The Black Douglas. S. R. Crockett
seek you here so late, my lord Abbot?" he said, with all the haughtiness of the unquestioned head of his mighty house.
"Nay, what seeks the Earl William here alone so late?" answered the Abbot, with equal directness.
The two men stood fronting each other. Malise leaned upon his two-handed sword and gazed upon the ground.
"I have come," the Abbot went on, after vainly waiting for the young Earl to offer an explanation, "as your kinsman, tutor, and councillor, to warn you against this foreign witch woman. What seeks she here in this land of Galloway but to do you hurt? Have we not heard her with our own ears persuade you to accompany her to Edinburgh, which is a city filled with the power and deadly intent of your enemies?"
Earl William bowed ironically to his uncle, and his eye glittered as it fell upon Malise MacKim.
"I thank you, Uncle," he said. "I am deeply indebted for your so great interest in me. I thank you too, Malise, for bringing about this timely interference. I will pay my debts one day. In the meantime your duty is done. Depart, both of you, I command you!"
Outside the thunder began to growl in the distance. An extraordinary feeling of oppression had slowly filled the air. The lamps, swinging on the pavilion roof tree, flickered and flared, alternately rising and sinking like the life in the eyes of a dying man.
All the while the lady sat still on the couch, with an expression of amused contempt on her face. But now she rose to her feet.
"And I also ask, in the name of the King of France, by what right do you intrude within the precincts of a lady's bower. I bid you to leave me!"
She pointed imperiously with her white finger to the black, oblong doorway, from which Malise's rude hand had dragged the covering flap to the ground.
But the churchman and his guide stood their ground.
Suddenly the Abbot reached a hand and took the sword on which the master armourer leaned. With its point he drew a wide circle upon the rich carpets which formed the floor of the pavilion.
"William Douglas," he said, "I command you to come within this circle, whilst in the right of my holy office I exorcise that demon there who hath so nearly beguiled you to your ruin."
The lady laughed a rich ringing laugh.
"These are indeed high heroics for so plain and poor an occasion. I need not to utter a word of explanation. I am a lady travelling peaceably under escort of an ambassador of France, through a Christian country. By chance, I met the Earl Douglas, and invited him to sup with me. What concern, spiritual or temporal, may that be of yours, most reverend Abbot? Who made you my lord Earl's keeper?"
"Woman or demon from the pit!" said the Abbot, sternly, "think not to deceive William Douglas, the aged, as you have cast the glamour over William Douglas, the boy. The lust of the flesh abideth no more for ever in this frail tabernacle. I bid thee, let the lad go, for he is dear to me as mine own soul. Let him go, I say, ere I curse thee with the curse of God the Almighty!"
The lady continued to smile, standing meantime slender and fair before them, her bosom heaving a little with emotion, and her hair rippling in red gold confusion down her back.
"Certainly, my lord Earl came not upon compulsion. He is free to return with you, if he yet be under tutors and governors, or afraid of the master's stripes. Go, Earl William, I made a mistake; I thought you had been a man. But since I was wrong I bid you get back to the monk's chapter house, to clerkly copies and childish toys."
Then black and sullen anger glared from the eyes of the Douglas.
"Get hence," he cried. "Hence, both of you—you, Uncle William, ere I forget your holy office and your kinsmanship; you, Malise, that I may settle with to-morrow ere the sun sets. I swear it by my word as a Douglas. I will never forgive either of you for this night's work!"
The fair white hand was laid upon his wrist.
"Nay," said the lady, "do not quarrel with those you love for my poor sake. I am indeed little worth the trouble. Go back with them in peace, and forget her who but sat by your side an hour neither doing you harm nor thinking it."
"Nay," he cried, "that will I not. I will show them that I am old enough to choose my company for myself. Who is my uncle that he should dictate to me that am an earl of Douglas and a peer of France, or my servant that he should come forth to spy upon his master?"
"Then," she whispered, smiling, "you will indeed abide with me?"
He gave her his hand.
"I will abide with you till death! Body and soul, I am yours alone!"
"By the holy cross of our Lord, that shall you not!" cried Malise; "not though you hang me high as Haman for this ere the morrow's morn!"
And with these words he sprang forward and caught his master by the wrist. With one strong pull of his mighty arm he dragged him within the circle which the Abbot had marked out with the sword's point.
The lady seemed to change colour. For at that moment a gust of wind caused the lamps to flicker, and the outlines of her white-robed figure appeared to waver like an image cast in water.
"I adjure and command you, in the name of God the One and Omnipotent, to depart to your own place, spirit or devil or whatever you may be!"
The voice of the Abbot rose high above the roaring of the bursting storm without. The lady seemed to reach an arm across the circle as if even yet to take hold of the young man. The Abbot thrust forward his crucifix.
And then the bolt of God fell. The whole pavilion was illuminated with a flash of light so intense and white that it appeared to blind and burn up all about. The lady was seen no more. The silken covering blazed up. Malise plunged outward into the darkness of the storm, carrying his young master lightly as a child in his arms, while the Abbot kept his feet behind him like a boat in a ship's wake. The thunder roared overhead like the sea bellowing in a cave's mouth, and the great pines bent their heads away from the mighty wind, straining and creaking and lashing each other in their blind fury.
Malise and the Abbot seemed to hear about them the plunging of riderless horses as they stumbled downwards through the night, their path lit by lightning flashes, green and lilac and keenest blue, and bearing between them the senseless form of William Earl of Douglas.
CHAPTER VI
THE PRISONING OF MALISE THE SMITH
[Now these things, material to the life and history of William, sixth Earl of Douglas, are not written from hearsay, but were chronicled within his lifetime by one who saw them and had part therein, though the part was but a boy's one. His manuscript has come down to us and lies before the transcriber. Sholto MacKim, the son of Malise the Smith, testifies to these things in his own clerkly script. He adds particularly that his brother Laurence, being at the time but a boy, had little knowledge of many of the actual facts, and is not to be believed if at any time he should controvert anything which he (Sholto) has written. So far, however, as the present collector and editor can find out, Laurence MacKim appears to have been entirely silent on the subject, at least with his pen, so that his brother's caveat was superfluous.]
The instant Lord William entered his own castle of Thrieve over the drawbridge, and without even returning the salutations of his guard, he turned about to the two men who had so masterfully compelled his return.
"Ho, guard, there!" he cried, "seize me this instant the Abbot of the New Abbey and Malise MacKim."
And so much surprised but wholly obedient, twenty archers of the Earl's guard, commanded by old John of Abernethy, called