The Black Douglas

by S. R. Crockett

At the first knock he heard a foot come slowly across the floor. It was my lady, who opened the latch herself and stood before Sholto in the habit she had worn when at the castle gateway Malise had told his news. Her couch was unpressed. Her window stood open towards the south. A candle still glimmered upon a little altar in an angle of the wall. She had been kneeling all night before the image of the Virgin, with her lips upon the feet of her who also was a woman, and who by treachery had lost a son.

"I would have your permission to depart, my Lady Countess," said Sholto, bowing his head upon his breast that he might not intrude upon her eyes of grief; "the castle is safe, and I can be well spared. By God's grace I shall not return till I bring either the maids themselves or settled news of them. Have I your leave to go?"

The Lady of Douglas looked at him a moment without speech.

"Surely you are not the same who rode away behind my son William. You went out light and gay as David, my other young son. There is now a look of Earl William himself in your face—his mother tells you so. Well, you were suckled at the same breast as he. May a double portion of his spirit rest on you! That lowering regard is the Douglas mark. Follow on and turn not back till you find. Strike and cease not, till all be avenged. I have now no son left to save or to strike. Go, Sholto MacKim. He who is dead loved you and made you knight. I said at the time that you were too young and would have dissuaded him. But when did a Douglas listen to woman's advice—his mother's or his wife's? Foster brother you are—brother you shall be. By this kiss I make you even as my son."

She bent and laid her lips on the young man's brow. They were hot as iron uncooled from the smithy anvil.

"Come with me," she added, and with a vehemence strangely at odds with her calm of the night before, she took Sholto by the hand and drew him after her into the room that had been Earl William's.

From the bundle of keys at her side she took a small one of French design. With this she unlocked a tall cabinet which stood in a corner. She threw the folding doors open, and there in the recess hung a wonderful suit of armour, of the sort called at that time "secret."

"This," said the Lady of Douglas, "I had designed for my son. Ten years was it in the making. His father trysted it from a cunning artificer in Italy. All these years has it been perfecting for him. It comes too late. His eyes shall never see it, nor his body wear it. But I give it to you. No Avondale shall ever do it upon him. It will fit you, for you and he were of a bigness. No sword can cut through these links, were it steel of Damascus forged for a Sultan. No spear-thrust can pierce it, though I leave you to avenge the bruise. Yet it will lie soft as silk, concealed and unsuspected under the rags of a beggar or the robes of a king. The cap will turn the edge of an axe, even when swung by a giant's hand, yet it will fit into the lining of a Spanish hat or velvet bonnet. This your present errand may prove more dangerous than you imagine. Go and put it on."

Sholto kneeled down and kissed the hand of his liege lady. Then when he had risen she gave him down the armour piece by piece, dusting each with her kerchief with a sort of reverent action, as one might touch the face of the dead. In Sholto's hands it proved indeed light almost as woven cloth of homespun from Dame Barbara's loom, and flexible as the spun silk of Lyons which the great wear next their bodies.

With it there went an under-suit of finest and softest leather, that the skin should not be chafed by the cunning links as they worked smoothly over one another at each movement of the body within.