The Black Douglas Part 25

"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 h.e.l.l--as indeed it was right and wholesome that they should be.

CHAPTER XXIX

CASTLE CRICHTON

Crichton Castle was much more a defenced chateau 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 spa.r.s.e 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 s.p.a.cious 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 a.s.sociated 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 amba.s.sador 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 amba.s.sador 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 amba.s.sador 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. It will 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 flas.h.i.+ng 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 answered with 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 s.e.x 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.

The _fetes_ with 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 circ.u.mstances have raised against his will to a position of responsibility.

The thirty spears of the Earl's guard, indeed, const.i.tuted 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 amba.s.sador of France, than a humble knight is able to do."