Part 36 (2/2)

She stood with her head erect, looking down upon the MacKims and upon the dropped heads and heaving shoulders of their horses. Above and around the torches flared, and their reek blew thwartwise across the strange scene.

”I am here,” she said, speaking clearly and naturally; ”what would ye with the Lady of Douglas?”

Thrice Laurence essayed to speak, but his ready tongue availed him not now. He caught at his horse's bridle to steady him and turned weakly to his father.

”Do you speak to my lady--I cannot!” he gasped.

A terrible figure was Malise MacKim, the strong man of Galloway, as he came forward. Stained with the black peat of the mora.s.ses, his armour cast off piecemeal that he might run the easier, his under-apparel torn almost from his great body, his hair matted with the blood which still oozed from an unwashed wound above his brow.

”My lady,” he said hoa.r.s.ely, his words whistling in his throat, ”I have strange things to tell. Can you bear to hear them?”

”If you have found my daughter dead or dying, speak and fear not!”

”I have things more terrible than the death of many daughters to tell you!”

”Speak and fear not--an it touch the lives of my sons, speak freely.

The mother of the Douglases has learned the Douglas lesson.”

”Then,” said Malise, sinking his head upon his breast, ”G.o.d help you, lady, your two sons are dead!”

”Is David dead also?” said the Lady of Douglas.

”He is dead,” replied Malise.

The lady tottered a little as she stood on the topmost step of the ascent to Thrieve. One or two of the torch-bearers ran to support her.

But she commanded herself and waved them aside.

”G.o.d--He is the G.o.d,” she said, looking upwards into the black night.

”In one day He has made me a woman solitary and without children. Sons and daughter He has taken from me. But He shall not break my heart.

No, not even He. Stand up, Malise MacKim, and tell me how these things came to pa.s.s.”

And there in the blown reek of torches and the hush of the courtyard of Thrieve Malise told all the tale of the Black Dinner and the fatal morning, of the short shrift and the matchless death, while around him strong men sobbed and lifted up right hands to swear the eternal vengeance.

But alone and erect as a banner staff stood the mother of the dead.

Her eyes were dry, her lips compressed, her nostrils a little distended like those of a war-horse that sniffs the battle from afar.

Outside the castle wall the news spread swiftly, and somewhere in the darkness a voice set up the Celtic keen.

”Bid that woman hold her peace. I will hear the news and then we will cry the slogan. Say on, Malise!”

Then the smith told how his horse had broken down time and again, how he had pressed on, running and resting, stripped almost naked that he might keep up with his son, because that no ordinary charger could long carry his great weight.

Then when he had finished the Lady of Thrieve turned to Sholto--”And you, captain of the guard, what have you done, and wherefore left you your master in his hour of need?”

Then succinctly and to the point Sholto spoke, his father and Laurence a.s.senting and confirming as he told of the Earl's commission and of how he had accomplished those things that were laid upon him.

”It is well,” said the lady, calmly, ”and now I also will tell you something that you do not know. My little daughter, whom ye call the Fair Maid of Galloway, with her companion, Mistress Maud Lindesay, went out more than twelve hours agone to the holt by the ford to gather hazelnuts, and no eye of man or woman hath seen them since.”

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