More than young James Stewart eyed his approach with apprehension, for he had been known to pick up a man in one hand and shake him until his neck broke. His father was not one of those who worried, however — for the old Earl sprawled fast asleep and snoring at one end of the dais table; anyway, he had long since surrendered any responsibility for his son.
Will and Kennedy, on either side of the King, stood up. The Master, they knew, was utterly capricious. He could be harmless, even docile in certain moods — or crazily berserk. Drunk, they feared the worst. Glancing round, to check the availability of further guards, Will saw that his brothers Jamie, Archie and Hugh had moved quietly up behind him.
The giant came forward, on an unsteady but determined course, certain cronies some way behind him. He almost fell over the step of the dais platform, but lurched on. Right to the table he came, to lean over on it, his great bristling beard out-thrust, eyes strangely and fiercely blue in the congested face.
“I . . . I’ll have my rights!” he roared, and smashed down a hamlike hand on the table-top, to set all the dishes and goblets leaping. “You hear? I’ll have my rights, by the Lord God!”
The boy James gulped, terrified.
“You shall have your rights, Master of Crawford, never fear,” Will said quietly. “Did you not hear parliament promise it, for all men, only today?”
“Quiet, Douglas! Quiet, I say!” the other cried thickly. “It’s no’ you I seek. It is . . . it is this snivelling priest!” He jabbed a finger at James Kennedy. “Louse! Slug! Crawling clerk!”
“How dare you force your way into the King’s presence, unbidden?” the Bishop said coldly. “Were you not drunk, sir, I’d have His Grace put you in ward, for lèse majesté, Crawford’s heir or no!”
“No, no!” the King croaked.
“Me! Put me in ward?” the giant hooted. “You? Or any here? Faugh!” He actually hawked, and spat. “Try, then. You. Any of you. All of you! Try warding Alex Lindsay! I am a man, see you — not one o’ your gelded cata . . . catamites!”
“This is beyond all bearing! But if it is myself you are at odds with, then, with His Grace’s permission, I will see you elsewhere. Outside this room. At least spare the King’s presence this outrage, man!”
“Na, na — I ken the style o’ you! You’ll no’ jouk Alex Lindsay that road! This laddie will hear the truth o’ you, and give me my rights — or he’ll see how Lindsay looks to his ain interests!”
“You threaten the King, sir? To his royal face! This is near to treason!. . . .”
“My lord — let the Master of Crawford make his complaint,” Will Douglas intervened urgently, as the big man looked like clambering right over the table itself to get at the Bishop. “Better. Over the sooner. Let us hear it, so that we may judge . . .”
“Judge!” the newcomer roared. “Who judges me? When Lindsay is misused, Lindsay judges! No whelps or striplings, Douglas or other! Hold your tongue, I say!”
At his back Will heard Archie growl and Hugh mutter. He signed to them to be quiet. Lindsay must be humoured if serious consequences were not to follow, not only immediate but for the future. For Crawford was one of the most powerful forces in the north east, and hitherto Will had been able to rely on its support. This red savage had been, after all, brother-in-law to the murdered 6th Earl of Douglas. Grievously offend him now and, with his father little more than a cipher, the precarious balance could swing dangerously against them.
“Tell His Grace your complaint, sir,” he suggested levelly.
The other snorted. “Lindsay does not complain!” he shouted. “He re . . . retaliates!” Nevertheless, he went on. “I am baillie and justiciar of the Abbey of Arbroath. As my father was before me. Now, these monkish scum have appointed another. They have taken Ogilvy. Oglivy of Inverquharity — God curse him! Against all right and custom. A man of straw and a scoundrel. And this . . . this . . .” He pointed at the Bishop. “This snake supports them! Tells them to disobey me. Me, Lindsay! I’ll teach churchmen to interfere in my affairs!”
“These are Church affairs, sir.” Kennedy snapped.
“They are not. They are mine. The matter is between me and those monks. Until you interfered . . .”
“Again you mistake. I did not interfere. The Abbot sought my advice. After you threatened his life. I told him that he and his brethen have every right to elect their own baillie and justiciar. As they have. That is all.”
“Liar! Rogue! Montebank!” The Master lost all control of himself. He had to get at James Kennedy. The dais table was in his way. It was thirty feet long and heavily made of oak, but he grasped it, and tipped it up as though it had been a toy. All the plates, goblets and flagons crashed to the floor. Those sitting behind it, including the King, had to push and struggle backwards, chairs and benches overturning, not all successfully. Chaos reigned.
Beardie Alex was stepping hugely over the upended table when Will Douglas acted, and his brothers with him. Like a pack of terrier-dogs they sprang at him, while he was still unbalanced and astraddle. Will was first, and took a mighty buffet which all but knocked the senses out of him. But he clung on, dizzy, pinioning at least one of the flailing arms until his brothers had the other. The giant, seeking to free his legs from the table between them, as well as the rest of him from his attackers, stumbled and fell headlong. Inevitably the Douglases fell on top of him.
Even then it was difficult to hold the Master down, as they rolled about on the floor amongst the pewter dishes and drinking-vessels. Quickly there was no lack of assistance, though most of it was vocal and advisory.
Hanging on, Will gasped to Kennedy. “Get the King away. And yourself. Quickly.”
The Bishop was a man sufficiently sensible not to put dignity and form before common sense. Nodding, he took the alarmed but fascinated monarch by the arm and, without ceremony, led him hurriedly over to the private door at the head of the Hall, and out. He shouted for more guards as he went.
When voices declared that all was clear, Will and his brothers were faced with the problem of disentangling themselves. Fortunately it was less difficult and dangerous than they feared. With guards pointing halberds at him from all around now, Lindsay seemed to regain something of his wits. He went slack. Gingerly the Douglases got up, one by one, watching warily for suddenly lashing fists or feet.
Amidst much shouting, the big man began slowly to rise to his feet. Will, panting, gestured to all to be quiet.
“Master of Crawford,” he got out, trying hard to keep his voice calm, level. “I crave your pardon. For laying violent hands on you. We all do. But it was necessary. You understand? Necessary. To save you from seeming to endanger the King. His royal person. Not your intention, I know. But it looked to be so and that is a grave offence. It could have gone ill with you.”
The other glowered, from under down-drawn brows, like a dazed bull.
“You take me? Ill with you. And, therefore, with the King’s cause. To which you are important. None would . . . none would belittle the might of Crawford.”
Lindsay, swaying a little, stared around him. The fall seemed to have sobered him somewhat. He was still frowning, but with an aspect of bewilderment rather than fury.
“You understand, sir?” Will persisted. “You may think yourself injured. By me and mine. But it was the work of friends.” He even managed to raise a smile. “I swear you should thank us!”
“Kennedy? That Bishop? . . . He is gone?” the other demanded hoarsely.
“Yes. Gone. With the King.”
“Aye. As well.” The big man gave something like a sigh. But for the moment the fight had gone out of him. He peered around him again, as though at a loss.
Will also was glancing round. He pointed. “There is my lord your father,” he said. The old Earl had had a rude awakening when the table overturned on him. Now he sat on his righted stool a little way aside from it all, his grey head in his hands, a man who might have been beaten by life. “He is, I think, weary. And a little in
drink. Would you . . . would you see my lord to his quarters, sir?”
Without a word, the Tiger pushed through the throng to his father, all moving hastily from his path. He took the Earl’s arm and raised him up. When the older man dropped limply, he shook him a little as though he had been a child. Then pulling him after him, he set off. Both had difficulty in negotiating the dais-step, but thereafter huge son led shambling sire behind him down the length of the Hall, with no single word between them. As silent, all watched this strange exodus. The Earl of Crawford, though old-seeming, was but newly sixty, Justice General of the North, Hereditary Sheriff of Aberdeenshire and Lord High Admiral of Scotland.
As they passed out of sight, Sir James Hamilton turned to Will. “You grow wily, my lord. Apace,” he said, sarcastically. “Quite the cunning cozener! But yon one will not love you for this, nevertheless.”
“Perhaps not,” Will admitted shortly. “But I seek not his love. Only his continued support for the King’s cause.”
“For Douglas’s cause, is it not?”
“For the King’s cause, sir. The same cause we set out on that day at Linlithgow, before Crichton. Have you forgot?”
The other ignored that. “Whatsoever the cause, think you that you can yoke and drive this team to your plough? With every man’s hand against another. Think you to build victory on such foundations?”
“I have no choice. These are all that I have to fight with.”
“You had choice, in some measure. And chose Kennedy!”
“He is honest. Able. High-born. And carries much of the Church with him.”
“And so his parliament makes edicts favouring his Church! But against all others. We are to be ruled by grasping priests! You will not unite the realm thus, my lord!”
“You are well informed, sir, as to today’s parliament — though you could not win here in time to attend it.”
Hamilton flicked that aside. “Crawford is only one. The first. Other lords suffering from greedy churchmen will turn from you. I swear that you can pay too dear for Kennedy as Chancellor!”
“Who would please all factions? You, sir — had the choice fallen on yourself, would you have had no enemies? None to raise their brows at you?”
Sir James frowned. “I flatter myself that honest men conceive me of their kind. At least you would have Crawford, Livingstone and Hamilton sure at Douglas’s back.”
Contemplating the thought of these at his back, Will had to repress a shiver. But he could not give voice to such sentiments. “It is my hope that, as His Grace’s Lieutenant-General, I shall have these, and all leal men, at my back!” he returned stiffly. He jerked a perfunctory bow. “Now. I go to acquaint the King that this mischance is past. Sit to, Sir James — the repast and entertainment will continue.” He signed to Jamie to call in the next spectacle.
Making his way thereafter to the King’s quarters — no longer in the half-ruined Ballengeich Tower but now in the true royal apartments formerly occupied by Alexander Livingstone — Will Douglas was almost sorry for himself. He had thought that it was a sword, many swords, that the King and his own vengeance required of him; but it seemed that this was the least of it. He had never fancied himself as the realm’s peacemaker — Black Douglas! But evidently the smooth tongue, the soft answer, the nimble wits, the scheming mind — these were what his task demanded of him. It was a far cry from Ettrick Forest.
CHAPTER NINE
ALL over Galloway’s great and rich province, from the Rhinns to the Machers, from Loch Ryan to the Nith, from the high hills of Merrick and Kells to the Solway marshes, folk went set-faced, men glowered and women clutched their heads against the clangour. Since dawn that summer morning the bells had tolled and jangled and clamoured, every bell and peal and carillion, in every church and chapel, cell and college, in every monastery, nunnery and abbey, in every town, village and hamlet — and Galloway was rich in all of these. The warm still July air throbbed and beat and quivered with the ceaseless tintinnabulation, heads were splitting, tempers fraying — and the bride tended to be cursed instead of blessed and toasted. By noon, many were near to madness.
That is, amongst the common folk of course. All who might aspire to any quality or position had flocked to New Abbey, amongst the green water-meadows where Nith met Solway beneath the tall cone of Criffel, and where the little abbey-town in the shadow of the lovely red-stone splendour of Dulce Cor had become a vast pavilioned city with its own streets, avenues and squares, a colourful metropolis amongst the rich pastures, fully a mile square, with the ensigns, banners and colours of half Scotland’s chivalry competing with striped and multi-hued tentage, canopies and awnings, and the inevitable men-at-arms encampments, the endless horse-lines and the seething cattle-pens extending all still further. Happily, the noise here at, as it were, the heart of things, was more bearable, for the bells of Dulce Cor, or Sweet Heart Abbey, were the sweetest in the land — Devorgilla, Lady of Galloway, had seen to that when she had founded this great minster for the heart of her beloved husband John de Baliol, and for her own when she should eventually join him, two centuries before. Now her young successor of a dozen generations later, moved to her bridal in their mellow, tuneful benison.
The great rose-red abbey had witnessed many a stirring scene in those long years, but assuredly none so compelling as this, wherein the Fair Maid of all Galloway wed the Black Douglas, in the presence of the King of Scots. Ministrels would sing of this day, poets extol it. Today great Douglas was reunited, and the Red Heart and the Sweet Heart were made one.
At noon the bells at last ceased their ringing, and in the vast abbey church, Bishop James Kennedy, Primate and Chancellor of Scotland, raised his voice. Evocative, powerful, sonorous, the rich Latin phrases echoed to the lofty timber roof-work of the nave and the groined stone vaulting of the chancel and transepts. A great choir made the responses, three hundred singing boys and half-men.
Will stood, with Jamie at his shoulder, just within the chancel. He was dressed all in black and silver, doublet and trunks of satin, and long silken hose. With his dark, almost swarthy good looks, he made an eye-catching figure. Jamie, all in grey, looked strangely delicate beside his brother, although in fact they were not so different as to build. On their right, further into the chancel, King James sat in a chair-of-state, very fine in cloth-of-gold, but fidgeting and twisting his legs round those of the chair. Standing a few paces off, on the other side, were the bride and her stepfather, Sir James Hamilton, backed by a bevy of bridal attendants, amongst whom were Will’s two remaining unmarried sisters, Janet and Elizabeth. The Lady Margaret of Galloway, in white silk-taffeta worked all over with slender gold filigree, high-throated, her long and lovely neck supported by a tall upstanding collar encrusted with pearls, eschewed all elaborate headdress, such as was the fashion, and wore a simple gold circlet over her long flaxen hair — but it was sufficient to remind all that she was a countess three times over in her own right. She looked heartbreakingly young, innocent and beautiful, but grave. Beside her, Hamilton overdressed in red crammesy, the doublet with great orange bell sleeves, the trunks slashed with emerald, resembled a strutting peacock. Beyond these, and opposite the King, were five more throne-like chairs, one and four. In front sat Abbot Henry Douglas, master of Sweet Heart, and behind four mitred bishops, the first John Cameron of Glasgow, looking sour. These blazed with such a wealth of jewels on copes, stoles, mitres and fingers, as to hurt the eye.
Will had glanced around and behind him, once, over the close-packed ranks of chivalry and beauty, past his mother and brothers and sisters and the Duchess of Touraine — but nowhere did he glimpse her for whom his eyes sought.
When a clash of cymbals intimated the end of the preamble, bride and groom moved together and forward, to a pair of golden cushions placed side by side before the altar-steps. There they knelt, not so much glancing at each other. They had not met since the day, all those months before when Will had left Threave in haste at Rob Fleming’s tidings. A sense of
complete unreality gripped the bridegroom, at least.
James Kennedy came down to them, and commenced the actual nuptials — which were, in fact, comparatively simple and brief. At the exchange of vows, the girl’s voice spoke more clearly than the man’s. When the ring was called for, and Jamie brought it forward on a cushion of its own, it was Will who fumbled, all but dropped it, and muttered while Margaret held out a small, slim but steady hand, and indeed aided him to slip it on her finger. On the Bishop’s pronouncing of them man and wife, it was she who turned to her new lord and master and dipped a curtsy, gracefully, firmly, though she did not smile, whereas his bow was short to the point of curtness, and the hand that raised her up was almost rough.
Thereafter, as the cymbals clashed again, trumpets flourished, the great congregation shouted, the bells high overhead began to peal again, and the choir burst into the anthem, the two of them stood together, still, silent, her white hand resting lightly on his black arm, almost strangers to each other yet made one in the sight of God, men and the law. Somewhere in Will’s head a pulse was hammering.
The paeans of praise and joy seemed to be endless. The bridal couple bore them as best they might, isolated there as the great minster throbbed and shook with thanksgiving. But at last the Primate was able to pronounce the benediction, and then to join the other prelates in heading up the procession of the clergy, led by the Abbot and escorted by acolytes, censer-swingers, crozier-, mace- and staff-bearers, which, after bowing to the King, paced down through the packed nave and out into the midday sunshine where the crowds waited in their laughing and excited thousands: The Lord Lyon King of Arms then signed for his trumpeters to blow, and with his gorgeously tabarded heralds, led the monarch after the clergy, backed by the Constable, the Marischal, the Chamberlain, the Standard-bearer, the Cup-bearer and other officers of state, while everywhere the congregation made obeisance.
Black Douglas (Coronet Books) Page 18
