Part 34 (1/2)
”The Yerl and Dawvid in the power o' their hoose's enemies. Blessed Saint Anthony, and here was I flighterin' and ragin' aboot my naethings. Here, lads, blaw the horn and cry the slogan. Fetch the horses frae the stall and stand ready in your war gear within ten minutes by the knock. Aye, faith, will we raise Douglasdale! Gang your ways to Gallowa'--there shall not a man bide at hame this day. Certes, we wull that! Ca' in the by-gaun at Lanark--aye, lad, and, gin the rascals are no willing or no ready, we will hang the provost and magistrates at their ain door-cheeks to learn them to bide frae the cried a.s.sembly o' their liege lord!”
Sholto had done enough in Douglasdale. He turned north again on a yet more important errand. It was forenoon full and broad when he halted before the little town of Strathaven, upon which the Castle of Avondale looks down. It seemed of the greatest moment that the Avondale Douglases should know that which had befallen their cousin.
For no suspicion of treachery within the house and name of Douglas itself touched with a shade of shadow the mind of Sholto MacKim.
He thundered at the town-ward port of the castle (to which a steep ascent led up from a narrow vennel), where presently the outer guard soon crowded about him, listening to his story and already fingering bowstring and examining rope-matches preparatory to the expected march upon Edinburgh.
”I have not time to waste, comrades; I would see my lords,” said Sholto. ”I must see them instantly.”
And even as he spoke there on the steps before him appeared the dark, handsome face and tall but slightly stooping figure of William Douglas of Avondale. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, and his serious thought-weighted brow bent upon the concourse about Sholto.
With a push of his elbows this way and that, the young captain of the Earl's guard opened a road through the press.
In short, emphatic sentences he told his tale, and at the name of prisonment and treachery to his cousins the countenance of William Douglas grew stern and hard. His face twitched as if the news came very near to him. He did not answer for a moment, but stood biting his lips and glooming upon Sholto, as though the young man had been a prisoner waiting sentence of pit or gallows for evil doing.
”I must see James concerning this ill news,” he said when Sholto had finished telling him of the Black Bull's Head at the Chancellor's banquet-table.
He turned to go within.
”My lord,” said Sholto, ”will you give me another horse, and let Darnaway rest in your stables? I must instantly ride south again to raise Galloway.”
”Order out all the horses which are ready caparisoned,” commanded William of Avondale, ”and do you, Captain Sholto, take your choice of them.”
He went within forthwith and there ensued a pause filled with the snorting and prancing of steeds, as, mettlesome with oats and hay, they issued from their stalls, or with the gra.s.s yet dewy about their noses were led in from the field. Darnaway took his leave of Sholto with a backward neigh of regret, as if to say he was not yet tired of going on his master's service.
Then presently on the terrace above appeared lazy Lord James, busily buckling the straps of his body-armour and talking hotly the while with his brother William.
”I care not even whether our father--” he cried aloud ere, with a restraining hand upon his wrist, his elder brother could succeed in stopping him.
”Hush, James,” he said, ”at least be mindful of those that stand around.”
”I care not, I tell you, William,” cried the headstrong youth, squaring his shoulders as he was wont to do before a fight. ”I tell you that you and I are no traitors to our name, and who meddles with our coz, Will of Thrieve, hath us to reckon with!”
William of Avondale said nothing, but held out his hand with a slow, determinate gesture. Said he, ”An it were the father that begat us.”
Whereat, with all the impetuousness of his race and nature, James dashed his palm into that of his brother.
”Whiles, William,” he cried, ”ye appear clerkish and overcautious, and I break out and miscall ye for no Douglas, when ye will not spend your siller like a man and are afraid of the honest pint stoup. But at the heart's heart ye are aye a Douglas--and though the silly gaping commons like ye not so well as they like me, ye are the best o' us, for all that.”
So it came to pa.s.s that within the s.p.a.ce of half an hour the Avondale Douglases had sent men to the four airts, young Hugh Douglas himself riding west, while James stirred the folk of Avondale and Strathavon, and in all the courtyards and streets of the little feudal bourg there began the hum and buzz of the war a.s.sembly.
Lord William went with Sholto to see staunch Darnaway duly stabled, and to approve the horse which was to bear the messenger to the south without halt, now that his mission was accomplished in the west. When they came out Sholto's riding harness had been transferred to a n.o.ble grey steed large enough to carry even the burly James, let alone the slim captain of the archer guard of Thrieve.
In the court, ranked and ready, bridle to bridle were ranged the knights and squires in waiting about the Castle of Avondale, while out on a level green spot on the edge of the moor gathered the denser array of the townfolk with spears and partisans.
In an hour the Avondale Douglases were ready to ride to the a.s.sistance of their cousins. Alas, that Earl William would take no advice, for had these and others gone in with him to the fatal town, there would have been no Black Bull's Head on the Chancellor's dinner table in the banqueting-hall of Edinburgh Castle.
CHAPTER x.x.xVII