see his noble cousin of Douglas at the castle of Edinburgh, presently put at his Majesty's disposal by the High Chancellor of Scotland. Here in this place are now assembled all the men who desire the peace and assured prosperity of the realm, saving the greatest of all, my Lord and kinsman of Douglas. The King sends affectionate greeting to his cousin, and desires that he also may come thither, that the ambassador of France may carry back to his master a favourable report of the unity and kindly governance of the kingdom during his minority."
"The King greatly desires to see his noble cousin of Douglas at the castle of Edinburgh, presently put at his Majesty's disposal by the High Chancellor of Scotland. Here in this place are now assembled all the men who desire the peace and assured prosperity of the realm, saving the greatest of all, my Lord and kinsman of Douglas. The King sends affectionate greeting to his cousin, and desires that he also may come thither, that the ambassador of France may carry back to his master a favourable report of the unity and kindly governance of the kingdom during his minority."
The Chancellor watched the Earl as he read this letter. To one more suspicious than William Douglas it would have been clear that he was himself perfectly acquainted with the contents.
"I am bidden meet the King at the Castle of Edinburgh," said Douglas; "I will set out at once."
"Nay, my lord," said Crichton, "not this day, at least. Stay and hunt the stag on the braes of Borthwick. My huntsmen have marked down a swift and noble buck. To-morrow to Edinburgh an you will!"
"I thank you, Sir William," the Douglas answered, curtly enough; "but the command is peremptory. I must ride to Edinburgh this very day."
"I pray you remember that Edinburgh is a turbulent city and little inclined to love your great house. Is it, think you, wise to go thither with so small a retinue?"
The Earl waved his hand carelessly.
"I am not afraid," he said; "besides, what harm canbefall when I lodge in the castle of the Lord Chancellor of Scotland?"
Crichton bowed very low.
"What harm, indeed?" he said; "I did but advise your lordship to bethink himself. I am an old man, pray remember—fast growing feeble and naturally inclined to overmuch caution. But the blood flows hot through the veins of eighteen."
Sholto, who knew nothing of these happenings, had just finished exercising his men on the smooth green in front of the Castle of Crichton, and had dismissed them, when a gaberlunzie or privileged beggar, a long lank rascal with a mat of tangled hair, and clad in a cast-off leathern suit which erstwhile some knight had worn under his mail, leaped suddenly from the shelter of a hedge. Instinctively Sholto laid his hand on his dagger.
"Nay," snuffled the fellow, "I come peaceably. As you love your lord hasten to give him this letter. And, above all, let not the Crichton see you."
He placed a small square scrap of parchment in Sholto's hand. It was sealed in black wax with a serpent's head, and from the condition of the outside had evidently been in places both greasy and grimy. Sholto put it in his leathern pouch wherein he was used to keep the hone for sharpening his arrows, and bestowed a silver groat upon the beggar.
"Thy master's life is surely worth more than a groat," said the man.
"I warrant you have been well enough paid already," said Sholto, "that is, if this be not a deceit. But here is a shilling. On your head be it, if you are playing with Sholto MacKim!"
So saying the captain of the guard strode within. He had already acquired the carriage and consequence of a veteran old in the wars.
His master was still pacing up and down the courtyard, deep in meditation. Sholto saluted the young Earl and asked permission to speak a word with him.
"Speak on, Sholto—well do you know that at all times you may say what you will to me."
"But this I desire to keep from prying eyes. My lord, there is a letter in my wallet which was given me even now by a gaberlunzie man. He declares that it concerns your life. I pray you take out my hone stone as if to look at it, and with it the letter."
The Earl nodded, as if Sholto had been making a report to him. Then he went nearer and began to finger his squire's accoutrements, finally opening his belt pouch and taking out the stone that was therein.
"Where gat you this hone!" he said, holding it to the light; "it looks not the right blue for a Water-of-Ayr stone."
Sholto answered that it came from the Parton Hills, and, as the Earl replaced it, he possessed himself of the square letter and thrust it into the bosom of his doublet.
As soon as William Douglas was alone, he broke the seal and tore open the parchment. It was written in a delicate foreign script, the characters fine and small: