'My lord—the chest!' I cried, and all save the maid alone rushed in. The treasure of Kelwood was gone! Without the door, on the trampled clay and mud, there were the steads of naked feet many and small. But of the treasure-chest for which we had ventured so much that night, we saw neither hilt nor hair, clasp nor band.
Only in the kitchen of the house on the Red Moss there was a dead man, and a maid mourning over him; on the table a dagger, red to the guard, and from it fell slowly the drip of a man's life blood, blotting out with a bitter scorn the plans of our wisest and the enmity of our proudest.
CHAPTER VI
THE CROWN OF THE CAUSEWAY
I rode forth from Edinburgh town with infinite glee and assurance of spirit. No longer could I be slighted as a boy, for that day I, even I, Launcelot Kennedy, had been put to the horn—that is, I had been proclaimed rebel and outlaw at the Cross of Edinburgh with three blasts of the king's horn, 'Against John, Earl of Cassillis, Sir Thomas of Culzean, called the Tutor of Cassillis, and Launcelot Kennedy, his esquire!' So had run the proclamation. I wondered what that unkempt, ill-tongued lassie, Nell Kennedy, would say to this. But the honour itself even she could not gainsay.
It is true that there were others forfaulted as well as I—the Earl himself that was a sitter in the King's council board, Sir Thomas, my master, and, indeed, all that had any hand in the great contest in the High Street of Edinburgh. How close had every leal burgess kept within doors that day and how briskly screamed for the watch! How the town guards sequestered themselves safe behind bars, and were very quiet, for there was hardly a man to be seen from the castle to Holyrood-House that was not a Kennedy, and trying to kill some other Kennedy—as indeed is ever the way with our name and clan.
We of Cassillis had ridden hot foot to Edinburgh to denounce the Bargany faction to the king, in the matter of the treasure and the killing of Black Peter. Not that we knew for certain that it was Bargany who had any hand in the murder and reiving. But it was necessary to make a bold face for it, and, at all events, we knew that the thing had been done in Bargany's interests. So we went, all prepared to declare that the active criminal was Bargany's brother, Thomas of Drummurchie, a bold and desperate villain, who had been outlawed for years for many a crime besides murder in all its degrees. Also we hoped that if the king were in a good humour towards us of Cassillis, who were always the men of loyalty and peace, he might even attaint Bargany himself. So that our Earl, being the Bailzie or chief ruler of Carrick under the King, might get his will of his house foe, and thus put an end to the quarrel. For there was no other hope of peace, save that our enemies should be laid waste.
But we found King James in aught but a yielding mood. The ministers of Edinburgh, and in especial one, Mr Robert Bruce, a man of very great note, and once a prime favourite with the king, had been setting themselves against his will. So at first we got little satisfaction, and it did not help matters that, on the second day of our visit, the Bargany Kennedies and Mures rode into the town in force—all sturdy men from the landward parts of Carrick, while we were mostly slighter and limberer lads, from the side of it that looks towards the sea.
The next day, as I went down the Canongate with the gold lilies of Cassillis on my cocked bonnet, I declare that nearly every third man I met was a Bargany lout, swaggering with his silly favour of red and white in his cap. But, for all that, I ruffled it right bravely in despite of them all, letting no man cock his feather at me. For I had a way, which I found exceedingly irritating to them, of turning the skirt or my blue French cloak over my shoulder when I met one of the other faction, as if I feared defilement from the contact of their very garments. This I did with all of the underlings—aye, even with Mure of Cloncaird. Indeed, I had already had my long sword three times out of its sheath by the time I got to the guard-house at Holyrood.
It was just there that I met young Bargany himself, coming direct, from the King's presence. But I practised my pleasantry not with him. For a more kingly-looking man did I never see—far beyond our Earl (shame be to me for saying such a thing!), and, indeed, before any man that ever I saw. But Gilbert Kennedy of Bargany was the bravest man that was to be gotten in any land, as all men that saw him in his flower do to this day admit. And hearts were like water before him.