Part 30 (1/2)
”I pray that you permit my young knight, Sir Sholto MacKim, to accompany me,” said the Earl to the officer who conducted them to their prison-house.
”I have no orders concerning him,” said the man, gruffly, but nevertheless permitted Sholto to enter after the Earl and his brother.
The chamber was bare save for a _prie-dieu_ in the angle of the wall, at which the Douglas looked with a strange smile upon his face.
”Right _a propos_,” said he; ”they have need of religion in this house of traitors.”
David Douglas went to the window-seat of low stone, and bent his head into his hands. He was but a boy and life was sweet to him, for he had just begun to taste the apple and to dream of the forbidden fruit. He held his head down and was silent a s.p.a.ce. Then suddenly he sobbed aloud with a quick, gasping noise, startling enough in that still place.
”For G.o.d's dear sake, David laddie,” said his brother, going over to him, placing his hand upon his shoulder, ”be silent. They will think that we are afraid.”
The boy stilled himself instantly at the word, and looked up at his brother with a pale sort of smile.
”No, William, I am not afraid, and if indeed we must die I will not disgrace you. Be never feared of that. Yet I thought on our mother's loneliness. She will miss me sore, for she fleeched and pled with me not to come, yet I would not listen to her.”
Sholto stood by the door, erect as if on duty at Thrieve.
”Come and sit with us,” said the Earl William kindly to him, ”we are no more master and servant, earl and esquire. We are but three youths that are to die together, and the axe's edge levels all. You, Sholto, are in some good chance to live the longest of the three by some half score of minutes. I am glad I made you a knight on the field of honour, Sir Sholto, for then they cannot hang you to a bough, like a varlet caught stealing the King's venison.”
Sholto slowly came over to the window-seat and stood there respectfully as before, with his arms straight at his side, feeling more than anything else the lack of his sword-hilt to set his right hand upon.
”Nay, but do as I bid you,” said the Earl, looking up at him; ”sit down, Sholto.”
And Sholto sat on the window-seat and looked forth upon the lights leaping out one after another down among the crowded gables of the town as this and that burgher lit lamp or lantern at the nearing of the hour of supper.
Far away over the sh.o.r.e-lands the narrow strip of the Forth showed amethystine and mysterious, and farther out still the coast of Fife lay in a sort of opaline haze.
”I wonder,” said William Douglas, after a long pause, ”what they have done with our good lads. Had they been taken or perished we had surely heard more noise, I warrant. Two score lads of Galloway would not give up their arms without a tulzie for it.”
”They might induce them to leave them behind, when they went out to take their pleasures among the maids of the Lawnmarket,” said Sholto.
”Not their swords,” said the Earl, ”it needed all your lord's commands to make yours quit your side. I warrant these fellows will give an excellent account of themselves.”
Presently the night fell darker, and a smurr of rain drifted over from the edges of Pentland, mostly pa.s.sing high above, but with lower fringes that dragged, as it were, on the Castle Rock and the Hill of Calton.
The three young men were still silently looking out when suddenly from the darkness underneath there came a low voice.
”'Ware window!” it said, ”stand back there above.”
To Sholto the words sounded curiously familiar, and almost without thinking what he did, he seized the Earl and his brother and dragged them away from the wide s.p.a.ce of the lattice, which opened into the summer's night.
”'Ware window!” came again the cautious voice from far below. Sholto heard the whistle and ”spat” of an arrow against the wall without. It must have fallen again, for the voice 'came a third time--”'Ware window!”
And on this occasion the archer was successful, guided doubtless by the illumination of the lantern the guard had hung on a nail, and whose flicker would outline the lattice faintly against the darkness of the wall.
An arrow entered with a soft hiss. It struck beyond them with a click, and its iron point tinkled on the floor, the plaster of the opposite wall not holding it.
Sholto scrambled about the floor on hands and knees till he found it.
It was a common archer's arrow. A cord was fastened about it, and a note stuck in the slit along with the feather.
”It is my brother Laurence,” whispered Sholto. ”I warrant he is beneath with a rope and a posse of stout fellows. We shall escape them yet.”