The Black Douglas. S. R. Crockett
miles from this castle of Thrieve?"
"Thou art a good lad, and also ready of wit, Master Sholto," said the Earl, looking at the armourer's son musingly. "Clear of eye and true of hand, so they tell me. Did you not win the arrow prize this day?"
Lord William raised his eyes to where in the bonnet of the youth his own golden badge of archery glistened.
"And I also won the swording prize at the last wappenshaw on the moot hill of Urr," said Sholto, taking courage, and being resolved that if his fortune stood not now on tiptoe, it should not be on account of any superfluity of modesty on his own part.
"Ah," said the Earl, "I remember. It was two golden hearts joined together with an arrow and a star in the midst—a fitting Douglas emblem, by the bones of Saint Bride! Where hast thou left that badge that thou dost not wear it along with the other?"
Sholto blushed and muttered that he had forgotten it at home. He was all of a breaking perspiration lest he should have to tell the Earl that he had given it to Maud Lindesay, as indeed he meant to do presently, along with the golden buckle of archery—that is if the dainty, mischievous-hearted maiden could be persuaded to accept thereof.
"Ah," said the Earl, smiling, "I comprehend. There is some maid in the question, and if I advance you to the command of my house-guard and give you an officer's responsibility, you will of a surety be ever desiring to go gadding to the greenwood—and around the loch of Carlinwark are most truly dangerous glades."
"Nay, indeed nay," cried Sholto, eagerly. "If it is my lord's will to appoint me to his guard, by Saint Bride and all the other saints I swear never to leave the island, unless it be sometimes of a Sunday afternoon for an hour or two—just to see my mother."
"Your mother!" quoth the Earl, laughing heartily. "So then my two golden hearts are in your mother's keeping. Art a good lad, Sholto, and as for guile it is simply not in thee!"
Sholto looked modestly down upon the earth, as if conscious of his own exceeding merits, but willing for the nonce to say nothing about them. But the young Earl came over to him, and dealing him a sound buffet on the back, cried: "Nay, lad, that lamb-like look I have seen tried on mine uncle the Abbot of Sweetheart. Thy brother Laurence is in the way of clerkly advancement on account of that same sweetly innocent regard, which he hath in even greater perfection. But I am a young man, remember—and one youth flings not glamour easily into the eyes of another. Sholto, neither you nor I are any better than we should be, and if we are not so evil as some others, let us not set up as overwhelmingly virtuous. For at twenty virtue is mostly but lack of opportunity."
Sholto blushed so becomingly at this accusation that if the Earl had not seen the brothers locked in the death grip like crabs in a fishwife's creel, even he might have been deceived.
"Nevertheless," continued the Earl, "in spite of your claims to virtue, I am resolved to make you officer of my castle-guard—if not in name, at least in fact. For old Landless Jock of Abernethy must keep the name while he lives, and stand first when my steward pays out the chuckling golden Lions at Whitsun and eke Lady Day. But you shall have enough and be no longer a charge upon your father. Malise should be a proud man, having both his sons provided for in one day."
The Earl turned him about with his usual quick imperiousness. "Malise," he cried, "Malise MacKim!"
And again the "word" ran through the castle, escaped the gate, circumnavigated the moat, and ran round the circle of the tents till the shouts of "Malise, Malise," could have been heard almost at the deserted fords of Lochar, where sundry varlets were watching for a chance to search the deserted pavilions for anything left behind therein by the knights and squires.
Presently there was seen ascending to the moat platform the huge form of the master armourer himself. He stood waiting his master's pleasure, with a knife which he had been sharpening in his hand. It was a curious weapon, long, thin, and narrow in the blade, which was double-edged and ground fine as a razor on both sides.
"Ah, Malise," said the Earl, "you have not taught your son amiss. He threatens to turn out a most marvellous lad, for not only can he make weapons, but he can excel the best of my men-at-arms in their use. Have you any objection that he be attached to my guard?"
The strong man smiled with his usual calm, and kept his humorous grey eyes fixed shrewdly on the Earl.
"Aye," he said, "it is indeed more fitting that Sholto, my son, should ride behind my Lord of Douglas than stiff old Malise upon his Flanders mare."
The Earl blushed a little, for he remembered how the armourer had offered to ride behind him after he had shod Black Darnaway at the Carlinwark. He went on somewhat hastily.
"I have resolved to make your son, Sholto, officer of the castle-guard. It is perhaps over-responsible a post for so young a man, yet I myself am younger and have heavier burdens to bear. Also Landless Jock is growing old and stiff, and will not suffer to be spoken to. For my father's sake I cannot be severe with him. He will die in his charge if he will, but on Douglasdale and not at Thrieve. So now I would have your son do my bidding without question, which is more than his father ever did before him."
"I can answer for Sholto," said Malise MacKim. "He is afraid of nothing save perhaps the strength of his father's right arm. He is cool enough in danger. Nothing daunts him except the flutter of a farthingale. But then my lord knows well that is a fault most commendable in this castle of Thrieve. Sholto will be an honest captain of your house-carls, if you see to it that the steward locks up his loaves of sugar and his most toothsome preserves."
"Faith," cried the Earl, heartily, "I know not but what I would join Master Sholto in a raid on these dainties myself."
In this fashion was Sholto MacKim placed in command of the house-guard of the castle of Thrieve.
CHAPTER XV
THE NIGHT ALARM
At parting with his father, the young captain received many wise and grave instructions, all of which he resolved to remember and profit by—a resolution which he did not fail to keep for full five minutes.
"Be douce in deportment," said his father, speaking quietly and yet with a certain sternness of demeanour. "Think three times before you give an order, but let no man think even once before obeying it. Set him astraddle the wooden horse with a spear shaft at either foot to teach him that a soldier's first duty is not to think. Keep your eyes more on the alert for the approach of an enemy than for the ankles of the women-folk at the turnings of the turret stairs."
To these and many other maxims out of the incorporate wisdom of the elders, Sholto promised most faithful attendance, and, for the time being, he fully intended to keep his word. But no sooner was his father gone, and he introduced to his new quarters and duties by David Douglas, the Earl's younger brother, than he began to wonder which was the window of Maud Lindesay's chamber and speculate on how soon he would see her thereat.
In the castle of Thrieve that night there was little sleeping room to spare. The Earl and his brother lay wrapped in their plaids in one of the round towers of the outer defences. In the castle hall the retainers of the French ambassador slept side by side, or heads and tails with the archers of the house-guard. Lights flickered on the turnpike stair which led to the upper floors. The servitors had cleared the great hall, and here on a dais, raised above the "marsh" and sheltered by an arras curtain hastily arranged, James the Gross slept on a soft French bed, which he had caused to be brought all the way from his castle of Strathavon on the moors of Lanarkshire.
In the Earl's chamber on the third floor was lodged the Marshal de Retz. Next him ranged the apartment of the countess. Here also was the Lady Sybilla at the end of the passage in the guest chamber which looked to the north, and