The Black Douglas

by S. R. Crockett

As he went down the stairs he recalled a thousand circumstances to mind which now seemed capable of but one explanation. It was evident that the Earl William came to visit some one by means of the private staircase under cloud of night. Nay, more, Maud Lindesay and he might be already privately married, and the matter kept secret on account of the pride of his family, who devised another match for him. For though the daughter of a knight, Maud Lindesay was assuredly no fit mate for the head of the more than regal house of Douglas. He remembered how on Sundays and saints' days Earl William always rode to and from the kirk with his sister on one side and Maud Lindesay on the other. That the young Earl was by no means insensible to beauty, Sholto knew well, and he remembered his words to his own father, when he had asked to be allowed to accompany him on his Flanders mare, that such attendance was not seemly when a man was going a-courting.

As is always the case, he grew more and more confirmed in his ill humour, so soon as the eye of jealousy began to view everything in the light of prepossession.

Sholto awaked the cellarer out of his crib, who, presently, with snorts of disdain and much jangling of steel keys, drew half a tankard from a keg of spirit in the cellar on the dungeon floor and handed it grudgingly to the captain of the guard.

"The Frenchman wants it, does he?" he growled. "Had the messenger been old Landless Jock, I had known down whose Scottish throat it had gone, but this one is surely too young for such tricks. See that you spill it not by the way, Master Sholto," he called out after him, as that youth betook himself up to the chamber of the ambassador of France.

At the shut portal he paused and knocked. His hand was on the pin to enter with the tankard as was the custom. But the door opened no more than an inch or two, and the dark face of the cropped servitor appeared in the crevice.

"In a moment, sir," he said, and again vanished within, while a strong animal odour disengaged itself almost like something tangible from the chinks of the doorway.

Sholto stood in astonishment with the eau de vie in his hand, till presently the door was opened again very quickly. The form of the servitor was seen, and with a swift edging motion he came out, drawing the door behind him as before. He held a bar of iron in his hand like the fastening of a window, and a little breath of heat told the smith's son that though black it was still warm from the fire.

"Take this iron," he said abruptly, "and bring it to me fully heated. I am finishing a little device which his Excellency needs for the combat of the morrow."

The captain of the guard was nettled at the man's tone. Also he desired much to know what his master was doing on the floor above.

"Heat it at your own nose, fellow," he said rudely; "I am captain of the castle-guard, and must attend to my own business. Take the spirit out of my hand if you do not want it thrown in your face."