FLAME
That night they waited in Garsykes village till the moon dipped over Scummer Rigg and grey-black gloom shrouded heath and pasture-land. Then every man who had strength to carry a burden reached out for his well-filled sack.
Long Murgatroyd came up the hill with his shammocky stride just as they were shouldering the sacks. He stood awhile in the lamp-glow streaming from the tavern windows, and they drew away from him as if he had the plague. There was something unearthly in his white, drawn face, in the laugh that broke his silence.
“So I’m in time, after all? It’s better pastime, this, than hanging yourself in Nita’s garter.”
The man still felt raw of a hempen cord about his neck—the cord that Hardcastle had loosed not long ago. Yet he laughed again, as he glanced from one to another. Once he had lain in wait for Hardcastle, and twice the Master had given him his life. The memory bit and rankled.
“Logie flares red as hell to-night,” he said. “Let’s make a start!”
They went out into a dark that could be felt, soon as the inn’s friendly gleam was left behind. It reared itself against them like a wall, so that they feared almost to break themselves against it. Then, as their eyes grew used to it a little, they picked their way across lean fields, over marshes yielding to the tread, through woods of pine and larch whose rustling blackness put slack fear into their limbs. But they dreaded more the open highway that gave them a ready way to Logie. Deep in the bones and fibre of the Lost Folk lurked distrust of roads where honest men might be encountered.
It was when they came to Logie Brigg that superstition gathered thick about them. They huddled together, a lack-luster mob, on their side of the crossing. It was a saying centuries old in Garsykes that luck never came of hindering a Hardcastle. They might rob or take tribute of Logie’s tenants, but must not touch its master.
“Bleating ewes, are you?” snarled Murgatroyd. “There’s all us—and up yonder only Hardcastle and two women, and an aged man who may be quick or stiff by now. And you bleat.”
A rough voice answered him through the murk of the windy night, over the song of Wharfe River as she raced below.
“It was you brought the trouble to Garsykes, when you were fool enough to wait for Hardcastle at the pinfold. There’s been naught but ill-luck since.”
The jostling mob, glad of a scapegoat for its panic, turned on Murgatroyd.
“Aye, be you first to cross the bridge—if you dare, mad Murgatroyd!”
His madness came on him in earnest. The broken years of his slavery to Nita, came to a head. Better any happening up at Logie than Nita’s laughter if they left the house standing and came back with the tale.
He forced his way through the press. Shammocky no longer, but grim and straight and broad he led his Legion of the Lost between the grey, narrow walls of Logie Brigg. And all men followed him, afraid of the gaunt figure striding through the gloom.
They came to the gate of Logie, where Donald had found their token in the autumn days. Above them the house lay dark and hushed. Starlings cheeped and scolded in the ivied wall, but no other challenge answered their intrusion.
Murgatroyd gave a low chuckle—bleak and terrible as when he had jested after looking over the brink of death.
“We’re not expected, though I blabbed to Hardcastle. He fancied, seemingly, that a liar never can speak truth.”
Then, with savage zest, he planned the night-surprise, giving them no time for a second panic. He would lead one half to the main door, while the rest stole through the stable-yard and attacked the kitchen-entry.
“Sharp and ready does it, and any man would be a fool to fall soft now. He’d have Long Murgatroyd to reckon with.”
Overwhelming weight of numbers was with them. So was the slumber of a house that did not look for them to-night. But Murgatroyd’s gruff threat was the steadying note.
Those chosen for the rear attack crept pad-footed round the yard, and piled their sacks against the kitchen door with frantic haste till the woodwork was hidden by a bulging load of fuel. They littered the stone porch with what bags were left, and fired them.
The blaze was so fierce and instant that they leaped back into the cool dark of the night, and waited for those in Logie to be burned in their beds, or to come through the flames for what waited them. And the first that those within-doors heard of trouble was Storm’s frenzied barking as he hurled himself against his cupboard-door, to break it through for Logie’s sake.
The Master lay for a moment between sleep and waking. One window of his room opened on the stable-yard, and below he heard the restless tread of feet, the crackling of flame. Grey, pungent smoke was drifting in already across his bed, and he sprang up with an odd sense of readiness—and of relief. What they had waited for was here at last, to be met and grappled with.
Brant, too, had heard the uproar, and they met at the stairway head and ran down together to the kitchen. Hardcastle was in shirt and breeches, donned hastily, and the shepherd made a queer figure, his beard splayed above the top of a woollen nightshirt that reached to his unlaced boots.
They glanced at each other in the light of the smouldering kitchen-fire.
“You’ve a fowling-piece, Master?” murmured Brant. “Better have chosen a likelier gun. From what I’d heard, I fancied they were coming—this night or the next.”
He broke off to listen to the roar of flame outside, to watch the door blister and gape open in wide rents.
“I borrowed a blunderbuss before I got up to bed,” he went on, in the same low voice, “and loaded it. It would make you laugh to know what I crammed into its muzzle—pebbles and rusty nails, and all kinds of winsome odds and ends.”
The door they were watching gaped wider, and great joy came to them, born of the house they loved. Without were fire and all the scum of Garsykes. Within were two leal men.
“The odds are with us, Stephen,” said Hardcastle, breaking a silence that seemed long. “When the door’s down, they’ll be in the glare, and we in darkness.”
“You’re getting quick at the uptake,” grunted Brant.
A light step sounded close behind them, and Causleen stood there, her hair rippling in a dusky cloud about her night-gear.
“Oh, go back, child,” said the Master. “There’s trouble.”
“I’ve faced many kinds. Shall I tell you why I stay, Hardcastle of Logie?”
He was daunted by her courage, by the smouldering anger in her face. Causleen did not seem to hear Brant, or gaping door.
“I stay to see if you’re better at the fighting than the wooing. A laggard in one is a laggard at both, they say.”
It was no time for warfare of the tongue, and Hardcastle turned sharply to carry her out of harm’s way. He turned again, for the thick, nail-studded door had crashed inward with a swirl of flame and dancing faggot-embers.
Nothing chanced for awhile save fire that drove him back, and stench of tar and resin. Storm’s barking rang like a wolf-cry through the house, till suddenly it ceased, and Rebecca stood among them, the dog bristling by her side.
“Here’s a queer upset in my kitchen,” she said, glancing from the blazing doorway to the men’s faces. “I wakened late, I own, but I’d sense to go and loose Storm first. He might have been burned alive, poor lamb.”
Brant and the sheep-slayer eyed each other with slow wonder, as folk who had not looked for the meeting and did not relish it. Then, with peril waiting close at hand for both, the shepherd’s full-fed wrath blazed out.
“I shot you, Storm. I shot you, d’ye hear, for killing ewes of mine. And you’re alive!”
Storm left Rebecca and showed bared teeth to Brant. He was no outlaw here at Logie, but ripe and ready for what was coming to the house he guarded.
“So much for you, Brant,” said Rebecca, with a cackle of wild laughter. “A word from the Master, and he’ll have his jaws in your lean throat.”
The flames of the blazing door were lessening now, for kitchen and porch alike were floored with stone and offered no fresh fuel; and the moment came that Hardcastle had looked for. The Garsykes Men, when no uproar sounded from within—though the besieged should be between two fires by now—grew restless and afraid of some ambush waiting in the dark of the stable-yard. A common impulse swayed them to dash over the live embers into the house before the first shock of surprise was over.
As they came into the ruddy murk of the porch, Hardcastle aimed point-blank at them. A wild-beast howl followed from men not used to bearing pain. Then the porch was empty, save for the foremost of the Garsykes Folk, whose legs were full of shot.
Outside there was a rough stampede of men who fought each other in their panic to get out of gun-reach. And Brant the shepherd suddenly went mad with the blood-lust. Robbed of his chance to fire a shot, he pushed Hardcastle aside, trod over the fallen body and ran out with a grim oath in his heart.
The night was black, impenetrable. Sight aided him nothing, but hearing did. On the high uplands Brant had learned to see with his ears when need pressed. The fleeing mob, not far down the road as yet, was making noise enough to rouse dead men on their gibbets, and Brant’s blunderbuss bellowed like a stag gone mad at rutting-time.
A livid shriek of anguish followed, and those in Logie’s kitchen waited for Brant to return in triumph.
“Hark to them,” said Rebecca, rubbing her hands together. “They came to Logie, as my lad told me at the gate—and they go as he fore-warned me. By the marrow, how they squeal!”
Causleen thought of her father. He had been asleep when she glanced in on her way to the kitchen; but the uproar must have roused him, and it was terrible to picture him lying there, alone and helpless, waiting for he knew not what.
The Master’s thoughts were with his shepherd, who did not return. “Brant’s long in coming,” he muttered restlessly, and had taken a step toward the porch when he halted, checked by the strangest tumult that had come to Logie on this night of crashing din.
He heard a bellow of mingled rage and fear, and knew the voice for Long Murgatroyd’s. He heard, too, the muffled oaths of other men. He sprang to Causleen’s side and put her behind him; and now the sharp stench of fire wisped and eddied down the passage.
“Go back,” he muttered, hearing her steps close following his.
She would not, and they ran down the long corridor together till they reached the open door of the room where Donald lay. And on the threshold they stood as in a nightmare, aghast at what they saw.
Long Murgatroyd and a press of Garsykes Men were in the room, their faces lit by a fire they had piled in the middle of it. The lamp-glow, stealing through the room where Donald slept, had shown them an easier way of entry than burning down the main door. They had crashed through the window, tossed down their sacks pell-mell and lit them. If they had seen the sleeping man, they took him for dead or helpless and had not heeded.
So much was plain to Causleen and Hardcastle, looking on with the nightmare grip about them still. But the pedlar slept no longer. He was awake and on his feet. His face caught the fireglow as wrinkled parchment might—little lines of crimson criss-crossing its ancient pallor—but the body they had thought chained was alert and strong, willowy with youth.
Donald had gone to sleep content. His girl would be safe in Hardcastle’s hands, and he was free to let dreams take him down the roads of old romance, when those of his race plied claymores and heard the battle-din. He woke to see an ill-kempt company lighting a fire at the far end of the room; and suddenly life raced into his palsied limbs.
Peril to Logie was mingled in his thoughts with far-off combats up the glens at home. He stood there, supple and thin and dominant, gathering the dreams come true at last. And the Garsykes mob gaped at this dead man who faced them without any weapon but his consuming joy in battle.
Long Murgatroyd was twitching from one foot to the other. The men behind him were bound as by a spell. So was Hardcastle, who was aware of deeper things than he had known till now. The Garsykes Folk saw only Donald. That was plain, and the pedlar must have his will of this last moment, till there was need to intervene.
Donald glanced about, as if in search of something that had shared his tedious days in this same room. And still Murgatroyd and those behind were held in thrall. The fire they had kindled blazed and smoked by turns in the sleepy draught, till Murgatroyd kicked it into flame.
“The wood’s wet,” he muttered, “and be damned to the fools that gathered it.”
“Aye, wet with blood,” shrilled Donald.
With that, strength came to him. His glance, roving again about the walls, found the thing he sought. With speed incredible he leaped to get the pike into his hands—the pike that had gone to Flodden and returned.
He swung it gently to and fro for one swift moment, as if he doubted which of its three blades to ply. Then, with a Gaelic battle-shout, he leaped forward, through and over the fire’s reek, whirling the axe-edge high above his old, grey head.
Long Murgatroyd got his skull away from the blow; but the axe clove his shoulder till it gritted on the bone.
“I’m done, lads,” he growled, swaying to his fall. “Get about this madman risen from the dead.”
No voice answered him. The Garsykes Men had gone the way they came taking still dread for company. Alone with one who whirled his axe to strike again, Murgatroyd gathered what strength was left him, and ran screaming out into the night.
A great light shone in Donald’s face. There was strength in his body still, and a pibroch in his soul; and, when Causleen ran to him across the dwindling fire, he turned happily.
“It was so they fought in the old days gone. I’m glad you saw me make an end that way.”
He toyed with the pike lovingly. He praised Logie for keeping its edges grouted and sharp through the centuries for this night’s work of his. Then his strength fell away, a borrowed joy. The pike dropped from his grasp, clattering into the embers that Hardcastle was stamping out.
“Your hands, child,” he whispered.
She guided him to the long-settle that had been his bed for many weary days, and her tears rained on the blankets she gathered round the motionless body. Donald opened his eyes once—glad, tender eyes, at peace with this world and the next—and he found voice, as he had got strength awhile since to lift the pike.
“Causleen, little Evening Star, you’ve lit the roads for me. And now—dear God, there’s sunrise on the hills.”
The pedlar lay quiet awhile. All that was of this world clamoured round him. He was saying good-bye to the broken roads he loved. There would be no to-morrows, with curlews wailing over summer hills and dusk cradling in purple hollows of the moor—no journeys on blistered feet through the tang of winter gales. He ached for the northland he must leave, and his spirit shrank from the last Crossing because the world was full of lovesome things. Surely he would see once again the shimmer of buttercups glowing like grace of old allegiance across the ripening meadows, would hear the storm-cock pipe defiance to the gale. Just once again he must smell, too, the reek of clover-hay as it came home on creaking wagons between the briar-rose banks.
“It grows dark,” he murmured suddenly. “And now the light shines through—and, child, there’s your mother beckoning from the braes. She’s just as young and bonnie—as bonnie——”
It was so the warrior died, and Hardcastle stood with bowed head till Causleen’s first storm of grief was ended. A strange gentleness came to him, a softening of the ice-cold years, as he covered Donald’s face and drew the girl away.
They stood facing each other in the dim lamplight. A chill breeze blew through the broken casement, tossing to and fro the reek of the stamped-out fire. On the floor the pike lay in a little pool of crimson, darkening fast. Yet nothing prevailed against the austere and tranquil presence that filled this room of death.
“Causleen,” he said, by and by, “you need not be lonely.”
She was feeling like a child lost in mid-winter moors. No words could have reached her heart as his simple, “you need not be lonely,” did. He was changed, as she was, by this alchemy of death, into finer metal.
Then, longing to believe in him, she took a step away. “It is not the time or place to—to doubt you.”
“It is the place to tell me why you doubt.” His glance went to the death-bed. “Could I be false, with your father lying there?”
“You could not—no—and yet it seems so mean a thing to talk of here.”
“It divides us, and he did not want that.”
“I am ashamed either way,” she said, her brave eyes meeting his—“of you, or of myself for doubting.”
Little by little he drew the tale from her. She had come to the wood between Logie and the slope to Wharfe River, weeks ago, and seen him with Nita’s arms stretched out to him.
Hardcastle understood now all that had baffled him these late days. He recalled each detail of that half-forgotten scene—Nita’s alluring eagerness, the sharp crack of a twig, his glance backward to learn if one of the Lost Folk was stealing on him from behind.
“You saw us there,” he said, “and she was an old love of mine. What else could you have thought?”
His quietness seemed to rebuke her. All these weeks she had been the silent accuser, he the shameless culprit. Was he a liar through and through, under his mask of gruff honesty?
“We shared the woodmen’s hut for a night,” he went on, “and afterwards there was trouble. I asked to clear that for you.”
“From pity.” It was her turn now to glance at the silent figure on the settle. “We never cared for charity, he and I.”
“I did not offer charity,” he said, direct and forthright. “While I was persuading you to that, Nita wove her devilry into it all.”
“What devilry?” she asked, her eyes grave and questioning.
He glanced from the shattered casement to Donald’s death-bed, and his face hardened.
“She offered me escape from what has come to Logie—and I would not take it.”
Causleen’s heart was free at last, as she watched this man whom she had flouted. He showed greater than his height in the dim lamp-glow that made flickering lights and shadows through the room. His voice though hushed in deference to what lay yonder, was vibrant in its simple candour. He loved her—loved her for herself.
A gusty weariness came about her, a need to lean on the man who had caused her sleepless nights and tears as salt as the nether brine-pits.
“I was afraid—till now,” she whispered, and put her hands into his as if she gave a kingdom.