The Black Douglas Part 22

"Being a near kinsman," he said at last, "it is not seemly that I should say aught against the Earl of Douglas; but this I do know--there will be no peace in Scotland till that young man and his brother are both cut off."

The Chancellor and de Retz exchanged glances. The anxiety of the next-of-kin to the t.i.tle of Earl of Douglas for the peace and prosperity of the realm seemed to strike them both as exceedingly natural in the circ.u.mstances.

"And now, Sir Alexander, what say you?" asked the Sieur de Retz, turning to the King's guardian, who had been caressing the curls of his beard with his white and signeted hand.

"I agree," he replied in a courtly tone, "that in the interests of the King and of the n.o.ble lady whose care for her child hath led her to such sacrifices, we ought to put a limit to the pride and insolence of this youth!"

The Chancellor bent over a parchment to hide a smile at the sacrifices which the Queen Mother had made for her son.

"It is indeed, doubtless," said Sir William Crichton, "a sacrifice that the King and his mother should dwell so long within this Castle of Stirling, exposed to every rude blast from off these barren Grampians. Let her bring him to the mild and equable climate of Edinburgh, which, as I am sure your Excellency must have observed, is peculiarly suited to the rearing of such tender plants."

He appealed to the Sieur de Retz.

The marshal bowed and answered immediately, "Indeed, it reminds me of the sunniest and most favoured parts of my native France."

The tutor of the King looked somewhat uncomfortable at the suggestion and shook his head. He had no idea of putting the King of Scots within the power of his arch enemy in the strong fortress of Edinburgh.

But the Frenchman broke in before the ill effects of the Chancellor's speech had time to turn the mind of the King's guardian from the present project against the Earl of Douglas.

"But surely, gentlemen, it should not be difficult for two such honourable men to unite in destroying this curse of the commonweal--and afterwards to settle any differences which may in the past have arisen between themselves."

"Good," said the Chancellor, "you speak well. But how are we to bring the Earl within our danger? Already I have sent him offers of alliance, and so, I doubt not, hath my honourable friend the tutor of the King. You know well what answer the proud chief of Douglas returned."

The lips of Sir Alexander Livingston moved. He seemed to be taking some bitter and nauseous drug of the apothecary.

"Yes, Sir Alexander, I see you have not forgot. The words,'If dog eat dog, what should the lion care?' made us every caitiff's scoff throughout broad Scotland."

"For that he shall yet suffer, if G.o.d give me speed," said the tutor, for the answer had been repeated to the Queen, who, being English, laughed at the wit of the reply.

"I would that my boy should grow up such another as that Earl Douglas," she had said.

The tutor stroked his beard faster than ever, and there was in his eyes the bitter look of a handsome man whose vanity is wounded in its weakest place.

"But, after all, who is to cage the lion?" said the Chancellor, pertinently.

The marshal of France raised his hand from the table as if commanding silence. His suave and courtier-like demeanour had changed into something more natural to the man. There came the gaunt forward thrust of a wolf on the trail into the set of his head. His long teeth gleamed, and his eyelids closed down upon his eyes till these became mere twinkling points.

"I have that at hand which hath already tamed the lion," he said, "and is able to lead him into the cage with cords of silk."

He rose from the table, and, going to a curtain that concealed the narrow door of an antechamber, he drew it aside, and there came forth, clothed in a garment of gold and green, close-fitting and fine, clasped about the waist with a twining belt of jewelled snakes, the Lady Sybilla.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE LION TAMER

On this summer afternoon the girl's beauty seemed more wondrous and magical than ever. Her eyes were purple-black, like the berries of the deadly nightshade seen in the twilight. Her face was pale, and the scarlet of her lips lay like twin geranium petals on new-fallen snow.

Gilles de Retz followed her with a certain grim and ghastly pride, as he marked the sensation caused by her entrance.

"This," he said, "is my lion tamer!"

But the girl never looked at him, nor in any way responded to his glances.

"Sybilla," said de Retz, holding her with his eyes, "these gentlemen are with us. They also are of the enemies of the house of Douglas--speak freely that which is in your heart!"

"My lords," said the Lady Sybilla, speaking in a level voice, and with her eyes fixed on the leaf-shadowed square of gra.s.s, which alone could be seen through the open window, "you have, I doubt not, each declared your grievance against William, Earl of Douglas. I alone have none. He is a gallant gentleman. France I have travelled, Spain also, and Portugal, and have explored the utmost East,--wherever, indeed, my Lord of Retz hath voyaged thither I have gone. But no braver or more chivalrous youth than William Douglas have I found in any land. I have no grievance against him, as I say, yet for that which hath been will I deliver him into your hands."

One of the men before her grew manifestly uneasy.

"We did not come hither to listen to the praises of the Earl of Douglas, even from lips so fair as yours!" sneered Crichton the Chancellor, lifting his eyes one moment from the parchment before him to the girl's face.

"He is our enemy," said the tutor of the King, Alexander Livingston, more generously, "but I will never deny that he is a gallant youth; also of his person proper to look upon."

And very complacently he smoothed down the lace ruffles which fell from the neck of his silken doublet midway down its front.

"The young man is a Douglas," said James the Gross, curtly; "if he were of coward breed, we had not needed to come hither secretly!"

"It needeth not four butchers to kill a sheep!" said de Retz.

"Concerning that, we agree. Proceed, my Lady Sybilla."

The girl was now breathing more quickly, her bosom rising and falling visibly beneath her light silken gown.

"Yet because of those that have been of the house of Douglas before him, shall I have no pity upon William, sixth Earl thereof! And because of two dead Dukes of Touraine, will I deliver to you the third Duke, into whose mouth hath hardly yet come the proper gust of living.

This is the tale I have heard a thousand times. There was in France, it skills not where, a vale quiet as a summer Sabbath day. The vines hung ripe-cl.u.s.tered in wide and pleasant vineyards. The olives rustled grey on the slopes. The bell swung in the monastery tower. The cottage in the dell was safe as the chateau on the hill. Then came the foreign leader of a foreign army, and lo! in a day, there were a hundred dead men in the valley, all honourable men slain in defence of their own doors. The smoky flicker of flames broke through the roof in the daylight. There was heard the crying of many women. And the man who wrought this was an Earl of Douglas."

The girl paused, and in a low whisper, intense as the breathing of the sea, she said:

_"And for this will I deliver into your hands his grandson, William of Douglas!"_

Then her voice came again to the ears of the four listeners, in a note low and monotonous like the wind that goes about the house on autumn evenings.

"There was also one who, being but a child, had escaped from that tumult and had found shelter in a white convent with the sisters thereof, who taught her to pray, and be happy in the peace of the hour that is exactly like the one before it. The shadow of the dial finger upon the stone was not more peaceful than the holy round of her life.

"Then came one who met her by the convent wall, met her under the shade of the orchard trees, met her under cloud of night, till his soul had power over hers. She followed him by camp and city, fearing no man's scorn, feeling no woman's reproach, for love's sake and his.

Yet at the last he cast her away, like an empty husk, and sailed over the seas to his own land. She lived to wed the Sieur de Thouars and to become my mother."

_"And for this will I reckon with his son William, Duke of Touraine."_

She ceased, and de Retz began to speak.

"By me this girl has been taught the deepest wisdom of the ancients. I have delved deep in the lore of the ages that this maiden might be fitted for her task. For I also, that am a marshal of France and of kin to my Lord Duke of Brittany, have a score to settle with William, Earl of Douglas, as hath also my master, Louis the Dauphin!"

"It is enough," interjected Crichton the Chancellor, who had listened to the recital of the Lady Sybilla with manifest impatience, "it is the old story--the sins of the fathers are upon the children. And this young man must suffer for those that went before him. They drank of the full cup, and so he hath come now to the drains. It skills not why we each desire to make an end of him. We are agreed on the fact. The question is _how_."

It was again the voice of de Retz which replied, the deep silence of afternoon resting like a weight upon all about them.